The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  “Are you sure?” she said. “I mean you just woke up and—”

  “I’ve been sleeping, not off to war or something. Stop tip-toeing.”

  “Drew’s dating someone.”

  “Someone…”

  “Else.”

  “Yeah. Got that. Who?”

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t go to Imperial.”

  My throat tightened.

  “Are you okay?” Dani asked.

  I bent my knees, letting the water rise to my chin. It was cold.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Are you sure? You remember last time when he—”

  “I’m fine.”

  I thought about that stupid red box sitting on my nightstand. The anniversary present I couldn’t open. The one he’d thrown against my headboard because I wasn’t ready. Because he was tired of waiting and I still wasn’t ready.

  Four weeks. It had felt like a long time when I’d first woken up but just then it felt like a flash, like it took him no time at all to find someone else. Someone normal. But as angry as I was, as much as I hated him, I hated myself a little too. Why can’t I just be normal?

  “Can you wait out there?” I said. “I want to finish up in here.”

  “Sure.”

  I heard the door slide closed and then I was underwater, watching the soft ripple of the vanity lights as they swirled with tears.

  2

  .

  My throat burned, those first few breaths setting my lungs on fire. I rolled onto my side, staring at those footsteps in the sand, at the deep impression of her knees. She was just here. I saw her. But then she wasn’t.

  I blinked, sunlight searing. Sulfur tears peeled down my sunburned skin, my fingers padding them dry. I finally opened my eyes and stared down at my hands, examining the unfamiliar scars and callouses. I looked down at my clothes, dark jeans and some t-shirt with weird shapes on it sticking to my skin.

  I stumbled to my feet but my legs were still liquid and I sank back down, crawling to the first sand dune. The tide licked at me, still reaching, and I kept crawling, getting as far away from the water as possible.

  I looked down the beach to where the water seemed to disappear behind the tree line, and then just past the next sand dune, the beach giving way to tall grass and a narrow dirt road that spilled into a bright blue sky. None of it looked familiar. Not the dark trees. Not the road veering around the bend. Not the beach. Not even my own shadow trembling next to me. I stared at my hands, throat tightening, trying to remember.

  Remember. Jesus, anything. Just remember something.

  But there was nothing. There was no one. No echo of a past I might have lived, of a place I might have come from. There was nothing and I was empty.

  3

  Bryn

  My hair was still dripping down my back when I walked into the kitchen. My mom, my grandmother, and my uncle were circled around an open box of blueberry muffins and ignoring how my clothes hung like they weren’t my own. They were good at that, at not treating me like a ghost, even though waking up always made me feel like one.

  “Hey kiddo, hungry?” My uncle Brian grabbed a clean glass from the dishwasher and poured me some orange juice.

  Waking up from a long episode always felt a little like my birthday, everyone waiting around to see me, doting on me like I was some kind of pet. But seeing my uncle after a long sleep was even more jarring. Not because I didn’t see him almost every day—he was always coming by the house fixing something for my mom; helping her with some new project—but because he was my dad’s twin. The dad I hadn’t seen in eight months. The dad who’d left us, all of us, when I was seven.

  I looked at my uncle, his face expectant. I’d just started Dr. Sabine’s latest drug trial before my episode and it was supposed to be the miracle we’d all been waiting for.

  I shook my head. “Shit didn’t work.”

  He shrugged. “Hey, everyone’s a little fucked up.”

  “Language,” my mom cut in. “Jesus, you weren’t raised by wolves.” Then she laughed. “Nice to see you’re in a good mood.”

  “It’s nice not to be a zombie anymore,” I said. “For now.”

  The room grew quiet and then my uncle said, “Brought you some parts. They’re in the backyard.”

  My uncle always stopped by the scrapyard on his way over, bringing me whatever salvageable metals he could find for my sculptures.

  I stared down into my glass of orange juice. “I missed the deadline.”

  “What?” my uncle said. “When was it?”

  “Last day of the fall semester.” I inhaled. “It’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry, kid.”

  “They’ll have another in May,” I said. “It’ll be cutting it close but if I won maybe they’d let me use the scholarship for the fall semester.”

  My mom cleared the empty plates from the counter before straightening the napkins and putting the orange juice back in the fridge. She was trying to avoid my eyes. But I wouldn’t let her, not this time.

  “We should probably plan our visit to the campus soon,” I said. “I’ll have to turn in my application by March.”

  I’d wanted to go to Emory since I was twelve, majoring in sculpture and spending every waking hour in some cramped studio with a bunch of dread-locked hippies and new age ingénues who still thought art could save the world.

  I wanted to live in a tiny dorm that smelled like coffee beans and old socks and I wanted to walk across campus with my hair a mess and no attempt at makeup because college kids didn’t give a shit what they looked like. Not the cool ones anyway.

  I wanted all of that despite the fact that I was sick. Despite the fact that I knew it could never happen. Unless we tried again. Unless we went back to Dr. Sabine and we tried again.

  “We’ll see,” was all my mom said.

  I followed my uncle into the backyard, rusting car parts scattered on a tarp near the garage. The sweet musk of the lawn floated up my nose and I sneezed, absorbing the daylight in harsh flashes.

  I bent down, picking through the pile, fingers trailing over every sharp edge and coming back orange.

  “Did you bring stuff every weekend?” I asked.

  “Just about,” he said. “Thought you’d be pressed for time when you woke up.”

  I knelt there, sun burning my eyes as I tried to catch my breath. “Thanks.”

  I tried to stand, tried to hide that I couldn’t, and then my uncle reached out a hand and pulled me to my feet.

  “Sorry you missed the deadline.”

  He helped me lift the garage door and I saw my sculpture for the first time in weeks. I’d spent the two just before my episode in this musty garage working under the glow of a red spotlight, fingers calloused and cheeks painted with dirt. Sunlight glinted off the steel petals, flashes of copper and aluminum, everything now trapped under a small film of dust.

  It was a giant sunflower, the kind that had grown around my grandparent’s farmhouse before my grandfather passed away and we had to sell it. Vines and wild grass wound around the stem spotted with bugs made of screws and bolts. I’d ground each piece down by hand and welded them with a hot flame. But it still looked bare. It still wasn’t finished.

  “Even if I tried again she still wouldn’t let me go,” I said.

  We both knew it was true. Maybe my mom would have considered it if I’d wanted to stay in Austin. But Emory was five hours east in another state and I knew the distance was something she’d never go for.

  “She’s just afraid,” he said.

  “So am I.” I pressed a finger to one of the sharp petals. “But what if I never get better? I can’t just keep waiting.”

  “You will get better. People grow out of this condition all the time.”

  It was true, KLS seemed to mostly afflict the young, stealing our best years before mysteriously abandoning us to adulthood but, “I was asleep for four weeks.”

  “Okay, longer than last time but nothing out of the ordin
ary. Don’t look at this as a step backwards.”

  “That’s what it feels like.”

  “But it’s not. It’s one last long episode, one last finale before they start to teeter off. They’ll get shorter. You’ll get better. You’ll see.”

  “But what if it’s not in time for school?”

  “Then you’ll go later.”

  “Yeah and be the only college freshman who’s thirty,” I scoffed.

  “Who cares? I bet you won’t look a day over twenty-seven.”

  I shoved him, his girth barely moving an inch. My uncle was 6’3” and worked in the oil fields, which meant he was not only covered in filth ninety percent of the time but he was also loaded. Though you wouldn’t know it by his standard uniform of flannel shirts and faded jeans, blonde scruff covering his chin.

  “So what if you live life on a different schedule?” he said. “You’re still living it.”

  I thought about being hunched over the desk in my bedroom, spending my waking hours sifting through mounds of homework. “Barely.”

  “With that attitude, yeah.” He gripped my shoulder. “Get it together. You’re not weak. This isn’t you.”

  “But what if I’m tired?”

  He smiled. “Then take another power nap.”

  “Fuck off,” I laughed.

  “Ah, there she is.”

  I spent the rest of Christmas break on the couch trying not to overexert myself. My mom was afraid it would set me off again so I was prohibited from venturing into the garage or leaving the house at all.

  Even Christmas morning had been subdued. I slept in, my mom no doubt pacing the living room until the moment I finally appeared coherent, worried that I’d slipped into another episode.

  When she saw me she’d rushed to the doorway, leading me by the arm around to the couch.

  “Breakfast?” she’d said, even though it was almost noon.

  “Cinnamon rolls?” I asked, pulling out of her grasp. It had been almost a week and I felt fine.

  “Of course.”

  My grandmother waved a hand, cheap gold bangles jingling around her wrist. “There’s a pan full of leftover quiche in the fridge. You don’t want it to go to waste, Elena.”

  Never wasting anything—one of my grandmother’s specialties.

  My mom ignored her, clicking on the oven. “Bryn wants cinnamon rolls. That’s our tradition.”

  My grandmother shuffled into the kitchen, long ratty shawl sweeping the floor, and then she opened the fridge and grabbed the quiche.

  After we ate, we took turns unwrapping presents, the packages of mine all lined with dollar bills and little notes. My mom always went all out on Christmas, springing for velvet wrapping paper and these big elaborate bows, gourmet chocolates and enough food to last her, my grandmother, and I the rest of the break.

  She held her breath while I unwrapped each gift –gift cards and new clothes for the summer that always came early, sketchbooks and vintage records for my grandfather’s old phonograph. I gave her and my grandmother each a necklace with a silver chain and a wooden charm I’d carved myself. Since then neither one of them had taken it off.

  My mom was clutching it the morning of New Year’s Eve while we sat in Dr. Sabine’s waiting room. It was empty—no patients, no nurses. When Dr. Sabine got back from her holiday in Aspen or New York or wherever rich people like to go during the winter, she’d made an exception to see me a week earlier than scheduled.

  My mom sensed urgency even though there was none and I thought the charm I’d made was going to disintegrate in her hand.

  “I’m fine,” I sighed.

  My mom glanced at me, trying to keep a straight face. “I know.”

  “Then relax,” I said.

  “I am.” She crossed her legs, then uncrossed them. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

  But I knew the truth behind that strain in her voice. I’d heard it buzzing there behind every word and every sigh since the bad dreams first started, since I first got sick.

  I stared at the aquarium across from us, empty for cleaning, and remembered pressing my hands against the glass the first time I sat in Dr. Sabine’s waiting room. I was ten when the dreams first started, eleven when they were replaced by sporadic comas spent on an imaginary beach, and twelve when I was finally diagnosed with KLS.

  I choked down the smell of rain and tried not to feel its cold patter against my skin. For some reason it would always rain in those childhood nightmares, so hard that I could barely make out my own silhouette. And the flowers. Dead. Everywhere. I remembered trudging through them, trying to run, their roots twisting up from the ground and clinging to my ankles. I never knew what I was running from and when the dreams finally stopped part of me thought that I’d gotten away. But as I sat in Dr. Sabine’s waiting room, thinking about my lips pressed to the boy’s corpse, I wondered if maybe I was wrong.

  My mom clutched my hand and then Dr. Sabine stepped into the waiting room.

  “How are we doing today?” she asked.

  My mom shot out of her seat. “Fine. Fine.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Dr. Sabine said, ushering us into her office. “And Bryn?” She sat at her desk and pulled up my file on her computer.

  “Fine,” I repeated.

  “Fine…” Dr. Sabine faced us with a cautious smile. “But a long one this time, correct?”

  “Longer than usual,” I said.

  “Anything happen just before?” She started typing something on her computer that I couldn’t see. “Were you under a lot of stress at school maybe? Worried about finals?”

  “Uh, maybe,” I said, still trying to make out what she was typing. “But I feel fine.”

  “You said that.”

  “Right. I mean I’ve felt good. Well, as good as…” someone with a debilitating neurological disorder.

  “The drowsiness,” my mom cut in. “It was a bit more severe last semester and I really wasn’t cooking as much as I should have been. I know you had that theory about some foods being a trigger. I was working a lot and we were getting a lot of take-out but I’ve made a grocery list and maybe you could look over it.” She dug around in her purse and slid the list to Dr. Sabine. “And you know I’ve been meaning to get one of those water purifiers installed on the kitchen sink. Oh and we’re switching to all natural cleaning supplies. That’s on the list too.”

  “Ms. Reyes, you know we’ve talked about this.”

  I watched my mom take a breath, grow still.

  “This is all great and incredibly proactive,” Dr. Sabine continued, “but this last episode might have had nothing to do with Bryn’s environment at all. I don’t want either of you getting worked up over this. There’s an ebb and flow to KLS, we’ve seen it.”

  “Right,” my mom said. “You’re right.”

  Dr. Sabine handed her back the list and she tucked it into her purse.

  “Just to be safe, we’ll run some tests.” Dr. Sabine looked at me. “Nothing too invasive. Just routine. You know the drill.”

  I nodded, tried to smile. But none of it felt routine. Not the empty waiting room. Not the strange chill in Dr. Sabine’s voice, left over from the vacation she’d cut short to come back for this appointment. Not the feeling twisting in my gut. And when she stuck me with the needle, for the first time in a long time I felt that too.

  When we got home my aunt and my grandmother were squared off in the middle of the kitchen. My grandmother was clutching a Tupperware container full of moldy carne asada and my aunt was trying to get her to throw it in the trash.

  “It’s still good,” my grandmother said.

  My aunt snatched it out of her hands. “You’re going to kill yourself.”

  “Well, good riddance,” my grandmother said as she made her way back to the couch.

  My aunt lowered her voice. “If only.” She gave me a hug, gaze trailing down to the gauze tied around my arm. “How’d it go?”

  I waited for my mom to say fine but she didn’t. Ins
tead, she just stood there, arms braced over the island.

  I tried to think of a way out of there and finally said, “I’m going to go change,” before escaping to my room.

  When I closed the door behind me I saw Dani thumbing around my desk. She was still in her running shorts, black hair thrown up in a messy bun.

  “Can I help you find something?” I asked.

  She waved me off. “What’s this?” She held up the red box from Drew.

  I flopped down on the bed, not looking at her. “Nothing. Toss it.”

  She cocked an eyebrow, her face still flushed from her morning run. “It says: From Drew.”

  “Exactly. Toss it.”

  She slumped down on the edge of my bed and pulled at the small bow, the top of the box springing open.

  I rolled my eyes and fell back against the bed. “Just get rid of it.”

  I heard something slip into her palm, clinking against her father’s class ring that she always wore.

  “Whoa.”

  I sat up, eyes settling on the silver chain. “What the hell is that?” I reached for it, examining the charm engraved with a shallow inscription. His initials.

  “Wow,” Dani said. “Why not stick a branding iron to your forehead?”

  It lay there in my hand, cold and heavy, my thumbnail chipping at the letters of his name. I tried to imagine him picking it out, slipping it around my wrist, waiting for my face to light up. Even though I’d never have worn something like that. Even though I didn’t believe in promises.

  I let it slip between my fingers, my stomach in a knot.

  Dani reached for it. “What an asshole. You know, I’m really relieved to see how well you’re taking all of this…you know, the whole Drew dating someone else thing. It’s obvious this didn’t mean anything to him.” She flung the bracelet in the trash and I tried not to flinch as it hit the bottom.