The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  My grandmother was rummaging around the fridge, still ignoring both of us by the time I left for school. I’d missed my first three classes and we idled in the parking lot, waiting for the bell to ring so I could slip in during the next passing period.

  “I’ll miss this,” my mom said.

  “What?”

  “Driving you to school every day.”

  Having KLS meant it was technically illegal for me to drive myself anywhere. Just in case I passed out at the wheel going seventy on the highway and drove myself off a bridge. That meant my mom had been driving me to school every day for the past thirteen years.

  “I won’t,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s not you.” I backtracked. My mom was sensitive, and especially just after an episode. “I just…I like the idea of going places on my own. Even if have to walk.”

  “Like Emory?” she asked.

  “Emory…anywhere really.”

  A few students trickled into the parking lot early, getting into their cars and heading to lunch.

  “It won’t be long,” she said. “You’ll graduate soon and then you’ll be out there in the world. Away from me…”

  “Not too far away.”

  I said it to make her feel better but all it did was remind me that staying close wasn’t really a choice. There were things I couldn’t do on my own. Not with KLS. I needed her, even if I didn’t want to.

  I spotted Dani coming down the steps and got out of the car. My mom idled near the stop sign until she saw me go inside.

  “So, what’s the damage?” I said.

  “You got lucky. Someone put some naked pictures of Candace Johnson from the party on the internet.”

  “Eclipsed by Candace’s tits.”

  “Again,” Dani laughed.

  “Well, thank God.”

  “Some girls get all the luck. Speaking of luck, you couldn’t play Sleeping Beauty for a couple more days? I mean at least miss the first day of the spring semester.”

  “I’ve missed enough school, trust me it’s not as fun as it sounds. I barely got all of my homework finished in those few weeks I was actually awake.”

  “Yeah, weird having them so close together like that. I guess seeing Drew must have really, you know, set you off.”

  “I guess.” I didn’t even want to think about that night. I’d been asleep for almost a week and I could still feel him pressed against me in that towel closet. I could still feel every move, every mistake. Because it was. A huge one. “Have you heard anything?” I asked. “About Drew or what happened, I mean?” I swallowed, expecting the worst.

  But then Dani said, “Not much. He’s mostly just been posting a lot of really cryptic song lyrics. That guy’s such a cliché. What do you think will happen when you see him in class?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I could think of a few scenarios, most of them ending with Drew in some kind of physical agony. But hadn’t that been how I’d imagined the party? That I’d face him. That I’d be strong. And then it was like I forgot everything. That night in my room when he wanted me to sleep with him. When I wasn’t ready. When he told me I was ruining everything.

  “What do you want to happen?” Dani asked.

  The truth? I didn’t know. But I swallowed it back down, words laced with disgust. “Ideally, nothing. That night was a mistake.”

  I opened my locker and grabbed my stats book.

  “Are you sure?” Dani asked.

  “You just said it. The guy’s a cliché. I’m done with that.”

  “Well, I guess we’ll see.”

  “I’m serious. He’s…”

  “Right behind you?”

  “What?”

  I closed my locker and there was Drew. He was leaning against the door next to mine, chewing on a piece of gum. I watched it curl around his tongue before clinging to a molar. It was disgusting.

  Dani fell into the crowd as I headed for the stairs.

  “You feeling okay?” Drew asked. “I heard—”

  “Fine.”

  I barreled up the steps and he reached for my arm.

  “Hey, slow down.”

  “Sorry, kind of in a hurry,” I lied.

  He jumped in front of me and I slammed into his chest.

  “Shit. Move.”

  “What’s your problem?” he said.

  “What’s your problem?” I spat back. I really didn’t want to deal with him on my first day back. But mostly I just didn’t want him to see my face, to see that I was angry and embarrassed. To see that I was still hurting.

  I lowered my voice. “Just, please, get out of my way.”

  He stared down at me, blue eyes dark. Then he stepped aside. “Fine. Whatever.”

  I rushed into class, tripping over the recycling bin on the way to my desk.

  “Good one, Bryn.” Jessie Fowler turned to me and winked.

  “Fuck off.”

  “Sure, but I could use some help.”

  I gave him the finger and he finally turned around. The rest of the class filed in, everyone stealing a glance at “coma chick” before finding their seats. I always hated that first day back. The staring, the speculating about what I’d really been doing the past six days. I’d heard everything from prison to joining some religious sect and becoming one of those child brides.

  This time I felt their eyes longer than usual but I couldn’t tell if it was because of what happened at the party or because of what was happening inside my head. I knew I was being paranoid. I hoped I was being paranoid. But what if they could tell? What if Dr. Sabine could tell and that’s what all that blood work had been about?

  I sunk in my seat, piling my books on the edge of the desk so I wouldn’t have to see Jessie in the corner of my eye, and more importantly, so no one could see me. I thumbed through Dani’s stats notes, trying to make sense of them. But I’d missed so much that everything Mrs. Wheeler driveled on about felt like it was in a foreign language.

  Technically it was. I mean numbers and I had never really gotten along all that well. When I was younger I thought I’d wanted to be an architect but sitting through my first geometry class made me want to puke so that dream shriveled up fast.

  I liked to make things with just my hands—calloused fingers, heat from my palms, the sharp corner of my thumbnail. But I didn’t like all the measuring, the precision, the knowing exactly what it was going to look like before I even started. There was no fun in that.

  I sat there, trying to focus on the projection screen, Mrs. Wheeler’s man-hands smudging the answers before I could write them down. I tried to sit still, listening to every word. I tried not to think about what I’d seen in the mirror that morning and I tried not to think about the boy in my head. Either of them.

  I tightened my grip and scratched through the page, tip of my pen carving out a few thin layers.

  Why does he always do this?

  Ever since that first breakup, Drew had always made me feel like I wasn’t allowed to move on. Like maybe I didn’t want to.

  I’d walk away and he’d reach for me.

  “It’s me,” he’d say, pulling at a strand of my hair and letting it spring back toward my face.

  “It’s always you,” I’d say.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Then he’d kiss me, a lazy apology that never tasted like the truth. Because it wasn’t.

  He’d left me so many times. Standing in the parking lot after one of his baseball games. Crawling out of my bedroom window while I tried not to cry. After dinner at my grandparent’s house the night of my fifteenth birthday. He’d left me. Why couldn’t I do the same?

  I flipped to a clean page in my notebook, pen carving out the mechanical cog shapes on the boy’s shirt. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen it before, if it was my memory stamped there and not his. But it was faded, part of the graphic peeling off—like something worn and owned and cherished.

  Who are you?

  “Bryn?”
r />   I sat up. “Yes?”

  “Do you have an answer?” Mrs. Wheeler asked.

  I swallowed. “Um…no I’m still working on it.”

  Mrs. Wheeler gave me a half smile and nodded. Sick girl: one. Statistics: zero.

  The bell rang and I ducked into the girl’s bathroom, searching the foot traffic for Drew. When I didn’t see him I finally stepped out, pausing over every face I didn’t recognize, wondering for a moment if I might see the boy from the beach.

  Everything else in that place had come from the present—a moment, a meeting. Memories. And maybe I had seen him. But as I scanned every person who passed by, some with the same dark hair, the same shoulders, the same height, none of them had his eyes.

  They’d poured into me, dark and afraid, and every time I didn’t see him in the hallway, I was afraid too. I hoped that he existed, that maybe he had KLS too, because thinking about the alternative was worse. That I was getting worse and whoever, whatever he was, it was a side effect of my illness teetering on that torrential edge of no return.

  Doctors always referred to KLS as a “non-fatal” disease but that didn’t mean there weren’t exceptions and that didn’t mean there weren’t possible outcomes even worse than death. I’d heard the horror stories, patients getting stuck in that in-between state and becoming some dribbling vegetable. Patients slipping into a coma and never coming out of it, some pale-faced family member exhaling a sigh of relief as the doctor pulled the plug.

  The truth was it could get a lot worse.

  Even though I could still remember his cheek against the soft tip of my finger. Warm. Giving way. Even though he’d felt real. Even though I wanted him to be, maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was just some kind of omen of things to come. Bad things.

  Unless I found him.

  Which is why I lingered in the hall during every passing period—in between hiding from Drew and anyone else who may have seen me make a fool of myself at Candace’s party—and examined every boy with black hair and dark eyes. Stopping them by dropping my books at their feet, by reaching for them and saying I thought they were someone else. I looked for him everywhere but I never saw him.

  On my way to lunch, someone brushed past me and when I turned I saw Candace and her lap dog Jessica Childress. I ignored them both, waiting for them to go away.

  Jessica had spent every hour of our History class in 8th grade sticking random objects in my hair—pencil erasers, wads of paper, gum—and as is the plight of most girls with curly hair I wouldn’t find the junk until later that night when I was in the shower. Meaning I’d spent four hours walking around school with shit in my hair like some kind of human trash can.

  She’d also been in love with Drew since we were twelve years old.

  I could feel her waiting for me to look up and I could taste her perfume sticking to the back of my throat. I coughed.

  “Oh, good,” she said, “I thought maybe you’d passed out again.”

  “No, Jessica, in fact I’m waiting very patiently for you to be struck by a falling meteor or to catch on fire or for the floor to spontaneously cave in and you to fall to your death in a disgusting sink hole. Also, I’m kind of walking so that should have been your first clue.”

  Candace narrowed her eyes. “Thanks for providing some much needed entertainment at my party.”

  “Yeah, well that was a—”

  “Mistake? Funny. Drew said the same thing.” Jessica looked right at me. “You should stay away from him.”

  “Believe me, I’m trying to.”

  “Well, try harder,” she said. But she didn’t look angry. She looked afraid.

  I looked down the hall and spotted Drew at my locker.

  “Well, it’s a little hard to do that when he keeps hanging around my locker,” I said.

  Jessica followed my eyes and then she pushed past me toward the parking lot.

  I met Dani in the courtyard for lunch. She was dabbing at her slice of pizza with a napkin.

  “That’s gross,” I said.

  “No. What’s gross is all this grease.”

  I took a bite of mine, that very grease dripping down my chin. She grimaced and I rolled my eyes, reaching for a napkin.

  “He’s staring at you.”

  “What?” I turned, still cleaning the grease off my face when I saw Drew sitting with his friends.

  “Well, was before you turned around.”

  I thought about what Jessica had said. How she’d been right. I should stay away from Drew.

  I lowered my voice. “Did I wake up this time, like, super hot or something? Jesus, I mean he’s never had a problem ignoring me before.”

  “Rejection,” Dani said. “It makes them horny.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true. Look at Felix.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Why do you string him along?”

  “I don’t,” she snapped. “I just…”

  I spotted Matt across the courtyard. He had three slices of pizza stacked on top of each other and was trying to fit the whole thing in his mouth.

  “You’d just rather go out with that?” I asked.

  “I’d rather know what I’m getting myself into,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Matt, he’s simple.”

  “Obviously.”

  “And simple is easy. Simple is safe. Don’t you think that’s why you keep getting back with Drew?” she said. “It’s comfortable and not because he makes you happy—the guy’s a total asshole—but because you already know what to expect. You already know how he’ll hurt you.”

  I was quiet for a long time, wondering if maybe she was right. But I wasn’t like her. I didn’t have a new boyfriend every week just so I didn’t have to feel alone. I wasn’t weak…like that.

  “Felix is different,” Dani finally said. “Felix is good.”

  “Exactly. So, why don’t you give him a chance? The guy’s been in love with you since we were eight.”

  “Just because he’s a good guy doesn’t mean he won’t hurt me and with him it will come out of nowhere, totally unexpected.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t act like I’m the only one with daddy issues.”

  My uncle had passed away when we were thirteen in a construction accident. I remembered sitting in the other room when they told Dani. It was quiet, so quiet, and then it wasn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t sure for what.

  She waved a hand. “It’s whatever. But with Felix…I just can’t.”

  I picked at a slice of pepperoni. “Do you like him?”

  She shook her head. “Bryn, I can’t.”

  That night when I got home from school my mom had gone all out on dinner. I thought about what she and my grandmother had been eating for the past week—probably whatever Christmas leftovers hadn’t sprouted mold yet and an assortment of Lean Cuisines.

  I could never understand why they just stopped everything when I was asleep. It’s not like I’d ever know. I just couldn’t stand the thought of them trudging through this self-imposed misery all because of me.

  “Dr. Sabine called,” my mom said as she piled some lasagna on my plate. “She’d like to have you come in this weekend.”

  I knew my mom had probably called the office the second I’d conked out again. Under normal circumstances I probably would have been annoyed by the inconvenience but I was actually relieved. Because I could pretend there wasn’t a pattern, that things weren’t starting to feel like they had those first few years I was sick. When my mom had to home school me. When I spent every summer in bed. When I missed birthdays and holidays and the last Christmas my grandfather was alive. When the disease was on hyper-drive, assimilating to my body, possessing me every chance it got. Eventually they’d mellowed out. I’d hit puberty and they were easier to manage. But something about the frequency lately just felt different. It felt scary.

  “Sure.”

  “The girl
’s fine,” my grandmother said. “She just needs a little bit more beauty rest than most. But steam her over a pot of boiling thyme…” She pinched the back of my arm. “And if she puts on a few more pounds she’ll look just like Sophia Loren.”

  Backhanded compliments. Another one of my grandmother’s specialties.

  My mom ignored her. “She said she has some news. An alternative treatment maybe.”

  Great. Another one. I’d been playing guinea pig for some new KLS miracle drug at least once a year since I was first diagnosed. Usually the same ones, some new variation added, small amendments to the original design, and they were usually always duds. For me, at least.

  I’d heard of a few drugs being widely prescribed and helping at least a handful of patients manage their symptoms. But they’d still never found a cure and I was still waiting on my miracle.

  “Have they tested it on rats yet?” I asked.

  “Funny,” my mom huffed. “It’s out of Germany so it was probably dogs.”

  “Oh good, so does that mean I’ll be the first human test case?”

  “We’ll see. You feel up to trying something new?”

  “You mean trying again?”

  She nodded.

  I thought about being laid up in a hospital bed, being poked and prodded, nurses filling vials full of my tainted blood, med students being paraded past my room and scribbling notes down for some research paper they were writing on rare neurological diseases. I thought about the monotony. The discomfort. The disappointment. But then I thought about the boy in my head. About what would happen to me if I kept getting worse.

  I exhaled, looked at my mom, and said, “Let’s do it.”

  9

  .

  I’d just stepped onto the dock, reaching back for the rope, for her hand. But she wasn’t there. She’d felt like a flash. Like I was trapped on some deserted island and she was the only person in the world who knew I was here. The only person in the world who knew I existed at all.

  I stood there, just staring at the waves—crests identical until you actually waded out into the water and looked close up. It was more than strange. It was like magic. What if she was right? What if…?