The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  “Don’t worry, I’m not offended. Shit’s disgusting. I only drink it for nostalgic purposes. Oh, and you like the bass.”

  “I do?”

  “You were tapping along with it on every song which isn’t normal. Most people follow the drums, lead guitar. Hey, maybe you play the bass.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I sort of have this feeling that I’m not all that coordinated. I mean I was checking myself out in the hall mirror while you were gone and it definitely doesn’t look like I play sports or anything.”

  “You were checking yourself out. While I was gone.”

  “I was just, you know, looking for clues like you said.”

  “By looking at yourself naked.”

  “I wasn’t naked. I was…never mind.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “If it turns out you play an instrument you won’t need muscles.”

  He cocked an eyebrow.

  “Focus. Enough about your body. Have you checked the beach?” I asked.

  “The beach?”

  “Something could have washed up with you.”

  I headed for the door but he hesitated. The sun was still stalled in a dark red sunset and he still looked afraid.

  “The light should last,” I said.

  “How do you know?”

  I looked up at the sky, shook my head. “I don’t know but sometimes when I want it to last, it does.”

  He gave a slight nod and then we headed for the sand. We walked along the tide, foam lapping against my bare feet. I’d never seen anything on the shore here. It was untouched, clean. But I’d also never seen another person here before. There could have been something, a piece of a boat, some kind of time travel machine, a cell phone from the future, anything.

  “Quick-fire round,” I said after we’d been walking for a while. “If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go?”

  He chewed on his bottom lip, the skin there starting to peel. “Um…”

  “The whole purpose of the quick fire round is that you don’t have time to over-think your answers. Just say the first place that comes to mind. We’re looking for clues, remember?”

  “Okay. I don’t know...”

  “First place.”

  “The moon.”

  “Bending the confines of my question. I like it. Okay, if you could have a million dollars or lifelong happiness which would you choose?”

  “Is that a trick question?”

  I shrugged.

  “Neither.”

  “Neither?”

  “Money isn’t everything and happiness is relative. Next question.”

  “Okay…” I chewed on the inside of my cheek, thinking. “Summer or winter?”

  He looked back toward the hill. “I like the cold,” he said, trying to shake the uncertainty from his voice. “I feel like I can barely breathe here.”

  “The humidity. Maybe you’re not used to it.”

  “Maybe. Like I’m an Eskimo or something.”

  “Maybe you’re a professional dog sledder.”

  He laughed. “I think I like dogs.”

  “What about cats?”

  He shook his head. “Cats are gross.”

  “Fish?”

  “Pointless.”

  “Birds?”

  “Annoying.”

  “I guess we know you’re not exactly the outdoorsy type.”

  He stared past me into the waves. “I wouldn’t rule it out. Although, almost drowning doesn’t really help.”

  “Do you remember that part at least?” I asked.

  He looked at me. “I remember waking up.” He shifted, shoes sinking in the sand. “I remember you.”

  “And then I blinked,” I breathed.

  “You woke up?”

  “I can’t really control it.”

  “So that’s what that trial was about?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “But not a cure,” he said.

  “There isn’t one, not yet, so in the meantime I’m just trying to find something that’ll…”

  “What?”

  I sighed. “Let me be normal.”

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets, smiled. “I know I can’t really remember reality right now, but I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing.”

  “Try convincing the rest of the world.”

  “If I ever see it again.” He was quiet, still staring at the water.

  I inched closer, trying to think of something to say, anything to sever his doubt. I stared into the sun, still hanging in the same spot it had been earlier. “What’s your favorite time of day?”

  He narrowed his gaze on the horizon. “Dusk. I like being able to see the sun and the moon at the same time. It makes me feel small.”

  “That’s…” fucking beautiful “interesting.”

  We stopped walking and he knelt down, picking through a pile of sand. There were a few seashells but nothing more. He stood up, wiped his hands on his jeans.

  “What’s your favorite color?” I said.

  He scanned the landscape, eyes flitting from the water to the field of sunflowers, then back to me. His eyes roamed my face then grew still. “Green.” He took a step closer, lowered his voice. “That trailer in the woods…”

  “Found it while you were exploring today?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Did you used to live there?”

  “With my dad.”

  “Before he left?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I have to warn you,” he said. “I did read some pretty revealing things about you in that diary.”

  “Oh yeah?” I swallowed, bracing myself. “What else did you read?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Everything. Who’s Drew?”

  “A boy. Next question.”

  “Nah-huh. Quick-fire rounds over, Bryn.” My name spilled out of his mouth. It was warm.

  “Sorry,” he said. “You don’t seem like the type who gets embarrassed.”

  “I don’t.” Usually. “He’s someone I dated.”

  “Past tense. So, he’s a jerk.”

  “You gathered that much, I see.”

  “By the third break-up, yeah.”

  I let out a long breath. “Actually, that is embarrassing. I’m not that girl.”

  “What girl?”

  “The girl who has a shitty boyfriend because it’s better than being alone. The girl who needs people.”

  “So you’re the solitary type.”

  “No, I’m the ‘has no friends because she’s asleep all the time’ type.”

  “Friends. Who needs ‘em?” he said. “I don’t have any and look at me.”

  I laughed. “I’m sure you had a lot. I’m sure you were like, president of the French club and wrote these insanely poetic music reviews for your school newspaper. And I bet you were captain of the rugby team or some other obscure, totally cool, non-American sport.”

  “Again. No muscles remember?”

  I stuck a finger in his gut and he coughed.

  “Are you kidding me? Those abs are practically made of steel.”

  He caught his breath and stood there, just staring at me. “You’re strange,” he said, smiling.

  “I told you this place was strange.”

  He smiled. “And beautiful.”

  “Right,” I said. “That too.”

  14

  .

  I blinked and it was night again. I wavered, disoriented.

  Bryn grabbed my arm. “Okay?”

  My heart was racing in my chest. “Does it always do that?”

  “Sometimes.” She looked up. “2003. Tucson, Arizona. I was eleven.”

  I followed her eyes and the sky was on fire, stars blinking in long trails leading into infinity. There were thousands of them winking in and out, swirling, falling.

  “Is this real?”

  She smiled, words caught in a sigh. “Does it matter?” She stared up at the sky. “I haven’t seen this one in a while.”

>   “Are they on a rotation or something?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes they seem random but other times they’re not.” She started walking towards the tree line, still looking up. “Sometimes I’ll see an old photo from a trip I took when I was a kid and then I’ll fall asleep and suddenly I’ll be back there.”

  I was stiff, staring into the trees. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to go back in there.

  But then Bryn looked back at me. “You coming?” She reached out a hand, her face soft. “It’s okay.”

  And something in her smile made me think it was. I reached back.

  A dull light radiated from the trunks of the trees. Little plastic stars were stuck to the bark, the kind people used to stick on their pop-corned ceiling.

  “They were my cousin Dani’s,” Bryn said, peeling them free. The stars rested in her hand and as we walked she stuck them to the trees we passed. “To light our way back.”

  The two of us dodged rocks and low hanging limbs before coming to a large hill. There was a small fire at the very top, flames cinched in by large stones. Ashes spit onto the grass, wood crackling. Bryn sat down at the edge of the fire, letting the shadows of the flames dance along her open palms. I sat down next to her, spotting a large tent, fishing poles stacked on sleeping bags.

  “This wasn’t here earlier,” I said.

  She gave me a sly smile.

  “Right,” I said. “Nothing here makes sense.” Though I wished something did.

  “It looks different,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, brighter, if that’s possible.” She lay back, pointing. “That’s the milky way.”

  I leaned back, my head resting on a few strands of her hair.

  “Have you ever seen it before?” she asked.

  I was quiet. I wasn’t sure.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “It’s okay.”

  I stared at the stars, low and pulsing as if they were strung along the tops of the trees. There were so many. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen them before or anything like them but every preconception I had felt duller; artificial like some movie still or a page out of a magazine.

  I heard Bryn exhale. “Sometimes it’s better than the real thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I think about that camping trip, I don’t just think about the stars. I think about the heat and my uncle burning our dinner and he and my mom and I huddled in our tent eating beef jerky while some coyotes sniffed at our tent. I think about getting lost trying to find the place and someone running off with our travel chairs and lanterns while we were sleeping.”

  “Sounds like a blast.”

  “And I didn’t even mention my hair almost catching on fire,” she laughed. “But here it’s different. It’s filtered and perfect and no coyotes.”

  “That you know of.”

  She was quiet and I bristled.

  “Don’t worry,” she finally said, her voice hesitant. “You’re safe here.” But the words felt forced this time, something strange in her eyes.

  “But I’m still lost.”

  I looked up when I heard the explosion. A long flame tore across the sky, climbing at an angle. A rocket. Bryn wrinkled her nose, watching as it shrunk to a small ball of light before blinking out completely, and I wondered what memory it had come from; if it was something she’d been thinking of.

  My hand brushed hers in the dark.

  Bryn rolled over, facing me. “I’m going to figure out who you are.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I will.”

  But her voice was thin, unsure. What if she still didn’t believe in me? What if she still just thought I was some kind of dream?

  “You think I’m…real, don’t you?” I said. “I mean, you think I’m out there? Somewhere?”

  Her chin slipped into her hand. She looked right at me, flames tangled in her green eyes. “I think you are very real.”

  I tried to believe her but I was still afraid. Of being lost forever. Of Bryn finding a cure and leaving me here alone.

  Her face grew dark. “You worry.”

  “You don’t?” I asked.

  “All the time.”

  I tore at a tuft of grass, not sure if I should say what I was thinking or how. I inhaled, not looking at her. “What’s it like?”

  I felt her almost flinch at the words. Shit. Why did I open my mouth? But then she sat up, her back to me.

  “Being sick?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I mean you don’t have—”

  “It’s like drowning.” She hugged her knees. “This wave pulls me under, completely out of nowhere, and then I wash up somewhere else. I don’t remember how or when. Entire weeks get stripped from my memory and all I do when I’m awake is try and put the pieces back together.”

  I felt that familiar ache in my throat because that’s exactly what I was doing. Flailing and trying to stay afloat. Trying not to get sucked into the fear that I might be lost for good. That I might never find a way out of this. That I was only temporary. That I was no one. I was still trying not to drown and Bryn had to do the same thing every time she woke up.

  “But you go to school?” I asked.

  “I try. Catching back up though, it’s hard. Right now I’m just trying to graduate.”

  “What will you do after that?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to go to school out of state.” She let out a tight breathy laugh. “Ridiculous, right? I spend half my life as a vegetable and I think I can still pretend to be normal. That I could actually survive on my own. That’s the problem, the worst part of all of it.” I sat up and she looked at me. “If I don’t get better I’ll need…someone forever. Like a child,” she said, voice cracking. “I’ll never be able to get by on my own.” But then she was solid again. She cleared her throat. “But that’s life, I guess. Everyone’s a little fucked up, right?”

  “Right…yeah, I guess so.” I didn’t know what to say. “But I don’t think you’re fucked up.”

  “You don’t?”

  Her cheeks were flushed and I couldn’t tell if it was from the fire or something else.

  “No.”

  “Well, I do.” Her voice was hard. “Something’s…changed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her voice rattled as she tore at the grass. “Strange things have been happening.”

  “You mean besides me?”

  She nodded.

  “Like what?”

  She looked into my eyes. “Like I‘ve been seeing things. Out of order. Like I’m seeing them before they happen.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “Maybe it’s nothing,” I offered.

  “Maybe,” she breathed.

  I didn’t like that look on her face, shadows replacing her blushed cheeks and starlit eyes. My fingers crawled across the grass, curling around her thumb. But the second our skin touched, I flinched. Again. Fingers trembling. Not because it reminded me that I might not be real but because it made me feel, for certain, that I was.

  Bryn stared too, at our hands, at the shadow of the flames dancing across them. But she wasn’t marveling at their closeness, she was marveling at my skin. At how it burned red, my veins ignited like the fire in front of us.

  I pulled away, cradling my hand to my chest, the light climbing to my wrist, to my elbow. Bryn reached for me.

  “I saw it before,” she said. “When you were sleeping.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She maneuvered my wrist, spreading my fingers, my open palm pressed against hers. Whatever was inside me reached back, surging. There was a shock, Bryn parted her lips, feeling it too, and then she was gone.

  I stared down at my hand as the light started to dull, the only heat now coming from the flames in front of me. I crept forward, kneeling over them, and as I led my hand into the fire I didn’t feel a thing
.

  15

  Bryn

  I spent lunch in the library, which wasn’t all that unusual. What was a little unusual was the way I had my bag so inconspicuously hanging from a coat hook in order to block the computer screen from the view of passersby.

  I knew I was being paranoid but all of the secrecy wasn’t because I didn’t want people to think I was weird. That was sort of a given. But because the last time I went on a research binge concerning my disease I sort of freaked out.

  I’d already been living with it for a few years but when I got into high school things changed. I was growing up and there were things I wanted to do and wanted to be a part of. I wanted friends. I wanted a boyfriend. I wanted school dances and debate club and homecoming and to try out for the spring play. I wanted that cliché high school experience you see in movies.

  But then I started missing classes, buying dresses I never wore, talking to boys who forgot that I even existed during those three weeks of school I’d missed during an episode. And when I was trying so desperately to fit in, only to be yanked back out every three months by my disease, I realized the truth—that I wouldn’t be able to have any of it unless I found a cure.

  I spent almost my entire freshman year in the library pretending to finish makeup work when I was really researching potential cures for KLS online. I was obsessed. I was afraid. And when they made me stop, when the librarian figured out what I was doing and they sent me to the school psychologist, I was angry.

  I hated that feeling of standing still, of being a bystander to this thing that was happening to my body and not being able to do anything about it. All of the reading and the research, all of the knowing, it made me feel stronger somehow.

  But then they were right. After chasing down every false cure and success story, I had nothing. So I stopped.

  As I sat there, scrolling through webpages that looked vaguely familiar, I realized another unfortunate truth. Since my days of trying to find a cure via Google, nothing on the KLS front had really changed.

  Someone in Europe was still trying to sell some kind of liquid “cure” on Ebay. The number of people with the disease was still hovering just around a thousand, seventy percent of which were still of the male variety. They were still using stimulants to combat the drowsiness but not much else. And there was still no one else out there like me.