The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  “Everyone forgets things,” she said. “In fact people forget most things. That’s life.”

  “Little things, maybe. Not the ones actually worth remembering.”

  She shook her head, wringing the hem of her shirt. “People only remember the things they want to remember. Not the bad things, the true things. Do you ever think about that?”

  “About what?”

  “That when you get your memory back you won’t just get the good things but the bad things too. Do you ever wonder if it’s better to not remember at all?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I haven’t really thought of that. Is that how you feel?”

  “Sometimes,” she said. “I mean, I’m glad I’m here during an episode instead of being conscious in the real world. I’d hate to see myself that way.”

  “Have you?”

  “Not really,” Bryn said. “I know there’s a tape of me somewhere. Dr. Sabine had my mom record me during an episode so they could monitor the severity of my symptoms. I’ve never seen it though.”

  “Would you want to?”

  “No, I don’t think I could.”

  “But what if it’s not as bad as you think?”

  “No.” Bryn stared out into the rain. “I’ve seen my mom’s face when I wake up. That’s enough.”

  The way Bryn talked about her disease made it seem like some kind of possession rather than just a long nap and it made me wonder if she thought the worst because she was here, not there, not really living it.

  Sometimes the things we imagine are worse than the real thing, right? Like whatever bad memories might have been lurking in the deep recesses of my brain. They could have been bad—my parents getting divorced, my grandmother’s funeral, getting into a fight at school. Or they could have been really bad. The worst.

  I tried not to think about all of the things that might be waiting for me. Bad things I might have given anything to forget. Things that had left a mark so deep it took drowning to finally scrape myself clean.

  But then I reminded myself that that wasn’t all it had taken. It took my memories, all of them, the good and the bad. My entire identity. Because don’t you need both? People don’t exist in just the light or the dark. They exist in the contrast. In the shadows where the two overlap. So even though I was afraid of what I’d find, I knew I’d never be myself again without all of it, the entire truth of me.

  The rain suddenly sputtered out all at once, sunlight tearing through the clouds.

  “Keep going?” Bryn asked, never dazed by the way things were constantly disappearing here.

  I nodded and she led us back through the trees now growing in dense clusters, branches tangled and sinking low to the ground. There were no trunks, only leaves, tall bushes hollowed out and rustling with the sounds of birds.

  Bryn spread the leaves, stepping into the tree’s wide crown and I followed, branches snapping shut behind me. Sunlight sifted in and glinted off the shuddering leaves, their emerald shadows dancing along Bryn’s skin. A band of wind cut through the canopy, igniting a soft clanking overhead. When I looked up there were glass bottles strung over us, their red, and russet, and dark blue silhouettes bleeding across the dirt beneath our feet.

  “It’s supposed to be a pirate ship.” Bryn shrugged. “Eight-year-olds.”

  “You did this?”

  “With my cousin Dani and our friend Felix.” Bryn knelt down, reaching for a bright red Cardinal feather before tucking it behind her ear. “We used to spend all summer in here.”

  She rapped her knuckles against the trunk of the tree. It was hollow. She slipped her hand inside a small hole and pulled out some dingy swaths of fabric, two caped action figures, a Looney tunes Pez dispenser, and some of those sparkly rocks that are supposed to be fake gold.

  “Pirates who don’t bury their treasure,” I said.

  “Of course not. That would be way too cliché.”

  I reached for the Pez dispenser in her hand. Tweety Bird.

  “Six Flags,” she said. “It’s a theme park. Have you been there?”

  I waited for the words to sprout in my brain the way they had when I was looking at those vintage car parts. I waited for some spark of recognition, a memory, a smell, a vision of me in tall socks and a cheap sun visor. Earlier it had felt like a small nudge, one slight tug deep in my gut and then I’d tasted the truth. But I waited and there was nothing.

  I shook my head. “Have you been?”

  “With my dad. Once.”

  She grew quiet, picking at a tuft of leaves. Her smile slid into something dark, teeth grating on her bottom lip as she looked up at the bottles twisting above our heads. She blinked, eyes trailing to the ground.

  “I saw him,” she finally said.

  “You did?”

  She nodded.

  “How was that?” I asked, wondering if I was prodding too deep, over-stepping my bounds.

  But then she said, “The same.”

  I took a step closer. “I’m sorry.” I wafted there, afraid of saying the wrong thing.

  She narrowed her eyes, still staring into the sun. “You know he’s right?”

  “About what?”

  “About leaving.”

  I thought about her diary and the episodic way her dad came in and out of her life, disappearing when he knew she wouldn’t be awake to see him go.

  “That’s not true,” I said. “He’s running.”

  “That’s more than I can say for my mom. At least he’s moving.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  Her eyes snapped to my face. “How do you know what I mean? You don’t even know me.” But it wasn’t anger thrashing behind her gaze. It was defeat. Disappointment. Stale and heavy. She drew in a breath. “I’m sorry.”

  I felt the words on my lips and I let them go. “I could.”

  “What?” She looked at me.

  “I could know you.”

  She sunk against the trunk of the tree, spurring a nest of butterflies. One tangled in a strand of her hair, wings flapping and wild. I reached for her, slipping it free.

  “I think I might like that,” she said, her breath trailing down my arm.

  “You know not everyone leaves,” I said.

  She looked away, putting her eight-year-old treasure back in the tree. I reached behind her ear and she watched me free the feather before tucking it in with Tweety Bird and the fake gold.

  “Who?” she said. “You mean like lonely single moms and lost boys who wash up on beaches that don’t even exist.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t count. You’re stuck here.”

  “I thought you said this isn’t purgatory.”

  “You’re still just waiting,” she said. “And so is my mom. Who’d want a lifetime of waiting?”

  I stared at the soft lines of her lips. “Someone who knows what it is they’re waiting for.”

  I thought about flipping through the rest of Bryn’s diary, reconciling the words with the long-winded peculiar voice I’d come to recognize.

  Within the pages there were doodles matching the rough outline of some of the strange sculptures lining the bookshelf. There were lists of her favorite things—teal fingernail polish, salted cantaloupe, the smell of things burning. There were pages ripped out, dark holes where her pen had carved something in a fury. And there were grey smudges, ink from her pen spilling into something long dry. Stories about her dad and about Drew marked with the translucent shadow of her tears.

  And for some reason I knew how she felt. Left behind. Always. I didn’t know how I knew. I was in a constant state of waiting when she wasn’t there but that was different. It didn’t feel deliberate or personal.

  She wrote about her dad showing up a few days after her birthday and then disappearing again. I could see her watching him go and I could feel that same ache in my throat. And Drew. Whoever the fuck he was. He liked playing with those tattered strings of Bryn’s existence, yanking on them, pulling her close, and then unrave
ling them again.

  I hadn’t been able to make out the seams before. I’d been too busy feeling impermanent. But now that I saw them—in the way she had to get the words out before losing them, in the way she’d hung her blanket over a stranger—I could see that it wasn’t just a cure she was looking for but a promise. And for some reason that made me feel real. Like it wasn’t coincidence that had carried me in with the tide at all.

  Bryn leaned forward, heat pouring from her mouth. I let it dance on my tongue, hovering there. But when I leaned forward, trying to close the space between us, there was a flash, light cutting across my vision. I smelled something burning; that same echo of gasoline. Then another sharp pain, this one rattling between my teeth, a scream between my ears.

  Bryn pulled away, startled. “I’m sorry.”

  “No. I…” I doubled over, barely able to hear my own voice.

  I blinked, my eyes flitting across the leaves, waiting for the light to recede. It was so bright. Just like it had been when I was staring at that carousel. When I touched that sculpture, the heat almost tactile.

  “I think I…” I tried to catch my breath, the light dimming. “I think I saw something.”

  Bryn laid a hand on my back and when I looked up she was watching my face, her own wary.

  “What was it?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure. Just light. It was so bright.”

  Bryn looked at me expectantly, fear in her eyes.

  “It’s happened before.” I shook my head. “I don’t know why but every once in a while I’ll just see this flash of light. Then I’ll smell something or hear something.”

  “Your memory,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Maybe it’s working,” she said. “Your memory. Maybe it’s coming back.”

  The light still swirled at the edge of my vision and I tried to wrangle it into something I’d lost. But then it blinked out and I was just staring into the sun. Maybe it was working. Maybe I was starting to remember. Or maybe the light wasn’t some glimpse of the past. Maybe the light was me, a flash just on the verge of disappearing for good.

  It was so quiet and that’s when I realized that Bryn wasn’t breathing. Her eyes were wide and I saw the darkness in them, its reflection pouring through the leaves.

  I turned and saw the shadow. Breathing. Reaching.

  “Bryn. Run.”

  21

  Bryn

  I could still see it, lithe and bristling like some kind of animal. There were no raised haunches or bared teeth. It didn’t growl or groan or say my name. But it knew me. It wanted me.

  Roman had told me to run but then I’d blinked. I’d blinked and I was dry and I was alone. And Roman was still back there.

  I sat up in bed and for a minute I just stayed there. I could feel the light pouring in from the window. I could hear the warble of water from a faucet, the clinking of drawer handles as my mom shuffled around the kitchen. I heard my grandmother flipping the channels on the TV. A car driving by outside. Doors opening and falling closed. The real world so loud that I couldn’t think.

  Because Roman could be hurt. He could be…Stop it. Stop.

  The dream-state is safe, it’s always been safe. Because it’s made of my memories, of me.

  I took a deep breath. One more. I looked down at my wrist, threaded with another string of rosemary. It was shriveled and stiff and I ripped it free.

  Useless.

  My door pushed open, my mom carrying an armful of clean laundry. When she saw me sitting up she dropped it onto the floor.

  “Oh, Bryn, you’re awake.” She reached for me. “How are you feeling?” My mouth was pinned shut. “Are you hungry? You feel a little warm. Let’s get you some ice water.”

  I followed her into the kitchen, wordless, anxious.

  My grandmother was standing in front of the microwave, eyes inches from the metallic lining of the small window. She was about to say something but then she looked up at me, face softening the way it had the night she’d come to my room.

  “Was it long?” I glanced at the calendar, counting for myself. Eleven days.

  “How…did you sleep?” my grandmother said as she came around to the table.

  I avoided her eyes, confused. I wasn’t sure why she was so concerned with how I was sleeping lately but exposing the cracks in my psyche was the last thing I needed to do, especially with my mom in the room.

  “Fine,” I said, not looking at her. I noticed a stack of papers on the table with the Emory seal in the top right corner. “What are those?”

  My mom was quiet. Unusually quiet.

  I sat down across from her. “Is this about the campus visit? You made the arrangements, right?”

  “I did…”

  “We’re still going?”

  She finally looked at me. “They’re getting more frequent, Bryn.”

  “Mom.” My voice slipped into that annoying desperate whine reserved for those few moments I liked to pretend I was still a kid. That I could still get my way. “You promised. You said—”

  “I know what I said but…they’re…they’re happening more often, Bryn. We just have to be careful. You have to be careful.”

  “I am careful. I’m always careful. Just don’t cancel the trip. Please. Let’s just go. Let me have that at least. We’ll decide when we get back. Just, please.”

  Her face softened.

  “Let the girl go,” my grandmother said. “It might be her one chance to set foot on a college campus.” Again there was that strange lilt to her voice, a softness that made me feel afraid rather than comforted. She must have noticed the strange looks my mom and I were giving her because she immediately hardened her voice as she added, mid-chew, “Let her get it out of her system and then you can force her back here to rot.”

  “Fine,” my mom sighed.

  I leaned over, kissing her on the cheek. She made a face.

  “Bathroom. Toothbrush. Now.”

  Emory was a walking campus, sprawled across 1,200 acres of lush green grass pocked with Magnolia and Dogwood trees in full bloom, the breeze tossing the flowers onto the sidewalk like snow. The sharp scent of spring filled my lungs and I sneezed, my mom picking petals out of my hair as we followed the guide down winding sidewalks and between Spanish style buildings.

  We spent the morning touring the campus, me snapping pictures of every building and every sculpture. There was a series of bronze portraits near the student union building and some whimsical replicas of famous authors and storybook characters outside the library. I saw someone sharing a cigarette with the one of Edgar Allan Poe, a beanie pulled down over his head.

  Everything was so bright and novel and alive. I wanted to feel that. I wanted to feel something other than fear. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Roman. About how I’d abandoned him, left him there with that…thing. That thing that felt ancient and angry and hungry. For me.

  After lunch they let us sit in on a few of the art classes and I tried to absorb everything the professors were saying, to distract myself. One was an introductory Photography class, the teacher flipping through a slideshow of National Geographic’s photos of the year. The last class we sat in on was a Sculpture class.

  The student’s long worktables were covered in scraps—pieces of plastic, torn strips of fabric, old road signs, rubber tires, and other miscellaneous things they’d picked up on campus. Their assignment was to construct the faux plant life for a bio dome project on waste and commercialism. Just the sort of rebel art I couldn’t wait to start making.

  The professor let me play assistant to some of the students while he, the guide, and my mom talked about the curriculum. I held a bowl of marbles for a guy with a long beard and thick square glasses.

  “My name’s Pete,” he said. “Where you from?”

  “Austin.”

  “Not too far. What is that, like five hours?”

  “Four if you speed.”

  “In a hurry?” he laughed. “You want to be an Art
major?”

  I nodded. “I make sculptures, mostly modernist stuff. I’m working on a sunflower installation for the scholarship contest. I missed the deadline in the fall.”

  “I applied for that my freshman year,” he said. “Didn’t get it. They’re pretty tough. What do you use?”

  “Mostly metal scraps from a local car garage. I have a friend who works there. I have a small weld and I just work in our garage.”

  “Nice. I do a little welding.” He took some marbles from the bowl, gluing them like seeds along the bud of a flower made of a broken mirror. “Well, prepare to be broke,” he finally said. “I’ve been living off ramen noodles and microwave popcorn for the past five months. Oh, and coffee. Lots of coffee.” He stood up straight, back cracking. He exhaled. “But it’s been the best fucking time of my life. You won’t regret it.”

  “Is he trying to convert you to the dark side?” A blonde in an oversized button down stepped in front of Pete.

  “She doesn’t need converting,” Pete said. “She’s applying for the Hendrix Scholarship. Hey Rachel, didn’t you win that your freshman year?”

  The blonde nodded. “I made a self-portrait out of these really brutal stills from a documentary on puppy mills.”

  “That’s…”

  “A little over-dramatic?” she laughed. “I was seventeen.” She shot Pete a look, then turned back to me. “Hey, why don’t you grab some coffee with us after class? Are you free?”

  “I think we were going to meet with the financial advisor.”

  “Ditch. Your mom’s taking care of that anyway, right?”

  “Oh, yeah, I mean, I guess.”

  “Cool. We’ll just head to Sugar Brown’s. It’s not far. We make the walk every Thursday night.”

  It took a good ten minutes to pry my mom’s hands from the sleeve of my sweater.

  “How long?” she said.

  “Not long.”

  “And where is it?”

  “Right down the street. Walking distance.”

  “You have your phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Charged?”

  “Yes.”

  “The volume’s up where you can hear it? You know I hate when you leave it on vibrate.”