The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  “I don’t want normal,” I said, realizing that Bryn’s fears weren’t about us in the here and now. They were about us in the real world. I squeezed her tight. “I want you.”

  She looked up at me, breathless.

  “Follow me?” I asked.

  The sun set slow for the first time since I’d washed up on shore. It hung above the trees, sinking as I led Bryn into the trees. At the top of a small hill was a checkered quilt, both of us kneeling just as something flickered, a crack of static ignited in the spontaneous night. The giant screen shuddered to life, a beam of light from an invisible projector spilling past us into the forest.

  “How did you know this was here?” Bryn asked.

  “I saw it on my way back to the farmhouse,” I said. “You haven’t seen it before?”

  “Not like this. Not here.”

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “When I was younger there used to be a drive-in movie theatre just outside of the city.” Her cheeks warmed with the memory. “We’d buy dinner at the small snack bar at the back of the parking lot, stocking up on corn fritters and beer salt and these corn tortilla sandwiches filled with meat and cabbage and pimiento cheese. I’d stuff myself sick and then we’d lie in the bed of my uncle’s truck, soundtrack pouring from the speakers of every car and out of the open windows.”

  Just as she spoke the words the audio swelled from the darkness. I sprawled out on my back, one arm tucked behind my head. Bryn just sat there, watching the light from the screen spill across the grass.

  “E.T.,” she said.

  “What?” I glanced up at the opening scene, tape flashing along the bottom of the screen.

  “It used to be my favorite movie,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “Until I saw Jurassic Park.”

  Her eyes fell on the quilt dimpling next to me and I reached for her hand, fingers climbing to her wrist, giving it a slight tug. “Want to come down here?”

  She slid onto her side, still facing me. I closed the space between us, my arm slipping around her shoulder, her chin resting on my chest. I brushed her hair back with my hand, trying to get her to shed the hesitancy she’d been shrouded in earlier, my thumb resting there as we faced the screen.

  She rose with my lungs, eyes fluttering closed, as if every inhale lulled her. And as I held her under the dull twinkle of those artificial lights, time almost felt tangible again. Like something real that you could tuck into your pocket. Like something worth saving.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, words trapped under my breath.

  Bryn looked up. “What?”

  “Don’t worry about this. About me.”

  “Why not?”

  I stared straight into her. “Because this isn’t a coincidence.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  I kissed her and I felt the sting in the balls of my feet. My tongue roamed her mouth, my fingers clinging to the nape of her neck. She pressed her mouth over mine, making me feel raw and new and exposed. Like I was a fossil, her lips tearing me from the illusory confines of time and space and I was on fire. But then she pulled away, long breaths tearing from her lips. She was staring at my own and that’s when I realized they were glowing, sparks igniting where our fingertips touched, where my skin brushed hers.

  “This is not a coincidence,” I said again and I knew this time she believed me.

  Bryn shifted next to me, my arm numb and tingling and still curled under her head. I clenched my fist, trying not to stir her as I slipped it free. But she was perfectly still, staring up at the screen, though her face was hidden, and I thought if this is what it looks like when she’s sleeping—soft, small, serene—I wouldn’t mind spending most of my life waiting for her to wake up.

  Because she made things and wrote things down and saved every detail like it was the most important thing in the world. Because she was strange and beautiful and even more than this place, she was the thing that haunted me. The thing I couldn’t figure out. Because she made me feel real.

  The film clicked off, static transitioning into another one of Bryn’s favorite movies.

  “Please tell me it’s not another documentary on Siberian tigers,” I said.

  She smiled. “I watch a lot of Netflix.”

  “When you’re busy not sleeping?”

  She nodded, sitting up. “I do a lot of boring things when I’m busy not sleeping.”

  “Like?”

  “I eat a lot,” she said. “There’s this great little restaurant by my house—Nacho’s Tacos.” She narrowed her gaze. “Do you like tacos?”

  Tacos. Mexican food. Universally revered, right?

  “Yes?”

  “You don’t remember tacos?”

  “I remember tacos. I just don’t remember if I like them or not.”

  “Well, you will.”

  “What else do you do?” I asked.

  She toyed with one of the quilt’s loose seams. “I like to make things.”

  “Like your sculptures.”

  “Right. I was working on something for a scholarship contest—sunflowers like the ones around the farmhouse.”

  “Was,” I said, watching her face. “Past tense?”

  She ripped the thread free, unraveling one of the squares. “I like to pretend I’m normal sometimes.”

  She threw that word around a lot. Detached, like she didn’t care. But even when she shrugged it off, I could still hear something sad in her voice.

  “What do you mean, normal?” I asked.

  “Like college is an option for me. Like I’ll get better.”

  And there it was again. She’d talked about her disease so many times before. My entire existence felt like it had been spent within the confines of her symptoms. But this time she looked defeated. She looked afraid.

  “Could you? Get better, I mean?” I tried to keep the words flat, like she wasn’t making me afraid too. But I was. Because what if losing her meant I’d lose more than just a way out?

  “Maybe.”

  I looked at her. “Maybe?”

  “Some people grow out of it but not soon enough. I don’t want to go to school when I’m thirty.”

  “Who cares how old you are?”

  “You sound like my uncle.”

  “The one who’s hot for your mom?”

  “What?”

  “Sorry. Your diary—”

  She shook her head. “He is. He totally is.” She sighed, raking a hand down her face. “You know I caught them kissing. Recently. And I…I don’t know. I was mad but then I wasn’t. It was weird.”

  “Is it weird that he’s not your dad?”

  “No. It’s a relief. I think I’m just so used to my mom being alone. Even though she hasn’t been. Not really. My uncle’s always been around. I guess I should have known.” She grew quiet, holding her knees.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Something happened,” she said.

  “Something…”

  “I told my doctor about you.”

  I sat up. “What did she say?”

  “Nothing at first.”

  “But then?”

  “But then I went back to her office to grab my mom’s bag and I overheard two other doctors through the door. They said they’d have to keep an eye on me. They said it wouldn’t happen again.”

  “What wouldn’t happen again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We both just sat there, quiet, and I could sense her trying to stifle the panic. Again. What did they mean, again?

  “But whatever it is, it can’t be good,” she finally added.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know what I’ve seen.” She looked down “I saw it again.”

  “The…” I stopped. I wasn’t sure what it was.

  “It was watching me sleep.”

  I reached for her hand. “Did it hurt you?”

  “No. But…”

  “What?”

 
She met my eyes. “I know it wants to.”

  “It seems like it wants both of us.” I swallowed. “Do you think it has something to do with why I’m here?”

  “I hope not.” Bryn stiffened, her gaze flashing to something between the trees. “Do you see that?” Her voice was almost a whisper.

  “What?” I scanned the trees, waiting for the shadow, but they were empty.

  “There…it almost looks like…deer,” she said, squinting.

  “I don’t see anything,” I said.

  She crouched on her knees and I turned to follow her gaze but the lingering sunrise suddenly ignited a pulse within the blank screen.

  “What…?”

  Bryn turned, the screen flickering. The tape rolled, frames sticking and shuddering out.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  I saw grass and a small white fence. Clouds pooled at the top of the frame and then the images started to race, the tape on fast-forward. There was a red plastic lawnmower, a kid in a diaper pushing it around the yard and igniting a stream of bubbles. A shadow spilled over his shoulder and onto the grass. Then hands were tucking themselves under his arms. Lifting him.

  “I don’t remember this,” Bryn said.

  As the man’s face slid into frame, five o’clock shadow stark against his skin, wide mouth opened in a smile, I said, “This one’s not yours. It’s mine.”

  24

  Bryn

  The screen shuddered to black and then so did I.

  I remembered staring past Roman into the trees. They were empty and then…they weren’t.

  There were deer, three of them, white tails flashing between the trunks. But Roman hadn’t seen them. He’d seen something else.

  Instead of my grandmother’s old quilt I suddenly felt my sheets, moist from sweat. I rolled and then I felt a hand on my arm.

  “Don’t move.”

  “What?”

  I opened my eyes and saw my grandmother. Her eyes were wide behind a pair of thick bifocals, the ones she wore when she was sewing.

  I felt a tug and realized she was gripping a strand of my hair, her other hand holding a pair of scissors.

  I pulled back. “What are you doing?”

  “You want this in your eye?” she said. “Stop moving.”

  There was a sharp snip and then one of my curls was resting in her palm. I sat there, wide-eyed.

  “Roots need it more than you do,” she said.

  “What roots?”

  She held up the strand of hair, narrowed her eyes, and said, “Whatever killed the roses is spreading.” Then she hurried out of the room.

  I watched through the window as she carried it to the roses planted along the sill. The backyard looked strangely pale—the roses; the flowers potted next to them; even the herbs planted out in the yard frail and muted grey.

  My grandmother was muttering something to herself, working the hair through her fingers like beads on a rosary. But as she carved a small trench in the dirt, burying the strand of hair, she wasn’t chanting about the roses. She was chanting something else, dark and pleading—a prayer—and then she said my name.

  I stood in front of the bathroom mirror glaring at that one hair that was now so short I looked like some kind of mad scientist. I tried tucking it behind my ear but it just sprung back out. Great. I finally pinned it out of the way but I couldn’t tear myself from the mirror.

  I was staring at my lips. At the place Roman had touched them. Kissed them. He was real. I thought I would feel relieved. Vindicated. Happy. But for some reason, the minute his lips had slipped from mine, cold air trickling into their absence, I’d felt afraid.

  What if he wasn’t like me? What if he wasn’t sick? What if he was normal? I wasn’t good at normal. I never had been and even though he said he didn’t care, that he wanted me, just me, what if he didn’t know what that meant he’d be giving up? What if normal really was what he wanted? The him in the real world.

  In the dream-state time wasn’t constant; it was slow and malleable and six weeks was just a sunrise. He didn’t know what it felt like to be left, not really. And that’s what I did. I left people. And now that he was real he would have real expectations just like everyone else. Like a future. Like college and a job and a family and going to sleep at night and waking up the next morning and not scrambling to catch up with the rest of the world all because you blinked. You blinked and you were gone while the people you left behind were still living. Without you.

  That would be the selfless thing to do, right? To leave him be. To let him be normal. Especially after what I’d overheard in Dr. Sabine’s office. I could be getting worse. Irrevocably, fatally worse. If something happened to me, what would happen to Roman?

  All night I’d stared at his hands as if the answer were written along the scars there. As if I would believe it. I stared at my reflection in the mirror now, still trying to summon the same thing. But suddenly my reflection dimmed, my eyes burning as I replayed Roman’s words. It’s mine.

  A memory? He remembered? I could still see that little boy, diaper sagging over chubby legs, three small teeth exposed in a smile as the man hovered over him. Roman. He remembered.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. That he would be as lost in the real world as he was in mine. But what if he wasn’t alone? He hadn’t been, at least not as a child. And from the way that large hand rested on the top of his head, the way the man swung him into his arms—he’d been loved too. Probably still was. Roman had a family. Roman belonged to someone else as much as I belonged to my mom. And what if they were far away? From here. From me.

  He was starting to remember. It wouldn’t be long before he’d start stitching the memories together, feeling whole again. What if that’s all it would take for him to finally wake up? And what if when he did he wanted the memories more than he wanted me?

  When I finally came out of the bathroom, my uncle was sitting on one end of the couch, my mom on the other.

  “You hungry, kiddo? There’s food.”

  I saw the pizza box sitting on the counter. I reached for a slice and it was cold. I could still see their heads peaking over the back of the couch, so far apart, and it made my throat ache. I glanced at the calendar. One week. When I was in the real world time felt like this infinite string I was constantly trying to unravel.

  But I wasn’t so afraid of the episodes anymore. I had somewhere to go, someone to be with. But standing there, holding that cold slice of pizza and watching my mom still afraid to indulge in the kind of normalcy I would never get to have with Roman, I was angry. And more than that I was scared. I didn’t want time to unravel anymore. I wanted it to stop. To just stop and let me exist in that invisible overlap between my dreams and his. To let me be happy for just a little while longer.

  The phone rang, buzzing along the counter, and when I answered it I heard the nasal voice of Dr. Sabine’s receptionist. She wanted us to come in this week if we could. She had something she wanted to discuss with us.

  Felix. I rushed to my room, checking my cell phone. Seven missed calls all from the last night I was awake. I dialed his number and he picked up on the third ring.

  “Bryn?”

  “I’m up.”

  “Yeah, after I’ve done all the heavy lifting. How convenient?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Dani and I spent the night in the parking lot outside Dr. Sabine’s office.”

  “Gross. I did not need to know that.”

  “I was breaking into their network,” he said, his voice dry.

  “You what?”

  “We tried waiting but three days passed and then three more.”

  “I know, shitty timing too. Did you find anything?”

  “There’s some interesting emails I forwarded to you. You said the other doctor’s name was Banz? German, right? They were going back and forth talking about Nilostasia?” He fumbled over the word.

  “Maybe that’s the new trial,” I said.


  “There was stuff about you too. Most of it seemed pretty straightforward but you’ll be forwarded all of their future emails.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I’m still working on decrypting the files I found on Dr. Sabine’s hard drive but it looks like Dr. Banz has been logging in remotely. Probably from a laptop. If I’m gonna hack into his files I need to get closer.”

  “You mean he’ll have to be in the office?”

  “Ideally. I’d rather not sneak into his hotel room.”

  “So it would have to be during the day?”

  “No worries. I’ll need thirty minutes, tops.”

  “And there’s no way they can trace this, right?”

  “Well…”

  “Felix!”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “It’ll be fine, Bryn, I promise.”

  “We’ll see. Dr. Sabine called this morning and asked if I could come in.”

  “Oh…”

  “Felix, I swear—”

  “It’ll be fine. Look, text me your appointment time and I’ll wait out in the parking lot. You can be my eyes while I break into the other quack’s computer.”

  I was pretty sure helping Felix hack into Dr. Banz’s computer was something that could possibly land me in jail if we were somehow caught. But what other choice did I have? I sighed. “Fine, what do you want me to do?”

  An hour later my mom and I were sitting in Dr. Sabine’s office. Dr. Banz and his creepy assistant were there too. I wasn’t really listening, mostly just glancing out the window, trying to spot Felix’s car in the parking lot.

  “What do you mean by new development?” my mom asked.

  I snapped to attention.

  “We’ve been having some very recent success using a drug called Nilostasia.”

  “The trial you mentioned before?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Dr. Banz said. “A few of our patients have seen some remarkable results in just the past month.” He spoke quickly, excitement painting his cheeks.

  But there was also a sense of urgency to his words and it made me wonder what had happened to the funding problem he’d mentioned a few weeks ago.