The vines were gone and so was the rain. Summer had stolen the cold again and the shadow had disintegrated within the night all around us. I stared up at Dani, confused, horrified, and she stared back at me with the same expression, waiting for me to explain why I was lying in the middle of the road.
“Bryn, I need you to tell me what happened.”
I finally found my bearings, caught my breath, and for some reason my first instinct wasn’t to tell Dani the truth. It was to tell her everything. About Roman. About Eve. About the shadows. So I did.
I trembled and she clutched tight to my wrists, guiding me to the car, brushing the hair from my face.
When my teeth finally stopped chattering I said, “It wants me.”
“But why?” she breathed, terror in her voice.
I thought of Dr. Banz, of his confession, and then I thought of Eve. I thought of those scribbled journal pages. I thought of how they said she’d died. “I don’t know,” I finally said. “But I’m going to find out.”
Dani drove me home, walking me to my window that was still ajar. We both crept inside and she examined every closet and every dark corner, checking under my bed and then peering into the hall before pulling the door closed and locking it behind her.
“Do you want me to stay?” she asked.
Yes.
“Where were you going?” I asked. “When you found me…”
She shrugged, looked away. “I didn’t want Felix to know I’d seen it yet. I just needed some time to think.”
“And did you?”
Even in the dark I could see her cheeks reddening.
“You really think it would be good for me?” she said.
“Felix?”
She nodded.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think I’m afraid of what I think.”
“Don’t be,” I said.
She stepped to the open window and said, “I’ll try.” She hesitated and then she faced me. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
I nodded, relieved. I watched her walk to her car and then I closed the window. I wasn’t sure how long she’d be with Felix but I knew I couldn’t sleep, even though I wanted to, every part of me secretly hoping for something even deeper. I needed to see Roman. I needed to talk to him.
I pulled up Mismatched Machine’s website, searching the gift shop for Roman’s shirt. It wasn’t there. Must have been from another tour. I checked the dates. They were touring the east coast this summer, their last show in New Orleans. Eight hours away in some shoddy club called The Lounge.
People had posted some photos on the band’s website—everyone in black t-shirts, arms raised, hair wet and sticking to their faces. I scrolled through them. No names. No dates. I clicked through page after page waiting to see Roman’s face in profile. Him riding over the crowd. Waiting in line outside the building. Meeting the band after the show. There were thousands of photos. Thousands of people I didn’t recognize.
Suddenly I heard a light knock on my window and I grew tense. Dani? I walked over, the light in my room still off, and peered through the curtain. I saw Drew and he saw me, my face lit up by the laptop glowing behind me. Shit. Again? He mouthed something I couldn’t quite make out. Then he slid the window open, the glass giving way under my fingers.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered.
“I came…” He lowered his voice. “I came to talk to you.”
“We talked. I told you I wasn’t going to prom.”
“No.” He stepped over the window seat. “We haven’t talked.”
“We—”
“No, blowing me off, acting like a bitch, that’s not talking.”
“Excuse me?”
“You forget,” he said. “You don’t scare me. I know you.”
Maybe he had. That girl who’d settled for invisible. He’d picked me up like some kind of stray and I’d clung to him. But I wasn’t lost.
I looked at him. “Not anymore.”
He shook his head, gripped his neck. “You think one semester of pretending to hate me can change two years of late night phone calls and ditching class and sneaking me into your room?”
I tried not to think about that first time. A light knock, his face beaming on the other side of the glass. I’d slid it open, letting him in.
“My mom’s in the next room,” I’d said.
He’d walked to my door, sly smile on his face.
“Don’t.”
He opened it, peered out. I held a finger to my lips and pushed him out of the way.
“Are those your pajamas?” he asked, eyeing my ratty tank top and yoga pants.
I turned away, throwing my hair up in a bun.
He reached for my hand. “No. I like it down.”
It fell in a mess around my shoulders, his fingers climbing behind my neck. He kissed me and I felt every bit of it but when he pulled away, I felt that most of all.
“I can’t stay long,” he said. “I just wanted to see you.”
And just to make sure he was real, I’d said, “Why?”
He stepped back, nose grazing my cheek. “Just in case you disappear again.”
I tried to shake off the memory, every word and every touch unraveling. Except for the last six. For some reason, every time I played it back in my head, it wasn’t sadness in his voice, it was accusation, and whether it was real or not, I’d made it real. I’d chained myself to Drew with guilt and every time I disappeared, every time I thought I hurt him, I cut the links a little shorter, waiting for him to hurt me back.
Drew inched closer.
I swallowed, trying not to look at him. “Drew, this isn’t going to work. Not this time.” And it wasn’t. I saw the feather on my nightstand in the corner of my eye. Not some ephemeral memory but a living, breathing piece of the present. A piece of Roman.
He reached for me. “Are you sure?”
I pulled away. “I…I met someone else.”
He stilled. His face was dark. “Who?”
“You don’t know him.”
He was quiet for a long time and then he looked at me. “I don’t need to.” He took another step closer. “I don’t need to know who this fucking asshole is to know he’s not right for you.”
“And you are?”
“Yes.”
Don’t indulge him, Bryn. Stay cool. “I don’t trust you,” I said.
“You shouldn’t.”
“No shit.”
“But we could start over. Forget about the past six months.”
“You mean the past two years?”
“Okay.” He exhaled. “You’re right. Maybe I don’t have the best track record but that’s the point. We’ll start over. Both of us. I’ll be better. I’ll do better.”
“What’s with you? This being desperate. It’s not—”
“Me? It’s not me. Or at least it wasn’t. You’ve always pushed me away but not like this. Not so far that I didn’t think I could get you back.”
“Wow. Thanks.”
He sighed. “I just mean you’ve never…scared me like this before.”
“I thought you said you weren’t afraid of me.”
He lowered his voice. “I’m not afraid of you. I’m afraid of losing you.”
Well, it’s too late. Say it. Tell him.
He leaned in.
“Don’t,” I stopped him.
“Bryn.” He gripped my arms and I waited for him to snap. For him to hurt me again. But then he loosened his grip. “I won’t. Even though I know you want me to.”
Enough.
Two years and I’d never told him no, to leave, to disappear for good and even then I could feel my lungs straining against every word. Because part of me was afraid it wouldn’t work—it never did—and because part of me was afraid that I’d be right about Roman, about him wanting the memories more than he’d want me, about us being too different.
Drew and I, we were different too, but at least he knew what he was getting himself into. I thoug
ht of Dani, of what she’d said that day in the courtyard about how it wasn’t Drew I was in love with, but his consistency and the relief of already knowing exactly how he’d hurt me, and she was right. About me. About everything.
I was just as afraid as she was.
Until now.
“Don’t fucking touch me.” I pushed Drew back and he stumbled against the bed. “You hurt me.”
“Bryn…”
I heard that same quaver in his voice that I’d heard in my dad’s.
“You hurt me. You hurt me with your fucking words and your fucking hands. I said no and you hurt me.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You did.”
I stepped toward him and he was pressed against the window frame. A car passed by, headlights cutting across his face. It was strained and pale and wet.
“Bryn, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Leave.”
“And then what? Bryn…” He stood there, watching me, waiting for me to break.
I didn’t.
I held back the curtain. “And then don’t come back.”
He stepped over the sill, hesitating as if he were contemplating looking back one last time, but then I pulled it closed. His headlights flashed against the window as he drove away and within the glare I saw my breath clinging to the glass and within it the circle Roman had drawn on that farmhouse window, two drips falling toward the center.
28
Bryn
I was sitting across from Dr. Banz’s empty desk when he walked in. The room was bare, just his laptop blinking on top of a small wooden desk, an empty coffee cup and a few pens perched on top of a yellow notepad—the brevity of his stay clearly evident.
“Bryn…” He lowered himself into his chair, resting his cane within reaching distance. He tried to smile. “What brings you into the office to—?”
“What is it?”
“What is what?” he said.
I steadied my voice. “What’s following me?”
I waited for him to ask me to explain or for him to give me an explanation of his own. For him to call it another symptom, another coping mechanism, another aspect of my illness that felt less and less like an illness and more like a prison every day.
But then he said, “I don’t know.”
“But you know something.”
I reached back, pushing the door closed until I heard a click. He stiffened.
“What is it?” I repeated.
“Evil.”
I grew still, forgetting to breathe until he spoke again.
“There’s no name for a thing like that.”
“But it’s bad?” I asked.
He nodded.
“What does it want?”
He looked right at me. “You.”
And Eve.
“So it’s hunting me?” The words tripped over my lips, soft and weak like a whisper. “But why?”
“We’re not positive.”
“But you have a theory?”
Dr. Banz’s eyes softened. “I’m afraid not, Bryn. We’ve been waiting decades to find someone else with Eve’s symptoms so we could finally unravel the mystery of her death but now that we have it’s just not that simple. As of now, whatever’s following you, whatever it is, we have to assume that it’s dangerous and we have to assume that it wants—”
“To hurt me…” I started.
“Have they?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.” I wasn’t. I’d felt its closeness the night before in that alley. I’d felt its heaviness, its hunger. It had pressed down on me, steeling me there cold and helpless. But it hadn’t really hurt me. Not yet. “It’s gotten close.” I inhaled. “Is that what really happened to Eve?”
He was quiet for a long time, face twisted and pained. “She’d seen them. She said there was something watching her. She’d mentioned strange things like that before she got sick, some kind of recurring nightmare. I thought she just had a vivid imagination.”
“Bad dreams?”
“That’s all they were at first. But then she started sleeping for longer periods of time, hallucinating during episodes, and then that stopped too. It was easier for her mother and I to manage but there was still something happening to her. She would wake up and describe these vivid scenes.”
“Like the dream state?” I asked.
He nodded. “That was what brought me here. Your case was described as incredibly rare but when I read Dr. Sabine’s notes it felt so familiar. The dream state, as she calls it…Eve used to write about it in her journal.”
“Was it made up of memories?” I asked.
“Sometimes it seemed that way but…then that started to change too.”
“How?”
“Eve was obviously being traumatized by something and the more often she lashed out, the longer her episodes became. She was breaking down. They…they broke her.”
“They.” I swallowed, my voice slipping and faint. “Shadows.”
“Shadows?” he repeated.
I met his eyes. “That’s all they are. Darkness.”
His face paled. “Anytime Eve was asked to describe what she was seeing that was the only word she’d ever used. Whatever darkness she’d seen, whatever darkness you’re seeing now, I can’t deny the connection between its sudden presence and the sudden worsening of your symptoms.”
“But you don’t know how?” I asked, “or why? What if they’re not just hallucinations? Or what if they are and it means that my KLS has caused some kind of irreparable damage to my brain?”
His hands shook and he clenched them tight. “That’s something we’re still trying to figure out.”
I let myself slip back to that night I’d been sitting on those swings, the shadow trying to force me into something deeper than sleep. “Whenever they’re around all I want to do is close my eyes. The cold is so fierce it hurts and I can feel myself drifting.”
“You’re becoming more debilitated. Eve was bed-ridden by the time she…” He pinched his forehead. “She was so small.”
The room seemed to tilt and Dr. Banz was quiet for a long time as I held tight to my chair. Every time I learned something new about Eve I felt like I was learning something new about myself and it only made me that much more afraid of what was happening to me.
“Eve.” I swallowed. “How did she…? How did it end?”
Dr. Banz looked down. “For a long time her doctors were still clinging to the theory that it was schizophrenia or some other mental illness in tandem with the KLS. They wouldn’t listen to her.” He cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t listen to her. Eventually she stopped talking about the shadows. She stopped talking at all.”
I wanted to ask Dr. Banz about the notes I’d read about Eve. It had sounded like she’d attacked one of the nurses. But I hadn’t confessed yet how I’d even heard about Eve and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
“Is that when…?” I couldn’t finish the rest.
“It wasn’t long after. A few weeks after she stopped talking we were forced to move her to a psychiatric facility permanently. At the hospital where she’d previously been receiving treatment she’d…attacked one of the nurses. Not intentionally. I’d tried to explain that to the physicians. She was afraid. She never would have hurt someone.” He was breathless then. “I could see it in her eyes that she was delirious. When we saw her she was just so afraid.” He grew quiet for a long time and I didn’t like sitting in that silence of his grief. I didn’t like watching it tear at his insides. So I was relieved when he finally said, “The boy…”
“Do you think he’s like the shadows?” I asked, even though I knew it was impossible. I just needed Dr. Banz to tell me that he was real, for someone to promise me that he was.
Dr. Banz shook his head, glancing out the window as he said, “Vogle, he’s not just my assistant.”
“What do you mean?”
“Vogle and Eve had a very special connection. I guess you’d call it a soul mate. To be that ruined on th
e day she died, he could be nothing but.”
“And Roman? What does any of this have to do with him?”
Dr. Banz looked me right in the eye. “I’m afraid, everything.”
I stiffened. “You know why he’s there in my dreams?”
“I’m not sure of that either. But what I do know, if my theory is correct, is that he’s not supposed to be.”
“What theory? What else do you know that you’re not telling me?”
The door pushed open and Dr. Banz only had time to mouth the words, “Find him,” before Dr. Sabine interrupted.
The moment she saw me she almost lost her grip on the stack of folders she was carrying. “Bryn, well, what a nice surprise. Is everything alright?” she asked, gaze flitting from me to Dr. Banz.
“Yes.” I stood. “I just stopped by for a minute to ask a few questions about the trip. I didn’t see you in your office so I came in here to ask Dr. Banz.”
“Oh, I must have been downstairs grabbing lunch.”
From the way she said it I wasn’t sure if she believed me, but I decided to get out of there before she could ask me anything else.
“Thanks, Dr. Banz.”
He nodded. “I’m not sure I’ll be seeing you until you land. My flight heads out tomorrow.”
“I look forward to it,” I said, and then I headed for the elevators.
My grandmother was out in the yard when I got home, whatever sickness that had stripped the garden in the backyard starting to contaminate the flowers near the front steps. The rose bloom she held was dry and cracking.
When she heard me, she let if fall to the ground. She sniffed. “You smell like public transportation. Where have you been?”
“Out…” I scrambled. “With Dani.”
“Well, be warned. Your mother’s dying to take you prom dress shopping. I told her you could wear her old one; save her some money. I still have it under my bed, you know. But oh no, that woman won’t even reuse her paper plates.”
“I’m not sure that you’re supposed…”
My mom came down the steps. “Oh, there you are. I was looking for you. Did you go somewhere this morning?”
“Just out for a walk.”
My grandmother shot me a disbelieving look.
“With Dani,” I clarified.
The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4 Page 22