The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  Waiting for Bryn to leave that night was agonizing. I knew we wouldn’t be left alone so our only form of communication was a side-glance here, a flash of eye contact there. But it wasn’t enough and I knew it never would be. Waiting for her to show up the next morning was even more agonizing. I’d hardly slept, my mind practicing every word, fighting against the pain medicine. I’d mumbled them into the dark until I recognized my voice, until I knew she would too. As soon as she reached the foot of my bed they were already perched on the edge of my lips.

  My dad went through his morning routine, meeting with the doctor, taking notes on my progress, reminding the nurses that he’d left a list of phone numbers by the bed where he could be reached while he was at the office.

  He leaned over me, kissing the top of my head, and I leaned into it, wishing it would last forever. I knew the second my dad walked out that door that we’d finally be alone. My eyes were pinned to his shadow until it finally disappeared out into the hall but in the corner of my eye I could still see Bryn as she sat by the window. Not inches from me like she had been before. She was afraid. I could feel it.

  I stared straight ahead, not letting myself look at her. But then she shifted, her body stiff as she sunk down into the chair next to my bed.

  “Roman?”

  I was still staring at my hands, manufacturing my expression into something cold, into something she’d believe. Then I looked at her. Even though I knew I shouldn’t, that it would only make it harder, I had to look at her one last time.

  “Roman.” She smiled but only for a second.

  She moved to rest her fingers over mine, her eyes already red, every inch of her pleading. I pulled my hand away even though all I wanted to do was leave it there and then she froze.

  I thought about the shadow, about feeling it inside me in the dream-state after I’d found it at the scene of the car accident. Pieces of it were still there, grating against my insides, absorbed into my very bones. And I didn’t want to be just another ghost haunting her, especially since it wasn’t the only thing that made me feel dead. I thought about Dr. King leading my dad into the hall, their voices hushed and breaking and I thought about the look on my dad’s face when he came back in. Empty.

  I looked at Bryn, more fragile than she ever liked to let on and I knew that I never wanted to see that look on her face. Even more than that I never wanted to be the one to put it there. Because I’d never be the boy she knew, not like this. I knew I couldn’t ask her to give up everything and I knew it was time to let her go.

  So I didn’t tell her I loved her. I didn’t tell her she was the miracle, not me. That she was everything. I didn’t say any of the things I wanted to say.

  Instead, I took a breath, grabbing hold of the words until they were sharp and bleeding me dry. Then I looked at her and said, “Who are you?”

  8

  Bryn

  I couldn’t remember how I got home or even if I had. I couldn’t remember walking out of Roman’s hospital room. I couldn’t remember falling asleep or closing my eyes or anything at all except his voice. Roman’s voice.

  Who. Are. You.

  The pain hijacked me in an instant and I was back in the dream-state, sitting at the edge of the waterline, foam lapping against the frozen beach.

  He doesn’t remember you.

  The chill bit at my skin as I replayed his words—the sharpness, the cadence—until the memory was replaced by a blade that drove into my flesh over and over again.

  He doesn’t remember you.

  He doesn’t remember you.

  The snow had climbed to my waist, settling over my legs, slipping under my shirt. But I wasn’t numb enough. Not yet.

  He doesn’t remember.

  9

  Roman

  Two weeks. I stared at the plastic calendar tacked to the wall above the cheesy pain assessment scale. There’d been a check mark next to level ten since the day Bryn left. It was a lie. Most days I was completely numb but if I said that they’d start trying to wean me off the high dosage of pain meds I’d been on and then I wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  And I needed to sleep. It was the only time I didn’t think about her and when you’re confined to a hospital bed with nothing but a constant stream of reality television there aren’t that many distractions.

  Even the people came and went in a blur. My nurses shuffled in like clockwork, scrubs sounding like a wind tunnel as they made their way up and down the hall. The physical therapist, Craig, still came twice a day, twisting me and bending me and making me want to punch him in the fucking face.

  “You get off on tort…” I stopped, tried again, “torturing people?” I asked him.

  Craig laughed and told me to push against his forearm, his eyes wide when he didn’t properly anticipate my weight.

  Dr. King came in during a few of those sessions, quietly observing, taking a few notes. But his expression never changed an inch even when I was pushing against Craig until his arm was shaking. He still looked hopeless and all I wanted was to slap that look off his face. Because every time I saw him I remembered the truth. That it didn’t matter how hard I could push or how hard I tried. All that mattered was what Dr. King had told my dad in the hall that day and nothing I did was going to change that. I still couldn’t move my fucking legs.

  Three weeks. I didn’t know if my dad had tried to call Bryn but I knew he wanted to. She’d left without saying goodbye, without saying anything.

  After I made her believe that I didn’t remember who she was, I’d seen the moment it happened, an infinite retreat that felt like more than the goodbye I’d meant it to be. I watched her disappear right before my eyes and all I could think was how much I wished I could take it back. Those words. That look.

  She’d sat there, trying not to fall apart, and then she looked at me, forcing a smile that split me in two. Because suddenly I wasn’t Roman anymore. I was some poor kid who’d just woken up from a coma, delirious and confused and pathetic. There was no anger behind her tears, only a solemn understanding, and I hated myself.

  I wanted her to be angry. It would have made things easier but I should have known that Bryn wouldn’t see it that way. I should have known that she’d prepared for every scenario, including this one, and that she could never hate me for forgetting.

  But the truth she would never know was that I hadn’t forgotten a single thing. I never would.

  My dad felt her absence too and I wanted more than anything to tell him that I was sorry, that I’d had a reason. But sometimes when I opened my eyes first thing in the morning and all I wanted was to see her face, it was hard to remember what that reason was. Until the doctor made his rounds, until the physical therapist gripped my legs and I realized they were still numb, until I had to go to the bathroom and my dad had to help me like some kind of child. Until I remembered why I was in that hospital bed in the first place, that suicidal prick who hated everything and everyone still lurking somewhere inside me.

  That’s what I’d taken from Bryn and no amount of waking would change any of it. My mother was toxic and because I belonged to her I was too. It was in my genes and in my thoughts and in my core, the only thing that woman had ever given me and the only thing I had to remember her by. And if Bryn had stayed, if I would have let her, I would have ended up hurting her the same way my mother had hurt my father.

  On the tail end of a dream sometimes I could still smell my mother’s skin or hear the sound of her breathing. Sometimes they were nightmares, the night I’d found her in that bathtub playing over my eyelids and pinning me to the bed. But other times I relived those moments when she could still fake her way through life. I dreamed about being outside, of watching her barefoot in the yard before she started to fear the sun. I dreamed of snow, of being so close I could touch her.

  We used to go up the mountain together, the three of us crammed on the ski lift. Up above those trees, skis knocking against one another, we were never closer and I always hoped that the tr
ack would stop so that I could remember how warm my mother was.

  I tried to remember it now but all I could remember was the wind, cold and rocking the lift and I imagined that’s what her insides were like—hollow, the cold cutting straight through her. Maybe that was why she’d hated the light and my voice and my father’s touch. But maybe she’d had it right all along. Maybe being frozen was easier than feeling.

  Five weeks.

  “Are you glad to be going home?”

  Nurse Jia handed my dad the copy of instructions she’d just gone over for my medications. He flipped back through the six-page itinerary, undaunted, that goofy smile he’d had since he’d woken up that morning still plastered to his face.

  “Yes.” I wasn’t sure if it was true but I wanted to hear my voice.

  “You’ll come back and see us though, right?”

  “I hope not.”

  She laughed, patted my hand. “Under different circumstances maybe.”

  I expected her to say something about Bryn but she didn’t.

  Craig walked in pushing a wheelchair. “Big day. You ready to do this?”

  I wasn’t sure if he meant going home or trying to maneuver into that wheelchair without busting my face on the linoleum floor.

  “Up.”

  I reached for him, my legs sliding off the bed as he pulled me down into the seat. My dad caught them, leading my feet onto the footrests. When they wheeled me out heads were poking out of doorways, other patient’s families lining the corridor with big smiles on their faces, every nurse I’d ever had waving me off from the nurses station.

  “What do you think, ladies?” Nurse Jia said. “We let him out he’ll be breaking hearts in no time.”

  There was a collective laugh and when I swallowed the air felt like sand.

  “Here.” One of the elderly nurses handed me something soft and fuzzy. “For your hands when it starts getting cold again.”

  I unrolled them and realized they were a pair of mittens. “Oh. Thanks.” At least they weren’t socks.

  Getting me in the car was pretty much a shit show. Luckily Craig was riding with us back to the house to help me get out of the car and to set up a place in the living room where he and I could continue our sessions.

  For some reason I was glad to have a stranger there, someone who didn’t know what the house was supposed to look like before my dad opened the door.

  They rolled me inside and the air was thick from all of those nights of being empty. My dad started messing with the thermostat as Craig led me into the center of the room. I noticed one of those wheelchair lifts at the bottom of the stairs. The same kind my grandmother had before my mother moved her to a nursing home.

  Our old couch was gone, replaced by a smaller one and a corner of empty space where my dad told Craig he could set up whatever mats or equipment we might need. The old entertainment center was gone too, our DVDs and video games displayed in a new one lower to the ground.

  “You changed a lot,” I said.

  I expected him to say, I had to. But instead he just said, “We needed new stuff.” And then after a beat of silence, “Do you want to see your room?”

  I stared at the top of the landing. It used to be a place we avoided. I’d even started sleeping on the couch most nights just so I wouldn’t have to walk past the guest room on my way to bed. The lights were always off and it was always quiet. But sometimes, if I held my breath when I passed by, I could hear my mother crying in there.

  “Later?” I said.

  “Sure. You hungry? I could order a pizza.”

  It was two in the afternoon and they’d already force fed me mashed potatoes that weren’t really potatoes and a limp piece of Salisbury steak but as soon as he said pizza my mouth was already watering.

  “Mushroom…” I didn’t even bother trying to conquer the next word.

  “And pepperoni?”

  I nodded.

  “And Craig, after your session, why don’t you stay for dinner?”

  I could see my dad scrambling but I was thinking the same thing—that I wanted to avoid being alone in this house for as long as possible. As soon as Craig left it would just be the two of us and then I didn’t know what would happen. We’d been cut from the daily routine of the hospital and now we were going to have to make our own.

  The truth was I hadn’t been looking forward to getting released. I was sick of hospital food and the constant shuffle of feet, nurses peeking in every hour while I was trying to sleep. I was sick of the smell and the ties on my gown digging into my skin and the way my dad looked so uncomfortable in that small plastic chair by my bed.

  But at least I knew what to expect there. I knew who I was—a patient—and on that day Bryn woke me, a miracle. But here, in this house, I couldn’t be the Roman who’d lived here before. Not that I wanted to. But he was the only other version of myself I knew and now he couldn’t walk.

  Craig shrugged. “Free pizza? Why not?”

  I wanted to hug him.

  I was sitting on the couch, trying to recover from my workout with Craig. He was more…persistent without a nurse looking over his shoulder and my arms felt like they were going to fall off.

  “Still feeling it?” Craig said between bites.

  “A little,” I managed.

  “I used to be an MMA fighter,” he said. “When I got hurt I switched to personal training, then this. So I know I can be a little intense.” He laughed.

  “You hid it well.”

  “I don’t like to scare the nurses. Especially when my wife’s on call. Maya,” he said. “I don’t think she was one of yours.”

  “Maya.” My dad nodded. “I didn’t know she was married.”

  “Why, did you flirt with her?” Craig laughed, reaching for another slice of pizza. His sixth. I’d barely finished two.

  My dad shook his head, smiling, and I rolled my eyes. No doubt he’d flirted with her. I knew those nurses didn’t call me a playboy for nothing.

  “It’s hard not to,” Craig said. “I know. We met my first week on the job. I nearly dropped a patient once when she was observing.” He nudged me. “Don’t worry, I caught them before they hit the floor.” Craig stretched his back. “Well, I’m stuffed.” He got to his feet. “Thanks for dinner guys.”

  My dad followed him to the door, probably trying to figure out how to knock him unconscious and drag him back in. It was four o’clock. That meant there were still four more hours of sunlight left, four more hours of channel surfing and trying to make conversation, of sitting in silence and trying to pretend like we could just pick up where we left off.

  Not seven months ago but two years ago when we would binge on hot wings and football and we’d laugh until one of us choked on a chicken bone and the other had to do the Heimlich. When we would spend all afternoon in the garage talking about taking a road trip once we finally finished restoring the car. Before my mother shut us out for good. Before she left her body to rot in that bathtub. Before my dad had to bury her alone.

  Since I’d been awake he hadn’t mentioned it. But as we sat there in that quiet house, both of us trying not to absorb the darkness she’d left behind, I could still feel her ghost. And as that first tear stung the back of my throat, I realized we hadn’t buried a thing.

  10

  Bryn

  I finally got up. Not because I wanted to but because the snow was starting to melt and it just wasn’t cold enough anymore. I followed the ice as it drifted back out to sea, pieces splitting and cracking, sharp edges melting before I could grab hold of them. Then all at once they sunk.

  I saw my reflection in the water. At first it was just a silhouette, darkness rippled in the shape of my mouth, my eyes. But then I blinked and I was smiling. The water shifted and tugged me forward and then I saw Roman. His face pooled next to mine. I turned but there was no one.

  From where I stood I could see the front of the farmhouse. It had been dark, empty without me in it. But suddenly a light turned on inside, la
ce curtains fluttering. They parted, eyes peering out, and suddenly I was running. I warmed with every step but as I approached the door, I realized that the heat wasn’t natural and the light wasn’t glass.

  There were flames.

  The doorway was scorched, a fire raging through the inside of the farmhouse. Smoke billowed at my feet, ushering me inside. I coughed, swatting it away, the heat singeing my arms and trying to force me back outside. But I had to keep going because somewhere within the flames, beneath the smell of ash and smoke there was something sweet—the scent of roasting coffee beans.

  “Roman?” I coughed and tried calling his name again.

  But just before the heat was too much, just before my lungs gave out, the smoke suddenly cleared and it wasn’t him sitting at the kitchen table. It was my grandfather.

  And then I knew. This wasn’t a dream and this wasn’t a memory, though it was something just as familiar.

  This was a nightmare.

  11

  Roman

  There was a knock on the door. I watched my dad roll off the couch and glance around the room. It was a mess. We’d been staying downstairs for more than a week and the coffee table was covered in two more empty pizza boxes, seven empty coke bottles, and eight days worth of crumbs.

  He wiped his eyes and straightened his shirt before finally opening the door. At first I just lay there, hoping it was one of the neighbors or someone else not worth seeing. My grandparents lived in California and they weren’t supposed to get here until the end of the week.

  But then I heard, “Uh, hi Mr. Santillo. How goes it, sir?” and I knew that goofy drawl belonged to none other than Jimmy Highland.