“Didn’t take you long to replace the old one,” he said, examining the car.
I wanted to strangle him.
He stepped into the shade of the garage. “Did I come at a bad time?”
“What the hell do you want?”
He leaned against the car and I shot him a look. “Sorry.” He raised his hands and backed away.
“Seriously, Carlisle, what do you want?”
“I can’t come check on my friend and see how he’s doing?”
“Don’t fuck around with me.”
“What? Like you fucked around with Cassie?” He smiled. “And yet I come bearing gifts.” He tossed something into my lap. “Here, a peace offering. I find out you slept with my girlfriend and you…well, how’s that chair feel?”
“Fuck you.” I threw the bag of hash and it slammed into his chest.
“Sorry, thought it might help take the edge off.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
He stood there, smiling, and I just sat there, fuming.
“Look, I didn’t come here to point out the obvious,” he said.
“Then why did you come?”
He stared into the sun, shading his eyes. Then his arms fell at his sides. “Do you remember that night you hung out the window of the Pontiac and took out all those mailboxes when we were racing down fourth street?”
I’d hooked my feet under the seat as Carlisle skirted along the curb, just close enough for me to swing that old steel bat. Not because I was high or drunk but because I was angry. Because it had been four weeks since my mother had come out of her room.
I didn’t answer him but it didn’t matter. He was reading the memory on every inch of my face. The wind slicing between my limbs, the breeze against the backswing, the sound of front doors falling open, the tires peeling back out onto the main road.
“How many do you think we got that night? Shit, at least twelve, right?” He clenched his fists and I watched his shadow swing at a crack in the concrete. “We were fucking flying.”
I’d abandoned the bat to the backseat, my arms spread out wide as I watched the moon rippling between the trees, the leaves shredding it to pieces. It was so small that night.
“And then when we came down that hill on Montgomery Boulevard…” I could hear the ascent in his voice, the memory of that one second of stillness before the car had slammed to the ground again, cinching his lips into a smile. But then he gripped his jaw, tugging himself free from the thought and his smirk collapsed into something dark. “I—”
“Don’t. I’m not really in the mood for any trips down memory lane. If that’s what you came for you can step off.”
He dared to come closer until his long wavering shadow was climbing into my short still one but I couldn’t let him finish whatever he’d come here to say. Because I couldn’t let myself go back there with him, to that weightlessness, and not from clipping off that hill at almost a hundred miles an hour but from the crash when we finally came back down. Carlisle had slammed on the brakes, his veins ignited with the adrenaline of cheating death. And mine had ignited with the adrenaline of something else.
I turned back to the car but Carlisle was still standing there.
Then he said, “I came to say I’m sorry.”
I looked back at him. “What?”
“I’m sorry.” He clenched his fists. “Shit. You think I don’t feel bad about what happened to you? We were friends.”
“Were we?”
“I get it. You’ve had some kind of epiphany. You’re all enlightened now and don’t want anything to do with me. But just because you woke up as someone different doesn’t mean the old you never existed.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you’d like to pretend you don’t.”
“You think I can escape who I was? I can’t even escape this fucking chair.” My heel dug into the ground, barely scraping the toolbox that I’d meant to kick across the garage.
“You could.” He gripped the bag of hash before stuffing it into the back pocket of his jeans. “You used to.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I won’t.”
He shook his head. “Fine. Be stuck. I don’t care.”
I gripped the side of my chair, my toes grating against the insides of my shoes. “Then why the hell did you come? You wanted a laugh? You just wanted to fucking piss me off?” All I wanted was to pummel him, my hands around his throat. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t hurt him.
“No.”
“Then what?” I spat.
His eyes narrowed into sharp slits. “Just thought you might want to know that we weren’t the only two out at the quarry that night.”
“What do you mean?”
I didn’t want to think about the fire. I didn’t want to think about any of it.
I thought I saw his lip tremble. “Someone saw us.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said and I didn’t. I knew Carlisle was just trying to scare me.
But he didn’t argue, he just stuffed his hands in his pockets, and turned to go.
Eighteen weeks.
I was staring at my leg, at my calf muscle tensed and shaking.
“Bend it, Roman.” Craig was holding me steady. “Bend it.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. You are.”
I sat up on my elbows, sweat pouring down my face.
“Bend your knee.”
It rose, the bottom of my foot scraping across the mat. I could feel every tear and ripple through the sole of my foot, my toes catching on a frayed seam.
“More. Bend it.” Craig guided my calf with his hand. I lost it, my leg slipping, but he held it up. “Bend it, Roman.”
I took a breath, holding it in my lungs until it hurt, and then I bent my knee, pulling it to my chest, cradling it as I fell back onto the mat.
23
Bryn
The porch steps were cold against my calves, the ocean spraying up the first gasps of winter. I’d only been awake for a week and now I was back at the farmhouse, probably back in that hospital bed. The space next to me was empty and maybe because of the cold or the sky hanging so low I could almost reach out and touch it, I knew my grandfather was gone. Really gone. I leaned against the column, arms clutching my waist as that slow sadness crept inside me again, the grief working my insides into sharp points.
They pricked and sliced me, drawing tears, but as I blinked them away I saw something else. Thick. Black. The swarm rose slowly, the darkness that had been covering the cracks now creeping onto shore and heading straight for me.
I didn’t have time to stop and deconstruct what exactly was chasing me before I ran for the trees, the sound of them coming ringing in my ears. The buzz was grating, my skin bristling as the darkness swelled overhead. They circled me, hard and round like locusts, but when I tried to open my eyes I couldn’t make out the lines. Everything was black.
I swung my arms, tearing at the air as they pulled at my hair, teeth bedding into my skin. I stumbled and buried my face in the moist soil, my screams lost beneath the flap of their wings.
They plucked at my fingers like they were made of thread, trying to pull my hands away from my face. I dug into the ground, trying to bury my hands, trying to wake up. Please. Wake up. Wake up.
Because this wasn’t a memory and this wasn’t a nightmare. This was real. The cuts. The blood. It was real.
Wake up.
Please.
The first drop of rain stung the back of my head. At first I thought it was my blood but then I felt another and another and suddenly it was sprinkling. It stalled them, their buzz growing faint, but they didn’t stop. I tried to pull myself onto my feet again, clawing at a tree, fingernails torn and bleeding. My face pressed to the bark but suddenly it was smooth. I opened my eyes, just for a second, and then I saw the scars. Someone had carved into the wood. Roman’s name. Mine.
Roman.
I winced against another sting, closing my eyes again, trying to shield my face. But I still felt every rip and tear, waiting for more rain. Wishing for it.
Water.
The ocean.
The thought grazed my mind like the soft tip of a feather. Faint. Subtle. I could practically hear the gears in my own consciousness locking with the invisible gears of the universe, snapping into place, grinding them in another direction. And then I was underwater, choking, floating.
I opened my eyes and saw the waves carving lines above my head as the sun danced along the surface. The current tugged at me and I let it, the saltwater burning into every wound, warm and curling me into its folds. My lungs started to ache as I reached for the sun. It glinted, my vision speckled with light, and then I started kicking towards the surface.
I woke in a cold sweat, nurses shuffling around me, someone’s hands on my shoulders.
“Mom?”
“Bryn.” I heard her voice but I couldn’t see her.
“Mom.”
“You’re okay.” She was behind me, her hand on my forehead.
“What happened?”
I remembered going to bed, my mom drawing the curtains before flicking off the light. I remembered closing my eyes. I remembered the sound of the cars on the street.
“You just had another episode.”
I tried to sit up but I was stopped by that familiar tug, the IV still stuck in my wrist.
“How long?” I said.
“Not long.”
“Days?”
She nodded. “Just six.”
Six. It wasn’t long enough to displace my mind completely but, totally still, my body refusing to eat and drink on its own, it was long enough to scare me and everyone else in that room. I tried to sit up, to say something, but then I saw my mom’s face straining against her tears and I knew I couldn’t break down. Not now. Not like that day in the garage.
Dr. Banz came around the corner, Vogle following close behind him. He dismissed the nurses and then it was just the four of us.
“I wasn’t eating?”
“Your IV…” I could tell Vogle regretted revealing that much the instant he said it.
I stared down at it again and then I noticed the small holes scaling both arms. “My body was rejecting it?”
“You’re under quite a bit of stress, Bryn,” Dr. Banz said, trying to be as vague and easing as possible. “Especially being so far away from home.” But I could tell he was scrambling. “Your body knows how to navigate itself there, from your bedroom to the kitchen to the bathroom. Now you’re in unfamiliar surroundings and it might be effecting—”
“But before. I was home then and I wasn’t eating either.”
“Bryn,” my mom stopped me. “Seeing Roman, I know it was hard on you. Probably harder than you’d expected. All of this could just be caused by stress.”
“Stress?” I swallowed, looking to Dr. Banz.
“It’s very likely,” he said.
His face darkened with the same expression that was on mine. I’d seen flashes of it in both his and Vogle’s eyes since the day they’d asked me where Roman was and I had to tell them the truth. That he didn’t remember me. That he didn’t remember any of it. Dr. Banz looked away but it was too late. I already knew what was there because I felt it too. Hopelessness.
“We could prescribe you some things for the anxiety,” Dr. Banz offered but I couldn’t tell if he was just trying to placate my mom again.
It didn’t matter though. I didn’t care about the cause anymore. All I cared about was time because after being attacked by the shadows in both the dream-state and the real world, I knew for certain that I didn’t have very much of it.
“I think you need a break, Bryn.”
“What?” I snapped.
My mom had her arms crossed. “All of this, it’s getting to you. You need a break.”
“No,” I said, desperate. “I can’t. Not now.”
She ignored me, turning to Dr. Banz. “We’ve been here every day for the past month for testing and observation and I swear to God you’ve wrung her dry. How many more vials of blood do you need? How many more hours of her sitting on the end of an exam table while people pinch and prod her? No, she hasn’t had a single moment to herself and she needs this. She needs some time away from this place.”
“Some time out of the hospital…” Dr. Banz gripped his chin. “Perhaps, but—”
“No. Mom, I can’t.”
She didn’t look at me as she spoke. “It’s settled.”
“Mom…” I stopped myself. There was so much that wasn’t being said. So much she couldn’t know.
“The city is beautiful in the fall,” Dr. Banz offered. “It might be good for you to see it.” His eyes were soft but the words felt final.
See it before what?
“But what if—?”
My mom cut me off. “No buts. You need to live, Bryn. You need to let yourself.”
24
Roman
The trees shuddered and I could almost hear the deep moan of their roots tightening their grip around the soil. This time I hadn’t woken up inside the farmhouse. I’d woken up in the forest, sky buried under leaves that seemed to claw at me.
I followed the sound—a grating hum that set my jaw and made my skin itch. A wall of static bled between the trees, dark and pulsing. But the locusts weren’t hovering there, they weren’t even watching me, they were attacking something. They circled low to the ground, hissing and tearing at the soil and the leaves and the bark of the trees.
Bryn.
I saw a flash of her skin, her hands hugging the tree next to her, and then I ran straight for them.
“Bry—!”
But then the wall collapsed. Empty. The locusts shifted all at once, revealing the bark where I’d carved our names. Drops of blood speckled the wood now but Bryn was gone, nothing but two small trenches where her knees had just been.
The buzz of the locusts grew quiet as the silhouette of a man edged out from the swarm, fear driving me back a few steps. I still wasn’t sure if this was a nightmare—a really vivid, really terrifying nightmare—or if I was really back there. I wondered if that was the point. Bryn had always said this place didn’t have to feel like purgatory but after what I’d done, after the lie I’d told, what if it was? What if this was my punishment? Catching sight of Bryn just in time to see her being attacked but not able to save her.
The shadow twitched, inhuman nose almost catching a hint of me on the breeze. It finally turned, sensing me there, but this time it wasn’t my face staring back. This time it was Carlisle’s, smug and smiling. I shivered but not with fear, with rage. I wanted to rip him open, standing on my own two feet, with my own two hands. I wanted to destroy him.
“Where is she?”
As I spoke it dawned on me that I’d never heard the shadow do the same. I wasn’t sure if it could but then it grinned, smirking at my boldness, and with Carlisle’s voice it taunted me.
“She woke up.” His smile faded. “For now.”
“Stay away from her.” I was speaking to Carlisle now, forgetting that threats were meaningless.
“For now,” he said again.
Carlisle rushed me, turning to fog the moment we collided. I tasted the cold of him on my lips, every inch of me trying to draw him inside. I was aflame, the light so bright it was all I could see as the shadow thrashed and tried to tear away, sharp claws scrambling from my mouth as if I was trying to swallow an insect. But before I could destroy it, there was a crash, glass shattering, and suddenly I was awake.
I used the light from my cell phone to check the floor but there was nothing. The glow caught the slightest movement and I looked up to see that my ceiling was breathing. The shadow hung there, curling down like a spider, and I scrambled off the bed. I landed with a thud on my bedroom floor as it crawled towards me.
I thought to kick, to run, but I couldn’t. I gripped the handle to my bedroom door, yanking
it open. But the shadow was already grazing the bottoms of my feet, scaling my legs, curling around me until a weight stronger than gravity was pressing me into the floor. I clawed myself into the hallway, the cold rushing out after me, but when I looked back it wasn’t the shadow leaning over me.
It was my mother.
She was smiling and bleeding, her face so close to mine that our noses brushed. Her corpse pressed against me, my insides twisting and my heart hammering in my chest.
I heard the click of the television downstairs, my mother’s eyes snapping in the direction of my dad’s footsteps. I looked too, my gaze shifting for just a second, but suddenly the air was easier to breathe. When I looked back my bedroom doorway was empty.
I crawled onto my hands, one arm reaching up for the stair railing. The TV buzzed downstairs, my dad prepping for another night of falling asleep to infomercials with a bag of potato chips on his chest.
I looked from the glow coming from the living room back to my empty doorway. There was nothing but darkness now but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still waiting for me. I pushed myself onto my knees, muscles contracting as I tried to hold myself upright. I collapsed back onto my hands, crawling forward instead, and trying to get away from my bedroom as fast as possible.
I lowered myself down a few steps before gripping the stair railing and pulling myself onto my feet. I glanced down the hall, making sure the light was off in the guest bedroom. I knew I wasn’t supposed to go downstairs, not alone, but there was no way I was going back in my room tonight.
I took a deep breath, bracing for that first step. I’d spent months piecing myself back together one muscle at a time, measuring my progress in twitches and knee bends and ankle rolls, every moment, every movement leading up to this point.
I lowered myself down one step at a time, my legs stiff, knees not always bending on command. I slipped, gripped the railing and pulled myself back up.
“Roman?” My dad appeared at the bottom of the stairs, his face pale. He took a step.
The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4 Page 40