His stomach let out a strange gurgle and he clutched it. “Did those mushrooms taste a little funny to you?”
I rolled, glaring at him. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of trying to have a mental breakdown over here.”
“Sorry, dude, no mental breakdowns allowed in my apartment.”
I sat up as Felix flipped through channels. “It’s a Saturday, you won’t find shit on tonight.”
He stopped on some grainy news coverage, the female reporter dubbed in English even though she was somewhere in South America. He dropped the remote as the camera panned out over a big white building.
“You don’t think Michael’s on some kind of revenge kick, do you? I mean, he wouldn’t still be mad about you hiding Stassi and turning everyone against him or anything, right?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Is that why you’ve been having trouble sleeping?”
He shrugged. “Trouble sleeping, eating, shitting, walking to my car alone at night—”
“I get it, you’re freaked out.” I tried to make the next words sound believable. “You shouldn’t be. The Rogues are on it and we’re thousands of miles away.”
“Yeah.” He looked down. “You’re right. I don’t know, maybe it’s not just Michael that has me freaked out.”
“You’re worried about Dani,” I said, reading his expression.
He eyed me. “Should I be?”
“No.” My voice was stern, certain. “I destroyed the shadow myself.”
“All of it?” he said.
“Look, Felix, I know it sucks that she’s ignoring you right now. You don’t deserve that shit, not after—”
I stopped rambling. Felix wasn’t looking at me anymore, something on the television distracting him. There was a news anchor sitting at a desk, an image popping onto the screen to her left. I scanned the ticker: COMA OUTBREAKS IN SOUTH AMERICA.
“What channel is this?” I asked, the station behind the news anchor shoddy and dimly lit.
“One of those public access channels that’s always doing stories on food and the ASPCA and shit.” Felix found the remote, turned the volume up.
“The International Organization for Rare and Neglected Diseases has issued a warning to all parents whose children have recently been complaining of unusual fatigue and/or meningitis-like symptoms. So far no meningitis outbreaks have been confirmed and none of the children in question were complaining of any flu or cold-like symptoms prior to these incidents. According to the parents of a sixteen-year-old girl in Chile, their daughter went to bed around 10:00 PM and when she didn’t join them in time for church the next morning her mother tried to wake her, only to find she was unable to.”
“Well, that’s creepy,” Felix said.
“Coma outbreaks?”
“Yeah, just what we need right now, a global epidemic to kill us all.” He moved to change the channel but I stopped him. “What is it?”
“Just leave it for a second.”
They brought up a map marking the locations where each instance had taken place. Six kids—two in Chile, one in Argentina, one in Colombia, and two in Brazil.
“Uh-oh,” Felix said, “what are your Spidey-senses telling you?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know…”
Another photo appeared and Felix was on his feet. He crouched an inch from the glass, finger igniting static as it traced the picture. I crouched next to him, the light of the television making me warm. But then the heat disappeared. From the screen. From my skin.
“And what are they telling you now?” Felix said.
I followed his finger, trembling as he held it to the face of a doctor I didn’t recognize but whose eyes I’d never forget. They looked just like Michael’s had the day he’d tried to take Stassi in Rheinpark and revealed to all of us what he really was. They looked just like Dani’s had when I’d found her standing over Bryn’s body after the shadow inside her had attacked the person she loved most and sent her into oblivion. Those same eyes stared back at us now on that television screen—black and warped—and even frozen in that photo, it was clear. They were dead.
“It could have just been a trick of the light.” It was the first thing I said to Felix when he woke up the next morning.
When the baseball bat he’d been clutching all night rolled against his knee, the memory jolted him like an electric current. “Even the local media was calling that doctor El Diablo. It wasn’t a trick of the light.”
I folded my arms against my knees. “But think about it, Felix. I mean, what are the odds? They can’t all be like Bryn.”
“Maybe they’re not.” He fell still. “Or maybe they are.”
“Or maybe after everything we’ve been through we can’t see a creepy doctor and a meningitis outbreak for what it really is. Maybe those kids really were exposed to a rare strain of meningitis like the news said. It makes sense. Besides, it was public access news. You know how they’re always going on about conspiracy theories.” I didn’t know why I couldn’t stop trying to rationalize what I’d seen. But it was as if my only options were to cling to my rationality, to my very sanity, or to lose my mind again like I had the day I’d lost Bryn.
“Maybe you’re right,” Felix said, sounding like he finally believed me. “I knew there was something funny with those mushrooms.”
“Yeah,” I said, “maybe it hasn’t been Michael giving you nightmares this whole time but all of that Chinese food.”
Felix attempted a laugh but he was still too groggy.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Almost noon.”
“Already?”
I searched for my shoes before scraping the bottom of my duffel bag for my toothbrush…and then I stopped. Every morning for the past week I’d woken in a rush, scrambling to get ready and head to the hospital. But I wasn’t allowed there anymore and because I couldn’t think of another good reason to get off the couch I lay back down, burying my face in the cushions again.
“She’ll…come around,” Felix offered as he poured cereal into an old to-go carton.
I wasn’t so sure. The reason Bryn’s mother had asked me to leave, the real reason she couldn’t bring herself to say, was that Bryn was afraid of me. The stranger in her body couldn’t stand the sight of me and sometimes I couldn’t stand the sight of it either. And even though I wasn’t supposed to hope, all I could think was that maybe it hated me because it knew, it knew that I could bring her back and that was the last thing it wanted.
“Hey, maybe you can come by the shop with me today, check out the new Audi we’re detailing.”
I stared at my shoes, picking at the laces.
“Might help you get your mind off things.”
I got dressed and Felix and I drove to his dad’s auto shop. Their last name, Villegas, was drawn in big red letters over the white garage doors, just two of them open, the ones left closed spelling out the word: LEGS.
“It could be worse,” Felix said, “sometimes they spell out the word: VILE. Those tend to be slow business days.”
“I can imagine.”
I followed Felix inside, the forty-year-old version of him standing behind the counter.
“You dragging in customers off the street?” the man asked, his mustache curling into his mouth.
“Friend of mine,” Felix corrected before adding, “Bryn’s boyfriend.”
Before I had a chance to absorb the sting, Felix’s dad was coming around the cash register and shaking my hand. “You know about cars, son?”
A spontaneous sweat erupted on my brow. I didn’t want to mention the car I’d restored with my dad the summer before the accident. The one I’d destroyed.
“My dad and I are working on restoring a GTO.” As soon as I said it the lump in my throat I’d been trying to avoid returned with a vengeance. The truth was it had been months since I’d been sitting in the garage with my dad and even longer since I’d been home.
I followed Felix through a side-door and we wound betwee
n rolling toolboxes and hoses and stacks of tires before stopping beneath an Audi. Sunlight glinted off the exterior as Felix pressed a button and lowered it down. All black, the seams between the tinted windows and the doors were practically invisible. It looked like it had been melted down out of molten lava, no grooves; no nicks, just curves.
We both slid inside, Felix busy pointing out the features as I gripped the wheel. The newness of it, the smells and the flashing lights assaulted my senses and it reminded me of standing in that clearing in Bryn’s memories.
Every time she’d reappeared in the dream, she’d reignited our search for clues, showing me around her memories in hopes that they might stir one of my own. I’d followed her through an empty field, the grass covered in hot air balloons, then a hoard of geese, then statues from her favorite art exhibits. There’d been one made of vintage car parts and as my finger grazed one of the ignition timers, that first prick of my memory burned me from the inside out. At first they were just facts and numbers but even that slightest waking had felt like magic.
All because I’d touched the past, connecting with it in a tangible way. At the time I’d had no idea that I was lying in a hospital bed somewhere in the midst of a six-month coma but finally waking out of it hadn’t started with Bryn’s kiss. It had started long before in that empty field, in the middle of Bryn’s memories.
Felix pushed some buttons on the navigation screen. “It syncs with his email address. I sat in here for like two hours one day just listening to the audio feature read through his inbox. There’s got to be a hundred emails just from this one chick named Heather.” Felix fell back, laughing. “It’s his fucking mistress, man.”
“Felix…”
He straightened. “Uh-oh. Cogs are turning. What’s up?”
“When was the last time you talked to Dani?”
He fell back against the seat. “I haven’t exactly talked to her since we got back. I’ve called, she just never answers. Why?”
My hands slumped to my lap. “Do you think she’d be up for doing us a favor?”
“Doubtful.” He chewed on his lip. “What kind of favor?”
“When I was in the dream-state with Bryn, my memory sort of came back in pieces. I’d see something or touch something and then all of a sudden I’d remember something about myself, about who I was and where I’d come from.”
“So…” He was nodding but not quite following.
“So, I know what’s happened to Bryn is different but what if we got Dani to bring her some of her old things and…”
“And it…what exactly?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she’d come out of this. Maybe if she remembered who she was, she could come out of this somehow.”
“It’s worth a shot, I guess.”
“So you’ll ask Dani? I don’t know how Bryn’s mom would feel about me getting involved right now, let alone going to their house.”
“I’ll ask her. I can’t guarantee she’ll say yes.” He huffed. “I can’t even guarantee that she’ll respond but I’ll try.”
Dani did respond. After three hours of helping Felix rotate tires and change oil we were standing in Dani’s bedroom, Bryn’s things in a heap on her bed.
“Thanks for doing this,” I said.
Dani was quiet, obviously waiting for us to take the stuff and leave.
I finally allowed myself to look at her. “Why did you?”
She scratched at her arm and then I couldn’t just look. I examined her from head to toe, reading her expression, the circles under her eyes, searching for any kind of wrongness. It was pointless, probably rude, but Felix’s fears were grating on me even though I knew better.
“If it would help Bryn get better I’d do anything.” Dani finally met my eyes and there was nothing sinister in them, only sadness. “So, you think this will work?”
“I don’t know.” I took a step back, still preferring to keep my distance. “But it’s worth a shot.”
She made her way towards Bryn’s things. “I didn’t want to take anything noticeable so I just grabbed an old photo box, some of her favorite books, and a few of her miniature sculptures.”
I picked up the smallest sculpture, recognizing it as one that used to sit on the bookshelf at the farmhouse.
“She made it in middle school,” Dani said.
“Really?”
Dani smiled and even though it looked out of place it also looked real. “She started out using foil. I remember she used to go around the lunch tables at school, asking people if they had any left over.”
I opened the photo box and placed the sculptures inside along with the books.
“I guess you’re going to sneak in?” Dani asked, her voice a few degrees colder.
“I have to. Ms. Reyes doesn’t want me around Bryn but if this could fix everything then I have to risk it.”
“And let me guess, you’re going to help?” she asked Felix.
“Yeah, I’m kind of driving the getaway car.” He inched closer, testing the waters. “You know, if you want—?”
“No.” She crossed her arms, the anger spontaneous. “I just…” She let out a breath, changed her tone. “I was there all day. I could use a break, that’s all.”
She looked right at Felix when she said the word break and his gaze fell straight to the floor. But she was lying. We all knew she hadn’t stepped foot inside the hospital since we got back to the States. Maybe her mother didn’t know that; maybe Bryn’s mother didn’t either. Maybe she’d been lying to them this whole time too, pretending to go see Bryn to avoid exposing the truth: that she was the reason Bryn was there in the first place.
Dani’s cheeks flamed and I realized I was staring. I wanted to say something, to confront her, or if she wasn’t lying, to warn her not to go near Bryn. But this Dani, the one who’d snuck into Bryn’s room for her things, the one who looked just as hopeful that this plan would work, this was the Dani I knew and I didn’t want to chase her back into herself for fear we might never catch a glimpse of her again.
“Well, we should get going,” I finally said, heaving the box into my arms.
I stepped into the hall but Felix wasn’t behind me. I looked back just as he was drawing the door partly closed.
“I’ve been trying to call,” Felix said under his breath. “Dani, would you please just look at me? After everything that’s happened, we need to talk.”
She didn’t answer.
“Why won’t you just talk to me?”
I was standing five feet away and even I could feel the sting of her silence.
“Dani, please.”
“I just need some space.”
“Space,” he said. “That’s original. What the hell’s gotten into you?”
Every ounce of oxygen on that entire city block must have disappeared at once. Because we all knew the answer to that question. Something bad had gotten into Dani, something evil. But maybe the real question was how much of it had gotten out?
7
Bryn
I woke up bruised and torn and cold. When I looked up I saw why. Night had fallen, Roman just a shadow next to me. It was easier when I couldn’t see him, when I could give him another face and another name. When I could see the monster inside him without having to see the boy where it lived.
The boy I loved.
“You made me this way, Bryn.”
I braced myself for his voice this time, the illusion shattered that he could be anyone else. He traced a finger down the side of my face, the skin blistering for the hundredth time. I didn’t respond. I’d woken out of death enough times to know it wasn’t a response he wanted from me anyway.
“You think I want to hurt you?” He slammed his fists down on either side of my face, flames brushing my cheeks. “I fucking love you.” He wrenched my chin with a burning hand as I choked down tears. “I love you, Bryn. But you make me do this. You.”
I kicked, vines tightening around my knees until I felt the warm prick of blood. But this time the
vines weren’t just strangling me, they were pulling me down, drawing me deep. I was sinking.
“You shouldn’t have come for me,” he said, voice colder. “I told you to stop. I told you this would happen.” His lips brushed mine. Fire. “But you found me anyway. You tore me out of that sleep.” His veins glowed beneath his skin. “And you made me this. You turned me into this monster.”
“No.” The word tripped out, muddled with an exhale I knew would be my last.
He was still. “And do you know what monsters do, Bryn?”
I trembled, trying to fill my lungs with air.
“One thing, Bryn. Just one.”
He buried my mouth again, the pain and the heat cracking me from the inside out. But this time I didn’t close my eyes. This time I made myself look, the light of him raging, as the light in me grew dim.
8
Roman
Visiting hours were winding down but I hoped I could still blend in with the other families. Dani had called Bryn’s mom to see if she was still here but luckily she’d left half an hour ago. I guess Dani wasn’t the only one who’d needed a break from the hospital.
The only person I feared running into now was Vogle. He practically slept in his makeshift office, and even though I knew he wouldn’t stop me from trying to help Bryn, I also knew that he believed there was nothing more I could do for her. Sometimes—most times—I believed it too. But believing I was useless and trying to convince the Rogue in me to follow suit wasn’t easy.
I braced myself before stepping into Bryn’s room, secretly hoping she was sleeping and then instantly regretting it the moment I realized she was. She was curled into a ball, knuckles blanched around the sheets as she gripped them in some kind of dream.
I didn’t have time to set the box down or even take another step before there was a knock on the door. I turned and saw a tall guy with blonde hair, a vase full of roses cradled awkwardly in his arms.
“Oh, sorry.” He lowered his voice when he saw that Bryn was sleeping. “When I saw you come in I thought maybe she’d woken up.”
The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4 Page 63