The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  He set the roses by the sink as I steeled myself between him and the bed.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  He reached out a hand, wrenching it back when he noticed the box I was holding. “I’m Drew.”

  What?

  “Drew Mitchell.”

  “Yeah, I heard you the first time.” My mind raced, words from Bryn’s diary and other tangible pieces of her memories snapping into place. This was him—the guy who was nothing more than a second-rate version of her father in a stupid baseball jacket. The guy who’d broken her heart. The heat in my chest was spontaneous, the flames sloshing inside me like lava. I sucked in air, tried not to strangle him. “What are you doing here?”

  He eyed me curiously. “I came to visit Bryn. I heard she was sick; that something happened while she was in Germany…” His expression changed. “Who are you?”

  Who am I? Sparks itched at the tips of my fingers, threatening to swell. “Roman,” I finally answered. “I’m Bryn’s boyfriend.”

  His lips quirked into an off-putting smile. “Boyfriend? Since when?”

  The question caught me off guard. Bryn and I had spent more time apart than we had together, and despite being fated, we’d never actually said the words out loud.

  I thought back to the day we’d met, the day of my accident and said, “Since December.”

  His smile widened. “Oh, really? She never mentioned you.”

  Suddenly the box was on the floor and Drew was wedged between my forearm and the wall.

  “Shit man, what’s your problem?”

  “My problem?” I lowered my voice. “Where the fuck do you get off coming to see Bryn? You don’t give a shit about her.”

  He pushed me back, matching every ounce of rage I’d pinned him with earlier. He was strong. “Or maybe the real reason you’re so angry is because you know I do. Because you know she cares about me too. Obviously she mentioned me, which is more than I can say for you.”

  I slammed him against the wall, our gazes locked. Instinct told me to snuff him out and I honed in on the urge, but even though my body was telling me to destroy him, that he was rotten, that he was wrong, it wasn’t telling me that he was evil.

  Headlights swelled just outside the window, creeping across his face until his eyes shone bright blue.

  He smirked. “Jealous type. Bryn’s never been a big fan of those.

  I shoved him, his head landing against the wall with a thud. “You don’t know anything about her.”

  Drew quavered but not at my words. At my hands. Light fluxed beneath the skin as the collar of his shirt smoked in my fist. Just as I let go, two nurses rushed inside, examining our red faces and heaving chests.

  “What’s going on in here?” one of them asked.

  The other nurse looked past me. I turned to see Bryn sitting up in bed, her eyes wide and confused.

  Drew saw her too. He dropped his hands. “Nothing.”

  “It didn’t sound like nothing. Visiting hours are almost over. Why don’t the two of you come back another day?”

  Drew looked from my face to my hands one last time before stepping past them both.

  “You too,” the nurse said.

  I left the box of Bryn’s things on the floor before storming out. I waited in the stairwell, trying to cool down, to think straight.

  But Drew saw everything.

  Shit. Shit.

  I should have been more careful. I should have controlled myself. But it was like I couldn’t…or worse, like I didn’t want to. And what if Bryn saw all of it? What if she was even more afraid of me now than she had been before? That was the real reason I was stalling. Because for the first time I was going to be alone with Bryn while she was actually awake.

  When the hallway was empty I snuck back to Bryn’s room before I had a chance to chicken out. When she saw me she crawled to the edge of the bed.

  “Bryn, it’s okay.”

  I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to speak, but her body was entrancing—every shift or scratch or sniffle; every move she made fooling me all over again. For a long time I just watched until my stare made her anxious and she started yanking on a strand of her hair.

  I carried the photo box to the bed and placed it in front of her. She stared at it, confused, but when I lifted the lid the first thing she pulled out was her copy of Through the Looking-Glass. She brushed each page, fanning them until her hair was blowing past her cheeks. She traced the typeface, the gold leaf on the spine. Then she let it fall back into the box.

  She plucked out a handful of photographs, her eyes widening over the faces. I couldn’t tell if it was recognition in them or wonder, her head drifting from side to side as she pointed at the people. But before she could bring herself to say a name or a place the photographs were tumbling back into the box next to the book.

  Every time one slipped from her hands I shrank, an ache starting in my fingertips, spreading until I was kneeling next to the bed. I clutched the mattress as she pulled out one of her sculptures. She turned it over in her hands and I eased back, letting her explore on her own.

  She brushed the prongs, picking at the grooves and indentions, the faintest smile pulling at her mouth. I held my breath, waiting for her to remember, waiting for her to wake up. But then Bryn took a breath, grip loosening as she hurled it against the wall.

  Footsteps again, only this time I barely heard them. I didn’t move until Bryn’s mother said my name, until I heard the fear in her voice.

  I stood, gathering Bryn’s things before her mother could take them. “I’m sorry.”

  She crossed her arms. “Roman…”

  “I know you didn’t want me here.”

  Bryn was trembling now, the tension in the room dancing like a live wire too close to her skin. She shielded her face with her hands.

  “No.” Ms. Reyes lowered her voice, eyes cutting to her daughter cowering on the bed. “Bryn. She doesn’t want you here.”

  The ache that had filled me earlier reached its apex until it was one searing pain. I couldn’t imagine feeling any worse than I did in that moment.

  But then she said, “Go home, Roman,” and I broke in two.

  “What?”

  Ms. Reyes pinched the bridge of her nose. “I said you should go home. To your father, to Albuquerque. Roman, it’s time.”

  I lay down on Felix’s couch, Bryn’s things in a pile by my feet, and I couldn’t even close my eyes. I stared at the ceiling, tracing the stray drips of paint and the faint cracks until it was all a blur and my face was wet. When the sun started stretching across the carpet I realized it was morning. Not long after, Felix was rummaging through the fridge. When he saw the look on my face he took tentative steps into the living room as if I were a ticking time bomb.

  “I didn’t hear you come in last night,” he said. “Thought…well, I hoped maybe you were celebrating.” Felix sat next to me on the couch, taking in my expression up close. “Shit, Roman, what happened?”

  “It didn’t work.” I gripped my scalp. “She didn’t recognize them.” She didn’t recognize me.

  “But you could try again.” Even as he said it, Felix was already folded in two, just as deflated as I was.

  “No.”

  “No? But…”

  “Bryn’s mom turned up after visiting hours were over.”

  “Caught you red-handed?”

  “She told me to go home.”

  “Go home? As in back to New Mexico?”

  I nodded, face between my knees.

  “Can she do that?” Felix asked.

  I shot up. “She just did. I can’t go to the hospital. I can’t stay here.”

  “You can.”

  “And wait for what? Unless Bryn comes out of this…” I stopped.

  It was about more than just Bryn. It was about me. I wasn’t as strong as she was and I couldn’t just sit around waiting for news about her not getting better. I couldn’t stomach even one more day of watching her deteriorate or one more night
of sleeping on Felix’s couch and not dreaming of her.

  I was empty and I was angry and I was broke. I couldn’t ask my dad for any more money and it wouldn’t be long before Felix and Vogle were tired of always footing the bill. This wasn’t my home. I didn’t have one anymore. Bryn was gone and her mother was right, my closeness was only making it worse. Maybe if I gave her some space it would help. Maybe if I left I’d finally be able to reach her.

  “I’ll be here,” Felix said. “Vogle and I can take shifts checking in on her when her mom’s gone. This shit isn’t fucking over, Roman. I promise you, we’re gonna figure something out.”

  Giving in felt like giving up, like I wasn’t just severing my obligation to Bryn but my very flesh and bone. I didn’t want to leave her but the awful truth inside me was that I didn’t want to stay either. Not like this. Not helpless. Felix sensed my hesitation but he didn’t realize I was really just being a coward.

  He gripped my shoulder. “I promise, Roman, it’s not over.”

  9

  Bryn

  With every breath I sunk deeper into the ground. A thorn snagged on my skin, drawing blood from the inside of my elbow, the same place Dr. Banz had stuck me with the needle. I closed my eyes, remembering—the lights growing dim, his hands on me, a sharp pain. And then…Sam. I couldn’t get past Sam—her eyes, her body, her death. Sam was dead. But what was I?

  Roman raised his voice. “You made me this way, Bryn.”

  The concept of time chimed in my brain like something I’d forgotten. I wondered how long it had been since Sam was lying next to me. I wondered how long it had been since I’d seen my mom.

  Pieces of her bloomed in my memory, another relic, and suddenly I realized how far away I was. Far enough for time to stop; for the past to turn to dust; for that dust to cripple and blow away.

  “I love you, Bryn. But you make me do this. You.”

  One touch from Roman and every muscle in my body clenched. I wanted to rip right out of me, out of this place, out of this body. I couldn’t hold onto the air anymore, each breath lost, stolen. Because it burned. It burned and it hurt and I just wanted to cry, to curl inside and disappear because I couldn’t take it anymore.

  Roman placed his hands over my mouth, stuffing the flames inside me. I trembled, every nerve ending in a panic. He thought I was struggling, my body convulsing and putting up a fight even though I told it not to.

  Please. Please stop.

  I wasn’t sure who I was pleading with. It didn’t matter. No one was listening.

  “You shouldn’t have come for me.”

  I tried not to look at him. I tried to look at the wound on my arm where the needle had stuck me, my senses coming to a slow and grating pause as I retraced my steps back through eons. The hospital. Sam. My mom. Dani.

  Her face was the last thing I remembered. I reached farther back in time, thinking of my grandmother, of the farmhouse. I reached for the ocean waves, trying to tug them over me. I reached for the rain, wishing it would come barreling down over Roman’s flames. I wished for death. I begged for it.

  Nothing.

  I trembled and seized and cried. I cried until I was empty of everything. Hope. Fear. I cried and screamed and still he wouldn’t stop. I sunk deeper into the ground and it was my only relief that soon the earth would swallow me.

  That’s when I remembered my grandfather’s words.

  There is no such thing as just a dream, Bryn.

  I knew what I was supposed to do. Because there was only one place I hadn’t let myself go, only one thing I hadn’t let myself do. There was only one way to end it. The pain. The sight of him. And that was to stop.

  Stop fighting. Stop being. Stop everything.

  I grew still. I gave up. And then I sank into the earth, buried at last.

  10

  Roman

  I didn’t bother asking my dad to pick me up from the airport or even to tell him I was coming home. I hid in my room for an entire day before he was drawn to the sound of my stereo after getting home from work. Once he finally mustered the courage to knock we didn’t hug or say much of anything at all.

  Another day passed or maybe it was two before my dad came up the stairs again, knocking and creeping a hand in as he cracked open the door. “Dinner’s here.”

  All I wanted was to stay in bed but I followed him downstairs to the kitchen table anyway. I was looking for a distraction, maybe even a fight, but as I sat down across from him, trying to remember the last few months I was here, trying to remember how to be that person, I realized that the real reason I’d gone downstairs was because I missed him. And not just my dad but the person I’d been when I’d first woken out of the coma. The person whose very existence had made him smile. He wasn’t smiling now and even though he hadn’t said it I knew he was angry.

  He slid me a carton of takeout, which I spent the next twenty minutes picking at. I stared silently at the table, my vision growing blurry until I almost slammed into it face first. Maybe that would have felt better than this.

  “Roman, you need to eat.”

  “I am…” I twiddled my fork, stabbing a piece of meat and shoving it in my mouth.

  The table rattled beneath his fist. “Goddamnit, Roman!”

  I sat back, not looking at him.

  “I haven’t seen you in months, you’ve been hiding in your room for days, and now you’re not eating.” He tried to calm his voice. “I know you’re worried about Bryn.” But then he couldn’t contain it anymore, his words shaking. “But I’m worried about you.”

  There was nothing inside me now but shame because I knew exactly what he must have been thinking—his worst fear—that I’d discovered something of my mother’s up there in all that darkness and that I liked it.

  “I’m not like her,” I said, staring at my hands.

  He exhaled. “How many times do you have to lose yourself to realize that you are? In more ways than you’d like to admit, you’re just like your mother.”

  “I’m not!” This time I was the one yelling. I shot up from the table, heading for the stairs.

  “No, you’re not going to hide from me. I’m not going to let you waste away in that room.”

  He grabbed me by the arm and panic seized me, my senses reeling as my body told me to swing. He stumbled back and my fist charged through the wall. I stumbled too, staring at my hands, at the cracked plaster. At his face.

  “Ro…” My name turned to air on his lips.

  My eyes cut to the ground as I tried to remember how to breathe. What have I…?

  “Roman.”

  No, no, no. “I’m…” I couldn’t finish. I couldn’t look at him.

  Before he could stop me I ran up to my room, locking the door behind me. I stood there, horrified, staring at the bolt and remembering those days back in high school when I used to lock myself up here for days just to avoid that look on his face. Because I’d ditched school too many times, or I’d gotten caught stealing, or because I’d been escorted home by a police officer who’d spotted me drunk and sitting on a curb somewhere.

  I wasn’t supposed to be that person anymore. He wasn’t supposed to look at me like that anymore. But he had and this time it was worse because this time I was worse. I’d tried to hit him. My dad. I’d wanted to…what? I re-traced my steps—every word, every feeling—calculating when the flames in me had finally erupted. He hadn’t seen them, out of control, hungry to destroy something. But the moment he’d touched me it was like a switch had gone off, the current electrocuting us both.

  I fell against the bed, perfectly still as I tested every sensation in my body for some kind of fissure, some break in the circuit. I cooled one muscle at a time, everything settling, and I felt…normal again. Tired again. Sad again. The rage didn’t linger and there was nothing left now but guilt.

  When I finally heard my dad go to bed I thought about sleeping but I was too afraid of another dreamless night. Exhaustion was better. I deserved the red eyes and aches.


  I rolled, staring at Bryn’s things on my bed—the books and sculptures, her photographs spilled across my pillow. She was scattered in pieces in front of me, a curl of her hair here, a sliver of her smile there, those green eyes staring up at me from every angle.

  The locket she’d clutched as she lay in that hospital bed in Germany glinted from the bottom of the box. I’d forgotten all about it until I was packing to come home, the chain tangled at the bottom of my duffel bag, the same silver chain that had been tangled in her fingers. I’d slipped it free, squeezing it in my fist as if its secrets were tactile, something to be absorbed through the skin. But then the shadow had appeared, taunting me, threatening Bryn. It had wanted me to end her life, to finish what I’d started. I’d almost ended mine instead, hurling myself out the window behind the shadow.

  But then Bryn blinked. She’d opened her eyes. She’d spoken to me.

  It’s not a dream.

  I stared at the locket now, afraid to touch the latch and unhinge whatever was inside. But I had to know where she’d gone, I had to know why she’d brought this back with her. My thumbnail chipped at the embossments, my fingers almost too big to pinch open the face. It finally cracked, widening until I could see the photo inside. There were three young girls, all wearing Bryn’s skin and a darker shade of her eyes. My own were drawn to the girl on the far left, one side of her mouth quirked up and mischievous. I knew immediately that it was Bryn’s grandmother.

  Saving her was the last thing Bryn had done but I still didn’t know how or where exactly the dream had taken her. Maybe she’d found herself in the middle of Anso’s lair or maybe back at her grandmother’s childhood home. Maybe that’s where she’d found the locket. Maybe she’d taken it as a parting gift from a time and place she wouldn’t be able to visit again. Or maybe she’d meant to bring it back for her grandmother as proof that she hadn’t been abandoned but that she’d been loved by her mother all along.