I was quiet, not sure how to tell them they were wrong. There was no we in this, there was only me. The moment I’d met Sam, I’d sensed that we were alike. Maybe it was time to find out just how much.
Kira slid to the floor next to me. “Do you think it could work?”
“I don’t know.”
“But we could try.”
“And how the hell are we going to do that?” Victor snapped.
“The dreams, all of this…” Joseph motioned around the room, “it’s all in our heads.”
“But our abilities don’t work in here,” Kira said. “We’ve already tried that.”
My silence probably led them to believe that I was listening or maybe even considering, when really I was staring at the door, waiting for the guards to step through it again. Because the next time they did I was going to follow. Somehow, someway I was going to leave this cell and I was going to find Sam.
“How did the girl used to do it?” Christine asked.
I couldn’t fight a smile as I said, “She’d pretend to be invisible.”
Everyone deflated as they realized there wasn’t much we could do with the simple explanations of an eight-year-old girl. But Sebastían didn’t look away even when everyone else did. He didn’t groan or sigh or hang his head. Instead, as everyone else stared at the floor, despondent, desperate, Sebastían’s eyes glinted, fervent and longing, and then he smiled too.
16
Roman
The first time I’d stood here it hadn’t looked familiar, the North Carolina landscape reduced to one ledge jutting out into a pale blue sky. Bryn had stood near the edge, undaunted as she asked if I was afraid of heights. I’d thought I was but what I was really afraid of was falling. And not just falling, but following her so close to that jagged slope and then hurling myself over.
The very thing that had landed me in her dreams in the first place.
But here and now she wasn’t coaxing me closer. She was sitting on the ground with her feet dangling over the edge, not much older than the last time I’d seen her on that crowded street at the county fair.
Beneath the wind and rustle of leaves there was a soft scraping—something twisting and reaching. For Bryn. Vines slithered up from the edge of the cliff face, dancing inches from her face like a charmed snake. The leaves stretched and fluttered, speaking to her in shapes and shadows that made the hairs on my arms stand on end.
“They want me to follow them,” she said.
I crept closer, trying not to look down as I sat next to her. “Follow them where?”
She lifted a hand, vines mirroring her fingers. “Down there.”
“Down…” My fingernails carved into the dirt as I peered over the side. Rocks tumbled, silent, but I couldn’t see past the swirl of clouds and mist. “What’s down there, Bryn?”
“Nothing,” she said, her hand still raised.
“I don’t understand.”
The mist beneath us thickened, swarming like a murder of crows, and I tried to peel myself back from the overhang. It swirled, dancing and hypnotic, each shade like a limb, a hand, an open mouth. The shadows turned into the ghosts I recognized, coaxing me the same way they were trying to lure Bryn.
She let out a soft gasp, holding up her index finger. A small drop of blood slid down her skin. “Sometimes they have thorns.”
I shuffled back, trying to pull her with me, but she was fixed to the earth. “Bryn, what do you mean they want you to follow them?”
She cupped a hand around my ear. “They want me to jump.”
Before I could say another word I heard the harsh snap of vines around Bryn’s wrist, her green eyes wide, and then she disappeared over the edge.
When I woke the bed was soaked, the sheets limp with sweat and alcohol. I gagged, sitting up as slowly as possible, Bryn’s pictures spilling to the floor, a few stuck to my skin. I sat perfectly still, trying to decipher which parts of the dream had been alcohol-induced and which parts had felt as real as the first one. But the only thing I could remember with any clarity was Bryn’s voice when I’d asked her what was down at the bottom of the valley.
Nothing.
I picked up my cellphone and called Vogle. I knew he wouldn’t have any news since twelve hours ago but I wondered if maybe I did; if the dreams really meant something or if they were just my own wishful thinking. It rang six times before cutting to his voicemail. I didn’t leave a message.
I tried to get up but my head was still swimming. I’d skipped the bathroom on my way in last night so I didn’t know how much of my hangover was from the alcohol or Carlisle’s fists, though he probably hadn’t done much damage.
I didn’t have time to brace myself before my door was rattling against its hinges. It was Sunday, which meant my dad was finally home from the office, which meant that if he saw me like this or, God forbid, caught a whiff of me through the door, I’d be in some deep shit.
“Roman? Get up.”
I searched the floor for a shirt that didn’t reek like something dead. I threw on a hoodie, sensing my dad shifting from foot to foot on the other side of the door. I stood there doing the same. My dad and I hadn’t come face to face since the night I’d punched a hole through the wall. Since he’d grabbed me and I’d swung.
“Roman?” His voice was an ounce softer, coaxing my hand toward the knob.
I took a deep breath, wondering what I should say and how. Wondering if I should say anything at all or if I even could. I exhaled and then I opened the door, standing a few feet back, trying to look awake. “Yeah? What’s up?”
He had his hands on his hips, irritation only slight. But then his lip twitched, that inhale stuffing the truth down his throat. “You smell like beer, Roman, and what’s this?” He grazed the tip of my cheekbone and I winced. “Did you get into a fight?”
I looked away and he pushed me farther into the room, the physical contact reminding both of us of what had happened the last time we’d touched.
He backed away. “What’s going on, Roman?”
“Nothing’s going on.”
“Really?” He fought between avoiding my eyes and forcing me to look, between yelling at me and easing me into the truth. “Roman, ever since you got back from Germany you haven’t been yourself.”
I bristled, the words stopping both of us. My dad wouldn’t have said them unless he’d believed them, unless he believed that the Roman who was standing there with a black eye…that the Roman who’d swung at him, wasn’t the real me. But what if he was wrong? What if the old Roman—the disrespectful drunk delinquent—was me? I just couldn’t remember how to be him until now.
“And this…” He stepped around my room, kicking at the mess of clothes. “You hole yourself up in here, making a goddamn mess. Jesus, how old are you, Roman? How the hell am I supposed to ground my eighteen-year-old son?” He paused to take a breath, letting it out slow. “Look, Roman, I know you’re going through a lot being this far away from Bryn. I know what’s happened to both of you has been hard and unfair and I get that. But you can’t self-destruct.” His voice was hard again but it was feigned, all this talk about Bryn burying the words he really wanted to say. About me almost hurting him, about him being afraid of me. “You can’t self-destruct again, do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” I said.
“Do you? Because this…” He motioned around the room again. “This isn’t working. You sitting around waiting for, I don’t even know what. It’s time for you to start making some decisions; doing something productive around here.”
“I’ll clean it up,” I groaned, hoping he would leave.
“You don’t get it. I’m not talking about the room, Roman, I’m talking about you. Clean yourself up, get a job, go to school. Do something other than picking fights in the middle of the night.” He took a step towards me, making me look. “Be something.”
What he didn’t realize was that I already was something. Something strange and powerful and awful all at the same time. And a
ccording to Andre’s story about his father’s hallucinations and subsequent suicide, it was all due to some genetic defect I’d inherited from my mother—one of many—as part of her “unfinished business.” There was no way I could just go out into the world, get a job, and be normal.
“Please, Roman.” The plea wasn’t just in my dad’s voice but in his hands, in his eyes. “Don’t waste this second chance. For either of us.”
I looked away, the pain threatening to crack me in two. But then I nodded. Because even though I knew I could never be normal maybe I could still pretend. I’d always been good at that.
I lay on my stomach, one hand scraping under the bed as I pretended to look for trash. I couldn’t stop replaying the look on my dad’s face when I’d opened the door—anger, shock, and then grief. Not stale and left over from my mother’s death but fresh and all for me.
I stared at the wall that separated my room from the guestroom, and past the blank white; the stains and scuffmarks, I could see straight into that black hole where my mother had lost herself. I could see the bed, probably still unmade unless my nonna had been brave enough to venture inside. I could see the nightstand, the old brass handles that used to clink late at night as my mother slid the drawers open. I could see the lampshade covered in dust, the cup beneath it milky white from when my mother only had enough energy to crush her medications into powder, downing them once they’d dissolved.
I could see the darkness, the shadows, the stray patches of light. I could see my mother on the bed, whispering, whimpering, trying not to breathe.
I sat up, dizzy. The few times I’d left my room since being home, the sight of that closed guestroom door always stopped me in my tracks. I’d fight the urge to glance at it, to think of her, but something inside always forced me to look. Just for half a second, just long enough for the handle to glint and coax me forward.
Every time I remembered Andre’s story about his own father —about his suicide and the journal Andre had found afterwards that revealed that his father saw the shadows too—I thought about opening the door. But I knew once I did I could never close it again. I wasn’t sure I could handle facing my mother’s darkness while I was still trying to subdue my own.
I pressed my forehead against the carpet. It smelled just as awful as my clothes and my sheets and my closet. Like I wasn’t living in here but rotting. Probably because I was.
It took two days for me to clear out my room, trash that I’d been tossing into the back of my closet since freshman year of high school, knotted in bags and finally thrown out. I hadn’t meant to clean the entire thing but once I started throwing stuff away I couldn’t stop. Everything old or used or broken was sitting in the alley next to the dumpster and my room looked as bare as a jail cell. And it felt good. Because for the first time it was more empty than I was and because for the past forty-eight hours I wasn’t thinking about Bryn or Carlisle or anything.
When I stepped into the garage after throwing out the last bag I had no idea where I was going. All I knew was that it had snowed last night and there was something about the harsh cold that I felt like getting lost in for a little while. As soon as I pushed the door open I noticed my dad leaning over the exposed engine of the Pontiac, a space heater blowing at his feet. He must have gotten home from the office early.
“Going out?” he asked, tinkering with the radiator.
I stopped, trying to read him.
“If not, maybe you could give me a hand with this; get some work done on it…”
I thought about trading my coat for an old ratty work shirt, and the silence I’d been trying to conquer since cleaning out my room, with small talk about how much snow they’d gotten up at Sandia Mountain. But even just thinking about pulling one of our infamous all-nighters and getting drunk off nothing but each other’s company made me feel like I was made of lead.
And I didn’t want to feel. Not happy or sad or angry or even one ounce of peace. Because even just one ounce of something real was all it would take to bring the levees crashing down for good. I could feel the cracks, and even worse, I knew my dad could see them. But I didn’t want to break those walls down. Not today.
“I’m going job hunting,” I lied, hoping it would make up for walking out on him.
“Where at?”
I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “Thought I might check out some of the diners on Fifth. Maybe the supermarket.” Just saying the words out loud made me want to hurl.
“Good, you know I think I saw that Moretti’s was hiring. Let me know how it goes.”
It took every bit of strength not to roll my eyes. He was setting me up. He knew I was lying about looking for a job and now he was going to force me to come home with some kind of proof.
I pulled up my hood, turning to go. “Sure thing.”
New snow was starting to fall, each step soaking my jeans. When I finally got to Fifth Street I didn’t bother going inside any of the storefronts and instead made a B-line for Moretti’s. I figured if I got it out of the way first thing I could spend the rest of the day wandering the streets and freezing to death like I’d originally planned.
When I stepped inside the place was practically empty and there was no one behind the front counter. A few waiters wandered the floor, not noticing me, and that’s when I spotted a small television where it sat on a shelf above the cash register.
I read the word along the bottom ticker—COMA. There was a girl in a hospital bed, blonde hair sticking to her lips and reminding me of Sam, of how we’d found her. The ticker at the bottom of the screen said she was one of six children between the ages of twelve and eighteen who had fallen into comas in the past week, all within a hundred miles of each other. All without any kind of explanation.
Which meant that either the virus was spreading or it wasn’t a virus at all.
I pulled out my cell phone, dialing Felix’s number. No answer. I called Vogle and it went straight to his voicemail. The bell over the front door clanked against the glass, cold air rushing inside. I looked back and a guy with pink cheeks was knocking clumps of snow from his shoes. He was wearing a Denver Broncos jacket, same logo, same patch over the shoulder as the one I’d seen on the guy leaving Parker’s party.
He seemed frantic, looking over one shoulder and then the other. When a voice called out from the other side of the restaurant he jumped.
“You’re late, Cole.” One of the waitresses rushed over.
“I know, I know.” He leaned against the counter. “I’ll make up the time.”
“Tonight,” she said. “We’ll be slammed in an hour.”
“Got it. Thanks, Chelsea.”
“Dine-in or Carry-out?” A hand waved in front of my face. “Hello? Wait, Roman?”
It dawned on me that the last time I’d been here I’d just re-learned to walk and had taken out an entire stack of chairs in my effort to be triumphant. No doubt Chelsea had been here. She’d worked at Moretti’s since we were sixteen and still in Geometry together.
“Oh…” I took a step back. “Sorry, I’m not here to eat.”
“Well,” she said, “how can I help you?”
“Actually…I’m here to fill out an application,” I lied. “You guys are hiring, right?”
“Yeah, absolutely.” She spun, searching the shelves before grabbing an application. “You have any experience in the kitchen?”
I was as bad of a cook as my dad but I just forced a smile and said, “I’m Italian.”
She smiled back. “Good.”
She helped some other customers while I filled out the questionnaire and the information for the background check. I wasn’t sure what exactly they’d find once it went through, probably a bunch of shit I couldn’t remember; a bunch of shit I wished I could forget. Fingers crossed that my brief stint as a cripple would score me some kind of sympathy points. Maybe they’d just give me the job out of pity.
From the look on Chelsea’s face as she watched me fill out the last page, I had an awful feel
ing she might do just that. But at least I’d be out of the house instead of sitting around waiting for Vogle to return my calls. Maybe soon I could save up enough cash to take a bus back to Austin. Maybe by then Bryn’s mother might actually let me see her.
And I could find out if Cole was really the person I’d seen leaving Parker’s party. Despite the fact that there were probably hundreds of people in this town with the same Denver Broncos jacket, I couldn’t shake what I’d seen the other night. And from the way he’d run into work late today, I wondered if he couldn’t shake it either.
“All finished?”
I nodded, handing Chelsea my application. “Thanks.”
Cole came rushing out of the kitchen, shrugging his coat back on. “Cig break.”
“Then take it in the back,” Chelsea said.
“Can’t without buying the cigarettes first.” Before she could argue, Cole disappeared out the front door.
Chelsea sighed. “Brothers. You got any?”
“No,” I said “it’s just me.”
“Must be nice.”
I handed back her pen, thinking about my dad freezing alone in the garage, working on the car he’d bought for us to restore together.
“Sometimes,” I said.
When I got home I realized I had a missed call from Vogle and I managed to sneak up to my room before my dad could notice I was home. I didn’t want to get caught in a conversation about my little excursion, especially if he suddenly decided to bring up the day neither one of us had been able to talk about. Even when he’d stormed into my room, angry and upset, he still hadn’t gone there. He still hadn’t told me I was wrong. I still hadn’t apologized.
When I called Vogle he picked up on the second ring.
“How’s Bryn?”
As soon as I said the words, I wished I hadn’t. Vogle’s pause said it all and I wished I’d let him ease into it.
“Roman…”
“Just say it.” I held my breath. Silence. “Vogle. Please.”
The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4 Page 69