The Girl In Between series: Books 1-4

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  “I don’t understand.” Tears cooled against my cheeks. “What am I supposed to do?”

  Sam crawled over, taking my hand as flames danced behind the windows. The doorframe bowed, ashes glittering to the ground as the house fell to pieces. I’d never seen it from this angle, desperate and defeated on my hands and knees. Because I’d always woken up before I could escape. Because I’d never actually made it out of the house.

  What if I wasn’t supposed to?

  I let go of Sam’s hand and raced up the porch steps, the heat so fierce it almost knocked me back. Everything was charred black and crumbling, the rafters exposed and hanging like brittle leaves. I ran to my grandfather, his newspaper singed but still in his hands. He flipped the page and I ripped it to the floor.

  “Bryn, what are—?”

  The wall crashed down behind me, settling in a pile of ashes. I fanned the smoke but I could feel it thick and sticking to my insides. I fell to my knees. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Bryn.” He coughed, the smoke strangling both of us. “You know I can’t go with you.”

  The words fell on me, weighted this time. I knew he was telling the truth. My head fell in his lap, my chest burning as I stared up through the broken rafters. The sky wasn’t black anymore but a soft cosmic blue that made me think of morning. Of cold. Of the ocean. Of rain.

  The first drop fell against my cheek. Steam rose from my clothes, every cold sting drawing tears as the rain fell in a torrent over both of us. The flames dulled, hissing and smoking as the heat loosened its grip. Then it disappeared altogether.

  My grandfather rested a hand in my wet hair. “You remembered.”

  I felt the moment he vanished, my face buried in the hollow where he’d just been. I was dry and alone but I could feel it in my bones that I’d done what I was supposed to. That I’d done what I never could before. I’d saved him. I’d saved both of us. And yet not everything was destroyed. The hallway stood before me, long and narrow and perfectly intact. My eyes were drawn to a single bar of light cutting across the floor and I knew I wasn’t finished just yet.

  38

  Roman

  Jimmy asked me to meet him at Cadman Park across from the apartments where he and Gingy lived. When I found him sitting on top of one of the picnic tables he was clutching his lighter, snapping the flame on and off.

  “So, what’s up?” He jumped as I came up from behind. “Sorry,” I said, “tense?”

  He shrugged it off, forcing a half-smile. I couldn’t help but wonder if something had changed and if what had happened at Parker’s party was the reason.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  He nodded, hard, fast. “Yeah, well…”

  “Well?” I scratched at my palms, wondering if this had something to do with Carlisle and the quarry; if he knew something I didn’t. Something about me going away to prison for a long, long time. “Shit, dude, spit it out.”

  “I heard you got picked up yesterday.”

  “From who?”

  He avoided my eyes. “Around.”

  “Yeah, well, that thing between me and Carlisle I told you about…it’s kind of—”

  “I know,” he stopped me.

  “What?” I sat back. Jimmy knew? How many people knew?

  Jimmy fumbled with his lighter, dropped it. “Shit, I thought this would be easier. I thought I’d fucking enjoy it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He finally looked at me. “Carlisle told me what happened.”

  “Okay…”

  He ran a hand through his hair, still stalling. “And…I told the police.”

  I couldn’t remember moving but suddenly I was on my feet. He stiffened but I wasn’t going to hit him. Not yet. I wanted answers first. “You told them what exactly?”

  “That you and Carlisle set the fire at the quarry.”

  “And why the hell would you do that?”

  “Because I was…” He knocked his shoes against the bench. “I was pissed off, okay? You and Carlisle were always giving me shit and when Carlisle got drunk one night and started bragging about the two of you starting that fire, I decided to save it for later.”

  “To turn us in?”

  “To teach you a lesson. When you disappeared this summer I knew you were running, that you were back to being your old self. I mean, I thought we were friends and then you just fucking vanished.”

  He was toe-to-toe with me now, the anger that had driven him to tell the police still boiling just below the surface. But what was boiling inside me was stronger, the heat so fierce I was seeing red.

  “Well, you did. Now I’m wanted for fucking manslaughter.”

  “What?”

  “They found a body,” I said. “A fucking person!”

  My fists unclenched, fingers trembling and twisting. The vein along his throat taunted me, his pulse calling for me to snuff it out. I looked away, stomping through the grass. It was the only way to stop from destroying him completely.

  “You…?”

  “No!” I spun on him. “I was there that night but I didn’t set the fire. Carlisle did that all on his own.”

  “He did?” Jimmy fell against the bench, doubled over. “Shit…”

  I yanked him up by the shirt, knuckles jammed against his windpipe until he was blue. “Are you fucking kidding me? You don’t get to be sorry.” I pushed him to his knees. “Go ahead. Do a little victory dance. You’ve earned it.”

  He looked up at me. “I brought you here to tell you I’d made a mistake.”

  “Oh, really? And when did you figure that out? Just now?”

  He tried to get to his feet but I shoved him back down.

  “No. You pretended to be my friend but all this time you were just hanging around so you could watch my life implode. Again.”

  I swung and Jimmy cried out. He held up his hands. “I’m sorry.”

  I wanted to hit him again; I wanted to destroy him. The temperature rose inside me, sparks itching at the tips of my fingers. And I was afraid. Of how much I liked this feeling, of how much I wanted to hurt him. I sucked in deep breaths, trying to quell the panic. Instead of taking another swing I gripped his arm, pulling him close so he could see what was inside me. He stared down at my veins, at the flames.

  “You’re going to tell them you lied.”

  “What…what is that?” he stammered.

  “Trust me,” I said, “you don’t want to know.”

  His proximity was grating, like a flame dancing before a fuse. I let go before I could explode, Jimmy crumbling to his feet as I turned to walk away.

  His voice stopped me. “He’s going to turn himself in.”

  I looked back. “Why?”

  “He thinks it’s the only way to get them to arrest you too.”

  The pills were right where she’d left them. I shook a few into my open hand before tossing them in my mouth. They were just sleeping pills, something to help my mother get through the night, but she used to down them like gummy bears until her body was too numb and they’d stopped working.

  I headed back to my room, just wanting to sleep, to forget about everything, to be with Bryn in the in-between where we’d first met. I downed another pill for good measure, but as I reached my bedroom door, I stopped. My body fought to change direction, the hallway magnetized, the guest room door like a vortex in the corner of my eye.

  Since I’d been home, I’d managed to ignore it, pretending that there were no memories on the other side of my bedroom wall, no pieces of her left. But after seeing my mother’s face and hearing her warning, after treading dangerously close to ending Jimmy for good, I couldn’t help but wonder if she was right. I wondered if what had happened to Carlisle and Dani would happen to me too. I wondered if that’s exactly what had happened to my mother.

  The shadow was using her corpse to try to break me, but I was already broken, the sight of her not just stirring fear but sadness. I hated her and I missed her and as I opened the door to her o
ld room it was like stepping back in time.

  Even the cold felt ancient, the air old and used. I stood at the foot of the bed, staring at the dimpled comforter, waiting for her to fill it. I grazed the stitching, the fabric faded, stray pale spots making me think of her tears. This was where she’d slept. This was where she’d disappeared.

  Who were you?

  Three words, one thought, and I’d never let my mind fully construct it. My dad had told me she’d loved me before I was born, but after growing up with nothing but her shell, it was hard to believe she’d ever been someone different. It was even harder to believe that she’d been someone strong. Bryn was strong and it wasn’t just inherent but born out of necessity. First when her father left and then when the shadows came.

  If my mother really was like Bryn and she’d somehow managed to stay hidden for all these years, wouldn’t that mean that she’d been strong too? But what if she wasn’t like Bryn? What if she hadn’t been living in a nightmare at all and was just sick like the doctors had always said?

  I swept the entire room, touching things, smelling them— the wax candle, wickless and scented like fall, the ring catcher on the nightstand that was laced with pill residue, her blue hair tie, a black strand snagged on the fabric, the pillow that still held the impression of her sleeping head. I traced her shape before lowering down, settling in the empty space she’d left behind.

  The bed still smelled like her—wilting flowers and rubbing alcohol. It was harsh and alive and as I closed my eyes I imagined she was. That she was next to me, that she was smiling. Each thought was a blunt arrow in my chest and I forced myself to see the emptiness, the truth, just so I could breathe again. I looked up, tears stinging my eyes as the sleeping pills swept my senses, and then I saw it.

  Letters…words…my mother’s words.

  They were carved just beneath the filigreed detail on the headboard, shallow and almost impossible to see in the dark. I wiped my eyes, flipped on the lamp.

  He is the end. She is the beginning.

  The letters were jagged and splintered. But they were there and they were hers. I knew it. I felt it. I grazed each one, feeling her all around me.

  He is the end. She is the beginning.

  How did she know? What did she know?

  The room started to tilt, sleep and tears obscuring the letters. The words turned to fragments, to ancient shapes and foreign sounds.

  He is the end. She is the beginning.

  She is…

  Instinct led my hand inside my pocket, fingers brushing metal. I pulled out Bryn’s locket even though I hadn’t touched it since the first night I’d been home. It had sat on my nightstand or fallen in my sheets somewhere, forgotten and avoided since I’d found out Bryn had fallen into a coma. But now it was tangled in my fingers, my pulse racing. I clutched it like an anchor between this world and Bryn’s memories, like a compass that would lead me straight to her.

  I fought the drowsiness, tracing my mother’s words and speaking them aloud. I tried to summon Bryn, to summon whatever had compelled my mother to scratch the message into the wood. Had she left it for me? Had she meant me?

  He is the end. She is the beginning.

  He is the end…

  He is…

  “You.”

  I was upright and aching, the colors all around me smeared and coming into focus one by one. I was dreaming.

  “Who’s there?” I clutched my head, sifting through the fog the sleeping pills had left behind, everything masked and fragmented.

  A pair of eyes cut through the daze first, two wide moons in orbit. The woman circled me, those eyes less menacing now that she was close. Now that I could see she was expecting me.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  “Don’t speak.” She drifted like ice, her skin as pale as porcelain. She was beautiful. “He hears the voices that don’t belong here.”

  He?

  “Anso,” she suddenly answered.

  I startled. You can hear me?

  She nodded.

  My thoughts were a riptide. Where’s Bryn? Where can I find her? How do I reach her?

  The woman lifted a hand, silencing my panic. “You dream with the pieces of her that I can reach but they’re too fragile now. The shadows have found a way to haunt her memories, wriggling like the worms they are through time and space. But time isn’t linear.” She traced glowing shapes in the air between us. “Sometimes it’s a moon and sometimes it’s a wave. Sometimes it’s a set of parallel lines and sometimes it’s a tangle of knots. Bryn’s memories are tangled now, the past, present and future overlapping in ways they shouldn’t because the shadows have found a way to enter her consciousness.”

  How do I stop them?

  “Face them in the dream. Destroy them at the very beginning.”

  You’ve been sending me the dreams, haven’t you?

  She nodded again.

  How do I destroy them? Where is the beginning?

  The woman reached out a hand and I reached back, waiting for a shock, to wake back into my body.

  “Tell Bryn to find me when the time comes. I’ll be waiting. And…tell them I’m sorry.” The woman smiled through tears. “Tell my daughter I’m sorry.”

  Your daughter…who—?

  A warm breeze carried me somewhere new. Away from my body, away from Bryn’s great-grandmother. I knew it was her, the fragility and starkness not enough to hide the fact that her beauty was something familiar. Something I’d fallen in love with before.

  Something rough brushed the back of my arm. Leaves. I was sitting in a tree house.

  “Why do I keep dreaming about you?” Bryn’s face was lit by the glow of a flashlight, pages of Through the Looking-Glass fluttering in her lap.

  She was just a girl again, her hair knotted in a neon-colored rubber band. She was younger than the first time I’d dreamed of her at the carnival, smaller too, though there was a depth to her eyes, a hardness that hadn’t been there before.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I keep dreaming about you too.”

  “Do you know me?” She rested her cheek in her hand, staring at me more intently. “You always seem to know me.”

  “I do.”

  “Well?”

  “Yes.”

  Bryn blushed.

  “What else do you dream about?” I asked, searching her expression for clues. This memory was special—it was the beginning—and I had to know why.

  “Are you like me?” Her eyes flashed up to mine. “Do you have bad dreams too?”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  She picked at the spine of her book, the threading coming undone. “They know to come for me in my room. That’s why I hide up here at night.”

  I leaned against the small window and spotted the front door to the farmhouse. I remembered Bryn had said she’d lived there for a little while with her mother.

  “Who knows to come for you?” I asked.

  Bryn crawled to the opening, shining her flashlight against a window on the side of the house. The moment the light hit the glass, shadows scattered like roaches, sinking into the bushes and evaporating like smoke.

  Was this what Bryn’s great-grandmother had meant about time not being linear? The Bryn I’d first dreamed of at the carnival seemed oblivious to the shadows but this Bryn knew fear.

  “Have they hurt you?” I asked.

  “Not yet but I know they want to.”

  Bryn crawled away from the window, the flashlight tumbling against the floor and spotlighting a small shelf in the corner. Her foil sculptures were lined up like tiny soldiers, pitchforks and other sharp weapons held at the ready.

  “I can’t sleep in there when they’re watching me,” she said. “They make me have bad dreams.”

  “Bryn, do you know why they want to hurt you?”

  Her knees curled into her chest. “Because of the dreams.”

  “The nightmares?”

  “No.” She frowned. “The other ones. The ones wher
e I make bad things happen.”

  The tremor was so slight I barely noticed it, but then the windows buzzed, wind or something stronger rattling them within the frame. The walls shook, boards cracking, nails clinking to the floor as the seams opened wide.

  “Bryn?”

  Her voice was a whisper. “They found us.”

  I crawled over to her, my light seeming to draw the shadows closer. They knew I was here, that we both were, and as the first boards tore free from the roof, I knew they wanted me to be.

  The first shadow dove for Bryn, the figure sheathed in hard tendrils that swept down like a willow tree. It scraped at us, clawing and smoking, as I sent my light out in every direction. The shadow skittered back, deepening shade after shade until I was almost hypnotized. It felt like the earth was moving in one direction, the shadow devouring it from the inside out.

  I clapped my hands together, the tree house walls ripping away as the vortex between my open palms sparked to life. Bryn screamed, burying her face in my back. I spun, incinerating a shadow just as it laced through her curls. Another shadow dipped down, grazing me before going up in flames. But the sky was still disappearing, the stars gone as the shadows rose over our heads.

  There was no beginning and no end. There was only darkness and we were right in the middle of it. The wind picked up, so fierce I could barely keep my eyes open. I knelt in front of Bryn, trying to shield her. Her mouth twisted in a sob and I knew she could barely breathe, my own insides ready to burst.

  I looked into her eyes, past the tears and past the fear, and all I could see was the girl she was going to become. The girl I loved. The one who’d found me on top of the Köln building, the one who’d shattered the glass from every window. The one who’d taken my hand in hers and made me the sun.

  “Bryn!” I held up my hands, calling her name over the wind.

  The sound was lost and she stared at me, confused, my eyes pleading with her to reach back. She inched closer, finally understanding, and as she pressed her hands to mine it was like the night had never existed.

  39