The Girl In Between (The Girl In Between Series Book 1)

by Laekan Zea Kemp

  I woke to Dani’s wet hair dripping onto my shoulder.

  She’d stayed the night when she missed curfew and was too afraid to face her mom in the morning. She’d been out with Matt, parked somewhere and making out in the bed of his truck. My bed was going to smell like fish and pond water for a week but when she’d texted me I was relieved. I was tired of staring out my bedroom window, shuddering every time the curtains fluttered, waiting for that thing to find me.

  I crawled out from under the blankets, trying not to wake her, and grabbed my laptop. I scanned my inbox but there weren’t any new emails from Felix. I checked my phone—no texts either. I glanced at the clock. 10:30. He would probably sleep in until his shift at the garage at noon.

  “Did he find anything?” Dani sat up, yawning.

  “Not yet. Sorry, did I wake you up?”

  “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Did something happen last night?” I asked.

  “With Matt? Not exactly.”

  I raised any eyebrow.

  “Okay. So maybe he’s not as…”

  “Great as you thought?”

  “He has a lower back tattoo,” she said, deadpanned.

  “What?”

  She shook her head. “And I mean lower lower back. As in more like an ass tattoo. Of his grandmother’s name.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I wish.”

  “Are you sure it’s his grandmother’s name? Could be an ex and he just—”

  “I met her at a match once. Plus, how many seventeen-year-olds do you know by the name of Ethel?”

  “Yikes.”

  “I know. I’m hung-over and we didn’t even drink.”

  “There’s orange juice,” I said. “Oh, and some Pop-Tarts.”

  “Do you have anything sugar free?”

  I crept into the kitchen but it looked like my mom and grandmother were already out for the day. I opened every cabinet and searched every pantry shelf but I couldn’t find anything that hadn’t been chemically processed and wasn’t choked in sugar.

  I stepped back into my bedroom and Dani was at my desk.

  I handed her a mug. “Coffee. Black.”

  “Thanks.” She took a long drink without batting an eye. “So what next?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The symbol wasn’t a dead end but who knows how long it’ll take Felix to track down which band it belongs to. In the meantime what’s your next move?”

  “I don’t really have one. I guess wait?”

  “That’s it?”

  “I don’t know. If he’s a future memory, won’t I end up meeting him anyway?”

  “Maybe. But he didn’t show up out of normal circumstances. What if you don’t meet under normal circumstances?”

  Normal. I waited for that word to mean something. My life wasn’t normal but since the boy showed up even the abnormalities were starting to feel tame. Because things had changed. I had changed.

  I thought about the night before and I looked at Dani. “I think I…” saw something.

  “What?”

  I felt the chill again, could taste it on the tip of my tongue. I bit it back.

  “I think I forgot something in the kitchen.”

  I took Dani’s cup and refilled it before bracing my hands over the sink. Then I stared into the steel bottom, my reflection warped and fuzzy and wrong. Breathe Bryn. Just breathe.

  I ran the water, holding my fingertips under the stream before trailing it onto the back of my neck, and then I went back to my room.

  Dani’s phone buzzed and she flopped onto my bed with a sigh.

  “Matt?” I asked.

  “Felix.”

  “Felix. What happened to Matt?”

  “Nothing. Felix is just asking me what we’re doing.”

  “We. Right.”

  “Are you going to be annoying about this forever?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Did he say if he found something?”

  “He says he’s still working on it.”

  She rolled onto her back, smiled at something Felix said.

  “You know he asked if you were going away to school next year.” She ignored me. “Have you thought about that?”

  Dani hadn’t even thought about starting her senior project yet—a required summary by every senior of the past four years of high school: all of their assignments, class projects, awards, pep rallies and other methods of forced participation—everything boiled down to some cheesy slideshow or weird installation or 5,000 word essay. I doubted she’d thought as far ahead as her freshman year of college.

  The truth though was that I hadn’t really started on my senior project either. There were too many holes in my high school experience to be able to even call it that. It was more like a very brief observation. One in which I hung back in Dani’s shadow, walking that line between trying to make people notice me and trying to make sure they didn’t. Neither ever really worked.

  “Dani?”

  “Huh?” She didn’t look up.

  “School. Have you thought about it?”

  “Oh. I don’t know. Stay here I guess. If I go at all…”

  “If?” I took a breath, tried not to sound like my aunt. “So you haven’t decided yet?”

  “No.” She rolled onto her stomach, still texting. “I don’t know. College is kind of a waste these days, don’t you think?”

  “A waste?”

  All I could hear was the sharp click of her nails on her phone. My face grew hot and I moved to sit by the window.

  All I’d ever wanted was to go to Emory. That’s it. I’d never been the typical kid who wanted a pony or a goddamned trip to Disney World or a new car or a closet full of designer clothes. I didn’t live in the real world long enough to actually enjoy any of those things anyway. No. What I lacked, what I wanted was to live. To really live. The way other people my age did. Moving away to school, being independent, being free. College to me was freedom and Dani just thought it was a waste.

  Suddenly the sound of her phone buzzing was drowned out by another sound—tires grating against the curb, an engine ticking off. I looked outside and I saw my dad’s face behind the dusty window of his truck. He was just sitting there, staring at our front door.

  “He came back.”

  “What?” Dani sunk down beside me. “Who?”

  “My dad. I mean Patrick. I mean…what the hell is he doing here?”

  “Is he coming to the door?” she said.

  I watched him walk past my bedroom window and then I heard a light knock. My mom had taken my grandmother out for the day and my uncle hadn’t come by since the day I’d caught him with my mom.

  “Are you going to answer it?” Dani asked.

  I knew what my mom would do. Turn up the volume on the television, pretend like he wasn’t out there the same way he’d pretended that we didn’t exist. Maybe my grandmother would chase him off the porch with a broom, threaten to call the police, throw some of her leftover spaghetti at him as he stumbled back down the steps. Because they’d all had their say.

  My mom had cussed him out in a Wendy’s parking lot. I sat in the car for almost an hour while she cried and yelled and cried some more. According to myth my grandfather gave him an epic ripping once after he’d disappeared for a weekend shortly after I was born. And my uncle had taken every one of his rare reappearances as an opportunity to do the same. Everyone had had their say except for me.

  I walked to the door, steps muted against the carpet, and then I just stared at him through the peephole. His face hadn’t changed much since the first time I’d stood there trying to decide whether or not I should open the door. He still had the same grey eyes, same blonde scruff on his chin, same dingy baseball cap. He gripped his chin, waiting, and I could see the chalk dust on the side of his hand. Maybe he’d found a construction job in town. Maybe that’s why he’d come back. Not so he could see us. Not for me.

  I turned the knob and watched him stiffen.

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nbsp; “Bryn,” he said. “You’re home.”

  There was something like surprise in his voice and it made me wonder if he’d been hoping my mom would answer the door. He had that same wanting look in his eyes he’d had that day I tried to be like her—fixing my hair and my clothes in a fury just on the other side of the door. Because I’d always known that I’d been the easy one to leave. It was her he still wanted.

  “What do you want?” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

  “Can I come in?” he asked.

  “She’s not here.”

  “Oh. I could wait. We could talk. We haven’t talked in a long time. It’d be nice.”

  “Six months,” I said.

  “What?”

  “That’s how long it’s been since we talked.”

  He cleared his throat, uncomfortable. “Bryn, can I come inside?”

  He sounded tired and for some reason that made him sound sincere. Like it had been a struggle to come back, to find us again, to even just get out of his truck and walk to our front door. I wanted to believe that he’d been through hell and back; that he’d fought his way here. That he was still fighting. That against my doubt and childhood memories, he would win.

  “Why should I let you?” I said, staring at the sawdust coating his shoes.

  He looked right at me and said, “Because I’m sorry.”

  I wanted to believe him. I wanted to let him inside. But I’d done that before and it hadn’t changed a thing. Except me. So this time, even though there was a part of me that wanted to hear what he had to say, and an even more pathetic part that just wanted to hear his voice, when I felt that eight-year-old hope pressing down on my lungs, I pushed it back down.

  “You’ve had seventeen years to apologize but you’ll never really be sorry. You’ll never really change. And she’ll never forgive you.”

  He clenched his jaw and I inhaled.

  “You don’t just get to have a family whenever you feel like it. Being a dad is something you earn by being there when the people you love need you. But you’ve never loved anything.”

  “Bryn—”

  “You’re worthless,” I said. “And I already have a dad.” Then I slammed the door closed, my back pressed to the window absorbing his footsteps through the glass as he got in his truck and drove away.

  Chapter 20

  Roman