When I got home the first thing I did was pop my iPod onto the base, turn up the speaker, and let it shuffle through every song I’d found by Mismatched Machine from live versions recorded on someone’s cell phone to leaked studio recordings that never made it onto an album.
The small speaker rattled against my desk, drowning out everything—the fear, the truth—and burying it under guitar solos and growling vocals.
I’d learned most of the words over the past four weeks, screaming them into the showerhead until my grandmother banged on the door and told me to turn off the Satan music. My favorite song, Stabilizer, bled through the speaker and I whispered every word until my throat was raw. I’d scribbled the verses all over my notebooks, the chorus engraved with the hot tip of a nail onto one of the leaves on my sunflower sculpture. My sculpture that still wasn’t finished.
I’d been meaning to get back to it but with everything else going on, it just didn’t seem like the most important thing. Not like it used to. Part of me wondered if it ever would again, if come fall I’d be getting ready to start school again, if I’d still want to.
I used to yearn for it, fingertips itching for the flame, for something sharp to press into my skin. I needed that. But lying there in my bed, thinking of Eve, I needed something else. The kind of distraction that didn’t make me feel, that didn’t remind my body that it was alive.
I muted the song but I couldn’t maneuver the quiet either. So I sat up and checked my email, plucking Dr. Sabine’s correspondence with Dr. Banz from out of my spam folder. I read through a few, skimming mostly.
Felix was right. It was all pretty straight forward. There was talk about the trial and about my diagnosis. I opened some attachments containing my medical history and a list of the previous trials I’d participated in, the name of the drug to the left, the results to the right. None were successful.
My phone buzzed. I was dreading a message from Drew but it was another text from Felix.
-Hey, so, I kind of need a favor.
-I guess I owe you one. Shoot.
-I need you to distract Dani tonight so I can break into her bedroom and steal her underwear.
-Don’t you have enough pairs already?
-I want to ask her to prom.
-So you’re going to hide in her closet, sniffing her underwear until she comes in and then you scare the shit out of her?
-No. I’m going to hide under the bed.
-Oh. Well in that case what do you want me to do?
I managed to lure Dani out of the house with guilt. My mom had been driving me everywhere for the past week and I told Dani she was out and could she give me a ride to the grocery store. In truth I was leading her to our once favorite little ice cream shop on Main, hoping to cheer her up. Luckily she said yes and I was able to convince my mom to let me go before she ran herself ragged running back and forth from my bedroom.
The minute she learned that Eve was dead she’d been reassuring me that I was different, that my case was too. Every few minutes she’d knock on my bedroom door, slipping inside to leave behind more words of comfort but when she realized those words meant nothing she stopped saying anything, just pushing the door open to make sure I was still there.
Dani and I sat by the window, headlights blinding us every time someone parked in front of the shop. Dani’s eyes were swollen, red freckles spotting her cheeks.
I wasn’t really in the mood for Dani’s drama. Next to the tragedy of Eve it felt vain and stale and all I wanted to do was grab Dani’s shoulders and shake some sense into her. I thought about telling her about Eve, about what had happened, but part of me thought it could wait and every time she was almost on the verge of tears again, I knew it could.
She started talking about the fight again and I sunk against my chair, taking my cue.
“He was a waste of space,” I said, mouth full of Oreo ice cream.
“He was—”
“Hot. I know. Whatever.”
“You’re in a foul mood,” she said. “I thought you dragged me out of bed to try and cheer me up not to mock me.”
“I did.” I gave her cup of ice cream a little nudge. “So eat.”
“Yeah, then I’ll be fat and alone.”
“Oh God, Dani. You’re not fat and one scoop of ice cream isn’t going to kill you.”
“I don’t want it,” she whined.
“Fine.” I reached for it. “Then I’ll eat it.”
Dani’s mild eating disorder was definitely the most annoying thing about her. One Christmas break I’d gained ten pounds and went up two cup-sizes—a post episode binge that finally made me look normal, like a woman. I would have killed to hold onto that version of me and all Dani did was count calories and complain about her non-existent cellulite. She was lucky. Most people were, they just couldn’t see it.
Dani leaned against the window, a long sigh pouring from her mouth. “Distract me?”
I fiddled with my spoon, staring out the window. My mind immediately went to Eve but I thought better of it and chose something slightly less tragic.
“Drew asked me to prom.”
“He did?” She sat up. “When?”
“Today.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I wasn’t going.”
“What? You’re not?”
“No, I mean I doubt it. It’s only a matter of time before I have another episode anyway. Why waste money on a dress I’ll never wear?”
“Because it’s your senior prom.”
“So? That doesn’t mean anything to me. I barely even went to high school. I don’t need some epic moment to commemorate this experience I didn’t even get to have.”
Dani was quiet, eyes suddenly dry.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to sound bitter or angry or anything like that,” I said. “I really don’t even care.”
“If you do that’s okay. And if you’re angry or bitter about it, that’s okay too,” she said. “I mean I’d probably be pissed too.” She reached for her cup of ice cream, taking a small bite. “And you’re right about Matt. He was a waste of space.”
“Totally.”
“And he always smelled like Vaseline.”
“What? Why?”
“He’d grease up before a match, make it harder for the opponent to pin him down.”
“Isn’t that, like, cheating?”
“Yeah,” she huffed. “Got a scholarship and everything. What a prick.”
“You should turn him in. Write an anonymous letter or something.”
She cleared her throat. “Dear Mr. Wrestling Coach, believe it or not but the slime oozing from Matt Thompson’s pasty orifices is not a convenient physical ailment but it is in fact artificial and can be purchased at your nearest convenient store in the aisle marked Masturbation Starter Kits.”
I choked on my ice cream, eyes tearing up. “Shit. Oh God. Please do it.”
She smiled. “I think I just might.”
I rode back with Dani to her house, claiming that I needed to borrow her notes for the Stats test the next day. Really I just wanted to see her face when she found Felix strewn across her mattress with accompanying candlelight, rose petals scattered across her bedroom floor. This was going to be good.
I hung back as she opened the door. The window was open, curtain fluttering. But there was no Felix. She reached for the light but it didn’t turn on.
“What the hell?”
She looked up to the fan where the bulbs had been stripped and there along the ceiling were tiny constellations, glowing green, and spelling out the words—Prom? Felix.
“What?”
Dani stared up at them, at the tiny stars she’d ripped from her ceiling the night after her dad’s funeral. The night she decided to grow up.
She looked at me. “He did this?”
“For you,” I said.
The stars spilled down towards the top of the window. Dani pushed back the curtains and there were more trailing down the side of the house, ju
mping from one tree trunk to another, dotting the pavement before disappearing across the street at the window to Felix’s bedroom. For a minute I just stood there, remembering the way I’d placed those stars on the trees leading to that empty clearing.
The kites.
I startled, taking a step back from the window. But it wasn’t like it had been before. This time I hadn’t just seen them on those trees in the dream-state. This time I’d put them there.
My lips parted and I almost said something but then I saw Dani’s face. I saw her smile, try to bite it back. Then she reached for the window and slid it closed.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Bryn, don’t.”
“Me? You. You should go with him,” I said. “Stop being such a fucking coward.”
Her lip trembled between her teeth. She bit down harder, eyes narrowed at me. “Just leave.”
I shook my head. “Fine. I’ll go. But if you don’t you’re going to regret it. You may think you’re protecting yourself from something but all you’re doing is making yourself miserable. Because as much as you don’t want to believe it, the truth is you need him just as much as he needs you. But he’s not going to wait forever.”
I stormed out and then I stood by the front door waiting for Dani to climb out of her bedroom window and make the walk to Felix’s house. I watched her bathroom light flick on, then off, and then nothing.
Nine years of riding bikes and chalking the sidewalk and copying each other’s homework and spying on the neighbors. Nine years of growing up together and she still wouldn’t trust him. She wouldn’t trust herself.
I passed our old tree house, moonlight sifting through the leaves and luring me inside. It felt small. Not the way it did in my head when Roman and I were staring up at the glass bottles that in the real world had all smashed or rotted away. Not the way it did when he’d almost kissed me.
I remembered his mouth. The way it had felt hovering over mine, that anticipation throbbing like a pulse on the edge of my lips. And then the way they’d felt when we finally touched—warm and soft and electric.
I knocked against the hollow trunk of the tree, finding the hole. When I reached inside I felt the cold plastic of the Pez dispenser, the rough grain of the fake gold, and then I felt something soft. I pulled it out, moonlight turning it to blood. The Cardinal’s feather. The one that I’d tucked behind my ear, that Roman had slipped free.
I gripped it tight, thin bone snapping. He’d touched it. He’d put it there. And now it was here.
Headlights cut through the leaves and I tore my way back out. I tucked the feather into my pocket and after taking one last glance at Dani’s window, still closed, I headed home.
The street was dark but I knew the way. Dani and Felix and I had snuck out of our bedroom windows for top secret, late night meetings at the tree house enough times growing up that I still knew which fences hid dogs and which yards ran their sprinklers at night.
I cut down an alley to avoid a cul-de-sac and ignited a barrage of loud barking against the slats to my left. I kept walking but suddenly there was more barking, more gums thrashing against the slats, more nails scraping at the wood. I turned, walking backwards to get a better look at the fence line and making sure there were no holes where one of the dogs was trying to tear free.
More howls rose up around me, some faint and far away, pouring over the tops of the houses. Dogs in the entire neighborhood were in a frenzy. I faced the street again, concrete edging onto the gravel road and then I saw why.
I could barely make out the silhouette, moonlight trapped behind the clouds. But I could feel the cold. I could feel it racing through my veins, trying to pin me there.
And then it did.
I was still and I was cold and I was sinking. The shadow grew dense, not animal this time, but standing upright like a man. It drifted closer, a slow cyclone winding all around me as the frozen air fell in sharp pricks against my skin. That’s when I realized that it was raining. I felt the mud beneath my feet and saw the grass, thick and climbing to my knees. Vines twisted out of the ground and I felt the thorns bite at my ankles.
The nightmare from my childhood was alive and all around me, ripping up from the pavement, shredding reality like the thorns that were shredding my skin. The vines tightened the more I tried to struggle, like locked jaws dragging me down to my knees. I sunk into the wet ground as the dark shadow solidified, slithering out, reaching for me. It scaled my scalp, curling into my hair like fingers. And I couldn’t run. I couldn’t move. Not like before when it was just a dream. When I could wake up. When I could just open my eyes and…
My back arched, spine twisting and heaving. I tried to fight it but it was so cold.
Headlights flashed against my skin, tires grating to a stop, and suddenly the cold lifted and I could feel my pulse again.
“Bryn? Bryn, what happened? Bryn…” Dani reached for me and I stumbled to my feet. “Are you hurt?”
I looked down at my hands, the sting trailing out of my fingertips, every inch of me dry.
“I…”
“Bryn, what happened?”
The vines were gone and so was the rain. Summer had stolen the cold again and the shadow had disintegrated within the night all around us. I stared up at Dani, confused, horrified, and she stared back at me with the same expression, waiting for me to explain why I was lying in the middle of the road.
“Bryn, I need you to tell me what happened.”
I finally found my bearings, caught my breath, and for some reason my first instinct wasn’t to tell Dani the truth. It was to tell her everything. About Roman. About Eve. About the shadows. So I did.
I trembled and she clutched tight to my wrists, guiding me to the car, brushing the hair from my face.
When my teeth finally stopped chattering I said, “It wants me.”
“But why?” she breathed, terror in her voice.
I thought of Dr. Banz, of his confession, and then I thought of Eve. I thought of those scribbled journal pages. I thought of how they said she’d died. “I don’t know,” I finally said. “But I’m going to find out.”
Dani drove me home, walking me to my window that was still ajar. We both crept inside and she examined every closet and every dark corner, checking under my bed and then peering into the hall before pulling the door closed and locking it behind her.
“Do you want me to stay?” she asked.
Yes.
“Where were you going?” I asked. “When you found me…”
She shrugged, looked away. “I didn’t want Felix to know I’d seen it yet. I just needed some time to think.”
“And did you?”
Even in the dark I could see her cheeks reddening.
“You really think it would be good for me?” she said.
“Felix?”
She nodded.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think I’m afraid of what I think.”
“Don’t be,” I said.
She stepped to the open window and said, “I’ll try.” She hesitated and then she faced me. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
I nodded, relieved. I watched her walk to her car and then I closed the window. I wasn’t sure how long she’d be with Felix but I knew I couldn’t sleep, even though I wanted to, every part of me secretly hoping for something even deeper. I needed to see Roman. I needed to talk to him.
I pulled up Mismatched Machine’s website, searching the gift shop for Roman’s shirt. It wasn’t there. Must have been from another tour. I checked the dates. They were touring the east coast this summer, their last show in New Orleans. Eight hours away in some shoddy club called The Lounge.
People had posted some photos on the band’s website—everyone in black t-shirts, arms raised, hair wet and sticking to their faces. I scrolled through them. No names. No dates. I clicked through page after page waiting to see Roman’s face in profile. Him riding over the crowd. Waiting in line outside the building. M
eeting the band after the show. There were thousands of photos. Thousands of people I didn’t recognize.
Suddenly I heard a light knock on my window and I grew tense. Dani? I walked over, the light in my room still off, and peered through the curtain. I saw Drew and he saw me, my face lit up by the laptop glowing behind me. Shit. Again? He mouthed something I couldn’t quite make out. Then he slid the window open, the glass giving way under my fingers.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered.
“I came…” He lowered his voice. “I came to talk to you.”
“We talked. I told you I wasn’t going to prom.”
“No.” He stepped over the window seat. “We haven’t talked.”
“We—”
“No, blowing me off, acting like a bitch, that’s not talking.”
“Excuse me?”
“You forget,” he said. “You don’t scare me. I know you.”
Maybe he had. That girl who’d settled for invisible. He’d picked me up like some kind of stray and I’d clung to him. But I wasn’t lost.
I looked at him. “Not anymore.”
He shook his head, gripped his neck. “You think one semester of pretending to hate me can change two years of late night phone calls and ditching class and sneaking me into your room?”
I tried not to think about that first time. A light knock, his face beaming on the other side of the glass. I’d slid it open, letting him in.
“My mom’s in the next room,” I’d said.
He’d walked to my door, sly smile on his face.
“Don’t.”
He opened it, peered out. I held a finger to my lips and pushed him out of the way.
“Are those your pajamas?” he asked, eyeing my ratty tank top and yoga pants.
I turned away, throwing my hair up in a bun.
He reached for my hand. “No. I like it down.”
It fell in a mess around my shoulders, his fingers climbing behind my neck. He kissed me and I felt every bit of it but when he pulled away, I felt that most of all.
“I can’t stay long,” he said. “I just wanted to see you.”
And just to make sure he was real, I’d said, “Why?”
He stepped back, nose grazing my cheek. “Just in case you disappear again.”
I tried to shake off the memory, every word and every touch unraveling. Except for the last six. For some reason, every time I played it back in my head, it wasn’t sadness in his voice, it was accusation and whether it was real or not, I’d made it real. I’d chained myself to Drew with guilt and every time I disappeared, every time I thought I hurt him, I cut the links a little shorter, waiting for him to hurt me back.
Drew inched closer.
I swallowed, trying not to look at him. “Drew this isn’t going to work. Not this time.” And it wasn’t. I saw the feather on my nightstand in the corner of my eye. Not some ephemeral memory but a living, breathing piece of the present. A piece of Roman.
He reached for me. “Are you sure?”
I pulled away. “I…I met someone else.”
He stilled. His face was dark. “Who?”
“You don’t know him.”
He was quiet for a long time and then he looked at me. “I don’t need to.” He took another step closer. “I don’t need to know who this fucking asshole is to know he’s not right for you.”
“And you are?”
“Yes.”
Don’t indulge him, Bryn. Stay cool. “I don’t trust you,” I said.
“You shouldn’t.”
“No shit.”
“But we could start over. Forget about the past six months.”
“You mean the past two years?”
“Okay.” He exhaled. “You’re right. Maybe I don’t have the best track record but that’s the point. We’ll start over. Both of us. I’ll be better. I’ll do better.”
“What’s with you? This being desperate. It’s not—”
“Me? It’s not me. Or at least it wasn’t. You’ve always pushed me away but not like this. Not so far that I didn’t think I could get you back.”
“Wow. Thanks.”
He sighed. “I just mean you’ve never…scared me like this before.”
“I thought you said you weren’t afraid of me.”
He lowered his voice. “I’m not afraid of you. I’m afraid of losing you.”
Well, it’s too late. Say it. Tell him.
He leaned in.
“Don’t,” I stopped him.
“Bryn.” He gripped my arms and I waited for him to snap. For him to hurt me again. But then he loosened his grip. “I won’t. Even though I know you want me to.”
Enough.
Two years and I’d never told him no, to leave, to disappear for good and even then I could feel my lungs straining against every word. Because part of me was afraid it wouldn’t work—it never did—and because part of me was afraid that I’d be right about Roman, about him wanting the memories more than he’d want me, about us being too different.
Drew and I, we were different too, but at least he knew what he was getting himself into. I thought of Dani, of what she’d said that day in the courtyard about how it wasn’t Drew I was in love with, but his consistency and the relief of already knowing exactly how he’d hurt me, and she was right. About me. About everything.
I was just as afraid as she was.
Until now.
“Don’t fucking touch me.” I pushed Drew back and he stumbled against the bed. “You hurt me.”
“Bryn…”
I heard that same quaver in his voice that I’d heard in my dad’s.
“You hurt me. You hurt me with your fucking words and your fucking hands. I said no and you hurt me.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You did.”
I stepped toward him and he was pressed against the window frame. A car passed by, headlights cutting across his face. It was strained and pale and wet.
“Bryn, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Leave.”
“And then what? Bryn…” He stood there, watching me, waiting for me to break.
I didn’t.
I held back the curtain. “And then don’t come back.”
He stepped over the sill, hesitating as if he were contemplating looking back one last time, but then I pulled it closed. His headlights flashed against the window as he drove away and within the glare I saw my breath clinging to the glass and within it the circle Roman had drawn on that farmhouse window, two drips falling toward the center.
Chapter 28
Bryn
The Girl In Between (The Girl In Between Series Book 1) Page 38