The In-Between

by Stewart, Barbara

  After dinner, I stuck my finger down my throat.

  So guess where I’m not? The dance started an hour ago. I keep expecting Jess to call, wondering where I am. I don’t know why I think that. She doesn’t have my number. What is it that makes me think there’s always some giant conspiracy to destroy me? I’m doing it again. Thinking everything everybody does has something to do with me. But Madeline thinks I made the right decision—not going. I won’t regret it. She has a surprise for me, she said. A big surprise.

  forty

  How did I not know? It was there all along. The signs. Her signs. Her messages. Everything makes sense now—a joyful singing kind of sense. What we have is more powerful than friendship, more powerful than love. We were never meant to be apart. That’s clear now. My entire life I’ve been searching, clinging to counterfeits. It was inevitable. On my bed, on my pillow, is the ultrasound with this scratched into it:

  Two perfect white stars pierce the endless black sky. In the second photo, the heavens shift and we collide. My thoughts unravel. My chest aches. There’s a spot over my heart that burns. A million red-hot pins pricking my skin. The collision didn’t destroy her. She is alive and she is with me. She vanished before our parents could name her. The universe named her. God named her. Madeline Torus.

  Why didn’t she tell me sooner? Why did she make me wait? She said I wouldn’t have understood. I wouldn’t have believed. There had to be a dawning, slow and natural. A journey from darkness to light.

  It’s a gift, what I have. I’m not alone. I’ve never been alone. We were together before I was born. We’ve been together my whole life, but I was too wrapped up in this world to notice. Blinded by sadness and heartbreak, my loneliness was the illusion. I see that now. I probably sound like one of those born-agains trying to describe what it’s like to find God. Only God doesn’t compare to finding your sister.

  forty-one

  Saturday was Autumn’s birthday. Her mom took us to the pizza place in the strip mall in the bigger small town. It was what you’d expect—hard plastic booths and cheesy murals of ladies picking grapes and loud guys in football jerseys shouting at the TV—but Autumn was dressed for something nicer. She had on this purple peasant blouse and sky-blue scarf and her hair was done up in a twist. The scarf was from her brother, stationed somewhere in the desert. The blouse was from her mom. I hadn’t known what to get her, but my mother said it was rude to go without a present, so Madeline went through my jewelry and found a pair of earrings she thinks are ugly. Autumn loved them. She hugged me and modeled them for her mother, who leaned across the garlic knots to fondle the tiny silver stars dripping from her daughter’s ears.

  “Please don’t be mad at me anymore,” Autumn said when her mother went up to the counter for more napkins. “I’m sorry about what I said. In the clubhouse. Sometimes I say dumb things. I know you don’t need me. I need you. You’re my only friend. You know that, right?”

  I glanced at Madeline—perched on the edge of the Foosball table, watching and smiling—and turned back to Autumn. I don’t want to be mean to her anymore. Knowing what I know has changed me. This secret I carry makes me feel special, makes me want to be nice to others. I have something they don’t: a connection to another world, a world where my best friend is my sister and my sister is not dead because she was never born. It’s time to follow my heart, and it is overflowing with sympathy.

  I smiled at Autumn and said, “I hope you’re having a good birthday.”

  Autumn hugged me again. She promised to wear my earrings every day. Some people don’t need much. Suddenly, everyone around me—their lives, their worries, their hopes and dreams—seem so small and sad and pitiful. I imagine this is what it feels like to be really, really smart or spiritual or talented, when all you can do is shake your head at the ignorant and be kind because they can never know what you know, feel what you feel, do what you do.

  forty-two

  Tonight after dinner, before we cleared the table, my mother said she had something to tell me. I knew it couldn’t be good. She’d hardly touched her chicken.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said.

  The clock above the sink ticked. The kitchen faucet dripped. I silently sat there moving peas around my plate. Eventually I managed, “Are you sure?”

  My mother said a test confirmed it. She went to the doctor today. “I’m about three months,” she said. “It must’ve happened right before the accident. The baby’s due around late April, early May.”

  “Are you happy?” I asked. A stupid question. Her napkin was shredded and her eyes were filled with fear and sadness. Anger, too, that here she was again, picking up the pieces of our family alone without my dad.

  She bobbed her head around, refusing to commit. “I will be,” she said. “What about you?”

  I shrugged. A baby. Life will be different. Things will change. Another New Beginning. Another Adjustment Period. We’re not even out of the one we’re in.

  “In case you’re wondering, we weren’t trying.” My mother reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “You’ll always be my little girl.”

  I wasn’t thinking about that. Right then I was worried about more practical stuff, like how we’re going to do this, how we’ll manage. My mother has to finish school to get her Realtor’s license. She’d said it herself: The life insurance won’t last a year.

  “I’ve been going over it,” she said. “They say pregnancy is nine months, but it’s really more like ten. I’m taking the exam in March. As long as I pass…” She rolled her eyes and sighed. “I’m really going to need your support. If this baby is anything like you were, I was sick the whole time.”

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  “I know.” My mother started collecting silverware and stacking plates. “You’ve been a big help to me since your father died.” She put down the pile of dishes and rubbed her belly. “You’re the reason I think I can do this. You’ve really changed.”

  Not really, I thought. Giving up cheese-filled pretzels doesn’t make me a new person. I wish my mother understood that. It’s Madeline who does the dishes and folds the laundry and picks up my room. Me, I’m constantly slipping, slacking off.

  I don’t know who I am, what I want. That’s not true. I’m Madeline’s sister and I don’t want to waste my time with stupid stuff. I dropped out of Key Club. Not officially—I just stopped going to their lame meetings. They were probably going to kick me out anyway. I never sold any ads for that program like I was supposed to. Today I tried to quit cross-country, and I would’ve done it, too, but Coach Buffman refused to accept my resignation. I’d put it in writing and put it in his mailbox because I was too chicken to tell him face-to-face. It didn’t work. He called me out of study hall and read me the riot act.

  “What’s this?” he said, pinching the letter by its corner, holding it out like a dirty diaper.

  I shrugged.

  “That’s not an answer. Are you dropping out of school? Do you have a potentially fatal heart condition? I didn’t think so. You’re not quitting. You’ve got too much potential.”

  Coach Buffman says I’m a natural. He can’t believe how far I’ve come since that first day of huffing and puffing around the track. I don’t know what he’s talking about. Our first meet I came in last. The second meet doesn’t count—I got lost and never finished the race. Third, fourth, and fifth: second to last. We run three miles just to warm up, then another three miles to train. I’m exhausted all the time.

  “I’ll pretend I never read this,” he said, crumpling my letter in his fist. “I’ll see you at practice.”

  I went, but only because I was afraid he might bad-mouth me to the team, use me as his real-life example of someone who’s not willing to work, who gives up too quickly, someone who’s afraid of success. Which is such a bullshit line. Why would anyone be afraid of success?

  forty-three

  I am sick. Throwing-up sick. Hundred-and-three-degree-fever sick. My brain says I need sleep
. But my body says I need a pill. The pills are all gone. I took the final one last Wednesday and hid the bottle at the bottom of the trash. My mother will think she lost them, misplaced them somewhere. If she ever asks, I’ll play dumb. What pills? How would I know?

  Maybe I should get dressed and go outside and get the bottle. It’s still in the bag in the can by the side of the house. Maybe I can get more. I can tell the pharmacist my mother’s sick and needs a refill. I need to sleep. My mind is like a scratched DVD, looping through the same scene again and again and again. We were in world history. The row goes Moss, Nolan, Pulaski. Jess was smiling at her lap, texting with somebody. Autumn tried to throw me a note, but Jess reached up and caught it. What was I supposed to do? Jess hates Autumn, so I’m supposed to hate Autumn, too. I’m stuck in the middle, between the popular girl and the reject. Like Priscilla was, I guess, with me and Natalie Paquin. It should be an easy choice, but it’s not. Autumn lives on my road, our mothers are friends. She wears my earrings every day. I don’t want to be mean to her anymore. None of this should matter but it does. In the hall I asked Jess to give me back the note. “You really want it?” she said, making a face like I’m some kind of traitor. Now Jess hates me. Nothing ever changes. People don’t like me. Why does it feel like I’m always being tested? Why does everything have to be so complicated? Why can’t they let me sleep?

  I’m sick. My mother’s sick. We take turns with the toilet. I said, “Maybe I’m pregnant, too.” My mother frowned. “That’s not even funny.” But it is. I’ve never even kissed a boy. I’ve never even held hands with one. I try not to think about it, but I see boys pressing girls up against lockers, I see girls making themselves pretty for boys. I try to be pretty for the boy who can’t stand still, the one whose cheeks burn red when he runs. He is long and thin and shy. He nods when he passes me on the course, and my mouth goes dry, I lose my rhythm, and then I have to stop for air. I wish it meant something, but it doesn’t. I’m just another runner—one of his teammates—pounding the path through the woods behind the school.

  My mother gave me Popsicles and ginger ale and dry toast for dinner. She has school tonight. She wanted to call Autumn’s grandma to come stay with me, but I begged her not to. I’m fourteen. I’ll be all right. She made the couch up into a bed and put the cordless phone in my lap with instructions to call her if I need anything, anything at all. She stood over me, torn. “Go,” I said. “You can’t miss class.” She rubbed her belly as if it would help her make the right decision. My mother talked all the way to the door. The key turned in the lock. The engine hummed in the drive. The tires crunched gravel and then she was gone.

  I wonder what my father thinks about this—the baby, that is. I wouldn’t know. He doesn’t talk to me. Madeline says it’s good. Madeline says she knew. She knows everything and everything happens for a reason. She flips through the coloring book my mother got me from the drugstore and colors until the pages start to wrinkle and curl, until the black crayon is nothing but a stub.

  forty-four

  I’m putting up walls. At school, I talk to no one. Not even Autumn. I can hear them whispering. They call me Eerie Ellie. They think I am deaf. They stare right through me. I am a ghost, haunting these halls with Madeline. The two of us are invisible. Books fly off the shelves. Things disappear. Madeline can hear their dark thoughts grinding away at their souls. She tells me their secrets. The boy I like likes boys. Kylie is afraid she’s pregnant. Jess takes seizure medication to keep from chewing off her tongue with those blindingly white teeth.

  After class, in the woods behind the school, we fly. Faster, she sings, Faster. The girls are gaining on us, the ones with the glistening teeth, hackles raised. They want to gnaw our bones, bury us beneath the leaves where no one will find us.

  Down the mountain, through the mud, I run and run. I am almost down to bone. My eyes are empty sockets. My stomach is hollow. The flesh burns away. Thinner and thinner, till there’s nothing left. This body is meaningless. My soul has flown its cage. They have no idea.

  The tree outside my window is bare except for one single leaf, brown and desiccated, twisting in the wind.

  forty-five

  When I got home from school, Mom was at the table, looking like she was about to explode. I thought it was the hormones—she looks like that a lot lately—until she handed me my report card. It had to be a mistake. A glitch in the computer system. They must have me mixed up with someone else. I don’t pay attention in class. I barely study. I imagined some honor roll student trying to explain my grades to her parents.

  “This is really something!” Mom squealed. She made that tight-lipped frog smile of hers and bulged her eyes. “I knew you had it in you!” She came around the table then and wrapped her arms around me, the hardness of her belly filling the hollow that used to be mine.

  My mother the cheerleader. For her this amounts to a touchdown, a home run, a slam dunk. And I had more good news to give her: I was invited to a party. By Kylie from French.

  My mother kissed my head and gripped my shoulders and held me out in front of her for a good, long look. “See, it’s not so hard,” she said. “Making good grades. Making friends.” I wanted to tell her it is hard. Harder than anything. It’s hard taking credit you don’t deserve.

  It helps that I’m sleeping again. Not on my own. Yesterday, I cut lunch and went into the woods and took the back way down the hill into town. It’s against school policy for freshmen to leave campus, but I went anyway, past the lot filled with shiny farm equipment and the ancient Victorians on Main, around the corner and past the gas station where the seniors go for subs. Waiting at the crosswalk, fine white flakes started sifting from the sky. The weather here is stupid. It was seventy last week. In the strip mall, I glimpsed my reflection in the plate-glass window of an empty store and thought it was Madeline. I didn’t recognize myself. I’ve changed that much.

  I thought it might be illegal to sell sleeping pills to minors, so I went around the store looking for cheap stuff to add, so I wouldn’t be embarrassed when they turned me down. I guess I was wrong. The woman behind the register rang everything up and put it in a bag. The candy bar and tissues were a waste. Everything except the pills ended up in the Dumpster out back.

  I made it back in time for art. We studied these drawings by this guy, M.C. somebody. There was one slide of these two hands drawing each other and another that was swans forming an infinity symbol. My favorite was of this castle with all these stairs. When you first look at it, all the people on the stairs are going down, down, down. But if you look long enough, you see that they’re really going up. It’s an illusion, like my life. I can’t tell which way I’m going. I thought for sure I was failing my classes. I thought everyone hated me. And then I get my grades. And then I get invited to Kylie’s party.

  Sometimes I think I’m going crazy.

  forty-six

  Madeline was wrong. The boy I like doesn’t like boys. Which makes me happy, even if I am grounded. It’s a long story that started with me sitting alone on a couch in Kylie’s basement and ended with my mother accusing me of being drunk.

  “Am not,” I said, fumbling with the stupid new seat belt.

  “I can smell you a mile away.”

  I cupped my hand over my mouth and checked my breath. All I could smell was toothpaste and onion dip. When I got home, I put my pajamas on backward, so maybe I did have too much to drink. It was worth it, though. I didn’t need a pill to sleep last night.

  Anyone reading this would probably picture one of those high school parties on TV where everybody’s packed into some kid’s parents’ really nice house. Imagine the crush of warm bodies and beer-soaked shirts and random pockets of love and violence. Hips bumping, fists pumping, music so loud it rattles the china. That’s what I was expecting. Certainly not a bunch of blah-looking kids huddled around a kitchen table cluttered with soda cans and chip bags. It’s not like I had a point of reference, though. The last party I went to was in third gr
ade, at a pizza arcade. We wore hats. We sang songs. We crawled through a giant hamster tube.

  I felt like a dork walking in with my family-size bag of snack mix, but Jess’s boyfriend, Derek, jumped up, knocking over his chair to get to me. He grunted like a Neanderthal and pronounced my name like it is two letters long. “L-E,” he said, draping his arm across my shoulder. He smelled kind of skunky as he coaxed the bag from my fist and tore it open with his teeth. “I love you. You’re the best.” Jess started tossing people sodas from a cooler. Somebody named Duggers tried to light a pretzel on fire. A guy in a hunting jacket planted his face in Kylie’s chest. Everybody started laughing and falling all over each other, and then they all got up and stumbled outside, leaving me alone in the kitchen.

  I wanted to do whatever they were doing out back, on the patio where the dog was chained up. I wanted to smoke what they were smoking, laugh like they were laughing, but I felt stiff and out of place, so I wandered around the house for a while, checking out the bedrooms and the bathroom. The light was on in the basement, so I went down there. The room was wood paneled, with antlers all over the walls—big ones and small ones, a whole head over the couch. There was a plaid recliner and a coffee table and a big-screen TV on one side, and a washer and dryer and a freezer full of meat—I’m guessing deer—on the other.

  Who gave me the vodka? That’s what my mother wanted to know. I didn’t tell her. That’s why I’m grounded. His name is Radford Lane. I know. Don’t laugh. Madeline says it sounds like an address. Everybody calls him Rad. He’s a sophomore. He’s the boy from cross-country, the one who smiles when he passes me in the woods.