The In-Between

by Stewart, Barbara

  He was wearing a flannel shirt I like and faded jeans and those beat-up sneakers that have covered hundreds of miles. He could’ve outrun the crazy girl who loves him, but he followed me to the commons where we were alone.

  I sat down first, which was a mistake. Rad didn’t sit next to me. He sat on the opposite bench, hunched and fidgety, his elbows awkwardly on his knees. I wanted to touch him like I owned him. It was Old Ellie all over again. Needy and pathetic. I reached out, but he leaned back.

  “I don’t want to give you this,” he said, pointing to his eyes, still raw and crusty with infection. He smiled halfheartedly and looked around. He was checking out my scars, but trying to act like he wasn’t. I used to do the same thing with Scilla’s dad. It’s hard not to stare.

  “Sorry I haven’t called,” he said, before rambling about how busy he’s been and why he hasn’t been in touch. Busy with school and work. “Yeah, work. I got a part-time job.” That’s why he didn’t visit me in the hospital. He had training. A few more apologies and then he was standing.

  “Well … I gotta run.” He said, “I’ll see you around. Okay? Cool.”

  Not Give me a call, Ellie, or I’ve missed you, Ellie, or You want to meet me after school? No. He looked down and tipped his head and said, “You’re gonna be okay, right?”

  And I thought: This is it. He’s leaving me.

  I guess I should’ve expected it. Everyone leaves me eventually. Scilla. My dad. Lucy Cat. Madeline. Now Rad, my first boyfriend.

  (Was he ever really my boyfriend?)

  I could see it on his face, sadness and fear and worry. He didn’t know how to do it. It was the kiss all over again. He was afraid I’d be crushed and try to kill myself. I can see why. I’m a mess. Not inside, though. My insides are gone. I’m a deep, dark void. I can’t feel anything, not anymore. I used to be either hot or cold. Now I’m just lukewarm. The drugs leave me flat. Rad was quitting a husk, some shriveled-up dead thing. A mummy. Maybe if I’d cried and begged for a second chance. Who knows? That’s not what I did. I told him to wait. I stood up and looked into his raw, pink eyes. I had one question for him, I said. One question before he walked away and never talked to me again:

  “Are you gay?”

  Rad slumped back as if I’d knocked the wind out of him. He looked shocked and hurt, like I was an evil monster exposing his secret. With all my scars I looked like one.

  “Is that what you think?”

  “I understand,” I said. “Really, I do.” My voice in my ears sounded slow and stupid, like I was drunk, like it was the party at Kylie’s where we first got together. Except it wasn’t the beginning, it was the end. From now on it’s all endings.

  “You should leave now,” he said. “Don’t make me say something I’ll regret.”

  My face hardened. My heart was even harder. I moved closer. Someone had to feel something.

  “You are, aren’t you? That’s why you don’t like me.”

  “God, Ellie!” He stomped his foot. He threw his head back. “Don’t be stupid! I’m not gay!”

  I leaned in for a good-bye kiss, but he blocked my mouth with his hand.

  “I’m not gay,” he said. “You’re just not who I thought you were. I’m sorry.”

  And now he’s gone and I’m alone. Again.

  I should go back to class, but I can’t move. I want to hate Rad, but I can’t do that, either. It’s my own fault, for pretending I was something I’m not: normal. Madeline warned me. She said that someday everyone would see that I’m a fake. She warned me about Rad, too. I should’ve listened. She was right. Not about Rad liking boys. She lied to protect me, to keep me from getting hurt. I’m too broken for someone like Rad. He likes girls, just not this one.

  seventy-two

  Christmas without my father. In some ways it’s not the first. He was always physically there, drinking coffee, opening presents. Mentally? Not so much. This morning Mom and I stuck to the routine. I woke her up, and she made a pot of coffee, and then I waited in the kitchen while she plugged in the lights and put on some music and hung my stocking. She called me in when everything was ready. I found her standing by the tree, pointing to a pile of presents she hadn’t wrapped, looking like Where did these come from? I’m not totally inconsiderate. I got her presents, too. I guess she was surprised because my dad always took me shopping before his winter blues kicked in.

  I gave her one of hers first. It was my school picture, which she’d completely forgotten about, and I had, too, until I found the envelope of prints in the bottom of my locker. The frame I got at the dollar store. There was other stuff, too—oranges from the FFA fruit sale at school, a travel mug, a bag of those gross licorice candies she loves—but the portrait was her favorite. She sat on the end of the couch in her robe, my picture in her lap, sipping her coffee, and looking pleased. It’s a good shot of me. No dark circles under my eyes. No cuts. I look normal. I am thin and healthy and happy. The funny thing is, I don’t remember that day. What was I thinking as I posed in front of the backdrop with the too-green trees and too-blue sky? Had I just been invited to Kylie’s party? Was I thinking about the boy on cross-country who always turned and smiled?

  Or was I thinking about Madeline?

  My big present was a cell phone. One of the really nice ones I’d been begging for, but now there’s no one to text. Unless Autumn got a phone, too—which I doubt. The portrait I gave my mother, that girl doesn’t exist anymore. She doesn’t know I don’t have any friends. Not that I ever had any. Jess and Kylie, they never knew me. Not the real me. The me Madeline knows. The me I guess Autumn knows, too. There’s so much I can’t tell my mother. I can’t tell her Rad and I are over. I want to, but I know she’ll just say something dumb and cliché, like You’re young or You’ll meet other boys or There are plenty of fish in the sea. Not telling her today seemed smart because I don’t want to hate my mother on Christmas, especially this one.

  “This is so cool,” I said, smiling my fake smile. It’s the only one I’ve got anymore.

  My mother sighed suddenly, putting down her coffee and the picture. “Let’s have some breakfast and get dressed and get out of here.”

  “What about the ham?” I asked. For the last two days, that’s all she’s talked about. What size ham? What time should we start the ham? What should we have with the ham? I don’t know if she didn’t want a repeat of Thanksgiving, but she said, “Forget the ham. We’ll eat out.”

  It sounded like a good idea, but the nearest city is pretty dinky. The storefronts were all dark and the streets empty and the gold garland strung between the light poles sagged sadly. I watched the dirty snowbanks go by and felt like I was in one of those end-of-the-world movies. The sky was a gray lid over everything, and I started to wish we’d stayed home and eaten our stupid ham. I could’ve pretended to text my friends, and Mom could’ve pretended that the portrait on top of the TV was her real daughter, not some imposter who got her hopes up and then let her down.

  We could’ve turned back—it wasn’t too late—but my mother kept driving.

  “Where are we going?” I said.

  “Does it matter?”

  It didn’t matter, not to me, but it was weird. It isn’t like my mother to do anything without a plan. We kept going—past the car dealerships with giant flapping flags, and the big-box hardware stores, and a run-down motel with a pink VACANCY sign flashing—until we came to a bridge with blue highway signs. My mother put on the blinker and followed the arrows.

  “We’ve got to find gas,” she said. She nodded at the phone in my lap. “That thing’s got GPS. Figure out where we are, what’s next.”

  I pressed a button and the screen lit up. I tapped a compass and the phone found us and put us on a map. We were the red arrow crawling through the mountains. The view was all wrong for what I wanted. I could only see where we were at that exact moment. I couldn’t get it to show me what was ahead. I kept tapping and then the top of the screen went white. We were heading into the abys
s.

  “I think we just drove off the road.”

  “I’m pretty sure we didn’t. Let me see.”

  “It’s not me. It keeps losing the connection.” I showed her the screen.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll find something. Watch for signs.”

  She looked back to the road, turning the radio up and then down again before looking back to me. “You know … I was thinking,” she said. “I’m off for a few weeks. If you wanted to have some friends over … you could have Rad over … he’s never been to the house.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe … thanks.”

  “How about a sleepover? You can have Jess and Kylie. Whoever. Just not too big, okay?”

  I didn’t want to talk about my friends because they aren’t my friends anymore, so I said, “You know, next year’s gonna be really different … Christmas, I mean. The babies will be—” I counted May through December on my fingers. “Eight months old.”

  “What do you think they are?” my mom said, glancing down. “Boys? Girls? One of each?”

  “Girls. Definitely girls.”

  “Me, too.”

  We passed a cell tower so I checked my phone again but there was still no signal, so I stared out the window and watched my breath fog the glass. There was nothing out there, nothing to see, just woods and farms and some low, boxy-looking factories in the distance. Everything was gray and black and white and brown. Muted.

  “Ellie? Can I ask you something?”

  I shrugged.

  “Is the medication helping?”

  I shrugged again. “I guess. She’s gone, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Do you—”

  “Can we not talk about it?”

  My mother stiffened. She was making that frowny face she makes when I hurt her feelings. Why did she have to bring that up today? On Christmas? My mother checked the mirrors and gripped the wheel, stepping hard on the gas. We were in the center lane, with a tractor trailer on one side and another speeding toward us from the on-ramp. My body went rigid. The car rocked. Sandwiched between the trucks, I counted the seconds and watched the wheels and waited for someone to swerve. After they passed, I added, “It’s just that I feel stupid—talking about her—if you don’t think she’s real.”

  My mother’s eyes skated between me and the road. “I wish you didn’t feel that way.”

  “I wish you believed me.”

  Our wishes lingered in the air until I pointed to a billboard for a truck stop.

  “Five miles.” My mother checked the gas gauge. “We can make it.”

  The plan was to stop for gas—just gas, but maybe some chips and sodas, too—but the truck stop was new and bright and huge, with a place to do laundry, showers, a video arcade, and even a place to rent movies. There was a restaurant, too. The entrance was just past the drink machines and the racks of sunglasses, and there was a sign that said PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF. We were just looking, but a woman in a Christmas sweater came out, and suddenly we were in a booth by the window, with menus in our hands.

  “Is this okay?” my mom asked.

  I nodded. “This is good. This is perfect.”

  My mother scanned the menu and said we needed to start back soon because she didn’t want to be driving in the dark on unfamiliar roads. This place might be the only thing open, and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I think that’s what she said anyway. I wasn’t really listening.

  I was watching everybody in the restaurant, thinking I should write a poem. I haven’t written one in a really long time. It can be like the one Ms. Merrill loves, about breakfast in a bowling alley. But different. Better. I didn’t have any paper, so I memorized every detail: the fake Christmas tree by the empty salad bar and the stockings taped to the bakery case and the windows frosted with spray-on snow. I’m going to write about the waitress with the yellow uniform and hot-pink nails who brought us water and silverware and said the pot roast was dry. Then there was the horseshoe counter and the guy with a do-rag eating strawberry shortcake and the guy in camouflage talking on a cell phone. And the people sitting alone in booths: an old lady in a gown looking like she’d come from a ballroom dance competition; a gross guy in a sweatshirt that said I’M NOT SANTA (BUT YOU CAN SIT ON MY LAP); the other waitress—the one with hair extensions—doing scratch-off tickets with a key. I want to write about my mom and me, too: me, looking like I’d gone bobbing for apples in a bucket of glass; my mother in her stretchy jeans looking like she’d swallowed a planet. It’s going to be about all these people with nowhere to go, settling for any old place just so they won’t be home alone missing a wife or an ex-boyfriend or a husband or a kid or a dad.

  Mom got the turkey, I got a hamburger, and we both got pie for dessert. The food was okay, but the food didn’t matter. This will be one of those Christmases we’ll talk about, one of the ones we’ll remember. All the other years will blur together in their sameness, but this one will stick out. It would’ve stuck out anyway as the first Christmas without my dad. But there are going to be a lot of those for a while: firsts without Dad. We let my father have Thanksgiving. Christmas is ours.

  When we were leaving it was snowing. I told my mother about the poem I wanted to write. She smiled and said I should write it, she’d like to read it, and started the car. As we pulled away, I could see the people in the restaurant: our waitress clearing our table, the guys at the counter drinking coffee, the lady in the gown reading a newspaper. And then the scene slid from view and we were back on the highway. I reclined the seat and thought about how all those people back there would have to drive home alone. We had each other, Mom and me. Everything was good in the car, with the heat blasting and the radio playing. Better than good. It was snowing, and my mother had to lean forward to see, but I wasn’t scared. For the first time in a long time I didn’t feel the weight of everything pressing down. I’d forgotten about Rad and my used-to-be friends and my father and even Madeline. I think my mother was forgetting, too. I think she’d forgotten about my father for a little while and about school and money and the house and my mental problems. It was just the two of us, and the babies inside her, and the future stretched out before us like the dark and snowy highway. We can’t see it, but we have to believe it’s there.

  In the end, it’s always about believing.

  seventy-three

  As soon as my mom stopped worrying about her classes for two seconds, she started worrying about the babies. Specifically: where she’s going to put them. Upstairs, there’s only my room and hers. Downstairs, there’s the computer room, the room that was going to be my father’s study. My mother kept saying there’s room in hers for now, for the bassinets. “But eventually—”

  “They can have my room,” I said. “I’ll move downstairs.”

  My mother looked relieved. I knew that’s what she’d been thinking but was too afraid to ask. She doesn’t know that I hate my room now. It’s not the same without Madeline. I can’t stand to be in there alone. It’s a reminder of everything I’ve lost.

  As soon as it was out of my mouth, my mother was making plans. “We’ll keep the Nacho Cheese and Chips. Babies like bright colors. What about your room? It’s kind of dark back there. We can do this today, if you’re ready. Get it out of the way. We’re gonna need help. You want to call Rad?”

  I called Autumn. We put the computer on a stand in the living room, and brought some boxes up to the attic, and got my father’s desk out to the garage. While my mother was out picking up a pizza, we got everything from my old room moved down. Desk. Bed. Dresser. My books and posters and Pegasus collection, everything except my nightstand and dollhouse. They don’t fit in the new room.

  The new room is weird, stuck on the back of the house like it is, off the hall off the kitchen. Plus, there are no windows. It’s like a prison cell but without the toilet. There’s no bathroom downstairs, either, which means I have to go upstairs, and the only closet is in the hall.

  “This isn’t gonna work.” My mother was leaning
against the door, her arms folded over her belly, making that frowny face of hers. “I’m sorry, Ellie. I thought this room was bigger.”

  “It’s fine,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  My mother wants so hard for me to be happy. Sometimes I have to give her something.

  “It’s only temporary, right?”

  The room is long and narrow. I can sit on my bed and look through my dresser. My desk doubles as a nightstand. My old room was big enough for two, but now I am one. I don’t need all that space. At night, buried beneath the covers, with the lights out, the room is warm and dark. Dark as a coffin. Dark as a womb. I imagine this is what it’s like for the twins, snug inside my mother, floating in all that darkness.

  seventy-four

  She’s real. My mother sees that now. She has two daughters, not just one. There is me and there is Madeline. She knows I did not invent her. She can’t deny it any longer. Maybe Madeline is responsible for what happened. Maybe she called up the storm, knowing where it would lead. It wasn’t predicted—all that wind. It came out of nowhere, tearing at the house, huge and powerful, trying to force its way in. I was in my new room downstairs when a sound like the world ending sent me flying upstairs, searching for my mother. I found her in my old room, in the dark, her face pressed to the window. I flipped the light switch but the power was out. Our tree had come down—the one out front—ripping through the lines, collapsing against the house.

  I want to jump ahead, but I can’t. I have to slow down. Tell it like it happened. I want Erika to read this, so it has to make sense. There was nothing to do at three in the morning, in the dark, with the rain pounding and the wind howling, nothing to do until the storm stopped and the sun came up. My mother wouldn’t learn about Madeline for another fourteen hours. A lot had to happen first. We had to call the power company and the insurance company. We had to find the camera. We had to talk to the neighbors who came by to point and gawk and wag their heads at the damage. We had to run to the gas station for coffee and donuts. We had to stand outside, in the cold and the snow, taking pictures of the tree. We had to wait for the insurance guy to show up, and the power guys, and the tree guys. We had to eat our lunch in a dark kitchen, shouting over the chainsaws and wood chipper. We had to go back out and take more pictures of the mangled roof after the tree was down.