Middle Ground

by Katie Kacvinsky

  My eyes fluttered and started to open. Something was different. I felt like I was lying inside a cloud, warm and soft and weightless. There were no nightmares. No cold sweats. But still, there was friction. An energy field surrounded me, pulling me in and holding me tight. A touch as warm as sunlight traced my eyebrows. And then there was a voice.

  “It’s me,” he said. Then I realized the movement I felt was his fingers lightly tracing across my forehead. They were his fingers orchestrating my jagged mind into a calm canyon. We sat at the opening of the subway tunnel. He had his back against the wall, and I was using his body like a deep armchair.

  “How long have we been here?” I asked.

  “You fell asleep and it started raining so I moved us in here,” he said. I nodded lazily. Justin knew I was going through more treatments and it was starting to drain me. He tucked me tighter in his arms. I could feel his chest rising and sinking. He whispered in my ear. “I probably should have brought you back to the basement, but I wasn’t ready to give you up.”

  His voice was so solid, I could lean on it. I wanted to turn him on at night and listen to him while I fell asleep. I wanted to sit him next to my bed so I had his face to wake up to every morning. I imagined someday I’d have that. We’d be together. Life could be different. Sometimes the only way to get through the present is to focus on the future.

  It was pouring rain outside. Rain dripped off the mouth of the tunnel and dove into the ground. Drops caught the reflection of streetlights in the background and pulled light down like golden ribbons. Water pooled in a tiny lake in front of us. Rain punched the lake into a thousand tiny potholes. Everything tapped and splashed like drummers on parade. Justin held my hand and I limply held his back. I stared at the symphony outside. It was liquid fireworks.

  I took a long, contented breath. “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  He buried his lips in my hair and I didn’t flinch from the contact. My thoughts felt like clouds, slowly gathering up only to drift away. I had to train my thoughts and force them to connect. He squeezed my hand and it brought me back. I told Justin I used to think water had magical powers.

  “My grandma used to take me on walks when I was little,” I said. My voice felt far away but I followed after it, determined to keep up with it. “We hiked along the Willamette River. I used to spend hours looking at rocks. I was amazed how beautiful they looked underwater; all their colors were magnified and polished. I spent whole afternoons collecting them. But as soon as they dried, they lost their luster. They just looked drab and dusty and pale. After that, I always thought water was magical, that it could make anything beautiful. I believed water could bring out the best in people. It’s hard for me not to be happy around it. Anything that can make a dull rock look like a jewel has to be pretty powerful.”

  Justin nodded and told me he knew what I meant.

  “I collected those rocks for years,” I said. “I still have a jar in my room. Even if they do turn pale when they dry, I wanted something to remind me to believe in magic.” I let out a long sigh and watched the rain. “I just want the ocean to reach out and wipe away this life. Wipe away the DC and my memories and make me new again. Water has the power to do that.”

  “So do you,” he said.

  I smiled at the curtain of raindrops. “Why does it feel so good to be outside?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t feel good to everyone,” he reminded me.

  “I don’t understand that,” I said. “It’s an escape. It’s the only place you can be where nothing’s expected of you. You don’t have to perform or conform. You don’t have to impress anybody. You don’t have to act out a role. You can finally relax.”

  His fingers played in mine.

  “Nature reminds you who you are,” Justin said, “and most of us don’t want to be reminded. People don’t know who they are anymore. They’re being told who to be so much of the time they don’t get the chance to figure it out for themselves.”

  “Maybe we’re always changing.”

  “Maybe we’re always performing.”

  “Then who are we really?” I wondered. “At the end of the day, with the lights off, all alone, which of those personalities that we take on and off are real?”

  “I don’t think we know anymore. Besides, we never have to be alone, so we can avoid thinking about it.”

  “So what are you saying?” I asked. “We all need to find ourselves?”

  “I’m saying maybe we all need to be okay with who we are ten minutes longer every day. Maybe we need to stop worrying so much about being accepted and caring what people think about us. But we need to accept ourselves first. Maybe we need to plug back into this,” he said, and nodded to the world outside.

  I thought about calling nature an escape. It’s strange because nature was the real world. It was always there, free, right outside people’s doors. The real world was always waiting. Yet people called it an escape. You shouldn’t have to escape in order to be real.

  Chapter Twenty

  I stayed in bed all day, staring with eyes that didn’t see. I felt like I was being erased. The nightmares were endless. My counseling sessions were twice a week now. Gabe promised me it would only last a few more weeks. I had been in the DC over four months. My body was exhausted. My mind, what I used to value most, had become my worst enemy. It lived inside my skin but my thoughts didn’t belong to me anymore.

  I was tired of fighting my dreams. I was losing the solid line between dream and reality. The system was wearing me down.

  My wall screens turned into constant sheets of rain. I heard a knock on my door and mumbled to come in. I didn’t have to shift my eyes to know it was Gabe. He checked in on me every night, when the Eye turned off. He was becoming more of a nurse than a friend. He tried to force food and water into me. He reminded me to shower and get out of bed and take care of myself. He forced me to talk, to move, to breathe. I was starting to resent him for it. I just wanted to fade.

  He set a sandwich bar and juice box on my desk. I smelled turkey and cheese and garlic but it just made me queasy.

  “You should eat something.”

  I blinked up at the rain. The clouds hung lazily over me. His words slid around me like water around oil. They fell to the ground and disappeared. I was too numb to nod. I was giving up. The visits with Molly weren’t working. I slept through half my nights with Justin. Seeing people just made me more depressed. They showed me a mirror and I couldn’t stand the person in the reflection.

  “You’ll feel better if you get up, Maddie,” he said. “Take a shower.”

  I rubbed my hand over my hollow stomach. “What’s the point?”

  “No offense, but you look terrible. You need to clean up.”

  “No, I mean of this life,” I said. “What’s the point of this life?”

  Gabe sat down in the chair next to me. “It’s the only one we’ve got,” he said. “So we shouldn’t waste it. Come on, Maddie. Remember what you’re trying to do in here.”

  He reached out to give me the sandwich but his movement was too sudden and I flinched and swatted his hand away.

  “Sorry,” he said, and scooted the chair back until it hit the desk frame. Silver rain fell behind him.

  Gabe glanced at his watch. “We need to get going. It’s midnight.”

  “I’m not going,” I said. “I don’t feel good.”

  “People are counting on you,” he reminded me.

  I told him there was nothing I could do. I felt like I was withering. I couldn’t stop shaking. Everywhere; my teeth, my shoulders, my arms. I wrapped my blanket tighter around me.

  “Don’t you want to get out of here?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not safe out there.”

  “It’s not safe in here. Being around people will help.”

  “You can’t trust people. We’re all twisted. We’re all waiting to snap. We all work better alone.”

  “That’s not true,” he said. “We all care about you. We’re d
epending on you. You need to have hope.”

  “Hope’s dead,” I mumbled to the sky.

  Gabe told me he didn’t believe it. He said I was the strongest person he knew.

  I laughed weakly. I felt as strong as a blade of grass.

  “It’s just your nightmares,” he said. “Don’t let this place break you.”

  “I want this to go away. I want to feel normal again. Something’s in my head, Gabe. They planted something in my head.” I started to cry. My shoulders shook, and my chest and my ribs. It felt like the rain had seeped inside of me and was pouring out. Tears replaced my blood with water, my heart with a river. They ran down my face and it was so strange to act human at a time when I felt as lifeless as a machine.

  “Justin’s waiting downstairs. Don’t you want to see him?”

  A tiny wing fluttered inside of me at the sound of his name. A spark lit up, like a match striking a rough surface and catching fire. Before my mind could cave in, my heart convinced my legs to move.

  ***

  Justin took me to the beach again. The air was humid and heavy but the sky was clear. The moon was full with a hazy layer wrapped around it, like a gold halo. There was a scattering of stars in the sky. We sat down in the soft sand and listened to the waves. I was still groggy; my thoughts came out slowly, like they were being filtered through a sieve.

  I looked out at the sky. “I almost forgot stars exist,” I said flatly. Justin held my limp hand in his. His fingers were laced with mine but I hardly felt the contact, as if something were disconnected.

  “I know,” he said. “You’re slipping, Maddie.”

  I nodded. “Mm-hm,” I said with a knowing smile. A small laugh climbed up my throat. It was the hopeless laugh of surrender.

  “It feels good to slip,” I said. It was easier to give in than to fight back. There was sweetness to letting go. Falling is freeing. The farther you drop the lighter you feel until you’re weightless. A permanent fog settled around my mind and it wrapped me up in a warm blanket. Trying to think was like pulling off the blanket only to feel the cold drafts. Why shiver when you can stay warm like this forever?

  “I think it’s really amazing what you’re doing,” he said. He was trying to catch me and pull me back but I wasn’t fooled. I didn’t want a parachute this time. I was enjoying the free fall.

  “I’m not doing anything,” I said. “I’m being undone. My whole life. I’ve been undone.” My voice came out monotone. “Every time I put myself back together it happens again. It’s pointless.”

  He was quiet for a few seconds. He squeezed my hand. Justin was still the only person who could touch me. His eyes were on my profile and then they met mine and there was a crease there, this worried concentration. His eyes were full of emotion, which was unsettling. It broke his calm surface. It was like pulling a single thread and watching something solid and colorful and perfect unravel. The warm blanket around my mind started to slip. Maybe it was guilt or sadness creeping in, but I didn’t like the feeling, so I tried to kick it away and reach for the blanket instead.

  “I need to tell you something,” he said, “and you’re not going to like what I’m about to say. But I think you need to hear it.” He sucked in a long breath. “You need to stop thinking so much about yourself. It doesn’t do any good to dwell on yourself. Trust me, it only makes things worse.”

  My fingers suddenly flexed inside his hand but he squeezed my hand harder before I could yank it away. “Excuse me?” I glared at him.

  He told me I needed to take a step back and refocus. “Right now you’re just focusing on yourself. You’re too shortsighted. That’s how they’re beating you.”

  Something kicked in my chest and it jarred my eyes open wider. It took me a second to place what I was feeling. It was anger. I stared at him with shock. “I can’t believe you’re saying this to me right now.”

  His eyes were tight and unforgiving. As vigilant as my father’s. “Believe it.”

  “Aren’t I entitled to feel a little self-pity?”

  “No,” he said. “Pity’s a waste of time.” He held my gaze and there was no apology on his face. His dark eyes were relentless. I twisted my hand free from his and my impulsive reaction made amusement swim over his eyes, like he was happy to get a rise out of me.

  “You forget—I’m in a detention center,” I yelled. “You forget—I’m being psychologically tortured. Sorry if I’m not fully embracing my situation with a positive outlook.”

  His mouth curled up at the corner. “There’s the Maddie I know,” he said, and his grin welcomed me back.

  I picked myself up off the ground but Justin caught me before I could walk away. He held my shoulders so I had to face him. I tried to wriggle myself free, not because his physical touch bothered me but because his words hurt.

  “You forget something,” he said. “This whole thing, it isn’t about you. Don’t you get it? Take yourself out of the equation. What you’re doing is bigger than this, it’s bigger than you,” he said and pressed his hands tighter on my shoulders. “People are depending on you. You’re responsible now because you know what’s going on in there. You’ve committed yourself because you believe in something. Don’t lose sight of that.”

  I shook his hands off me and backed up a few steps. “It’s not that easy. They’re controlling my mind in there,” I said, and pointed back at the tunnel, at the dark hole waiting to swallow me up again like the mouth of a snake.

  “Only if you let them. Only if you stop seeing a way out. Don’t let them beat you down. Stop focusing so much on the problem. It’s only going to make the struggle feel worse. Focus on the answer. Put your energy in that.”

  “I can’t do anything!” I shouted. “I’m not on a mission to save the world, Justin. Don’t mistake your goals for mine. I’m just trying to survive. I’m just one person.”

  I expected him to get angry at this, but his voice stayed calm.

  “That’s not true,” he argued. “There are a lot of people backing you up on this. You’re only one person if that’s the way you choose to see it. Don’t let yourself feel that small. That’s how the system beats you. You’re thousands of people. You’re not alone.”

  I turned and marched down the beach. “I’m not in the mood for one of your leadership speeches right now,” I yelled over my shoulder.

  “So what are you going to do? Quit?” he yelled after me. “Shrivel up and die?”

  “I can’t do anything,” I repeated. I wanted him to let me give up. Didn’t he ever give up? “They censor all of my words,” I said through tears. “They’re monitoring everything I do.”

  “That never stopped you before,” he reminded me. He reached out for me but I pulled my hand back. I exhaled a bitter sigh. My breath felt stale and tired. My lungs felt black.

  “Maybe this is all pointless,” I said.

  Justin shook his head. “Maddie.” He paused for a second to pick his words. “You’ve always been monitored—by your dad, by Damon, by school. You know how to be bigger than what’s trying to confine you. Don’t stop now.”

  Tears ran down my cheeks. “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “You’re in there to help us figure out what’s going on. We need you to be stronger than them or this whole thing is useless. You can’t let them beat you down. You’re going to become consumed and you’ll just turn into another one of the sleepwalkers.” He spoke the words slowly to make sure they sank in. “Look at what they’re trying to steal. They’re not trying to hold your body hostage. It’s your mind they want. So, see out of it mentally. Attack back with your mind.”

  I knew he was trying to help. But I still wanted to fail. “Maybe you shouldn’t count on me.”

  “If anyone can do this it’s you. I have more faith in you than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  I pressed my lips together and thought about his words. He was right. I was breaking down, and if I let myself give in, I wouldn’t be any use to anyone.

  “I’m
sorry,” he said. “I’m just trying to help you realize you’re not alone.”

  “You’re right,” I admitted. I narrowed my eyes at him. “But maybe you need to realize the same thing.”

  “Me?” he asked, his face puzzled.

  I told him he had more faith in people than anyone I’d ever met. He grew up being tossed around, living out of a suitcase, never knowing what to expect. “I grew up pampered and spoiled and you have more faith in your heart than all the people I know combined. But you don’t know how to love anyone,” I said.

  “Give me a break,” he said, and took a few steps back. “This again?”

  “Have you ever opened up about your past?” I demanded.

  “Where is all this coming from?” Then he knew before I had to tell him. His eyes narrowed. He kicked his foot in the dirt and sent a spray of sand sailing through the air. After all the times I’d envied him for staying calm and being patient, I’d finally found a place where he couldn’t control his anger. It’s when he allowed himself to care.

  “Clare,” he said. “I should have guessed. So Kristin’s death has been turned into gossip?”

  “Gabe told me, and it’s not like that. He honestly thought I knew. I should have known.”

  Justin shook his head and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “No. It’s got nothing to do with you.” His eyes were open but the shields were in full force. “I don’t talk about it. To anybody.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “There’s nothing to say.” His face was unreadable.

  I wanted so badly to be easy on Justin. But I couldn’t stand there and watch him hold all of those memories and feel responsible.

  “How am I supposed to know you if you keep something like that from me? How is anyone supposed to know you?”

  He inhaled a slow breath. I could hear the anger seething off his body. It sounded like steam. “It’s my mistake,” he said, and pressed his fingers hard against his chest. “My burden to carry. I don’t need to put it on anybody else. I’m not like that. So leave it alone,” he warned me.

  Tears welled up in my eyes at the hurt on Justin’s face. Maybe I was trying to bring him down. Maybe I wanted someone to feel as miserable as me. Now I could see why no one had had the courage to bring it up with him before. They didn’t want to see him break.