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The In-Between
By Barbara Stewart St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2013 Barbara Stewart
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-03017-7
CHAPTER 1
I was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. My lifeless body slumps over the cat carrier in the backseat of the twisted wreck. Bloodstains bloom through my T-shirt and jeans, and my hair sparkles with bits of broken glass. My parents sparkle and bloom, too. They are in the front seat, pinned upright by the dashboard of our crappy little hatchback. The airbags slowly deflate, floating down over them like freshly washed sheets. My mother's cheek is pressed against the side window. My father's head droops, his chin on his chest. Even with all the blood we look peaceful, as if we're napping at a rest stop before continuing the long drive to our new home.
Were my earbuds still in my ears when the rescue team arrived? Was Lucy making that strangled calling noise she makes when she can't find me? Did they use one of those metal saws to free us? All I know is some stubborn paramedic refused to give up on me. Maybe because I'm only fourteen. Maybe because he has a daughter or little sister who listens to the same music and has an orange-and-white cat or wears all black and loves cheese-filled pretzels.
I am alive. My father, too. My mother is gone. Lucy is gone. That's what I know. Here's what I don't know: Where did my mother die? (The middle of the highway? The back of an ambulance? On a stainless steel gurney in a fluorescent-lit ER?) Where is she buried? Did Lucy die or is she lost? (Lost seems worse.) How long was I in the hospital? (Long enough to lose most of the fifteen pounds I'd put on during The Worst Year of My Life. Long enough for my hair to grow out. Long enough for the red scars on my wrists to fade to white.)
Here is what I remember before everything changed forever: We were somewhere in the mountains of Pennsylvania — the Poconos, I think. My dad was driving. My mother was in the passenger seat warning me not to let Lucy out of the cat carrier again.
"She's miserable," I said.
"She's a cat," my mother said. "She'll survive."
My father smiled in the rearview mirror. "Watch it or we'll put you in a carrier."
I poked a cheese-filled pretzel through the metal gate. Lucy loves salt but she ignored it. I popped it in my mouth and chewed.
"That's enough," my mother said, reaching behind her. "Give me the bag."
I plugged in my earbuds and ate one more. New Ellie is addicted to cheese-filled pretzels, too.
"Richard? Talk to your daughter, please. We had an agreement. She's going to start eating better. No more junk food."
We were starting over. This was our New Beginning. Not just for me, but for all of us. A few weeks after his unemployment ran out, my father was offered a job in a water treatment lab in Pottsville, New York. My mother was going to get her real estate license. I was going to lose weight and dress better and not try to kill myself again.
Honestly, right then, things were good. Better than they'd been in a long time. It's surprising what distance can do. I was obsessed with the number of miles between me and Jackson Middle and everyone in it, especially Priscilla Hodges. I asked my dad for an odometer reading.
"Three-ninety-one, kiddo." He winked. "Nope ... wait ... make that three-ninety-two."
We were driving into a bank of clouds parked low over the mountain, but the darkness was lifting. My heart was lifting. I felt lighter than sunshine. I wanted to live forever.
Before I tried to end it all, Old Ellie's favorite morbid pastime had been imagining her own death: school shooting, E. coli, terrorist attack. It's what got her through the endless days at Jackson Middle. God, how they shunned me. Correction: shunned her. Old Ellie had low self-esteem. Old Ellie had dependent personality disorder. Old Ellie engaged in self-destructive thought. But Old Ellie always had Scilla. It was the two of us against the world until ...
Stop. Just stop. I know what happened. I've got a box of journals documenting your stupid, sorry life. This is not about Old Ellie. This is not about Priscilla. This is about New Ellie and Mom and Dad and Lucy.
"Can you turn down the air? I'm cold."
Those were my last words before I died. Poignant, right? For someone who loves books and spent hours planning her own annihilation, you'd think I could have come up with something a little more poetic. At least I get a do-over.
Mom's last words: "Oh my God!"
And now I'm here. We're here. Without Mom. I woke this morning with my father staring down at me, a look of joy (or was it horror?) distorting his face.
"Where are we?" I said.
I was in my bed, but not in my room. I sat up and looked around, and then it hit me: the new house. We'd made it. It was all a bad dream. New Ellie was in her new room. It was nicer than I remembered from our trip back in June when we'd flown to Pottsville to go house hunting. My father had painted it the colors I'd picked: Nacho Cheese and Chips.
"Where's Mom?"
I tried to get up.
"You shouldn't even be here," my father whispered, tucking my comforter around me. "Stay in bed. You need to rest."
"What happened?"
"You don't remember?"
I remembered my dream: I remembered asking Mom to turn down the air. I remembered her reaching for the knob on the dashboard and gazing up through the windshield at the southbound lane. I remembered the way the headlights looked like Christmas lights strung across the mountain above us.
"Oh my God!" My mother clapped her hand over her mouth and pointed.
A black-and-silver RV had gone through the guardrail. It was airborne, nose-diving down the mountain towards us. My father punched the gas. My head snapped back. The RV somersaulted, and pieces of metal and plastic rained down. I grabbed the cat carrier and closed my eyes. I remembered the brakes squealing. I remembered the seat belt locking, digging into my chest. I remembered my pulse rushing in my ears, and my father yelling, "Hold on! We're gonna hit —"
"We crashed," I said.
My father nodded. "You were hurt pretty bad."
I felt fine. No cuts or bruises or broken bones. I wiggled my fingers and toes.
"You hit your head."
I felt for bandages.
"Inside." My father drummed his temple. "Let me know if you feel dizzy."
My father made me poke-in-the-eye eggs and bacon, then dragged a chair beside my bed and watched me eat. He had this hopeful, tender look, like he was caring for an injured bird.
I chewed my food and smiled at Dad and gave the eggs a thumbs-up. They were good, but not as good as Mom's. Then I realized what I already knew — in my heart. My mother was gone. She hadn't made it. My father didn't have to say it. It was written in the lines across his forehead, in those sad watery eyes of his. Everything went blurry. I tried swallowing, but there was a knot in my chest. My throat tightened around a clot of warm yolk.
I put down the fork and closed my eyes, trying to breathe. Everything I'd suffered over the last year was nothing compared to this. I'd hated my mother that day in the family therapist's office when she turned to me and said, "You don't know grief. You don't know misery."
But she'd been right.
My father squeezed my hand. I opened my eyes to look at him. But his palms — both palms — were pressed into his eye sockets, like he was trying to keep from seeing something terrible.
I felt it again. A clutching. Invisible fingers kneading. Warm. Soft. Something brushed my face. My skin tingled. Not my father, but just as familiar. It felt like ... it felt like her.
"Do you think Mommy's still with us?" I asked.
My father wiped his eyes. "What?"
I felt it again. A grip so tight it made my bones ache.
"I think my brain's messed up."
"You're in shock," my father said, reaching for the curled hand at my side.
I pulled away. I didn't want the feeling to pass. But it did. Just like that, whatever it was let go.
My father carried the tray of dishes downstairs and didn't come back. I heard the strains of some sad jazz saxophone echoing through the house. I don't know what he was doing down there. Probably the same thing as me — trying to get settled. God, there's so much to do. Everything I own is in boxes, tubs, and bags. I made sure the movers hadn't damaged the important stuff — my Pegasus collection, the dollhouse my mother built — before I ran out of steam. I felt weak and achy, like I was coming down with something. I sat at the desk and switched on the lamp. It was getting dark. Correction: darker. It had been gray and murky all afternoon. The kind of day that makes you think all the color has been drained out of the world.
It's night now. Nine, maybe. I can't find my alarm clock or even a calendar. And it's damp and chilly, the kind of night Mom would've fixed soup for dinner or called for pizza. It feels more like October than ...
I breathe in sharply.
It's happening again. I feel her.
This isn't my brain short-circuiting or shock. It's as if my hand has a life of its own, the fingers uncurling one by one.
Scilla and I used to play this game called knife. I would make a fist (tight, tighter), and she would caress my knuckles, my wrist, the back of my hand. (Concentrate. Concentrate. People dying, babies crying. Concentrate. Concentrate.)
"Close your eyes," she'd whisper, peeling back my fingers, exposing my palm. (Babies dying, people crying. Concentrate. Concentrate.)
No matter how many times we'd done it, it was always a shock when she stabbed me with her thumbnail. (Stick a knife in your hand, let the blood run down. Stick a knife in your hand, let the blood run down.) Just thinking about her fingers tickling across my wrist and down my arm gives me chills. I swear I used to feel the blood pooling in the crook of my arm.
Does Scilla know my mother is dead?
Something soft presses against my forehead. A rush of breath warms my skin. She's here. My mother's here. I know it.
CHAPTER 2
When we were in fifth grade, Scilla's dad got his arm chewed off in a machine at work. He used to tell us about his ghost pains. It's a condition amputees feel after losing a limb. He used to show us his stump, all pink and shiny, like something boiled. He said he could still feel sensations like heat and pressure and tingling, but it wasn't real. He said the brain can't accept such a sudden, shocking loss. It keeps firing impulses to the nerves that used to be connected to the missing part. Maybe that's all this is, what I'm feeling with my mom: a physical memory. My brain's screwed-up response to losing her. My body's way of consoling my grief-stricken mind.
CHAPTER 3
I left the second floor this morning and took a tour of the house. It's okay. No one will mistake us for millionaires. It's small and old and creaky and backs up to the woods. My parents called it a "fixer-upper." It would look a thousand times better if my father would unpack.
It's quiet without Mom. She would have been better at dealing. Dad and I are stuck, useless. Mom could handle anything. When I tried to kill myself, she was the one who kept everything going. It's how she coped, by doing things. Every day she'd force me out of bed and out of sweats and make me shower and wash what little I had left of my hair. My dad is the one who went to pieces. He couldn't even talk to me. He'd just stand in my doorway, staring at me like I was a stranger in his daughter's bed.
Mom was the enthusiastic one, the confident one, the glass-is-half-full one. My father gets depressed. He goes off the rails. He loses hope. They were a good match. Opposites attract and all that. My mother used to say I'm just like my father. Maybe, but I've got her in me, too. I can feel it sometimes — her optimism — deep inside, struggling to surface.
I'm not saying my mother was perfect, but everything would've been running smoothly by now — the curtains hung, the dishes unpacked, the TV hooked up. I'm going through withdrawal. There's no TV because there's no cable. No cable equals no Internet. No Internet equals no e-mail.
We're living like hoarders. The house is a maze of boxes and trash bags. There's shredded paper all over the carpets. It looks like a parade went through the living room. I'd clean it up if I could find the vacuum. None of the furniture is arranged. Everything's still sitting wherever the movers happened to plunk it down. We don't even have a phone. We combed the house for the cell, but it's gone.
I don't know what my father does all day. We don't do anything. We haven't gone anywhere. He hasn't unpacked his telescope. He just shuffles from room to room, poking through junk, searching for something he never seems to find. Truthfully I don't know what I do all day, either. I'm missing enormous chunks of time. One minute I'm painting my nails or going through pictures of Mom, and then ... I don't know, my brain checks out for an hour or two. It feels like hours, anyway. I have to go by the light. All the clocks are still packed. My father lost his watch in the accident. It was brand new. My mother had engraved it for their anniversary: You make every minute worth remembering. Corny, I know, but he loved it.
I am seriously damaged. The blackouts are one thing, but most of my senses are broken, too. I can still hear. And my sense of touch seems heightened — my left hand, especially, the hand my mother always holds. It's the other senses that aren't working. I can't smell. I can't taste. Even my sense of color is off. Everything is dull and drab, like seeing the world through a dirty window. My room is yellow, but it's definitely not Nacho Cheese — it's the color of sickness, of infection. It's like that with everything. Reds and pinks have a brownish tinge to them, the look of dried blood. Blue doesn't even register — it all looks gray. Which is depressing because I love color. You'd never know it by the way I dress. My closet looks like a black hole. But that was supposed to change. That was part of the New Beginning. Mom was going to take New Ellie on a back-to-school shopping spree for all new clothes — colorful clothes, stylish clothes, clothes that fit.
On the bright side (if there's a bright side to any of this), my fat jeans are too big. I had to dig around for something smaller. It's been so long I've forgotten what it's like to wear clothes that don't pinch. And my hair looks good, too. It's growing back thick and dark and shiny. I don't know what possessed Old Ellie to hack it all off that day. She just started cutting and couldn't stop.
* * *
What's happening to my father? He's not himself. He's like the living dead. I've seen him depressed. That's nothing new. It happens every Christmas, and sometimes around his birthday. This is something different. Worse than the time he and Mom almost separated, or the time they were having money troubles and almost lost the house. Worse even than when I tried to die. It's like all those other bouts of depression were just tremors, little quakes. Losing Mom is too big. The world is crashing down and all he can do is stand and watch, alone and terrified, powerless to go on living.
I'm here, but I'm not Mom. I can't talk to him the way she talked to him.
Don't get me wrong. He's not totally neglectful. He turns off my light at night and tucks me in. Yesterday he tried to help me find the blow dryer. Tonight he opened a can of soup and made grilled cheese for dinner. It's better than nothing, I guess, even if it was just soup and sandwiches. We were actually okay for a while, staring into our bowls, and waiting for the soup to cool. But then we had to ruin it by talking.
Dad: Aren't you gonna eat?
Me: I'm eating.
Dad: No, you're not. What's wrong with it? It says you can use water. Is it better with milk?
Me: It's okay. My taste buds aren't working.
Dad: Maybe you're catching a cold.
Me: There's other stuff wrong, too. Weird stuff.
Dad: Like what?
Me: I feel like Mommy's been holding my hand.
I wasn't supposed to see it, the face he made before he tried to look curious. That split second when his eyeballs shifted toward the ceiling, showing too much white. That face that said, C'mon, Ellie. He didn't believe me.
What I said next was meant to hurt him, but it was also true. I didn't make it up. "No one's waiting for us on the other side. All those stories about near-death experiences? Heaven doesn't exist. There's no white light. Mommy wasn't there. When you die, you die. That's it."
My dad just sat there, spoon raised, blinking. He let out a rush of breath and pushed himself up and shuffled over and cradled my face in his hands.
"Ellie, sweetie, I don't know what to tell you," he said. "If you feel like she's with you —"
I lifted my chin and searched his eyes. Nothing. I didn't have to ask, but I did.
"You don't feel her?"
He shook his head. His face crumpled.
I feel New Ellie retreating. Old Ellie's slithering back. We're just barely living. We should've all died in the accident. We would've been better off.
CHAPTER 4
The sky outside my window is clear and bright, but this house is shut up like a tomb. I want to go out, but I can't. I'm afraid of the blackouts. Plus, there's nowhere to go. Everywhere I look it's mountains and trees and more mountains. I didn't remember it being so desolate, so quiet. It's like living in the bottom of a bowl. Where we live is hardly a town, just a road with some houses and a river. Even the name sounds Podunk-y: Pottsville. What were my parents thinking? No stores. No gas stations. No restaurants. The library is five miles away in a bigger small town. The nearest mall? God only knows. It might as well be on the moon.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The In-Between by Barbara Stewart. Copyright © 2013 Barbara Stewart. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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