Between (7 page)

“Well, that’s interesting.”

“Yeah,” I agree, “it is. I was in the hospital last year because I fainted on my stairs. I got a concussion,” I say, almost brightly, encouraged that I remember the detail. “And I was drinking last night—I’m not supposed to drink.”

He nods. “And now look what’s happened. You’re dead. Did you learn nothing from health class?”

I give him a cool stare. “It’s no wonder you weren’t popular. You aren’t very nice.”

He stares right back. “Being nice doesn’t have anything to do with being popular. You of all people should know that.”

I close my eyes for a minute. He’s right. I should try to be nice. As politely as possible, I say, “Well, I’ve asked you twice now. Please shut up. I’m trying to listen.”

Joe is looking over the notes he’s made in his tiny spiral notebook. “So … all right. Is everyone telling the same story here? You fell asleep, and when you woke up, Liz was gone.”

“That’s right,” Mera says.

“And then someone decided to go look for her?”

Mera nods. “I did.”

“After how long? Ten minutes? An hour?”

My friends stare at each other. Finally, Richie says, “It couldn’t have been longer than maybe fifteen minutes. We sent Mera up to the house.” He swallows. “But she didn’t make it. She walked outside, and she saw Liz right away.”

Joe takes a long moment to consider each of my friends. He stares at my parents. I notice a softness to his eyes, a watery quality. This isn’t easy for him, either. He knew who I was; I wouldn’t be surprised if he remembers me and Richie from that night a few months ago. Two kids in love, steaming up the windows of a car after prom.

“So we’ve got ourselves a little mystery,” he murmurs. “Isn’t that something?”

Silence. The calm inside the boat is unnatural, buoyed by silent horror and heartache.

Joe closes his notebook. “All right. That’s it for now, kids. I’m going to be in touch with all of you, though. So, you know, don’t go too far.” He glances at my parents. “Mr. and Mrs. Valchar, we’re gonna need you both at the station directly.”

They don’t say anything. They only nod.

Alex and I follow Joe and his partner, Shane, onto the dock. Once they’re out of earshot from the boat, they stop.

“You believe that?” Shane asks.

“Do I believe what? That an eighteen-year-old girl fell into the water and drowned in the middle of the night without anybody noticing?” He takes a long look at my parents’ boat. “I don’t know. She had a history. I guess we’ll see what the medical exam says.” He appears to be thinking. “It’s probably an accident. That’s my best guess.”

“But it sounds kinda fishy,” Shane prods, “doesn’t it? Like a bunch of liars in there with a lousy story they’re trying to keep straight.”

“Fishy,” Joe repeats. “Ha.” He pats Shane on the shoulder. “You watch too many
Law and Order
reruns, you know that? This isn’t New York City. I’m sure her friends didn’t just decide to up and kill her.”

Five

Before people knew me as a dead girl, they knew me as a runner. I remember this fact as clearly as I remember my own name or my mother’s face. I was on the cross-country team. I wasn’t all that fast—I usually clocked around an eight-minute mile—but I could run for hours. And I did; every morning, even during the school year, I’d roll out of bed before sunrise, tug on my running shoes, and go up and down the Sound, along the road leading to Mystic—which is the larger community that neighbors Noank—sometimes all the way to the outskirts of town before turning around to come home. It wasn’t unusual for me to do ten miles in a day. It is such a comfort that these memories are still with me, to know that they are ingrained within my being. At any time, I can close my eyes and almost hear the rhythm of my footsteps against the road.

It’s funny—my parents used to worry about me, running alone in the mornings like that. Water everywhere, all around us, and they were always worried about my safety on dry land.

For right now, everyone’s version of the events from that night seems to point to the conclusion that I drowned. The story is this: I was drunk, had low blood sugar, and I went outside to get some air. I stumbled and fell off the docks. Nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything.

And people seem comfortable enough with that version of the truth. My parents seem to accept it; my friends seem to believe it. It’s the Official Story. Case closed.

But unofficially, Joe Wright is standing in a suit and tie at the back of the funeral home, watching with quiet eyes as the crowd shifts in the room.

Getting around with Alex is easy enough; all it takes is for me to close my eyes as I make some kind of physical contact between the two of us, and he can come with me anywhere. Even though we don’t like each other, I can tell that we’re both grateful for the company. Regardless, aside from the memories that I visit on my own, when I choose to leave him behind, we’ve been practically inseparable since the day I died, bonded by an unseen force that I don’t have a name for.

We’re at my funeral. It’s the same funeral home where they held services for my mother when I was nine years old.

“She’s not here,” I murmur, tears coming to my eyes.

“Who isn’t?” Alex asks.

Even though I know nobody can see us, I feel strangely out of place with Alex, both of us so casually dressed among all the mourners in black. I gaze down at my boots. Their gemstones shimmer beneath the light from the chandeliers that hang in the funeral home. They hurt my feet so badly; all I want is to slip into a pair of sneakers, to wiggle my toes freely, but I died with these boots on, and it seems as though they’re here to stay. It’s weird; I can’t feel any pain aside from my feet. I don’t understand why.

“My mother,” I say.

“Hmm.” Alex’s gaze drifts across the room. “Everyone else is here, that’s for sure.”

It’s true. As I’ve reminded him more than once, I was very popular; it looks like practically the whole school has turned up to cry over me. But my close friends have the premium seats. Mera, Caroline, and Topher are seated in the second row, behind my immediate family. The other two—Richie and Josie—are seated with my dad and Nicole. Richie’s parents are there, too, a few rows behind my friends, sitting with Caroline’s and Topher’s parents. I haven’t spotted Mera’s mom and dad yet, but I’m sure they’re here somewhere.

Death is tricky. My personal experience, I’ve learned, is different from Alex’s in a few ways. For instance, I still have sea legs; everywhere I go, even on dry land, I’m bothered by a persistent rocking feeling. And I’m freezing all the time, chilled almost to my bones. It feels like being submerged in cold water. Alex tells me that he feels cold most of the time, too, but more like he’s alone in the wind, in a wide-open space. It makes sense, when I think about it: death by sea, death by land. What follows really should be similar. Sometimes, when I concentrate on the taste in my mouth, it almost feels like I’m swallowing salt water.

And it’s tricky in other ways. In the first day or so after I died, I had to really concentrate to bring myself into a memory. And when I was watching one, it felt very separate from my consciousness in the present. But what were initially so pronounced as flashbacks into my old life come quicker now, drifting almost like memories unfolding before me, the past and the present beginning to blend together—except that I’m not living the memories this time; I’m only a spectator.

Like my mother’s funeral. All of a sudden, in a blink that I’m not anticipating, I see my nine-year-old self sitting in the back row of the funeral home, watching as my father stands before a closed oak casket. Inside the casket, I know, is my mother.

My hair is long and shimmering; I look oddly pretty and docile among so many mourners, their faces somber, an almost palpable grief saturating the room. My head is down. I’m staring at my feet. At nine years old, I am wearing small, black patent leather high heels. At
nine
. Now, at eighteen, this choice of footwear—did my father let me wear those shoes? Did he buy them for me?—seems embarrassingly improper. Who lets their nine-year-old wear heels?

Josie’s mother, Nicole, comes up behind me and puts her hands on my shoulders. She leans over to whisper in my ear. “Elizabeth. Sweetheart. How are you?”

When she touches me, I flinch. I look up, gazing in confusion at the crowded room. My face is red and tear streaked. I look like I have no idea what’s going on, like a lost little girl who only wants her mommy back. Watching myself, I feel a pang of sadness, of grief so deep that I realize now it never went away, that it has always been with me somewhere inside.

Back then, I knew Nicole as Mrs. Caruso, Josie’s mom. And while it feels like a struggle to recall specific events from my childhood, which is overall sort of fuzzy and indistinct in my mind, I remember the basics: At age nine, Josie and I had already been best friends for years. Our parents used to spend a lot of time together before my mother died. Then Josie’s dad left. What happened after that between my dad and Nicole almost seemed natural. Years ago, they’d been high school sweethearts. After my mother died, and after Nicole and her first husband got divorced, Nicole seemed to fall seamlessly into my life as a mother figure, and I never thought much about it; it was simply the way things were. My father needed a new wife; Nicole needed a new husband. I never felt like she was trying to replace my mother. And I’ve never believed any of the rumors that were spread around school, and throughout town, about my dad and Nicole having an affair before my mom died.

Other people believed it, though. People close to me believed. Josie believed. It was a topic she and I tried not to broach much, and I never dared to bring it up with my dad. It occurs to me now that it isn’t that I was always certain there was no truth to the rumor; it was that I didn’t want to acknowledge the possibility that there
could
be any truth to it.

“I’m okay,” I tell Nicole, attempting a smile. It seems obvious, now, how seriously Not Okay I was.

Nicole kneels beside me. She holds my hands. Even as an observer, I can smell her. She’s wearing the same perfume she’s worn for as long as I’ve known her.

In an instant, the thought occurs to me—who wears perfume to a funeral?

“Josie is here,” she says. “She doesn’t want to come in, honey. She’s in the hallway. Would you like to come see her?”

The nine-year-old me only nods, fresh tears filling my eyes.
Where’s Mr. Caruso?
I wonder. I don’t see him anywhere. It’s not all that surprising—he and Nicole got divorced a few months after my mom died.

I follow my younger self and Nicole as they walk toward the back of the room and into the hallway. As I’m watching us, I notice several of the funeral attendees shooting glances at Nicole. They’re almost glaring at her. She doesn’t seem to notice; her arm is around my shoulders, guiding me toward the door as I take shaky steps in my high heels.

Josie stands in the hallway, her back pressed into a corner that is covered in gaudy purple wallpaper.

I can’t help but smile when I see her. She is so young, so innocent and pretty. She’s missing one of her front teeth. Her hair is pulled into two long, light-brown ponytails. An odd fact surfaces in my mind: Nicole didn’t let Josie start highlighting her hair until she was twelve.

We hug each other tightly, holding on for a long time. Her hands are clenched into little fists around my neck. Out of total coincidence, we are wearing the same dress: black and dark green stripes on our full, knee-length skirts, black crushed velvet bodices tight around our tiny waists and chests.

“Josie, honey? Do you have something you want to tell Liz?”

Josie nods. She stares at me, wide eyed. “I wanted you to know,” she begins, her voice small and scared, “that you can come to our house whenever you want. You can even sleep over on school nights.” She glances up at Nicole. “Right, Mom?”

“That’s right.” Nicole smoothes her daughter’s hair, winding a strand around her finger in thought. “If Liz’s dad says it’s okay.”

“Thank you,” I tell her.

“I got you something,” Josie adds. She looks at her mother again. Nicole reaches into her white suede purse and removes a long, narrow velvet box. Inside, there’s a slim gold bracelet, a single charm dangling from a loop. It’s half of a heart.

“Best friends. See?” Josie holds up her left wrist. She’s wearing another bracelet, the matching half of the heart dangling from the chain. Nicole removes my bracelet from the box. Carefully, she puts it on my wrist. Josie and I hold our arms side by side, pressing the hearts together so they form a full heart that says “Best Friends.”

“I love it.” I smile at her. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She beams. For a moment she is too cheerful, as though she’s forgotten where she is.
It’s not her fault,
I think to myself now.
She was only nine
. “Come over soon, okay? We got a new Slip ’n Slide.”

Leaving Josie alone in the hallway, Nicole guides me back through the double doors, back to my seat inside the viewing room.

She leans forward to give me a long hug. “We loved your mom so much,” she whispers. “And we love you, too.”

“Mrs. Caruso?”

“Yes, sweetie?”

I gaze at her, searching her face for answers. “Where is my mom now?”

Nicole doesn’t miss a beat. “She’s safe, honey.” She gives my hands another squeeze. Whispering again, she says, “Next time you come over, I’ll show you.”

I get a kiss on the forehead. Then she walks away, toward my father.

I leave my younger self and follow her. When I was a child, I didn’t have a chance to observe so much; now it seems crucial that I pay close attention. I’m not sure why. But I’m here, aren’t I? There must be a reason for this memory. It’s like Alex said: I’m trying to put a puzzle together. But I have no idea what the picture will look like when it’s finished, which makes it hard for me to know quite where to start, or what pieces to pay attention to.

“Marshall,” Nicole says, putting her arms around him. With her mouth beside his ear, she murmurs, “She’ll never be hungry again.”