Between (15 page)

When my younger self turns on my nightstand light, I realize that I’m seeing myself at ten, maybe eleven years old. My bedroom is still decorated the way it was before Nicole redid the whole house: a border of ballet slippers is stenciled along the top edges of my cream-colored walls; my posters are all stills from shows like
The Nutcracker
and
Swan Lake
. This was before I started running; in the corner of my room that is now reserved for sneakers, there are a few scuffed ballet slippers and a pair of shiny black tap shoes. The decor, along with the footwear, are the last remnants of my mother’s influence after she died. She loved to watch my recitals. She rarely missed so much as a rehearsal. But I was never that good of a dancer, even though I took lessons from preschool up until the end of sixth grade. I was always forgetting the steps in ballet, and I could never master the complicated tap choreography.

It’s incredible to see myself as such a young girl. I wear a fitted white tank top and pink pajama bottoms decorated with—what else?—ballet slippers. There’s a softness to my facial features that is long gone now, replaced in my teenage years by an angular jaw and hollowed cheeks. My chest is nonexistent; I probably didn’t even own a training bra yet. My long blond hair is all one length, spilling over my shoulders without any hint of layers to frame my face. I watch myself as I look silently around the room before placing my bare feet on the floor, pressing my palms to my flushed cheeks. I can’t help but smile when I notice that my toenails are all intact, and painted a deep shade of dainty pink.

As innocent as my younger self appears, it’s clear that I was having some kind of a nightmare; my forehead is wrinkled in agitation, and for a minute or two I just look around the room, staring at all of my things, as though I don’t know what to do with myself.

Then, walking on tiptoes so as not to make too much noise, my younger self steals out of the bedroom. I follow through the door, down the hallway to the right, where my younger self has come to a stop outside Josie’s room.

I don’t knock. I simply open the door and go in, pattering softly now to the edge of her bed, where I put a small hand—my fingernails painted the same shade of pink as my toes—on her sleeping form, curled into a ball on her side.

“Josie,” I whisper, shaking her a little bit. “Hey, Josie.”

“Mmm.” She rolls onto her back. She blinks up at me. Her own bedside light is on; Josie has never liked the dark. Even now, at seventeen, she sleeps with a night-light. “Hey, Liz,” she smiles, yawning to reveal two rows of metal braces. “What’s wrong?”

“I had a bad dream.”

She reaches toward me, takes my hand, and squeezes it.

As I watch the two of us together, I feel such a yearning for those days, for the blissful ignorance of youth. At ten or eleven, we knew we’d be best friends forever. In the light of Josie’s room, I see that we’re both wearing our half-heart bracelets—this was a few years before we decided they were uncool and needed to be hidden.

“Here,” Josie whispers, pulling back her covers, “get in.”

My younger self climbs into bed with my stepsister. I put my arms around her waist. I rest my head beside hers, on the same pillow.

For a while we don’t say anything—we just lie there together, with our eyes closed—and I’m almost ready to blink myself back to reality, when Josie whispers, “Love you, Liz.”

“I love you, too,” my young self whispers.

“Sisters,” Josie murmurs. “Forever.”

“Forever,” I echo as we hold each other.

I could watch us together like this all night, but after a few moments, it becomes clear that all we’re doing is sleeping. It’s time to go back to reality. My heart, which does not beat beneath my chest, aches so badly for those days. At that age, I’d already lost my mother, so my innocence was gone—but life was still full of hope, full of new beginnings. I had a new family. I still had my father. The future was ripe with possibility.

I close my eyes, squeezing them shut as hard as I can, trying to erase the longing that accompanies what I’ve just witnessed. When I open them, Alex is standing beside me, staring at me with a combination of curiosity and boredom.

“There you are,” he says. “Where were you?”

I ignore the question. “I want to get out of here,” I tell him. I suddenly can’t stand being in my room anymore.

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t care. Anywhere. Out.”

Ten

When I was alive, it was easy to escape reality: I just put on my shoes and went running. But now, it seems, there is nowhere to go that isn’t gut wrenching. I am freezing, almost shivering from the feeling of dampness that clings to my bones. My feet ache. I’m tired. Despite Alex’s constant company, death is incredibly, immeasurably lonely.

On our way out of my house, we pass my father sitting in the living room alone. He’s dressed in his work clothes, but he doesn’t look like he’s in a hurry to go anywhere. He sits on the sofa, staring at the television mounted on the wall. It’s off, the screen black, but my dad doesn’t seem to realize that. He’s holding a tumbler of what looks like scotch, gripping it so tightly that his knuckles are white.

I remember my dad as such a happy guy. Now he seems hollowed. Despite his dress clothes, there are small clues in his appearance that make it obvious things aren’t quite right. Looking him over, I see that he hasn’t shaved in at least a few days. His watch—which I don’t recall ever seeing him without—is missing from his wrist. And he isn’t wearing socks—just a pair of shiny black loafers over his chubby bare feet. It’s like he’s gone through the motions of getting ready for work, for life, without any real intention of following through.

He looks from the television to his glass. He shakes it a little bit, watching as the ice cubes rearrange themselves with gentle clinking sounds. Then he cocks his head, listening.

Alex and I are quiet as we watch him. I hear sounds of upbeat chatter coming from above, my stepsister’s voice lilting down the hallway as she talks to someone on her phone. I hear her laughter.

My dad hears it, too. He closes his eyes and slumps a bit on the sofa.

He takes a sip of his drink. He chews on an ice cube. Then, slowly, he stands up and walks toward the kitchen. Alex and I follow him. My dad puts his glass in the sink. He goes to the cupboard and removes an entire bottle of scotch. He tucks it beneath his arm and heads toward the back door that leads into our yard.

“Where do you think he’s going?” Alex whispers.

“I don’t know.”

“We could follow him.”

I watch from the kitchen window as he makes his way through the backyard, heading toward the docks. If any of our neighbors see him this way, they’ll think he’s come completely undone. Maybe he has.

“I don’t want to,” I tell Alex.

“Why not?”

I look at him. The question seems ridiculous. “Because it hurts too much. That’s why not.”

Instead of following my dad, we head in the opposite direction, out the front door. As we’re standing on the street in front of my house, I stare down the road, imagining how it would feel if I could go for a run right now. To get away from Alex, from the painful scene of Josie and my friends going through my old stuff, from the sight of my father barely functioning, from death. Even though I know I can probably never go running again, I can’t help but imagine how good it would make me feel, how free. As I’m thinking about it, I wander toward the end of the block just in time to see my boyfriend stepping out onto his front porch. Immediately, I hurry toward him. I feel like I need to be with him, to be close to him.

Richie looks startling. In all the time I’ve known him, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in workout gear outside of school. But here he is now: standing in a T-shirt—it’s actually a white undershirt—and running shorts, tying the laces on his sneakers. Even though they’re technically old—I gave them to him over a year ago—they haven’t seen much use yet: they’re still white, relatively clean, and stiff looking. Richie appears unsteady on his feet. His legs are pale and not toned. It’s obvious he hasn’t been running for more than a couple of weeks, if that.

As he’s getting ready to step off the porch, Josie opens the front door to my house. She waves at Richie.

“Damn it,” he murmurs, even as he smiles at her.

“Come here,” Josie calls, waving him over.

I follow him as he walks down the street. He looks around self-consciously as though he’s afraid someone will see the two of them together.

My stepsister frowns at him. “What the hell are you wearing?” she asks, with a half giggle.

“I’m wearing clothes. I’m going running.”

“
You?
Running?”

“Yes.” He pauses. “It helps me think.”

It occurs to me that it could be more than a coincidence that Richie is setting out on a run just as I was thinking so hard about it myself. But the thought almost makes me feel too hopeful; as quickly as it surfaces, I dismiss it.

Josie twirls a piece of hair around her finger. Compared to Richie, she’s meticulously put together: her hair is curled and fluffed into perfect disarray, framing her small face that has been so carefully made up. I’ve seen her go through the process more times than I can possibly count. She is the kind of girl—I understand now that I was, too—who sets her alarm for the very early morning and gets out of bed to begin the painstaking process of self-care: Velcro hair rollers for volume. Tweezers for stray eyebrow hairs. Foundation. Bronzer. Blush. Eyeliner. Eye shadow. Eyelash curler. Mascara, mascara, mascara. Lip plumper. Lipliner. Lipstick. Lip gloss. Blotting papers to absorb any excess oil. Hairspray. Body lotion. It is amazing how much effort it takes to look just like everyone else—only better.

It’s chilly outside by mid-September, the sky blue with a few scattered, perfect clouds. There’s a breeze, which is accompanied by the near-constant sound of the brass wind chimes hanging from Richie’s front porch colliding in light, pleasant tones.

Josie hugs herself, rubbing her bare, goose-bumped arms. “How are you doing?”

“I’m okay. School’s hell, though. Everywhere I look, I’m thinking about her.” He stares at the sky. “It feels like she isn’t gone, you know? Every morning when I wake up, there’s always a moment when I think I’m going to see her again. I’ll think something like, ‘Well, I’d better hurry up, Liz hates to be late.’ And then I remember. It’s like she dies all over again, every day.”

“I know,” Josie says. “I was just saying the same thing to Caroline and Mera.” Tentatively, Josie reaches toward Richie. Her fingernails, I notice, are no longer purple, but instead a glossy shade of red. She’s had a manicure recently.

“Richie, I’ve been meaning to tell you something. I shouldn’t have told you about her and Vince,” she says. “You would have been better off not knowing.”

He stares at my house, at my car—a red Mustang, which I got for my seventeenth birthday last year—parked in the driveway. “Maybe. Maybe not.” Then he shakes his head, a lock of curly hair falling into his eyes. I want so badly to reach out and brush it away.

“No,” he says. “It’s better that I knew the truth.” He takes her hand, swings her arm back and forth. “We can take care of each other.”

Suddenly Josie looks past him. She raises her free arm and waves. “Hey, Mrs. Wilson.”

Richie glances over his shoulder. His mother stands on his front porch, watching them.

“Christ,” he says, keeping his voice low. “What does she want?”

“Oh, be nice.” Josie smiles at him. “She’s your mother.”

“Barely,” he mutters. Like I said before, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson are both successful artists. They are creative, thoughtful people, but somehow they’re painfully awful at raising a child. I heard someone say once that there are two kinds of parents: the kind who will do anything for their kid and the kind who will pay someone to do anything for their kid. Richie’s parents are the latter. It isn’t that they don’t care; it’s just that they’re really quite busy, dear.

“Richard? Can you come here for a minute?” Mrs. Wilson doesn’t return Josie’s wave. She doesn’t even smile.

“What’s the matter with her?” Alex asks. “She doesn’t like Josie or something?”

I nod. “She doesn’t like any of us. Not Josie, not my parents—”

“What about you?”

I flinch. When I look at my house again, Richie and Josie are gone, replaced by another memory. A moving van is parked in the driveway. The front door of the house is propped open with a brick. From inside, two young voices are shrieking at each other, footsteps pounding down the stairs.

“Girls! Calm down!” My father appears in the back of the truck, carrying a pile of boxes.

Nicole steps out the front door. She’s wearing a
very
tight T-shirt and jeans, her long hair tied back with a pink bandanna. She’s young, in her thirties, her cheeks flushed with hard work and excitement and dewey, newly wedded bliss. And man, is she pretty.

“Let them play, Marshall,” she says to my dad. She kisses him on the cheek. “They’re excited.” She tucks a strand of loose hair behind her ear, revealing a tiny dream catcher for an earring, impossibly small feathers dangling from the circular web.

Josie and I come rushing out behind her, our faces sweaty, both of us giggling. I almost bump into my father as he’s carrying the boxes up the walk.

“Watch it!” He jumps out of the way. Sighing, he puts the boxes on the ground and presses a hand to his back. He’s only in his midthirties, but my dad is already overweight and out of shape. Beads of sweat shine on his creased forehead. He’s out of breath. In four years, he’ll have a mild heart attack, over lunch and drinks with a client. His doctor will advise him to lose twenty pounds and stop eating red meat; he’ll promptly gain ten pounds and refuse to abandon his love for steak.

He gives the boxes a dirty look. “We should have hired movers.”

“Oh, would you relax? You’re a big boy. It’s not that much stuff,” Nicole says, waving a hand carelessly through the air. A big diamond on the ring finger of her left hand gleams in the sunlight. The accessory seems out of place among her other jewelry: the earrings, along with a chunky turquoise necklace and ring, and a wrist of bangle bracelets.