Between (18 page)

“Oh …,” I say, the word catching in my throat. There is genuine yearning in my voice. Now that I’m dead, I assume that I can’t gain weight. It would be like heaven if I could eat whatever I wanted without giving any thought to the calorie content. Taste, though, is a foreign feeling now; I don’t think a binge on sweets would bring me any pleasure.

“Get out. Now.” I’ve never heard Alex speak so harshly. He’s right beside me.

“Where are we? It’s your memory, isn’t it? This place is from your past.”

He doesn’t blink as he glares at me. “You know where we are. Now leave.”

A brittle-looking middle-aged woman steps between us. “Hello?” she calls. “Does anyone work here?”

She places her hands on the counter and taps her fingernails impatiently against the metal. A tennis bracelet dangles from her slim wrist. She is dressed nearly all in white, except for a red silk scarf knotted around her neck. A marquise diamond the size of a marble adorns her ring finger. Her fine gray hair is pulled into a tight bun. Even here, standing at a deli counter, she exudes class.

“Oh, man …,” Alex says, cringing as he looks at her. “Liz, you need to get out of here. I don’t want you to see this. None of it.”

Then it dawns on me; of
course
I know where we are. I’ve been here countless times with my friends. Looking around, I recognize the wall lined with racks of freshly baked bread, the charming two-person wrought iron tables at the front of the room, the huge storefront windows that offer a great view of the beach.

And now, stepping out from the back room, wiping his hands on his dirty apron as he hurries to the counter, here’s Alex. He’s younger, but not by much. We are, of course, at the Mystic Market.

“Mrs. Boyden.” He gives the woman at the counter a wide smile. “How are you?”

At the sight of him, her polished, steely demeanor softens a bit. “Alex. So good to see you.” She glances around. “I’ve brought someone with me today, but apparently she’s being shy. Chelsea? Where are you hiding?”

I tell Alex, “You never bring me with you when you remember things.”

He shrugs, but I can tell he’s only trying to be casual; he’s obviously nervous. “I don’t do it very much. We’ve been so focused on what happened to you. I had a whole year to go back over things by myself.”

I shake my head. “That’s not why. You said yourself that you don’t know who killed you yet. You must be remembering things. You don’t want to let me in, do you? Not even a little bit. We’ve been together all this time, Alex. I’ve showed you so much. But you don’t want me to see anything from your life. That’s not fair.”

“Liz,” he says, his tone growing impatient, “there’s nothing that says I have to show you my life. I don’t need your help with anything. This is private, okay? Can’t you understand that?”

From between two rows of groceries, a pretty young girl steps toward the counter. She wears a Catholic school uniform, complete with navy-blue knee socks and loafers. Her brown hair is pulled into a high, simple ponytail. She’s wearing makeup, but only a little bit, probably nothing more than some blush and lip gloss. Almost immediately, I notice that her ears aren’t pierced. Her fingernails are short and unpainted.

“But all you’re doing is working,” I say, pouting. “Anybody could walk in here and see you. What could possibly be so private about this?”

“Nothing. It’s just—nothing.” He sighs. “This is
mine
. I want to keep it that way.” And he pauses. “I don’t want anything to ruin it.”

“You think me being here is going to ruin it?” I frown. “How?”

The other Alex—the one behind the counter—smiles at the girl. Chelsea. “Hey,” he says, “how have you been? Long time no see.”

There is something odd about Alex’s expression, the tone of his voice, even the light in his eyes. And that’s not all—he appears taller somehow. He leans his arms against the countertop and rests his chin casually in his hands.

Mrs. Boyden looks back and forth between the two of them. “I picked Chelsea up from school today,” she says. “She’s spending the weekend with me.”

“I don’t know her,” I tell Alex. “Should I? Why is she wearing a uniform?”

“She goes to a Catholic school in Groton,” he mutters, clearly unhappy to be clarifying anything for me.

“Oh, yeah?” The Alex behind the counter nods with interest. “Any big plans for this weekend?”

Then it occurs to me what’s so different about him in this memory. He is happy. Calm. Relaxed. More than anything, though, he’s confident.

“Look at you,” I say, grinning at him. “Flirting like a pro.”

“Stop it.” He almost looks ready to cry.

“Alex, what’s the matter? It’s okay. We’re in this together, you know? We’re both dead. I’m not going to make fun of you, I promise.”

“Whatever.” He stares at the floor. “It’s not that.”

“Then tell me,” I demand. “What is it?”

But he ignores the question, choosing instead to focus on his former self with Mrs. Boyden and Chelsea. “Oh, I don’t try to fool myself into thinking that Chelsea wants to spend her evenings with me anymore,” Mrs. Boyden says. “She’s almost fifteen. She wants to go out and have fun with kids her own age, not stay home with her grandmother. Right, dear?”

Chelsea blushes. She shrugs. “I don’t know many people here, Nana.”

“She likes to go for walks,” Mrs. Boyden continues. “We live right along the beach. Did you know that, Alex?”

Alex shakes his head. “No, I didn’t. That’s great.”

Mrs. Boyden beams. “It’s a lovely property. Mr. Boyden and I had it built shortly after he retired. Of course, we’re only here from April to August—it’s too cold for us old folks the rest of the year. Chelsea will be done with school next week, and I’m trying to talk her into staying with us for the summer.” She winks at Alex. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Alex says. “You’d meet lots of people, Chelsea.”

She brightens a bit. “Could you introduce me to some of your friends?”

“Sure. I know tons of people.” He pauses. “I’m older than you, though. Most of my friends will be juniors next year.”

“Alex,” I say, “this is only a few months before you died. Isn’t it?”

“Yes.” He nods.

“So you never got to take her out?”

He frowns. He doesn’t answer.

“What do you like to do when you’re not working?” Chelsea asks. Nervously, she begins to wind a thick strand of hair around her index finger. She’s so cute.

Alex stands up straighter. “Go to parties, mostly,” he says. Then, with incredible nonchalance, he adds, “And I spend a lot of time with my girlfriend.”

I stare at Alex. He won’t look at me.

“Oh. You, um, you have a girlfriend?” Chelsea asks. The poor girl looks like someone has just stolen her ice-cream cone.

Alex nods. “Yeah. We’ve been together almost a year.”

By the look on Alex’s face, I can tell this wasn’t true. “Why did you lie?” I ask him. “She liked you, Alex. I don’t understand.”

He continues to look at the floor. “You wouldn’t.”

“Well, I mean, of course I wouldn’t! It doesn’t make any sense. Here’s a perfectly nice girl who obviously has an interest in you, and you’re totally pushing her away. Why would you do that?”

He gives me a sudden, fierce look. “Because I
didn’t
have a ton of friends. I
didn’t
get invited to parties. And if she knew all that—if she knew the truth—she never would have liked me in the first place. She didn’t really like me. She liked who she thought I was.”

I shake my head. “You don’t know that.”

“You heard her grandmother. They live along the beach. They’re rich.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Alex,” I ask, “don’t you get it? You could have taken her out, let her get to know you. At least you could have gone on one date, and probably more than one. But you decided to lie to her instead. You didn’t even want to try.” I shake my head. “And you call me and my friends fake.”

“I want to go back now,” he says.

“Of course you do.” But I don’t move; I just continue to stare at him.

My gaze is obviously making him uncomfortable. “I don’t want to talk about this, Liz.”

“Did you remember this before now? Did you remember lying to her?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

“Don’t you see? You told me yourself—all these memories we’re reliving, that we’re seeing for the first time, it’s like we need to realize something about ourselves. What are you supposed to understand, Alex? Think about it.”

“I have thought about it. And in the future, I’d like to think about it alone.” To drive the point home, he adds, “By myself. Without your help.”

“Okay. Fine, then.” I sniffle. “Whatever.”

“Thank you.” He reaches toward me, putting his hand on my wrist. “Ready?”

I take one last look at the old Alex as he stands behind the counter. Mrs. Boyden and Chelsea are leaving now. As soon as they’re gone, Alex turns around. He takes a few deep breaths. He shuts his eyes and tilts his head back. Then he walks toward the back room. As he steps through the doorway, he kicks the wall hard with a sneakered foot.

“I’m ready,” I say, nodding. A part of me wants to hug him after what I’ve just seen. But I know that even my grip on his arm is bad enough. Everything I was, and everything I represented—it wasn’t just that he disliked me and my friends, I realize. It was so much more complicated than that.

Once we’re back, it seems that there is nowhere comfortable: not here at Alex’s house, not anywhere. Aside from my dad’s obvious grief, my house is too full of life and energy, my stepsister and friends so clearly moving on. But I’m beginning to think that any place is better than here, the atmosphere absolutely suffocating, the grief so palpable it almost seems to breathe around us.

“Can I ask you something?” Alex looks up at me, leans against the piano. His forearm resting against the keys produces a crush of sound that makes me wince. “Sure,” I say, positive he won’t ask me anything about what we’ve just seen together. He undoubtedly wants to change the subject. “Did you ever think this would happen?” he asks. “That you’d die while you were still young?”

There’s a sound from the stairwell. A cat, a fat calico with long, thick whiskers and a puffy tail that sweeps the air as though cutting through invisible netting, struts into the room. Alex was right about animals; there is no doubt it can see us: it strolls directly to Alex and weaves in and out of his legs, purring, arching its back, and finally settling at his feet. I’m not sure why—it isn’t like we can really communicate with it—but knowing the cat can see us, like being able to hear Alex playing piano, makes me feel reassured somehow, certain that our ties to the living world have not yet been entirely cut.

And I feel such sympathy for Alex all of a sudden. It’s not only because of what I’ve just seen. Maybe it’s also because we’re in his home, which is cloaked in such sorrow in the wake of his passing.

“Death was familiar to me, in life,” I tell him.

He blinks at me. “Because of your mom?”

I nod. “Yes. It’s hard to explain. It’s like … it’s like it had a place in my heart. When I was nine …” Just saying the words out loud hurts so badly. But suddenly I want him to know the whole story, the one I’ve been holding back on telling him since we ended up together. I want him to see that I was a little girl once—that, like him in the photographs on the piano, there was a time when I was innocent and kind and knew very little of the social echelons that would come to dictate my life as a teenager. I want him to know what happened to me, to understand that it changed everything.

“I want to show you something,” I tell him.

He blinks a few more times. “What?”

“Put your hand on my shoulder.”

He’s hesitant. “Why?”

“Alex … come on.” My tone is gentle. “It’s okay. There’s something I want you to see.”

So he does. As soon as I feel his touch, I close my eyes. And we’re there.

It’s a summer day in the middle of the afternoon. I am nine years old, and my dad is at work. It’s a Tuesday. I’ll never forget this day.

“Look at you, all dressed up,” Alex remarks, not unkindly. We’re standing in my parents’ bedroom. There I am, just a kid, walking back and forth across the room in a pair of my mother’s strappy high heels. I’m wearing a floor-length fur coat and dainty pillbox hat—both my mother’s—and striking poses in front of the mirror, hands on my hips, sashaying like a pro while I bat my eyelashes and kiss the air. My lips are a shade of red called—I’ll never forget,
never
—crimson heat. I’m wearing mascara and eyeliner and big pink circles of blush, and as I watch myself, I remember so clearly how I could barely believe how lovely I looked. My fingernails are press-ons. I hold a pen between my index and middle finger and bring it to my mouth with a deep inhale, pretending to smoke. Just like my mom.

As I begin to shakily execute a spin before the mirror, this amazing sound rips through the house, the kind of sound that is undoubtedly accompanied by a huge mess. I stare across the room, at the closed door to my parents’ bathroom, where my mom is taking a shower. It takes my nine-year-old self a few seconds to realize what I’m looking at.

“What is that?” Alex asks.

I can barely talk. All I can do is stare. I thought it would be different now, but I’m quickly realizing that seeing it happen all over again is no less horrifying than it was the very first time, nine years ago. “Just wait,” I manage to whisper.

From the crack beneath the door, water starts to trickle into the room, slowly at first, then in quiet, horrible gushes that absorb immediately into the white carpet. It’s like watching a magic trick: as quickly as the carpet grows wet, it turns red.

“Let’s go, okay?” I say to Alex, glancing frantically at my younger self, aware of what’s about to happen and suddenly sorry that I’ve brought him here. I thought I could handle this, but I can’t. I don’t want to see it, not again. Once—when I was only nine!—was enough.

But he shakes his head. “I want to know, Liz.”

“Then you stay. I’m going.”

“No.” He tightens his grip on my shoulder. “I can’t stay without you. Liz—please?”