Between Here and Forever (7 page)

eighteen

Dad gets home late that night, long after even
Mom has gotten home from the hospital. I’m still up, sitting in Tess’s room again, looking at all the things she brought home from college and was going to take back. Laundry, books, some pictures. Her laptop. Her nice, shiny laptop.

I have a computer, sort of. It’s the one Dad got back when Tess was sixteen. I got it when she went away to college, and by then it was still sleek-looking but bordering on outdated. Now it’s basically useless, and the hard drive that Tess carefully wiped clean, her “gift” to me (“It’s just like new, almost!”) churns whenever I turn it on, and if I open more than one program, it freezes.

Tess had a job at college, filing papers for some archive project the library was doing. The school gave all incoming freshmen laptops, but Tess saved her money and got a nicer one, and part of me wants it.

I could use it for just a little while, until she wakes up. I could experience being able to write papers without having to save them every ten seconds, look something up online without wondering if the browser will be able to show the whole page.

I turn her computer on, and am met with a password screen. I didn’t expect that, but I guess it’s something you have to do in college.

I try Tess’s birthday: month-day-year.

Nothing.

I try it backward.

Nothing again.

I try her name, then Beth’s name and everyone else she’d ever talked about from college, all the guys smiling at her in the pictures she’d brought home.

Still nothing.

“Abby?” Dad says, and I freeze, fingers hovering over the keyboard, but he doesn’t ask me anything else, just says, “I was out for a walk. I used to—I haven’t gone on a long walk in ages.”

He comes over and picks up the pictures lying next to the laptop. “She looks—doesn’t Tess look happy?”

I nod, a little frightened by the intense and yet somehow lost look on his face.

“I hope she was,” he says, looking down at the pictures.

“Is,” I say, and he blinks at me.

“She is happy,” I continue. “That’s who Tess is. She’s happy, she’s pretty, and everyone likes being around her. Just look at the photos. She’s happy. That’s Tess.”

“Her fingernails match her outfit,” he says, and I look closer, see that they are the same pinky-red as her shirt.

“Just like Mom.”

“Just like Mom,” he says. “When she was in high school, her best friend, Lauren, would talk about that sometimes, about how Katie always made sure her nails matched her outfits.”

“You used to talk about Mom’s nails with her best friend? The Lauren Mom talks to all the time?”

“I used to—I dated Lauren,” he says quietly. “Back before—well, a long time ago. Before your mom and I really knew each other.”

“Oh,” I say, because what else can I say? I don’t know what’s weirder, that Dad went out with Mom’s best friend before he dated Mom, or that I’m finding it out now, in the middle of the night.

The fact that Dad dated Mom’s best friend is definitely weirder. I mean, Lauren? She’s come to visit before, with her husband, Evan, and their kids and everything. And I never even guessed that … I mean, Dad? And Lauren? If Tess knew, she’d freak out.

Tess. She’d know what to do now, what to say. Shocked or not—and she would be—she’d appreciate this moment for something, while I—I don’t even know what to say.

I settle for “I’m going back to bed,” and start to head to my room.

“Did you really see her move her eyes?” Dad asks.

I stop and look back at him.

“Yes.”

“So you think—you think she can wake up?”

I nod, surprised he’s even asking this. It’s not like you can fake a coma, and Tess has so much to live for. The pictures he holds are proof of that, of Tess leading the life she’s always had: easy, full. Happy. “Don’t you?”

“I’d do anything to have her come back to us.”

“I know,” I say. “And she will. I mean, this is Tess, Dad.”

He smiles, and I slip away, go to bed. I don’t sleep though, and it’s a long time before Dad leaves Tess’s room, almost daylight, and I wonder what he saw in those pictures that had him asking the things he did. I wonder if there are things I’m not seeing.

nineteen

I get to the hospital early the next afternoon because
I got out of school early. My last two classes were canceled so we could all sit through an assembly about improving our academic performance, and there was no way I was sticking around for that.

It’s too early for Eli to be here, but I look for him anyway. I don’t see him, and why should I?

I remind myself of that when I’m disappointed.

If only I could wire my brain to think the way it should, instead of the way it does.

I head up to see Tess, but when I’m buzzed in to the unit I stop, frozen, and stare into Tess’s room.

Beth is there. Beth, who hasn’t come to see Tess since before classes started up again, and when she left the last time, something about the look on her face, a sort of bitter sadness, made me think she was never coming back. I didn’t say anything to anyone about it, but I was right.

Or at least, I thought I was.

“Beth?” I say as I walk into the room.

“Hey, Abby,” she says, and moves back from where she was sitting, pushing her chair away from Tess’s bed. She’s been holding Tess’s hand, and I watch as she pulls her fingers away, her thumb smoothing over Tess’s as she lets go. Her hair is longer than when I last saw her, down to her shoulders, and chunks of it have been colored a deep, rich purple.

“You don’t have to move,” I say, sitting down in the other chair. “When did you get here?”

“A little while ago,” Beth says. “I wanted—I was just thinking about her yesterday and I thought …” She trails off and touches Tess’s hair briefly, like it pains her. “She’s gotten so thin.”

I look at Tess, at the hollows under her cheekbones, at the frail length of her arms. I don’t see anything different, but then I see her all the time. Beth will see things I don’t.

“Are you going to stay over? I know my parents would love to see you.”

Beth shakes her head. “I don’t—no offense, Abby, but I didn’t want to see anyone. I just … I was cleaning up her room, putting Tess’s things into boxes to send back here, and I started thinking about her.”

“Wait, send her stuff back? You don’t have to do that. She’s going to need it—”

“I—I have a new roommate, Abby, and I can’t … I can’t keep Tess’s things around.”

“Can’t? Why?”

Beth’s mouth tightens. “Abby, I—I have a life.”

“Oh. Okay. Don’t let me or Tess keep you then,” I say. “When Tess wakes up, I’ll be sure to tell her you decided you couldn’t be her roommate anymore. That’ll be nice to hear, don’t you think?”

“I should go,” Beth says, and stands up, looks down at Tess with her mouth trembling, and then looks at me. “Look, about me and Tess living together. Before the accident, we talked, and Tess said she was going to move out. We—”

“Hey, I thought you might be here. I came early because I wanted to—oh,” Eli says. “I didn’t see—Hi,” he says to Beth. “I was looking for Abby.”

“Hey,” I say at the same time Beth says, “Hi,” and then turns back to me, saying, “You’re bringing guys with you when you visit your sister?”

“He’s here to see her,” I say. “Unlike her so-called friends, who decide to disappear and then show up and announce ‘Oh, hey, I’m getting rid of her things because I don’t feel like waiting for her to move back.’”

“Like I said, before the accident, Tess and I—”

“Um, should I come back later?” Eli asks, and that’s when I see it. Over the sound of Eli’s and Beth’s voices, I see Tess.

I see her eyes moving behind her closed eyelids, like a part of her is listening.

“Tess,” I say, and lean over, grab her hand. “Tess, I saw that. Come on, open your eyes.”

But she doesn’t.

twenty

Beth leaves, slipping away when the nurses are
looking at Tess and we’re all waiting outside the room. I should have noticed, but I don’t because I am watching Eli, who is standing with his arms folded across his chest again, looking almost as freaked-out as he did yesterday.

“Do you need to go get a drink or some air or something?” I ask, and that’s when I notice Beth is gone.

“Crap,” I say. I hadn’t been looking at Eli that much. Or so I thought. “Beth couldn’t even stay and say good-bye to Tess?”

“Is that who was with you?”

“Yeah, her roommate,” I say, and notice that under his crossed arms, Eli is tapping the fingers of both hands against his shirt. “You don’t have to stay, you know. I’m sure Tess is going to wake up now, and of course you can come back and see her because I know you’ll want to, but for now—”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m going—I’ll be in the cafeteria.”

And then he leaves. Or, more accurately, bolts.

I wait for the nurses to come out. When they do, I’ll have to wait for them to call the doctor, and for the doctor to show up, but I have enough money to buy a magazine and I’ll read it while I wait and wait and eventually the doctor will come and tell me how long it’ll be until Tess opens her eyes for good and how long it’ll be until she can sit up. Walk.

Come home.

Unfortunately, none of that happens. The nurses don’t see any change in Tess. I explain about her eyes, and I’m told that “emotional upset’’ can “be stressful for family,” and before I know it, I’m walking out of the unit fast, my stomach churning, my eyes burning.

I open the stairwell door, and then, with a sob rising up out of me, take my bag and throw it as hard as I can down the stairs.

Why isn’t anyone else seeing what I do? Why? I know I’m only seventeen, but that doesn’t make me a liar or stupid or both. I know what I saw.

I wipe my eyes, blinking hard to stop the tears, and head to the cafeteria. Right now, if I go back to Tess’s room, I’m afraid I’ll scream. Or cry. Or both.

I wonder if my parents will hear about what happened. I know they will. What will they think? Will they think I’m a liar? Be disappointed? Both?

My parents have never been disappointed in me, but if Tess doesn’t wake up, if I become all they have, how will they be able to avoid it? How can they not look at me and think of everything Tess could have done?

How can they not see how obvious it is that I can’t ever be her?

I don’t want to let them down, but I will. I let myself down so easily, so stupidly, and there is no way I can ever be like Tess. I can’t be perfect. I can’t make everyone happy. I can’t make everyone want to be me.

This shouldn’t make me angry, but it does. I don’t want to even try to be Tess. I wish she’d just gone back to school after the party. But no, she had to come see my parents again. She wanted to talk to them about her classes, ask for their advice, and thank them for being there for her.

In other words, be the perfect daughter while I skulked around wishing I was anywhere else. I didn’t go to any parties on New Year’s Eve, went over to Claire’s and ate stale microwave popcorn with her while people on television gushed about how next year would be the best one ever and introduced musical acts who lip-synched poorly and exhorted us to “Celebrate!” until I told Claire my New Year’s resolution was to never ever say the word “Celebrate!” like it was a command.

I head into the cafeteria, buy a soda from one of the vending machines against the far wall, and pop the top, glancing around the room. Normally I sit by the plastic tree in the corner, watching people look out at the river and silently counting down how long I have until the nurses will be done with whatever they are doing and I can go back to Tess.

I count because if I don’t, I could easily get sucked into looking out the window. Into watching the river.

Into getting up, leaving, and never coming back.

The hospital is depressing. It’s full of death waiting, just waiting, and Tess’s unit is so silent, like the world has gone away, and if I could, I wouldn’t ever come here.

I come here—I am here—not because it’s the right thing to do, but because I want Tess to be here, really here.

I want her out of this place and back in her life. I want her back at school.

I want life to be like it was after she went to college. I was still in her shadow but not directly under it. Not weighed down by it. Even Tess couldn’t fill up Ferrisville from far away. She was a memory. A strong one, but still, just that.

But now she’s here, she’s a tragedy, and she defines me all over again.

And that’s when I see Eli sitting on the other side of the room, looking at me.

I force myself to look right at him even though I don’t know what to do when he looks at me. Why is he even looking at all?

He lifts a hand, then waves.

There is hesitation there—I see it and it stings, and I hate myself for that—but he waves.

Run.

That’s what I want to do. I want to run and run and run until I am far away from here, from Ferrisville, from everything. I want to run until I can look at myself and not wish I were more like someone I will never be anything like.

I want to run but I know what happens when you pretend things can be different. I held Jack and thought he could love me, but he couldn’t. He didn’t.

I thought I was free when Tess left for college but now I am tied to her so tightly I am here, spitting and snarling and trying to wake her up.

I am here and once again there is a guy in front of me, a guy who will only ever see Tess, and deep down, in a place I have tried to destroy, part of me sees him and wants. Wants him, wants him to see me.

Stupid. So, so stupid. I square my shoulders and walk over to Eli because I will remind myself why I am here. Why he is here.

I will remind myself that everything is about Tess.

I will remind myself that I’m nothing when put next to her.

twenty-one

“Hey,” Eli says when I reach his table. “I—I was
going to come back in a little while. I just thought that with everything going on, you might need some space.”

I shrug, because I don’t know what to do with his kindness. I don’t … I don’t know what to do with someone like him. I don’t know why he would even want me to sit with him.

Also, he is looking at me, and away from the fluorescent lights of the hospital, sunlight from outside glinting in and making the river look almost beautiful, he is—it’s like time should be frozen around him. I want to trace—touch—his mouth, his neck, and the hidden hollow of his throat peeking out from his shirt.

I think all that—want all that—and it still doesn’t capture how he looks.

I’m staring. I know I am. The thing is, he’s staring back.

Of course, I am the one gawking at him.

“So,” I make myself say as I sit down and drink some of my soda. “Do I have something on my face?”

“No,” he says. “I was just thinking about stuff you’ve said—about all of this. And okay, no offense, but you’re kind of … it’s like I’m not even an actual person to you.”

“I think you’re a person,” I say, stung. “I just …” I swallow, because I can’t say
You’re beautiful and I’m afraid of you.
“I’m sorry I’m not drooling all over you like everyone else must, but I guess I can fix that. How’s this?” I arrange my face into a slack-jawed look of awe (sadly, it comes quite easily) and look at him.

“I can’t help how I look,” he says, like he’s got horns growing out of his head or something.

This is making me nervous. He’s making me nervous. “Okay, I—I think you’re perfect for Tess, and yeah, it’s because of how you look. Or it was, before I realized that you’re nice too. But you—I mean, you know what you look like. You’ve seen a mirror before and everything after all, right?”

“Okay,” he says, shrugging.

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, and then hesitates for a moment. “Are your—are your parents like you too? Do they come visit every day?”

“Yeah,” I say, and finish my soda, pushing the can’s sides in. “They pretty much live here.”

“I haven’t seen my parents since last year,” he says.

“Oh, so you board at Saint Andrew’s?”

“No,” he says. “I live here, in Milford. I just—I haven’t seen them since … it’ll be a year in two weeks and one day. They both travel a lot, and thought I should … they thought sending me to school here would be good.”

“Is it?”

He shrugs. “It’s different. Milford is very …”

“Scenic?”

“Small,” he says. “Milford feels small to me.”

I bet he’s from L.A. or something. “Where did you live before?”

“Connecticut.”

Not what I expected. But then, this whole conversation has been like that, hasn’t it? I toss my soda into the trash can near us. “You miss it?”

“Not really,” he says. “But at least there people didn’t—I get tired of explaining what I am to people here.”

“Well, even in Milford, there aren’t many people as—I mean, you’re like good-looking times a hundred,” I say. “When Tess wakes up, she can help you deal with it.”

He stares at me.

“I mean the fact that I’m not white,” he says. “I get tired of explaining that.”

“Oh. I hadn’t—I mean, I didn’t think …”

“You think people here don’t care?” Eli says. “They care. Everyone’s always, ‘Oh, it’s so great that Saint Andrew’s embraces diversity,’ which means, ‘Oh my God, there’s a non-white boy attending, test scores might slip, and my darling Winthrop might not get into Yale!’”

I laugh because he’s right, that is how people over here talk, and when he looks at me, I say, “No, it’s not—it’s just—that
is
how they talk. Once in a while the school sends their choir over to sing at the town retirement home, and the guys act like walking through town is so daring. Like, ‘Look at me! I’m in a place where people don’t have numbers after their names!’ I just never thought—I mean, I wouldn’t think you—”

“I know what you think about me,” he says, and for the first time, there’s something sharp in his voice.

I swallow, hard, and wonder why there’s such a look of confusion and longing in his eyes. Must be about how things are for him here. I can understand that, and take a deep breath. “It really sucks that people are assholes to you. How come you don’t tell your parents?”

“My dad grew up here,” he says. “So it’s not like he didn’t know what would happen to me.”

“Wait, your dad grew up in Milford? Do you have relatives here? Wait, of course you do. Why don’t they tell all the assholes to—?”

“It’s … complicated,” he says. “Have you ever known someone who lived in their own little world?”

“Like, an imaginary one?”

“No, just like—I don’t know. The past, basically.”

I shake my head.

“Well, that’s how my family is. They all want things to be like they used to be.”

“I guess I do get that,” I say slowly. “I want Tess to wake up because—I mean, I want her to wake up just because, but I also—it’s like everyone’s life is frozen because Tess is that way.”

“You don’t like the word ‘coma,’ do you?” he says.

“I know she’s in a coma, I know what the doctor says. But you don’t—‘coma’ is this word without hope, this word that means gone, and Tess isn’t gone.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Yeah, you did.”

He pauses for a moment. “Here’s the thing. I … I’m half Japanese, part black—and this is what counts in Milford—part white,” he says quietly.

“And?”

“And that, just now, was me telling the one person who doesn’t care what I am exactly what I am,” he says. “It’s—you know. You don’t like to say ‘coma.’ I don’t like being divided into little pieces of color. And I … let’s just say I understand what it’s like to be angry. But you … you’re so—”

Horrible.
I wait for it, or some word like it.

He swallows.

“Strong,” he says very softly. “I think you’re strong.”

“Strong?” My heart starts to pound, and he nods.

And then he says, “And sad. You’re … I think you’re the saddest person I’ve ever met. It’s like you’re drowning in it.”

I push away from the table and stand up so fast my chair falls over as I rise. I grab it before it hits the ground, then slam it into the table as I grab my bag.

And then I pretty much race out of the cafeteria. I force myself not to run, but I’m moving fast and my eyes are stinging and I’m angry, I tell myself, I’m leaving because I’m angry.

But I’m not. I’m scared.

I’m scared because he saw me. Because he sees me.

“Abby!”

I hear him behind me, but I ignore him, cutting around a cluster of people waiting by the elevators and heading for the entrance.

When I get outside I force myself to stop. I know he isn’t going to follow me. I am not the kind of girl that guys chase, much less guys like Eli.

I’ll find him on Monday and I’ll just take him straight in to see Tess. No more talking to him.

“Abby,” he says right behind me, and to my embarrassment, I jump, I’m so startled.

“Do I look like I want to talk to you?” I say, trying to throw as much anger as I can into my voice, but he came out here, he came after me, and I don’t sound very angry at all.

I sound frightened.

“No,” he says. “But I—about what I said before, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t upset me.”

He looks at me then, and I can tell he knows I’m lying. Hell, I know I’m lying and doing a crappy job of it too.

“Okay, you did upset me,” I say. “I don’t want or need you feeling sorry for me.”

“I don’t—”

“Yeah, you do. Drowning in sadness? I look like that to you? Really?”

“Yes.”

That’s it. One word. He doesn’t say it with any sort of force or anger or anything like that. He just says it like it’s true and I find myself spinning away from him again.

“No, wait,” he says, touching my arm, and I still. “I wish … I see what you’re doing here. Every day you come and you hope and you—you’re so fierce. So determined. And I wish … I wish I could be like that.”

I force myself to look at him. To say something that makes this about him again because I can’t believe he sees things that aren’t grubby and awful in me. “So you could go home?”

“So I—so I could do a lot of things,” he says, and shoves his hands into his pockets. “Do you … do you want me to meet you tomorrow?”

“It’s Saturday.”

“I know.”

“I come at night,” I tell him, and I’m not ashamed of having no life, I’m not. Except I haven’t ever been somewhere with a guy on a weekend night. (Or day, for that matter.) “My parents come during the day and I come—they let you stay till eight, so I usually come around seven.”

“Okay.”

“Oh.” I can’t help it. I didn’t think he’d agree. I thought he’d have plans.

But then, Eli is rapidly turning out to be a lot more complicated than I thought he was.

“So I’ll meet you in the waiting room by—by where Tess is?” he says, and I nod, then turn around and walk off to the bike rack.

“See you,” he says, but I pretend I can’t hear him. Not only is Eli more complicated than I thought, he’s also a lot more interesting.

He’s …

No, I tell myself.
No.
He’s nothing to me. He’s for Tess. She’ll wake up. She’ll see him. He’ll see her. That’s all it will take. That’s all it ever takes, and then he’ll be hers and I’ll be …

I’ll be just fine.

I will.