Between (11 page)

“I didn’t cheat on him!” I shout as loud as I possibly can. “I loved him, Alex. I might not have been that nice to you, but with Richie, things were different. And besides, if I had cheated on him—which I
didn’t
—why would I deny it now?” I demand. “Why would I possibly lie to you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you don’t remember yet. Or maybe you don’t want me to think you’re a bad person.”

My voice is shaky. “Alex, I am telling you the truth. Yes, I don’t remember everything from before I died, but there isn’t anything else to remember when it comes to this. I’ve known Richie since we were two years old. Something isn’t right. I never would have hurt him.”

And then, as if on cue, Richie says, “I don’t think she meant to hurt me. We’d been together so long, maybe she felt like she needed to … I don’t know, to see what else was out there.” He swallows. “Anyway, I didn’t believe Josie. I called her a liar and everything. But then she said she’d prove it to me. She drove me into Groton, to this apartment complex by the river. We found Liz’s car. It was outside the building of this guy I know.”

Richie is holding a corner of his bedspread, a maroon-and-navy-blue patchwork quilt, in his left fist. With his right hand, he tugs at the threads in the seam, working them into a fray. His eyes are still watery. As I listen to what he’s saying, I realize that I don’t remember any of it happening. Not only that, but—despite what Alex might think—it sounds completely unlike anything I would do. I don’t even
know
anyone who lives in Groton. It’s like someone has taken a cheese grater to my memory. The feeling is beyond frustrating.

But why would Richie lie? Looking at him as he picks nervously at the quilt, I know without a doubt that he believes he’s telling the truth.

“A guy you know,” Joe echoes. “What was his name? How do you know him?”

“It was this guy named Vince. Vince Aiello.” His voice cracks as he says the name out loud. “He was kind of a friend of mine. He’s older.”

“How much older?”

“I don’t know. Twenty-one? Twenty-two? Does it matter?”

“It matters if he was sleeping with Liz.”

Richie sucks in a sharp breath of air. For a moment, I expect him to defend me, to explain that I was a virgin, and that I couldn’t
possibly
have been sleeping with anyone. But he doesn’t.

“How did Liz know Vince?” Joe presses.

“I introduced them.”

“And the day you saw her car parked outside his apartment, what happened? Did you confront her?”

“No. Well, sort of. We sat there for almost an hour, until Liz finally came out. I watched her leave his apartment and go to her car, and once she got home I waited a while before I called her. I asked her where she’d been all morning.” He looks down at the quilt, still clutched in his fist. Loose threads are scattered on the floor. “She told me she’d been out shopping at the mall. She lied.” Richie looks up at Joe again. His gaze is fierce and angry. “I want to kill him,” he says.

“Who?” Joe asks.

“Who do you think? Vince.” Richie nods, like he’s giving the idea some thought. “I really do. I really want to kill him.”

“Hey. Be careful what you say to me, buddy,” Joe says. He’s trying to keep his voice light, but I can tell he’s serious. Richie doesn’t say anything else; he just stares down at the quilt again, holding it tightly.

For the first time, I notice that Joe is wearing a wedding ring. It’s a thin silver band. With the tip of his thumb, he works it back and forth over the middle knuckle of his ring finger as he stares at Richie.

“When did things start to develop between you and Josie?”

“I don’t know. A few weeks later.” He stares out the window, at the rows of boats docked along the shore, his gaze narrowing in at the
Elizabeth
, where we’d spent such a happy evening together just a few days ago. Before I died. Back when life was gentle, easy, perfect. At least I thought so.

“What’s going on with Josie is nothing,” he says. “It’s just your normal, sordid teenage drama. I used to think Liz and I were different from all that, but I guess not. Anyway, it just happened with me and Josie. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Does Josie know that?” Joe asks.

“I think so.” Richie nods, still staring at the
Elizabeth.

Joe works his wedding ring back into place. He stands up, positions himself behind Richie’s shoulder, and follows his gaze.

“What happened that night? Did you and Liz get into a fight? Did you confront her?”

“No. She didn’t know that I knew.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell her? Come on, Richie. You were angry. You were hooking up with her stepsister. I get it; you wanted to hurt her for what she’d done.”

Richie turns around. “You’re wrong. I was angry, sure. I guess that, on some level, I wanted to get back at her by messing around with Josie. And I knew I’d have to confront her eventually. I knew we’d probably break up because of what she’d done.”

Joe looks at him skeptically. “But not yet?”

“No. Not yet.”

“And why is that?”

“Because,” Richie says, looking at the boat again. He takes his thumb and holds it up in his line of vision, as if to eradicate the
Elizabeth
from his view. “I didn’t want to ruin her birthday party. I loved her too much.”

Eight

There’s so much I can’t remember about my life. I can’t recall exactly what I was doing the night I died, or a week earlier. Aside from the brief flashback that I experienced, when I saw myself with Richie in his car, I barely remember being at the junior prom at all. I can’t recall the last time I spoke to my parents while I was alive. I can’t even say for sure whether or not I was cheating on my boyfriend. But I remember running.

The act is worn into my bones; I can remember the cadence of my footsteps against concrete and earth; I remember the gradual process of awakening that took place every morning as I stepped out my front door and worked myself into an easy pace by the time I reached the end of High Street. I remember how it felt to start out cold and dry and tired, then finish sweaty and warm and exhilarated. Running was magic. It was solitary bliss. It was everything, and I miss it more than almost anything.

So there is some fierce irony to the fact that, in my own personal afterlife, I’m wearing ill-fitting cowgirl boots that pinch my already blistered toes. These boots are the only source of pain I can feel, for reasons I don’t understand at all. In life, I adored them. I never imagined they’d become a permanent part of my apparition.

Alex and I are sitting on the white linoleum against a wall of lockers on the second floor of Noank High. It’s the first day of what would have been our senior year, and there’s a palpable sadness in the hallways, thanks to the recent death of everybody’s favorite socialite. The students are quieter than usual; it’s like nobody wants to seem too happy. Outside, the flag is flying at half-mast. My unofficial parking space in the student lot remains empty. Already this morning I’ve heard kids talking about the fact that there are grief counselors hanging out in the library, waiting to console anyone who might be overwhelmed by my untimely passing.

“Was it like this after I died?” Alex asks quietly.

As much as I’m glad to have some company, there are times—like right now—when I am
so
annoyed that he’s still around. It seems like he’s always full of probing questions and biting observations precisely when I’m enjoying the solitude that comes with being a ghost, a silent observer. For a moment I’m tempted to say, “No, of course not. You weren’t popular.” But I’m not
that
bad of a person—at least not now. If I was as terrible when I was alive as Alex claims, at least I’m trying to do better in the afterlife. Instead I say, “It was kind of like this, yeah.”

But it wasn’t; not exactly. To my surprise, I find that some memories start to flash of the days following his death. I remember coming back to school last year after Alex was killed. The school did everything that was expected: lowered the flag, supplied a handful of counselors—they even orchestrated a schoolwide moment of silence during morning announcements. But I remember other things, too: the slew of yearbooks being passed around that morning, open to Alex’s tenth-grade photo, so that people could accurately remember who they were supposed to be mourning. And the moment of silence in my homeroom was interrupted when one of my friends, Chad Shubuck, let out an obnoxious, very audible fart. Almost everyone laughed.

I blink myself back into reality, beyond relieved that Alex didn’t see my memory. I feel a pang of pity for him.

I can see Chad Shubuck now, standing among a group of students in the lobby at the end of the hall, where the administration has displayed a framed, blown-up picture of me, taken from last year’s yearbook. He stares quietly at my face—it’s a fantastic picture of me—and then he slowly crosses himself, like he’s just finished a prayer.

I stare down the hallway to look for my other friends. Not ten feet away, Richie is standing at his open locker, staring at the contents. He seems lost in thought as Topher and Mera approach, their hands in each other’s back pockets.

Topher, dewey eyed and almost glistening as an all-American boy, wears a red-and-white football letterman’s jacket over his T-shirt and jeans, chews a wad of what’s undoubtedly sugarless gum (he is obsessed with oral hygiene—after all, his father
is
Noank’s most respected dentist and oral surgeon), and flashes a sympathetic smile to reveal two rows of sparkling white teeth as he leans against an adjacent locker.

“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” he says, running a hand through his tousled hair. “Being here without Liz?”

“It’s horrible.” Mera has clearly been up before dawn to work on her hair, which is styled in countless perfect blond ringlets. Her fingernails are smooth acrylic French tips. “Everybody’s gonna want to know what happened. And since I’m the one who found her, I’m the one who has to tell them.”

I knew it. I
knew
she would milk her discovery of me for every drop of attention that it’s worth. It’s so typical of her. I’m
dead
, for God’s sake. You’d think that, for once, she could restrain herself from seizing an opportunity to be the center of attention.

“Don’t tell them anything. There’s nothing they need to know.” Richie shrugs off his jacket. Underneath, he’s wearing an almost threadbare Yale T-shirt and wrinkled jeans that look like they’ve been rolled in a ball on his floor for weeks. His hair isn’t combed. There are puffy circles of grayish white beneath his big eyes. Richie has never been too fixated on his appearance, but he’s definitely far more disheveled than usual. He doesn’t seem to care a bit.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Richie,” Mera says, frowning at him, “but you look awful.”

Inside his locker, there’s a picture of the two of us taped to the door. It was taken on my parents’ front lawn, before last year’s homecoming. The photo only shows our faces and upper bodies, but there’s someone just outside the frame whose hand is slung around my shoulders, her fingertips resting on the back of Richie’s neck. It’s Josie. Richie sees it, too, and I can tell he wants to do something with the picture—maybe take it down? Throw it away?

He doesn’t do anything, though. “I have to be somewhere,” he tells Mera and Topher. He lets out a long breath; it’s like he’s trying to summon a semblance of his typically cool, confident self. But there’s a weary quality to his voice when he speaks. “What do you need?”

Topher leans in a little closer, lowering his voice. “Hey, buddy. I know it’s a rough time for all of us, but can you help a brother out?”

“What’s he talking about?” Alex murmurs.

“Shh.”

“Is he talking about drugs?”

I look at Alex. “Are you deaf as well as dead? I said
shh
.”

“What do you need?” Richie asks again, closing his locker and glancing at the clock hanging in the hallway. “I’m gonna be late, dude.”

“You know … a quarter?”

Alex shakes his head in disbelief.

“What? What’s that look for?” I demand.

“You and your group. You think you can get away with anything. Topher’s on the football team. Don’t they drug test?”

My gaze drifts to my boots. My feet are positively
throbbing
. Even though I know it won’t work, I’ve tried to take the boots off a few times, but sooner or later I look down and there they are again. It’s like magic. They are, at least for now, a permanent part of me. “There are ways around that,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“The drug tests are supposed to be random,” I explain, “but Topher was MVP last year. They aren’t going to kick him off the team.” I pause, trying to explain further without sounding like the entitled snob that I know Alex thinks I am. “I’m just saying, there are things a person can do if he doesn’t want to get caught.”

“Right. Or he could, you know, just
not do drugs
.”

“Come on, he’s a good guy.” But there’s no conviction in my voice; not after witnessing Topher’s treatment of poor Frank Wainscott in the cafeteria.

Alex looks at me with what I can only describe as suppressed horror. “Of all the people to end up dead with,” he says, shaking his head, “it had to be you, didn’t it?”

“You’re kidding me, right? I could say the same thing about you.”

“No, you couldn’t.” His tone is firm. “I’m a nice person. I never did anything to hurt anyone. But you … you and your friends.” He takes a moment to look up and down the hallway, which is starting to empty as homeroom approaches. “Admit it, Liz. Isn’t there a part of you that’s embarrassed to be sitting here with me, even though nobody can see us?”

I don’t answer him. My silence is enough of a response.

Once Topher and Mera have left, I expect Richie to go to Mr. Franklin’s room, which is where he and I have both been in homeroom since the ninth grade. But he doesn’t. Instead, Alex and I follow him down to the first floor, through the cafetorium (which is a combination cafeteria/auditorium—Noank High is a small school), and outside to the field house. He stands at a closed office door in a darkened hall and fidgets, waiting to knock.