Between (21 page)

Before they leave the room, he turns to Mera, who is still frozen, holding her cigarette. By now, it has burned down so far that it’s mostly ash, dangling at an angle from her limp hand. “Put that damn cigarette out right now,” he says, his teeth gritted.

Mera flicks the cigarette out the window.

“Good.” My father takes a deep breath. “That’s better.” He looks at Caroline—who seems to be near tears—at Josie, and finally at Nicole. “Let’s go back to bed,” he tells her.

“Sure, honey. Let’s go.”

They leave, closing the door behind them. My friends don’t say anything for a long time.

Finally, Mera says, “Wow, Josie. Liz’s dad is in rough shape, isn’t he?”

Josie stares at her. She narrows her eyes. “
My
dad,” she corrects Mera. “He’s my dad, too. You know that.” When I was alive, she was never this forceful about the idea that we might have the same father. Now that I’m gone, though, she is adamant.

“She really believes it,” I say. “Listen to her, Alex.” I look at him. “She’s convinced we have the same father. I never thought it was possible, never once.”

“But now?” He lets the words dangle with possibility in the air.

I shake my head. “Now I don’t know. I feel like I don’t know anything.”

Alex nods. Then he asks, “Do you still want to follow Richie?”

I’d almost forgotten. But I’m grateful for the interruption. Seeing my father so upset is heartbreaking. My poor dad. He seems so alone now. I feel an incredible sense of guilt for having left him. Even if I didn’t do it on purpose, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m gone.

“Yeah,” I say, my voice cracking, “let’s go.”

There is almost no moon, just a tiny slice of silver crescent hanging in the sky as if by magic as we follow Richie through town.

“I wish we knew where he was going,” I say, wincing with every step. I can feel the blisters on my toes. I can feel nerves being pinched with every motion. “You don’t know how badly this hurts. If we knew where he was headed, we could just
go
.”

“I have an idea about that,” Alex says.

“You do? Where do you think he’s going?”

“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? We’re almost there.” And he nods at the wide iron gates ahead of us in the distance. “He’s going to the cemetery.”

It’s a cool night; Richie’s feet must be freezing in his flip-flops. For a minute, I imagine how my toes would feel in a pair of sandals—so free, finally.

Almost immediately, it becomes clear where he’s headed. It should have been obvious right away. He walks past several rows of tombstones until he reaches a fresh plot that is cluttered with flowers and teddy bears. It’s my grave.

Alex and I are close together, watching him. For a long time Richie doesn’t say or do anything: he only stands there in the dim moonlight, staring at the earth. My tombstone is not up yet; according to Alex, it takes at least a few weeks for them to carve the stone—sometimes more, depending on how elaborate the marker is.

Slowly, Richie kneels, brushing his fingers against the dirt. He puts his head down. He starts to cry.

“I would have forgiven you, Liz,” he says out loud. “I don’t care what you did. I don’t know why you would have … I don’t know anything. But I would have forgiven you. I promise.”

I have tears in my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Richie,” I whisper. “I don’t know what happened. I love you.”

Alex is staring at me. “You really do,” he says.

“I really do what?”

“You really do love him.”

I nod. “Yes. I’ve loved him forever. Alex, I don’t know what’s going on, or why you and I are here together. But when I saw my dad back there, in my old room, I remembered something … Alex, I used to be different. You don’t have to believe me, but it’s true. I was just a normal little girl, and then my mom died, and everything was different after that. It’s almost like … like I thought that if I were pretty and thin and popular, if I surrounded myself with people who liked me, if I could control everything that went on in my world, then what happened to my mom wouldn’t hurt so much anymore. And my dad was willing to do anything to keep me from suffering. It made me shallow. I get that now. Alex, you have to understand, I’m sorry for how we all treated you … for how I ignored you. And for how we treated other people, too, people like Frank Wainscott. I’m sorry things were so hard for you in school. If I could go back and change the way it all happened—”

“You can’t,” he says simply. He doesn’t sound angry or compassionate. Maybe just a bit regretful, but mostly, his tone is matter-of-fact. “It’s over for us.”

I look at Richie. “It’s not over for him.”

My boyfriend kneels for a long time. Then, in a deliberate motion, he lies down on my grave. The grass beneath him is young and thin; it has barely begun to sprout over my freshly dug plot.

Richie lies on his side. He lies on top of my body, down there in the earth, and he closes his eyes.

I go to him. I lie beside him and put my arms around his body. As my sea legs make themselves known again, the ground seems to rock gently. Like last time, when I concentrate hard, I can feel Richie. But it’s also different from before, outside Alex’s house. Instead of our contact growing unbearably hot, forcing me to pull away after a few seconds, I’m thrilled to find that, this time, I can really hold Richie. The feeling is beyond wonderful. It is the most alive I’ve felt since my death. As we lie there, it occurs to me that I held him almost exactly the same way over a year ago, when he was sick in bed. And even though Richie doesn’t give any sign that he can sense me, I am almost giddy from the feel of his curly hair against my face, his clothing beneath my hands. I can feel his breath. I can hear his heart beating, feel the coolness of the damp earth beneath us.

He lies like that until he falls asleep, his breath eventually growing deep and even. He stays there all night, until the first rays of sun begin to break at the horizon. And I stay there with him—Alex watching both of us wordlessly, watching and understanding that I might not have always been the nightmare of an individual that he thought. Maybe not.

Richie sleeps, but I don’t. I stay awake, my arms around him, wishing that he could feel me just one more time. Wondering what the hell happened to put me in the ground. And fearing, more than anything in the world, that I might never find out.

Thirteen

The following Monday at school, it’s almost like none of the bizarre events from the weekend—the séance in my old bedroom, my boyfriend sleeping on my grave—ever happened. It’s high school; the popular kids are clustered together as usual at their lockers in between homeroom and first period, taking their time getting to class. For years, my friends and I have coordinated our schedules as much as possible. So it doesn’t surprise me a bit when I see that Richie has first-period English with Caroline and Josie.

Still, when I see my stepsister taking her seat next to
my
boyfriend in the back of the class, edging her desk so close to his that they’re almost touching, I can’t help but scowl.

“It’s like she’s stepping right into my place,” I complain to Alex.

He shrugs. “You guys were like sisters. She’s dating Richie now. I’m sure it comforts him, in a way. What’s the big deal?”

I stare at him. “What’s the big deal? Richie slept on my
grave
just two nights ago, Alex. He is obviously not over me. And Josie is just moving on like … like it’s a natural progression.” I shake my head, staring at her from across the room. “I never had any idea that she liked him. Not a clue.” I pause. “Not that I remember, anyway.”

“Well …” Alex hesitates.

“Well, what?”

“She thinks you two are half sisters. Right?”

I nod.

“Does it really surprise you that she’d want to step into your shoes, Liz? I mean, isn’t that what sisters do?”

I stare at the dry-erase board on the front wall of the classroom. Somebody—probably not our teacher—has written DIAGRAMMING SENTENCES IS
AWESOME
! in big block letters. The sarcasm is obvious. “But it’s not fair,” I tell him, pouting. “Lots of guys like Josie. Jason Harvatt is practically obsessed with her. She should date somebody else. I should be with Richie.”

“But you’re dead. And you aren’t with Richie anymore. You’re with me.” As quickly as the words come out of his mouth, he stumbles over them, clearly embarrassed. “I mean, you’re not
with me
with me, but we’re together in the—”

“Alex.” I give him a half smile. “It’s okay. I know what you meant.”

The seniors are reading
For Whom the Bell Tolls
, and for a few minutes Alex and I listen to a boring discussion on symbolism, which seems to drag on forever. When I look at the clock, I see that it’s only been five minutes.

“I always hated English class,” I remark. We’re sitting on the floor at the front of the room.

“Really? You don’t like books at all? And yet you said Richie wanted to be a writer.”

“He does. But that’s his thing. I never liked to read much. Just, you know, magazines and stuff.” I pause. “Well, that’s not entirely true. Sometimes if Richie read a book he thought was really great, he’d give it to me to read. There were a few I liked a lot.”

“Like what?” Alex seems genuinely interested.

“Um, let me think … well, I loved
Catcher in the Rye.
That’s Richie’s favorite book. We read it sophomore year, I think.”

“Yeah, it was sophomore year. I read it, too.” He pauses. “I loved it.”

There’s an odd moment of awkwardness. We’re both quiet. Then Alex says, shyly smiling, “Well. That’s one thing we’ve got in common.”

“Yeah.” I smile back. “It’s something.”

The awkwardness lingers. It’s clear that neither of us knows where to go from here.

“I’m bored,” I say, trying to change the subject.

“Okay. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know.” I look around. “We could remember something together.” I pause. “I mean something about me,” I add. We have yet to discuss further the memory from Alex’s life that we shared the other day. I can tell it’s not a topic that either one of us feels comfortable approaching, and I’m in no hurry to force the issue. It’s obvious he doesn’t want me in his head.

There’s a part of me that feels like it’s unfair—after all, I’ve shown him so much from my life—but I’m mostly okay with letting him keep his memories to himself. After all, it’s not like our lives intersected much while we were alive, and more than anything, I’m interested in figuring out how and why I died. What could I possibly learn from watching Alex’s memories? They have nothing to do with me.

He’s quiet.

“Or I could do it alone,” I offer. “I don’t know if I want you to come with me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to give you more evidence of what a terrible person I was.”

He studies me. “You’re more complicated than I thought, Liz. You aren’t just a superficial, spoiled brat.”

“You think I’m complicated?”

“Yes.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Let me come with you. Let’s remember something together.”

I nudge his hand away. “I kind of want to go alone.”

“Then what am I supposed to do, sit here while you space out?” Our teacher, Mrs. Davis, has transitioned from talking about symbolism to a discussion of the Spanish-American war, which I’ve gathered is the subject of the book. Oh God. I could die again, just from boredom.

“Okay,” I say, “we’ll play a game to decide.”

“We’ll what? Liz, just let me come.”

“No, I want to play a game. Let’s do rock, paper, scissors, okay?”

Alex rolls his eyes. “Fine.”

I hold out a fist. He does the same. “Ready?” I ask. “One, two, three … oh no.”

Alex is paper; I’m rock. He wins.

“Best out of five,” I plead, unable to suppress a giggle. “Best out of five.”

“No, no, no. You said you wanted to play, and we played. I won.” He clamps his hand on my shoulder again. “Now let’s go. Where are we headed?”

I shrug. “Let’s not decide. Let’s see where we end up.”

When I open my eyes, I’m still in high school. I look up and see myself standing in the doorway of my junior year English class. I can tell right away that it’s junior year because I’m limping as I walk through the doorway, and I have a bruise on the side of my face that looks
awful
.

“Oh my God,” I say to Alex, staring at myself. “This is the day I came back to school after I fell down the stairs.” I look at him. “You were already gone. Do you want to try again? We could try to go back farther—”

“No,” he says. “I want to see what happens.”

“It’s just going to be me sitting in English class—”

“No it’s not, Liz. It might be important. You can barely remember anything from last year, you’ve said so yourself. Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know how you ended up in the water?”

“Yes,” I admit. But what I
don’t
want to see is more of me acting like a total bitch. And when I let my gaze drift across the room, toward the back, I can tell immediately what kind of display we’re in for, even if I don’t remember specifically what’s about to happen.

“Just watch,” Alex says calmly. “It’s okay.” The corners of his eyes wrinkle in a half smile. “I won’t be too hard on you.”

Richie is sitting in the back of the room. He always sits in the back; he’s just that kind of guy. Normally I’d be right beside him, but as I walk in, I stop dead in my tracks: sitting next to Richie, her desk against my boyfriend’s, is Beth Follet.

Beth is on the cross-country team with me. Her parents are divorced. She lives alone with her mom, who is a dental hygienist at Topher’s dad’s office. Beth and I don’t get along. Like so many of the other girls in school, she’s always had a thing for Richie—she even went so far as to ask him to dance with her at sophomore year homecoming, while I was in the bathroom. The
nerve
. Of course, Richie said no. But now, here she is, sitting beside him like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

I walk to the back of the room, a smile plastered onto my face. “Hey,” I ask, “what’s going on here?” I stare pointedly at Beth, still smiling. “You’re in my seat.”