Between (6 page)

“I’m afraid I’ll mess up,” I say to my mom; I’m clearly nervous. I’m maybe six years old. My mother is still painfully thin—I don’t remember a time when she wasn’t—but she looks happy. She always seemed to enjoy my recitals. Beside her, balanced on the lip of the sink, is a makeup bag. She kneels in front of me, her eyes narrowed as she carefully swirls blush onto my young cheeks.

“You won’t mess up, honey. You know all the steps. I’ve seen you do it. You’ll be great.”

“Can I wear mascara?”

She smiles. “Sure you can.”

“Will Daddy be mad?”

“Because I’m letting you wear makeup? No, he won’t be mad. You look like a princess. You look beautiful.”

“Daddy says I don’t need makeup to be pretty.”

My mom bites her lip, hard. She fumbles through the makeup bag, pulling out a yellow tube of mascara. “Open your eyes wide,” she tells me. “Look up. I’m going to show you how to do this.”

After she’s finished doing my makeup—blush, mascara, even lipstick and eye shadow—she puts her hands on my shoulders and stares at me. “You’re perfect,” she says.

“Really?” I fidget in my slippers.

“Yes, really.” She kisses me on the tip of my nose. “My perfect little girl.”

I want
so badly
to be inside my younger self, to feel her touch. But all I can do is watch.

“Mrs. Greene says it doesn’t matter what a person looks like on the outside. She says the only thing that matters is being beautiful on the inside.” Mrs. Greene was my dance teacher. I pause, thinking. “But I think it’s important to be pretty on the outside, too. Isn’t it, Mommy?”

My mother hesitates. “It’s important to be pretty on the inside,” she says. “It matters a lot, Elizabeth. But you’re a girl. It’s different for girls.” And she gives me another kiss on the nose before she stands up and takes me by the hand, leading me out of the bathroom.

As I follow, I see that my dad is waiting for us in the hallway, where there’s a crowd of other parents with their little ballerinas, getting ready for the recital to start. When he sees me, when he notices my heavily made-up face, his own face turns a deep red.

“What are you doing?” he whispers to my mom. He’s obviously angry.

“She’ll be on stage, Marshall. I want her to stand out.”

“She already stands out. She’s half a foot taller than everyone else, and she’s rail thin.” My dad flashes me a forced smile. “Like a real ballerina.”

“It’s just a little blush.” My mother frowns. “It’s nothing. Just to bring out the color in her cheeks.”

“She looks like a goddamned geisha,” my father mutters.

“What’s a geisha?” I ask, gazing up at them. “Are geishas pretty?”

My parents stare at each other. My father positively glowers at my mother, who is expressionless now, her blank look defiant and final.

“Geishas are pretty, yes,” she tells me, “but not as pretty as you.” And she kneels down again, leans close, and whispers in my ear. As I’m watching the three of us in the memory, I have to step closer and strain to hear what she says.

“You’re the prettiest girl here,” she whispers. “You always will be.”

My father walks away from us, into the auditorium.

I’ve seen enough. I blink and blink, willing myself to be back in the present.

“Where’d you go?” Alex asks. “What did you see?”

“None of your damn business.”

He smiles widely. “Well, it’s good that you’re back. You were about to miss the show.”

I start to cry again as my friends quietly find seats inside the boat. I’m crying because I know that this is real, that I’m truly dead, but also because of the aching that remains inside from the memory I’ve just seen. I’d never realized before that my parents had problems. Everybody’s parents fight sometimes. But I get the feeling the tension I witnessed between the two of them—in our whole family, really—was nothing new. As difficult as the memory was to witness, though, it made me want to be with my mother even more.

Everybody’s parents fight
, I think again. My dad and Nicole fight sometimes. It’s not like my parents’ marriage was a disaster. Sure, I can remember the rumors clearly, even though I wish I couldn’t, but I know they aren’t true. No matter what anybody else might think.

“Would you pull yourself together?” Alex asks.

“Shut up.”

He raises an eyebrow but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he turns his attention to the scene unfolding inside the boat. Together we watch.

A couple of my friends—Mera and Topher—are openly smoking cigarettes, their fingers shaking, silent tears running down their cheeks. Everyone is white, shocked into paleness, their summer tans nowhere in sight.

Without a word, my stepmom, Nicole, goes first to Mera, then to Topher, taking both of their cigarettes. She drops one of them into an empty beer bottle and keeps the other one for herself. Nicole quit smoking a few years ago, when my dad had his heart attack. I guess she figures now is as good a time as any to start up again.

Once everybody is sitting down, Joe Wright takes a seat in the captain’s chair. He’s holding a tiny spiral notepad and a pen. It seems like an impossibly small tool for solving the mystery of how I ended up dead. There’s another cop standing beside him, also holding a notepad. His name tag reads SHANE EVANS.

Joe Wright clears his throat. “Okay, kids.” He takes a deep breath and rubs an invisible spot on his forehead, like this whole situation is giving him a headache. “Let’s start at the beginning, all right? Tell me what happened.”

Nobody says anything for a good long minute.

“I know you kids were partying here. It was her birthday, right?”

“Liz.” Richie stares at the hardwood floor of the boat. “Her name is Liz.”

“And you are? That’s a good place to begin, actually—let’s get all your names, and you can tell me what you remember from last night. One by one.”

“It’s fascinating,” Alex whispers, as though they might hear us.

“What is?” I can’t stop looking at my dad and Nicole. They are both trembling, probably from shock. I would do anything to put my arms around them right now, to really feel them, and to have them realize my touch.

“I’ve never seen the cool kids in such disarray. Your friends don’t even have on makeup. They don’t look so hot without it. Don’t you think?”

I scowl at him. “When would they have had time to put on makeup? Do you think they’re really that shallow?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.” He squints. “Especially Josie and Mera. You three were the most superficial people I’d ever met. You know what my friends and I used to call girls like you? Girls who had everything handed to them on a silver platter, who only cared about how they looked and who was dating the most popular guy?”

“What?”

His grin grows wider. “We called you bitches. You girls were straight-up bitches.”

The comment stings. Coolly, I say, “Funny, I thought it might be a trick question. I assumed you didn’t have any friends.” Right away, I’m sorry for saying it. I almost want to apologize, but the silence dangles between us, so palpably uncomfortable, so thick with other emotions, that I don’t know what I’d say.

“I had friends,” Alex says. “You just didn’t know them.”

“Who were your friends, Alex?”

“I worked with them. At the Mystic Market.” He pauses. “They were older. Mostly college kids. But they were nice. They liked me. They were different from you and your group. They understood that there was life beyond high school, that there were other things that mattered besides what brand of purse you carried or who you were dating.”

I shrug. “But high school
was
life. It was all we knew. So even if those things wouldn’t matter forever, they mattered then.”

Alex opens his mouth to respond. But before he has a chance to reply with what I’m sure would be another one of his biting observations, Mera starts to talk. As she speaks, my memory of who she is becomes clearer and clearer.

Mera Hollinger: eighteen years old. Blond hair, long and highlighted, just like all of my other friends. She’s a swimmer, and a very good one at that. She’s also kind of stupid. She’s all beauty and athletic prowess, no brains whatsoever. Out of all my friends, I like her the least. I’m almost disappointed that she’s the one who found me; aside from her other flaws, Mera can be melodramatic. Once school starts, I’m sure she’ll be taking full advantage of the fact that she discovered my body, using every opportunity to tell the story, making sure to mention what I looked like when they pulled me out of the water.

Then there’s Mera’s boyfriend: Topher Paul, also newly eighteen, who’s sitting beside her now, holding her hand. They were the first couple I knew of in our school to have sex, back in the tenth grade. They’re joined at the hip. They’ll probably get married someday. Topher is a real high school celebrity, a football star, the only son of wealthy parents who dote on him like he’s God’s gift to the world. He is prone to fits of anger, sometimes difficult to get along with, but deep down he’s a nice guy. We have known each other since preschool.

“We were just having a regular party,” Mera says.

“There was nothing out of the ordinary,” Topher echoes.

“And you are?” Joe Wright is frantically taking notes; there are visible beads of sweat on his forehead even though it’s cool inside the boat.

“Topher Paul. Christopher. My father is Dr. Michael Paul.” Topher pauses for effect. “The dentist,” he adds. “He’s Noank’s most popular dentist and oral surgeon.”

Joe gives Topher an odd look. He says, his tone dry and sarcastic, “Well, then. I suppose that would explain your beautiful smile.”

“His dad’s a dentist? I don’t see what the big deal is,” Alex says, confused.

“Hey, that’s my friend,” I tell him. “And it kind of is a big deal. His dad is on the board of directors for the country club. And, you know, Topher’s mom was Miss Connecticut once, too.”

“Hmm. How important and meaningful. She was really contributing to the betterment of society, wasn’t she?”

“Just be quiet. I’m trying to pay attention here.”

“So it was a normal party,” Joe is saying, “and ‘normal’ for you kids involves drugs and alcohol?” He raises an eyebrow in my parents’ direction. “Who bought the alcohol?”

When nobody says anything, Joe lets out a long sigh. “This is serious, now. I need to know where you got the booze.”

“It was on the boat,” my dad whispers. He squeezes his eyes shut. A single fat tear drips down his white, whiskery cheek. “We keep the bar stocked.” He looks up, glances around at my friends. “We trusted them,” he says.

Caroline Michaels, who has been sitting silently on the floor until now, finally speaks up. “We weren’t that drunk,” she says. “Liz wasn’t a big drinker. It was just something to do.”

Caroline: seventeen years old. As sweet and naive as they come. She is the youngest of four girls. She made head cheerleader at age sixteen. Her claim to fame is the ability to do a triple back handspring, which she does often and with great enthusiasm at football games, flashing her perfect, Lycra-covered ass at the adoring crowd in the bleachers. Her parents travel frequently, and most of the time they go to exotic places like Vienna or Athens or Egypt. She’s well known for throwing the most amazing parties—I somehow know this, even though I can’t remember anything specific from any of them. It’s like somebody has taken my memory and deleted entire sections, simply wiping it clean, while leaving other simple details untouched. The effect is unsettling, frightening, and intriguing all at once. I don’t even know who I am. Beyond that, I don’t
like
who I seemed to be all that much. And I don’t know what happened to make me that way. But I get the feeling I’m going to find out.

“Right,” Joe says, writing in his notebook. “And what about the drugs? Pot? Coke?”

“Jesus,” Richie blurts. “No coke. Nothing like
that.
A little weed, that’s all.”

“So you were partying,” Joe continues, “getting drunk, getting stoned … and then what happened? Someone get in a fight with the birthday girl?”

“No,” Richie says. “I don’t know what happened. We went to sleep. We all went to sleep.”

Richie Wilson: almost eighteen. Also known in school as Famous Richie Wilson. He’s my only friend who’s never worn braces; his teeth are naturally perfect. He is the smartest person I’ve ever met. He exudes confidence. I might have been pretty and popular, but I understand—I
always
understood, even in life—how lucky I was to have Richie. He is an all-around nice guy and the love of my life. I feel more drawn to him than anyone on this boat.

Right now, though, his confidence, that self-assured coolness that drew everybody to him, is nowhere in sight. Instead, he looks deflated. He is shaking. Somehow, I know that he’s dying to go home, to lock himself in his bedroom and smoke weed until he can barely remember his own name. Richie has a drug problem—it’s his major flaw. But it didn’t matter much to me; I couldn’t help but love him regardless.

“And when we woke up, Liz was gone,” Josie says. “We thought maybe she went up to the house, for food or something. She gets spacey when she doesn’t eat. She gets hypoglycemic.” Josie’s gaze flickers to my dad and Nicole. “She’s had problems with passing out. She’s been in the hospital because of it.”

Josie Valchar: seventeen years old, a full six months younger than me. Even though she’s my stepsister, she and her mom took the last name when our parents got married. Although some people don’t believe we’re stepsisters. People who don’t know any better. Other than Richie, she has been my best friend since elementary school. Josie believes in ghosts; like her mother, she frequently goes to the Spiritualist Church in Groton. She claims she’s always felt a connection with the spirit world, but it’s obvious to me, right now, that she’s full of it. She’s just a scared kid, like the rest of my friends, devastated and horrified. I don’t know what she’ll ever do without me.

“Hypoglycemic?” Alex asks. “What’s that?”

“It’s nothing,” I say. “It’s just low blood sugar. It happens when I don’t get enough to eat.”

“You mean like diabetes?”

“Sort of. I’m not diabetic, though. But I get dizzy a lot. Like Josie said, sometimes I pass out.”