Between by Jessica Warman

Author:Jessica Warman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Walker Books
Published: 2011-09-26T00:42:20+00:00

Fourteen

There is no sleep for the dead; at least, not for Alex and me. We spend our nights in quiet loneliness, lost in our own memories—mostly we travel into mine together, but sometimes I go alone, and on occasion Alex will slip into his past, though I haven’t asked to go with him again. Aside from that, there isn’t much else to do except wait for the sun to come up, so we can watch our living friends and relatives as they go about life without us. I dread the end of every day, the inevitable quiet darkness, the lost feeling of seclusion that makes me ache for sleep that I know isn’t coming anytime soon.

It’s late September now, two weeks after we witnessed my scene with Beth in the girls’ bathroom. It’s the middle of the night, probably close to dawn. There’s no clock in my room anymore, but after so many nights spent here, gazing out the window, I’ve gotten good at reading the sky, at being able to tell where we are in the night based on the position of the moon.

“Someone’s outside,” Alex says. He’s standing at my window, staring at the street below.

“So?” I’m on the floor, beside my pile of old running shoes. In the dark, they look almost alive: tongues like mouths, laces pulled like expectant facial features through multiple sets of eyes. We watch each other.

“It’s your boyfriend.” Alex’s face is pressed against the window as he peers down the street. But there is no circle of breath on the glass from his mouth. “Maybe he’s going to sleep on your grave again.”

I sit up straighter. “Do you think so?”

Alex stares for a moment longer. “No,” he says. “He’s going somewhere in his car.”

It’s true: once Alex and I are outside, we watch as Richie works quickly, loading a small suitcase and duffel bag into his backseat. He’s about to climb into the driver’s side when a car turns down our street and its lights shine directly onto him, stopping him in his tracks.

“Shit,” he murmurs, closing the driver’s-side door, shoving his keys into his pocket. He stands beside the car, trying to look nonchalant. I almost expect him to start whistling.

Joe Wright, off-duty, in a maroon sedan with two car seats secured in the back, puts his car in Park and lets it idle in the middle of the street.

Richie puts his hands up. “I’m not doing anything wrong. I was out for a run, that’s all.”

“At four in the morning?” Joe looks around innocently. “It’s dark, you know.” He stares at my boyfriend, who is wearing a T-shirt, gray sweatpants, and the same flip-flops he wore to the cemetery a few weeks earlier, their soles still caked with mud from my grave. “You’re a lousy liar.”

“I’ll be eighteen in a month. I can do what I want.”

Joe cups his hands to peer into Richie’s backseat. “Your parents know you’re going on a road trip?”

Richie glances at his house. All the lights are on inside.

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