Inbetween

Chapter 5

Emma I shut my blinds and let my eyes adjust to the dimness of my room, then flipped on my camera. I felt so unfocused. Rattled even. And by a stupid boy, no less. One I could have sworn I’d seen before, but when I tried to pin down the memory in my head, it floated just out of my grasp like a dream. The way he looked at me, though… It was like he knew me. Like he wanted to consume me. And the way that look sent shivers down my spine made me want to let him.

I shook my head to discard the cute guy’s face from my mind and focused on the digital camera in my hands. It didn’t matter how he looked at me. Once he found out I was the crazy chick who had spent half of junior year in a mental institution, he wouldn’t look at me like that again. And even if he did…it didn’t matter. It didn’t change anything. I was stupid for even thinking about it.

My phone buzzed beside me and I jumped, dropping the camera on the bed. I stared at the screen, not wanting to answer it, but sighed and picked it up anyway.

“Hey, Mom.” I put it on speaker and set the cell phone in my lap.

“I just got off the phone with your principal. Are you okay?” She sounded frantic. “You should have waited for me to pick you up.”

“You’re thirty minutes away. Besides, I’m fine,” I said. “I’m not even hurt. Promise.”

She sighed and the sound of two car doors slamming shut sounded in the background.

“I’m coming home,” she said. “I can have someone else cover the open house.”

“Why?” I picked up my camera and turned it over in my hands. “So you can watch me do my homework? I can do that without you here.”

She sighed. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Yes!”

“Okay…I’ll be home right after the open house then. Don’t leave the house until I get home. Got it?”

“Yes. Got it.”

“Love you.”

I told her I loved her, too, then leaned back against my pillows and clicked through the pictures I’d taken at last week’s pep rally until the images blurred together. The boy’s green eyes stayed superimposed on the backs of my lids, offering a glimpse each time I had to blink.

My bedroom window slid open and a gust of cool air swirled into the room. Cash. He must have heard already. Crap.

“What are you doing here? Don’t you have calculus this hour?” I asked, refocusing on the camera.

He ignored my question and turned on the lamp by my bed. “Are you okay?”

I closed my eyes. “How did you find out?”

“Are you kidding? I got three texts before I even got to school. Not to mention the mess they’re still dealing with out front.”

I considered watering down the truth. If I told him everything, he was just going to worry. But if I didn’t tell him, he would just find out from the gossip queens at school, and then he’d be pissed. He was a pain in the ass when he was pissed.

I let my head thump against the bed frame and stared at the ceiling. “The sign fell while I was standing under it. Somebody knocked me out of the way before it landed. End of story. It’s not a big deal.”

He leaned on my desk, his brows pulled together. “Don’t tell me it’s not a big deal. You could have died.”

Like I needed him to remind me. We both knew this wasn’t the first time I’d had a close call like this. And whether he wanted to admit or not, we both knew it wouldn’t be the last. Thinking about all of the times I’d only been a second ahead or behind being the victim of a major “accident” made me want to swathe myself in Bubble Wrap and never leave my room. “I’m fine.”

Cash folded his arms across his chest. I could hear the worry in his quiet sigh, could feel his eyes on me, looking for scratches, bruises, anything that might drive me over the edge. “Do you need to go to the hospital? Just to make sure—”

“The paramedics already checked me out at school. I have a scratch on my knee, that’s it.” I looked over at him. “How did you get out?”

“You act like it requires blueprints and some big escape plan to get out of that place.” He sat a little paper sack and a foam coffee cup on the table. “I just left.”

“You’re going to get detention again,” I said. “And your dad is going to flip out.”

He shrugged. “That’s okay. You can make it up to me. We can order pizza for lunch and watch really bad daytime television.”

I slumped farther into the bed, wanting to do just that. Hide in my hole and refuse to face the rest of the world. But I couldn’t. Not when Mom was forcing me to take this stupid yearbook class.

You’re not involved in anything, Emma. You need a dose of normal. How about more school activities?

“You know I can’t,” I said. “If I don’t get the senior pictures for yearbook ready by Mr. Hall’s deadline, he’s going to fail me. Missing today is already going to screw me. I’m going to have to work on it from home.”

Cash frowned. “You wouldn’t even be worrying about this if it wasn’t for your mom. It’s total bullshit for her to make you take yearbook our senior year. You’re not supposed to be taking pictures of the memories—you’re supposed to be making them with us.”

“I know.” I sighed, then turned back to my camera, hoping he’d drop the drama. I clicked through a picture of our mascot doing a cartwheel. The cheerleaders spurring on the crowd that sat in shiny silver bleachers. Two football players in blue and white face paint. Half of them were ruined, marked up by a random white spot that kept appearing on the prints. “Have you met the new guy yet?”

I wished I could stop thinking about him. Yeah, he’d saved my life, but did that require that every thought be devoted to the guy? Couldn’t I just bake him a pie or something? I blinked and there he was again. Green eyes wide, amazed and nervous all at the same time. Something in my chest fluttered.

You’d be dead if it weren’t for him.

Part of me couldn’t help but think it would be over if it weren’t for him. I didn’t know whether to be angry or grateful.

“What new guy?” Cash asked.

“The one I sort of met in the quad today,” I said. “He saved me from being squished.”

“You mean the someone who knocked you out of the way?” He looked like he was fighting a smile.

“So he’s a guy?”

“Yeah, I think he must be new. I’ve never seen him before.” I think.

“I don’t think I’ve met him. What did he look like?”

I shrugged, feeling my face flush. “I don’t know.” I bit my lip, stalling. “About your height. Kind of short brown hair, green eyes…” I averted my eyes. “Cute.”

“Do you like him?” Cash finally broke into a full-on grin. “Of course you do! He saved you. Chicks love that crap. Does this mean you’re actually going to go on a real date now?”

“Can we talk about something else? Please?”

“You’re no fun.”

I laughed. “If I’m not fun, why do you keep coming back?”

“I ask myself that every day.” I punched him in the arm and he chuckled. “Hey, you’re coming to the senior bonfire thing tonight, right? Maybe your new boyfriend will be there.”

“No way. I’m not going to that.” I frowned. “And he’s not my boyfriend.”

Cash groaned and fiddled with the beaded hemp bracelet I’d made him while he was at summer camp, like, four years ago. I couldn’t fathom why he still wore the stupid thing. The guys at school gave him hell for it.

“You have to. You’re the yearbook photographer. You owe it to your fellow seniors to document these memories,” he said.

“I seriously doubt they want me documenting their booze binges and beer-goggle hookups.”

“You can Photoshop the beer bottles out. And as for the embarrassing hookups…you wouldn’t deny me that kind of entertainment, would you?” He grinned. “Think of all the blackmail opportunities.”

“I have a better idea.” I held out my camera. “Why don’t you take this and document all the debauchery you want.”

“Me? I don’t know how to work that thing.” He nudged my camera away. “I create art with my hands, not machinery.”

I sighed and let the camera fall into my lap. “You should probably go to school. I’m not going to be a lot of fun today. I’ve got to figure out a way to fix these stupid pictures.”

He picked up my camera and turned it over in his hands. “What’s wrong with them?”

“They’re ruined.” I moved over so he could sit next to me on the bed. “Well, some of them anyway.

I think my camera is busted.”

“What’s wrong with them?” His eyebrows drew together as he studied the pictures. “The spots?”

“Yeah. There.” I pointed to the unusually large ball of translucent white light at the corner of the screen. I grabbed the stack of pictures I’d printed last week and picked out the few that had the spot.

“These, too.”

Cash held a photo up to the light. “You know what these look like, don’t you?”

“No. Enlighten me.”

“Orbs,” he said. “My aunt is really into this stuff. She went on a haunted tour at an old abandoned tuberculosis hospital in Kentucky last year. Got all kinds of pictures like these.”

I snatched one of the pictures and studied the spot. “What are they supposed to be?”

“I don’t know.” He tossed the picture back onto my bed and laced his fingers behind his head.

“Ghosts, I guess.”

I swallowed the odd sensation in my throat. My stomach fluttered.

Dad.

Could it be him? If it wasn’t him…no, it had to be him. I didn’t want to think about what else it could be.

I gave my head a little shake and stomped out the feeling of hope. I couldn’t start thinking like that.

I wanted to look at this as some kind of proof. But I couldn’t. Thinking like that would just land me back in Brookhaven Psychiatric Hospital listening to the real crazy people scream themselves to sleep at night. I closed my eyes against the shiver rolling down my spine and when I opened them again, I did my best to seem indifferent.

“I haven’t exactly been to any haunted hospitals lately,” I said. “These were taken all over the place.

School, my house, by the lake even. Explain it now, Professor Paranormal.”

Cash leaned forward and gave me a crooked smile. “Maybe it’s not the places that have a ghost attached to them. Maybe it’s you.”

Maybe it’s me … Uneasiness and excitement bubbled in my stomach. I jumped off the bed and headed for the hall. “Hang on a minute. I’ll be right back.”

If it was me, there would be more orbs. There would have to be. I dug through the top of Mom’s closet and pulled down the big photo box that said “Emma” in purple scrapbook letters. She used to always put every photo in a scrapbook, but since Dad died, she hadn’t kept up. Most of the pictures didn’t even make it into an album now.

I dropped the box on my bed and dumped the pictures into a four-by-six-glossy pile of Emma. Cash picked up a few and laughed.

“Holy shit, I completely forgot how nerdy we used to be.” He flashed a picture at me. “Dude, check out your sunglasses in this one.”

I grabbed the picture and looked at it. Nerdy sunglasses, check. Orb, no. I threw it back in the box and pulled out a few more. All from before Dad died, none with orbs.

“What are we doing?” Cash asked.

“Looking for…” I switched to a more recent pile and stopped. I’d found one.

A glowing white orb hovered over my shoulder in a picture of me at last year’s neighborhood block party. I handed it to Cash and found another. And another. I sat down, trying not to hyperventilate.

Goose bumps rose across my skin as I stared at all the orbs that lay across my bed at that moment.

What were they? Who were they?

Something inside me told me I should know.

“They’re in, like, half of them,” I whispered. “But there aren’t any in the pictures from before.”

“What?”

“Orbs.” I tossed a few more pictures into his lap. “Look at them.”

Cash stared at the pictures in his lap. “So, you think all of these are ghosts? You think you’re being haunted by a poltergeist or something?”

I allowed myself to think the thoughts I’d kept locked up tight for the past two years. Like someone wanted me dead. Like someone else wanted me alive. Sometimes everything went cold, like ice under my skin. Other times a sensation so warm and safe swept over me that I could hardly believe it was real. It was when I felt both, like today at the school, that everything seemed to go wrong. In those moments, I almost believed I was crazy. It felt like there was this invisible battle being fought around me and I was continuously caught in the crosshairs.

And it had all started the day my father died.

“I don’t know what I believe,” I said. It had only taken my saying how I felt once for them to lock me up and double my therapy sessions. I wasn’t stupid enough to say it again.

“Hey,” Cash leaned over and rested his elbow on my knee. “It’s just the camera, okay? Your camera is busted. That’s it.”

“Then explain the other pictures. The ones Mom took. And there aren’t any in the pictures before my dad died. None.”

“Fine. It’s not the camera. But Em…you can’t do this. Not again. If you start talking like this again, they’re going to put you back in Brookhaven. So, I’m asking you to drop it. Please.”

It wasn’t in my head. I had to prove that to him. I bit my lip. “Or I could get a Ouija board?”

When he didn’t say anything I peeked at him.

“Emma…” He pinched the bridge of his nose.

“What if there is some sprit following me around?” I sat up on my knees and tugged his hand away from his face so he’d have to look at me. “If there is, they’d probably talk to us, right?”

“ A spirit. Seriously?” Cash shook his head. “Maybe we should wait until I’m drunk to have this conversation.”

My throat ached, but I had to get the words out. “What if it’s Dad?”

He grabbed my hand and folded it between his warm fingers. I could smell Red Hots on his breath and the leftover paint on his hands. The only sound was the rattle and swish of the washing machine on the other side of the house.

“It’s not your dad,” he whispered.

I blinked back a tear. “How do you know?”

“Because your dad was a good guy.” Cash squeezed my hand. “He was too good not to go to Heaven. If there’s a God, and I know you believe there is, he wouldn’t let your dad wander around down here all alone.”

“Then what if it’s something else? Someone else?” My voice trembled like glass ready to shatter.

“What if it’s whatever has been trying to hurt me the past two years?”

“Those were accidents,” Cash said gently. “When you got home from Brookhaven, you said you understood that.”

I’d said whatever they wanted me to say to get out of that place.

Cash let go of my hand and folded his hands in his lap. He had that worried look on his face. It was the same look he had when he visited me at Brookhaven. When I told him about the memories that didn’t belong to me. When I told him I knew I was going to die. God, I hated the way he was looking at me.

“I’m not crazy,” I whispered. “I just want to try it.”

He sighed and his shoulders slumped. “I know you’re not crazy, but I don’t want you to give your mom any more ammunition. I can’t lose you like that again.”

I nodded, but the emotions crawling around inside me made me want to scream. Cash was my person. He was supposed to be the one who believed me when the rest of the world thought I was nuts.

But maybe I was. Maybe he was right to say the words that came next. The words I didn’t want to hear. The words he didn’t want to have to say.

“Did you take your pill today?”

I picked up my remote and turned on the TV so I’d have somewhere else to look. So that there would be something but this god-awful silence between us and the resentment brewing in my gut.

“Stop it.” Cash grabbed the remote from me and pointed it over his shoulder to turn it off.

“Stop what?” I grabbed my pillow and tucked it against my chest so he wouldn’t see me shaking. “It was a stupid idea. We’re done talking about it.”

His dark eyes burned into me. “Don’t do this.” He stared down at me, jaw clenched. “Don’t shut me out.”

“You don’t want to hear what I have to say,” I said.

“It’s not that! I just—”

“You just what?”

Cash stopped and looked at me like he knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere. He was right. He shook his head and slipped off the bed the way I wanted to slip out of my skin. He was going to be able to walk out my door and leave all this behind. But I couldn’t. Not when it was my life. Not when it was going to be my death.

“It’s happening all over again, isn’t it?”

I felt like I was being analyzed under a microscope. Diagnosed all over again. I wanted to scream at him to stop looking at me like that. I squeezed the pillow tighter. “I’m fine. Just go home. Please.”

Cash sighed. “If you’re so fine, come with me to the bonfire.”

“You don’t need me there.”

“I do need you there.” He hesitated for a moment, then kicked the side of my bed and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Who else will talk me out of making a complete ass of myself?”

This. This was why I loved Cash. Why he was the one stable thing in my life while the rest of the world spun out of control around me. He always knew what to say to ease the pressure, make me smile, make me forget why we were fighting in the first place.

“You’ll do that whether I’m there or not, and we both know it.”

Cash smiled, but I could tell he wasn’t ready to let the rest go. He was waiting for me to snap again.

I wanted to be mad at him for it, but if I was being honest, I was waiting for it, too.

“Besides,” I said. “You’ll ditch me as soon as you find somebody to take home.”

“I won’t.” He balanced an empty Dixie cup from my nightstand on top of my head like a little red top hat. “I’d never leave you alone. Promise.”

“You don’t have to babysit me. I’m not going to do something stupid.”

He knelt down in front of me. “I don’t want to babysit you. I want you to come have fun with me and forget about all of this crap for a little while.”

I slapped the cup off of my head. “Fine. I’ll meet you there.”

“Why don’t you just ride with me?”

He knew I’d bail if I didn’t go with him. Any other day, I wouldn’t have been caught dead at one of these stupid bonfires. Especially after what happened today. God, I really wanted to bail, but the look on his face made my chest feel tight. I couldn’t let him think I was shutting him out. Besides, I was still about a gazillion pictures short for the yearbook.

He lingered in front of my window, waiting.

I pulled at a thread on my shirt, already feeling the fear wind like vines around my throat, and said, “Pick me up at seven.”