Between Here and Forever Read online

  BETWEEN HERE AND FOREVER

  Also by Elizabeth Scott

  Bloom

  Perfect You

  Living Dead Girl

  Something, Maybe

  The Unwritten Rule

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to

  historical events, real people, or real locales are

  used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and

  incidents are the product of the author’s imagination,

  and any resemblance to actual events or locales or

  persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  First Simon Pulse hardcover edition May 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by Elizabeth Spencer

  All rights reserved, including the right

  of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks

  of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  or [email protected].

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  Designed by Tom Daly

  The text of this book was set in Berkeley Oldstyle.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Scott, Elizabeth, 1972—

  Between here and forever / by Elizabeth Scott. —

  1st Simon Pulse hardcover ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When her older, “perfect” sister Tess has a car accident

  that puts her in a coma, seventeen-year-old Abby, who has always

  felt unseen in Tess’s shadow, plans to bring her back with the help

  of Eli, a gorgeous boy she has met at the hospital, but her plans

  go awry when she learns some secrets about both Tess and Eli,

  enabling her to make some decisions about her own life.

  ISBN 978-1-4169-9484-8

  [1. Coming of age—Fiction. 2. Sisters—Fiction. 3. Secrets—Fiction.

  4. Coma—Fiction. 5. Self-perception—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S4195Be 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010051366

  ISBN 978-1-4169-9486-2 (eBook)

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-four

  Many thanks to Jennifer Klonsky and everyone at Simon Pulse for all they do, for their continual faith in me, and for making this book possible.

  As always, thanks go to Jess, Diana, Clara, Robin, and everyone else who read drafts and held my hand and supported me, with a special shout-out to Jess, who always finds time to tell me that yes, I can do this.

  I also want to thank the following readers for being such amazing and supportive people: Morgan Mavetz, Brittani Zarate, Jenny Davies, Katy Williams, Jessica Launius, Lucile Ogie-Kristianson, Denise Jimenez, Kalie Spurgas, Amber White, Andrea Burdette, Christina Rose Groff, Jhenne’ Martinez, Kat Werner, Stacey Mac, Sarah Wethern, Marina Ornelas, and Jess Faulkingham.

  one

  I lean forward and look at Tess.

  She’s still.

  Silent.

  The machines that keep Tess alive beep at me. I’ve been here so often that sometimes I think they’re her way of replying. But today that’s not enough. Sunday is a day of prayer after all, isn’t it? So here’s mine:

  Today I want Tess to wake up.

  Today she has to wake up.

  I lean in, so close I can see the tiny blue lines on her eyelids marking where her blood still pumps, still flows. Shows that her heart still beats.

  “If you don’t do something, Tess, I—I’ll sing for you.”

  Nothing.

  “I mean it,” I say.

  Still nothing. Tess’s eyes stay closed, and her body lies limp, punctured with needles and surrounded by machines. I used to visit Tess with Mom and Dad, used to wait with them for the doctor, but the news never changed and I got so I couldn’t bear to see my parents’ faces, washed out and exhausted and sad.

  Like a princess in a fairy tale, Tess is asleep. Deeply asleep.

  I guess “coma” doesn’t sound as good when you’re trying to sell stories where everything ends up okay.

  Sleeping means you’ll wake up.

  Coma … well, coma doesn’t. And Tess has been in this bed, in this room, in this hospital, for six weeks. She was in a car accident on New Year’s Day, driving home the morning after a party. She’d waited to come home because she didn’t want to risk getting into an accident with a drunk driver.

  Instead, her car hit a patch of ice and slammed into a tree.

  Tess was always so good at being safe. At doing the right thing, at making people happy. And now she’s here. She turned twenty in this room, four days after the call that sent us all rushing here. My parents got her balloons. They floated around for a while and then wilted, fell.

  Tess never saw them.

  I turned seventeen in this room too. It was two weeks and two days after the accident. I was still visiting Tess with my parents. They got me cupcakes from the vending machine and sang when I opened them.

  Tess didn’t say a word. Didn’t even open her eyes. I chewed and swallowed and chewed and swallowed even though the cupcakes tasted like rubber, and my parents watched Tess’s face, waiting. Hoping.

  That’s when I realized I had to start coming by myself.

  When I realized I had to bring Tess back.

  “Wake up, Tess,” I say, loud enough for my breath to stir her hair, and pick up the glass unicorn Beth brought the first time she visited. She said she knew Tess would like it, that it was all about impossibilities. I thought that sounded a bit beyond Tess, who dealt in the here and now and in being adored, but when Beth put the thing in Tess’s limp hands, I swear she almost blinked.

  Now Tess doesn’t do anything, and I put the unicorn down.

  I miss the little ledge where it sits though, and it hits the floor. It doesn’t break, but a crack appears, running from one end
of the unicorn to the other.

  A nurse comes in and frowns at me.

  “Accident,” I say, and she says, “Love is what your sister needs, not attitude,” like it wasn’t an accident, like she knows me, like she and all the other nurses who have only ever seen Tess in this not-life, this twilight state, know her.

  They don’t, they can’t. But I do. Tess believes in happily ever after, in dreams come true, and I’ve decided that’s how I’m going to reach her.

  Now I just have to figure out how to do it.

  I leave the hospital and ride my bike down to the ferry.

  Once I’m on board, I stand by the side of the boat. Most people stand up front; the wind in their hair, the river all around them, and Ferrisville up ahead looking almost quaint and not like a big pile of nothing.

  I look at the water. It’s dark, muddy brown, and slaps hard against the ferry. I can see my shadow in it, all chopped up, bits and pieces scattered among the churning waves. I turn away, because I already know I’m broken, that there’s nothing in me worth seeing. I already know there’s nothing worth believing. It’s just how I am.

  two

  I run into Claire when the ferry’s drifted into the dock at Ferrisville and people are heading to their cars.

  “Hey you,” she says through the three inches her window will roll down, jamming her fingers through the opening into a sort of wave. “Wanna ride home?”

  I gesture at my bike. “You got room for this?” Claire’s car is about the size of a cracker, and littered with Cole’s stuff. There’s barely room in it for Claire.

  She rolls her eyes at me. “Yes, but go ahead and leave it at the dock. You know nobody’s going to steal it.”

  “Are you saying my bike is shit?”

  “Yeah,” she says, and I grin at her because it is a pretty shitty bike. It was nice when Tess got it—back when she was ten—but now it looks like a beat-up old bicycle that someone’s younger sister got stuck with.

  Which, of course, it is.

  I ask Daryl, who normally stands around scratching himself but today is standing around coiling rope, if I can leave my bike on the dock.

  “Sorry, no,” he says, and then, “How’s Tess?” in the voice everyone uses on me now, the oh-it’s-such-a-shame voice. The oh-we-all-miss-Tess-so-much voice.

  “Not dead yet,” I say, my voice cracking, and drop my bike by his feet before I stomp over to Claire’s car.

  I hate how I am when people talk to me about Tess. I hate how everyone sounds. I hate how she’s already been reduced to the past when she isn’t.

  She’s still here.

  “You okay?” Claire says when I get in.

  “Not really,” I say, pushing a box filled with what I hope are new diapers onto the floor. “I just … the way people talk about Tess. Like she’s gone.”

  “I don’t think it’s totally like that,” Claire says. “I just think they miss her.”

  “Do you miss her?”

  Claire looks at her hands on the steering wheel. “Me and Tess stopped talking a long time ago.”

  “You mean she stopped talking to you because you dropped out of high school to have Cole.”

  Claire sighs. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t like that, Abby.”

  But it was pretty much exactly like that, and we both know it.

  “How is Cole?” I ask, finding an open pack of gum on the floor. I wave it at her. “Is this stuff still good?”

  Claire takes the package and sniffs it. “Smells like fake fruit. Go for it. And Cole’s fine. I have the only two-year-old who’s afraid of toilets, but he’s fine.”

  “Maybe he just doesn’t like your bathroom,” I tell her, popping a piece of gum in my mouth. The flavor bursts sweet and fruity across my tongue, but only lasts about two chews. “I know I’m afraid to go in there. It’s like being inside a cross-stitch classroom, with all the reminders to put the seat down and wash my hands.”

  “So funny. Like your mother’s collection of towels no one but ‘guests’ can use is better.”

  I shrug and shove another stick of gum in my mouth. “I heard one of the nurses talking about her kid today. He’s four and sometimes takes off his pants and poops on the rug. So I figure you’re doing okay with Cole.”

  “No! Who is it?”

  “Kathleen.”

  We grin at each other. Kathleen is Claire’s supervisor, and is always making Claire run and fetch things for her, like Claire’s her slave and not a nurse’s aide.

  “That almost makes up for how she acted today,” Claire says. “She spent five minutes yelling at me for having a stain on my pants when she knew the reason I had the stain was because she made me wash Mrs. Green, who always pees the second you start to bathe her.”

  We pull onto Claire’s street, which is also my street. Cole is out in the front yard, running around after Claire’s dad’s hunting dogs in that weird way little kids have, where for a second it seems like they’re going so fast they’re going to fall right over their own feet.

  “Momma!” Cole yells at Claire when we get out of the car. He can say about ten words now, although Claire swears he’s talking when I think he’s babbling.

  “Hi, baby,” Claire says. “Wanna say hi to Abby?”

  “No!” Cole says, which I don’t take personally because of the ten words I know for sure that Cole knows, his favorite is “no.”

  “Hey,” I say, and pat the top of his grubby little head. “Claire, thanks for the ride.”

  “Sure,” she says. “Tell your parents I said hi, okay?”

  I nod, but I won’t. Telling my parents anyone said anything would mean actually talking to them, and that’s something that doesn’t happen much these days.

  After all, what is there to say? We all know what’s going on. We’ve all waited and waited for Tess to wake up.

  We are all still waiting.

  three

  “How was the ferry?” Mom calls out from the kitchen as I come in. I stop, shrug at her, and then walk upstairs to my bedroom.

  My parents have to take the ferry home from the hospital too, so they know what it’s like. There’s no other way to get from Milford to Ferrisville, and the ferry is what it is, a slow boat on a river.

  There was talk, once, of building a bridge, but nothing ever came of it. My guess is that if Milford wanted a bridge across the river, it’d be built in a heartbeat. But why would they want to connect to Ferrisville? We’re a small, poor town near nothing but acres of government-owned land that’s supposedly a national park or reserve. Not that we get any visitors. Who wants to see something called “The Great Dismal Forest”?

  Even more importantly, who wants to live near it?

  Well, my parents, for one. They think it’s nice we live near a river, that on the weekend we can walk down to the water and trip along the sand-studded rocks (that’s “the beach”) and look at people grilling or riding around in tiny boats, their motors roaring as they pass each other going back and forth, back and forth.

  But of course my parents like it. They didn’t grow up here. They grew up in a nice suburban neighborhood, with shopping malls and neighbors who aren’t all related to each other in some way. Or so they say. My mother’s parents are both dead, and my dad doesn’t talk to his parents at all, and they only ever mention where they’re from once in a while.

  Tess used to love to look at pictures of them from back when they first started dating, and even before, from when they were in high school together. She asked all sorts of questions that neither of my parents ever really answered. It’s like they didn’t exist until they met each other and moved here.

  Tess used to say our parents had secrets, and lots of them, but that was back when she was stressing out over going to college, and had also stopped talking to her best friend just because she got pregnant. And that made her into someone I had no desire to listen to.

  I figure there won’t be any follow-up questions to the nonquestion I got about the ferry, but just w
hen I’m feeling almost relaxed for the first time all day, Mom comes up and knocks on my door.

  “Abby, what are you doing?”

  “Homework.”

  I’m not. I don’t need to, because Ferrisville High is a joke, but I need to be alone right now. Try to figure out what to do about Tess.

  “I wanted to tell you that your uncles sent Tess flowers again,” she says. “Did you see them?”

  “I must have missed them. Sorry.” I’d seen them, and read the cards. Get Well Soon on each of them, and nothing more. My mom’s brothers, Harold and Gerald, seem nice enough, but they don’t come to visit often.

  Mom’s not that much older than they are, but it’s like—well, the couple of times they’ve been here, they treat Mom like she’s way older than they are. They treat her like she’s their mother, with a weird sort of respect and anger. I don’t know what they have to be mad about. They don’t live here.

  “I’m going to go and make something to eat for your father and me,” Mom says. “Maybe heat up the leftover pancakes from this morning. Do you want to join us?”

  I want to, but I don’t. If I do, I will see Tess’s chair. I will think about it.

  I will know we are all thinking about it.

  “I’d better finish my homework,” I say.

  “All right then, good night,” she says, with a little sigh, and I listen to her footsteps fade away.

  four

  After school the next day, I grab my bike from the ferry dock (amazing how no one took it, right?) and head to the hospital. I weave through the ground floor, past the waiting room full of people doing just what the room wants them to, down the hall past the gift shop (run by cheery old Milford ladies who chat about their prize-winning dogs or flowers while they sell gum for the outrageous price of two bucks a pack), and around to the elevators.

  Everything about Milford Hospital is depressing.

  Well, not everything. I like the cafeteria. It looks out over the river, and Ferrisville is far enough away that you can’t really see it. You just get an impression of houses on carefully laid out streets, a factory nestled at one end, and a rocky strip of beach dotted with the weathered ferry station.