Between Here and Forever Page 18

  “No,” Claire says softly. “I won’t. I can’t. I’m not—I’m not strong enough to now. When Cole’s older, and money isn’t so tight, and I have time to do more than just get through each day, then maybe I will. But you don’t need me to believe, Abby, and you know it. You aren’t me. You aren’t Tess, even if parts of you remind me of her. You’re you. You get to make your own choices. I get to make mine.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’d have lied to anyone else if they’d asked me, you know,” Claire says. “Lies are a lot easier than the truth. Simpler.”

  Like Tess, who picked what she knew over stepping into the unknown with Claire for everyone to see.

  Like me, because I want Eli but said, “I don’t know what to do,” because it was easier than saying “I’ve wanted to kiss you too.”

  “Do you want—the pictures that Tess has, do you want them?”

  “No,” Claire says. “I remember them, and that’s enough.” She nudges me with her foot. “Go home so I can sleep.”

  “I feel like—I want to fix things for you,” I say. “This isn’t … something should happen for you now. Something good, I mean.”

  “I’m responsible for me,” Claire says. “You be responsible for you.”

  “That’s it?”

  Claire smiles at me again, a little sadly this time. “That’s it. See you tomorrow, okay?” And then she lets herself inside her house and shuts the door.

  I look at it for a moment, and then I walk home.

  forty-two

  In the morning, my parents tell me I don’t have to go to school.

  “Why?” I say, because my parents never let me miss school unless I’ve woken up covered with spots (chicken pox, third grade) or thrown up in front of them (sixth grade). “Is it—did the phone ring when I was in the shower? What’s happened to Tess?”

  Mom puts down the cup of coffee she’s drinking.

  “Nothing’s happened,” she says, and, when she catches my eyes, repeats it again, gently. “Abby, nothing’s happened.”

  “But you never let me miss school.”

  “After last night,” Dad says, “and with Tess being moved so soon, your mother and I thought—we thought you might want to see her. Spend time with her.”

  “All day?” I wish the thought of spending a whole day with Tess filled me with joy, but it doesn’t. I just—not only do I not know who Tess really was anymore, I don’t think I can spend an entire day watching her lie there. Watching her live with her eyes wide shut.

  “No,” Mom says. “Your father and I—we need to see her this afternoon. We need to talk to the doctor, and we also have to start making a list of things we need to get for her new … for her new room.”

  Dad puts his coffee cup down and gets up from the table then, goes and looks out the kitchen window. His shoulders are slumped, defeated-looking. Sad.

  “She could still wake up,” I say, not because I feel like I have to, but because I still think she could.

  I just don’t know if she will.

  “Yes,” my mother says, her voice tight and as sad as the slump of my father’s shoulders, but Dad turns around and gives me a small half smile. Not of thanks, but of shared hope.

  I smile back.

  “Last night, you went out,” he says. “Your mother and I assumed—”

  “Claire,” I say, and he nods. “Is she … how is she?”

  I look at my parents. What do I say? That Tess really hurt her, broke her in ways even they don’t know about? That she saw Tess’s need to be who everyone wanted her to be more clearly than me, and I thought I’d seen her true self—the way she was capable of being cruel, the way she could be understanding without having to say a word—but that I had no idea who Tess really was? That I’m not sure even Tess did?

  “She’s busy,” I say. “Working a lot.”

  “And what happened with Tess?”

  “She said—” I pause, looking closely at my parents, and realize that it’s not that they couldn’t handle me telling them what Tess did. It’s that they don’t need to know. They are carrying so much now, paying for a life for Tess that none of us could have ever seen, and then having to watch her live it. Watch her live life still, and silent.

  “It was a long time ago,” I say. “Claire’s—she’s got Cole now. She says … she says that and work are her life.”

  Mom looks at me, and I can tell she knows there are things I’m not saying. I can also tell she won’t ask what they are. That she understands that sometimes you can’t fix things.

  “I should go get ready,” I say. “To go to the hospital, I mean.”

  “You want a ride to the ferry?” Dad says, smiling at me. His smile looks so much like Tess’s, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see Tess smile again.

  None of us do.

  forty-three

  I haven’t seen Tess in the morning since pretty soon after the accident, when everything was still a crazy blur, and when I get to the hospital, I’m surprised by how things in her ward are exactly the same as they are in the afternoon and at night.

  I thought maybe the nurses would be less tired-looking or—I don’t know. I guess I thought the morning might be more hopeful somehow. Riding across the river with the sun shining on my face, and thinking about what Claire said about belief, made me wonder if things could be different for me. Better.

  And so I thought maybe I’d only been seeing the hospital for what it had carved out of me, what it had put in my heart, all the fears about the future, all my worry for Tess. All my anger at her. And I’d thought that trying to move past that would make it different.

  But it doesn’t. It’s still sad to see all the patients lying motionless, to hear nothing as I walk by their rooms except the sound of machines.

  It’s how Tess’s room sounds. For so long I’ve been focused on wanting her to wake up, on willing it, that I don’t think I’ve ever—I thought about the machines, about her hooked up to them, but I don’t know if I’ve ever really seen it.

  If I’ve let myself.

  I can see why Claire comes here and thinks No. I am used to coming in and focusing on Tess.

  Or, lately, on Eli.

  But now I see that Tess, beautiful Tess with her long, gorgeous hair and still, stunning face, is gone. Maybe not forever—I don’t want to believe she’s never coming back, I want to believe that one day she’ll open her eyes—but right now, she isn’t here. Not the Tess I knew. Not the Tess I don’t know.

  I sit down next to her.

  “I—we need to talk,” I say, and realize this is the first time since the accident I’ve said this to her. Before I have said her name, pleading, or gone straight into saying things I thought would bring her back. Make her open her eyes.

  But now I just want to talk to her.

  “I saw Claire last night,” I tell her. “I—there was a lot about you I didn’t know, Tess. About you and Claire. You and Beth too. Even you and Mom and Dad. I always … you always seemed so perfect to me. So sure of who you were, and so quick to judge anyone who didn’t live up to your standards. That’s why I thought you stopped talking to Claire, you know. Because she did something you wouldn’t, and I thought—I thought you’d decided she wasn’t worth your time.”

  I touch her hand, not because I’m expecting or even hoping for it to move. I touch it because she is my sister. If she was awake, I don’t know if she’d let me. I don’t even know if she’d still be listening.

  There is so much I don’t know about her, and I touch her hand because I wish I had the chance to know the real her, even if what I’ve learned has made me see that Tess wasn’t perfect.

  Tess is human, just like me.

  “I guess you did decide that,” I say. “Just not … not like how I thought. How could you do it? I can understand why you didn’t—I see why you were afraid to come out, sort of. I always thought how people talked about you was annoying because it made me into nothing. But you—did you feel like it made you into
nothing too? Like you had to be how people thought you were and not who you are?”

  I lean forward, watching her closed eyes. Wondering what I would see if they opened.

  “You hurt Claire,” I say. “You hurt her a lot, and maybe you were scared, but you—it was cruel. And now, after I find out about you and her, I still don’t—how could you do it, Tess? How could you break her heart and then ruin her life? Was it—Claire says it was because you never expected her to find someone else, even if it was for a little while. Is that true?”

  There. I see it again, a tiny flutter behind her closed eyes. Maybe what the doctor said is true. But maybe what I thought is true too. Maybe, somewhere, somehow, Tess can hear me.

  “I want you to be sorry,” I say. “I want you—I want you to know that when someone offers you their heart, you shouldn’t push it away. I mean, how often are you going to get that? I haven’t had to deal with it, but if it ever does happen I know I wouldn’t …”

  I trail off, because I have. Because instead of telling Eli I’ve wanted to kiss him too, I backed into fear, into saying something easy. Into saying “I don’t know what to do,” when I did know what I wanted to do.

  When I did—and do—know that I want him.

  So I tell her about Eli. I tell her what I did. What I want. And then I just sit with her for a while longer, describing how the sunshine spreads across the room, and then how the ferry sounds when it’s crossing the river, how the waves break when the boat passes through them.

  “They come back though, you know,” I tell her before I leave. “The ferry goes through them, but if you look back, you can see them again.”

  Before, I would have said that Tess should do that. Be like those waves. Come back. Wake up. But now I just say, “Bye, Tess,” and go.

  I can’t make things happen for Tess. I can’t make her change the things she did. I can’t make her come back.

  But I can do something for me. For my life.

  forty-four

  As I’m leaving the hospital, part of me hopes that I’ll run into Claire, or Clement, or … someone. Anyone. I really would like to talk to both Claire and Clement—Claire, to see how she is, although if last night made me see anything, it’s that Claire is even stronger than I thought she was, and Clement—I’d just like to say hi. See how he is.

  Maybe I should wait for my parents. Make sure they’re okay. They have to see Tess and do more than just talk to her. They have to arrange for her to be moved out of the hospital. They have to plan the rest of her life for her now. I don’t think they ever thought they’d have to do that.

  I stand next to my bike, and glance back at the hospital. I don’t see Clement outside. I bet I could find him if I went back in, though. I could find Claire too.

  I could keep myself so busy I’d have no time to do anything.

  I can make sure I don’t see Eli again. It would be easy. It would be so easy.

  I get on my bike, though, because the thought of not seeing him again gets to me. Really gets to me. And I think that’s okay. I think it might be all right for me to … for me to like him.

  For me to let him like me.

  When I get to Saint Andrew’s, the parking lot is filled with boys getting into their expensive cars, and there’s an ease about how they move, as if they know the world is okay, full of promise, and always will be.

  I only ever saw one person in Ferrisville move that way. Tess. She had such careless grace, made everything look so simple, and it turns out she was more uncertain about herself, about everything, than I thought.

  She was capable of carelessness, though. She wrecked her own heart. She wrecked Claire’s.

  For ages, I’ve told myself I don’t want to be like Tess, but part of me did. Even after Jack, after I swore to myself that wanting another person in my heart and life was over, part of me still wanted to be the girl who everyone knew, who everyone loved.

  I don’t want to be like Tess now, though. I don’t care if I’m a shadow girl in the eyes of everyone in Ferrisville forever.

  I just want the people who see me, who really see me, in my life.

  I just want to be me.

  I feel so brave, thinking that. So proud. Then I see Eli, walking toward the parking lot alone, looking off into the distance like he can’t see anything or anyone, and I don’t feel quite so brave anymore.

  Why would he ever want me? And how can I compete with the shiny-haired, shiny-eyed, soft-voiced girls who live in Milford, who are born knowing what to do in every situation or can at least fake it better than I’ll ever be able to?

  Because I understand him. I see the way he’s walking, how he’s really and truly looking off into the distance. Putting himself somewhere that isn’t here. He knows what it’s like to have people look at you and only see certain things. For me, it’s Tess. For him, it’s his OCD or his looks.

  He is more than how he looks or how his fingers are moving restlessly, counting out a rhythm he has to.

  And I am more than Tess.

  I walk over to him. I practically have to walk into him before he sees me.

  “Oh,” he says, looking startled and, I think—I hope—happy, and then he looks off to the side, looks away from me. “I didn’t think—what are you doing here?”

  “Tess,” I say, and hate myself for how easy it is for me to say that. How easy it is for me to not say what I want to. How easy it would be to make this an ending.

  I broke my own heart once. I gave it to someone who I knew didn’t want it, and had to take it back when he refused to hold it.

  I could break my own heart again now. I could just tell Eli that Tess’s going to be moved. Thank him for everything. Tell him I’m sorry she didn’t wake up to see him. Never mention the kiss. Never mention anything I want to.

  “Is she all right?” he says, looking at me now, and I see hurt in his eyes. I’m not imagining that. I know what hurt looks like. I spent ages with it written all over me.

  “She’s—she’s the same,” I say. “But I … I actually didn’t come here to talk about her.”

  “You didn’t,” he says, and it’s not a question. His voice is flat, his eyes are still so wary, and I—

  I’ve hurt him.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “About the other day. I wanted …”

  You, is all I have to say. You, just three letters and all true, so true.

  “I didn’t mean what I said,” I say, because “You” is stuck inside me, trapped by fear.

  It’s just—why now? Why me? I can’t answer those questions, and if I don’t know, then how can I move forward? I tried to create happiness before, tried to make myself a happily ever after, and it didn’t work.

  I believed, and look what happened.

  “What did you mean?” Eli says, still looking at me, right at me, and that’s when I realize that this moment, this now—this is my chance, if I’m willing to take it.

  If I can believe again.

  And I do. “I meant that when you kissed me, I didn’t—”

  “Know what to do?” Eli says and turns around, walking back onto the empty school grounds. Walking away from me.

  “Wait a minute,” I say, and walk after him even though everything in me says to take the familiar path, to just yell something easy, to yell words that mean nothing and just go. But I don’t. “Could you at least let me finish what I want to say?”

  He stops and turns to face me. “I said I was someone who wants to kiss you. I—I said that and you said you didn’t know what to do. That’s … it’s the kind of thing people say before they break your heart.”

  “But I—”

  “It’s what Jack said to you, right?” he says before I can say anything else. “It’s what my parents said to me before they sent me here. ‘We don’t know what to do about you, Eli. We just don’t know what to do.’ And then that was it. I was gone. My life with them—done.”

  “But I—” I say again, and he shakes his head.

  “I …
why didn’t you want to kiss me?” he says.

  And now I see what has been there all along, what I’ve noticed but never truly understood until now.

  Eli is as uncertain as I am, as we all are. Life has surprised him like it has me. Has hurt him like it has me.

  And for once I know that words will not do. Words will just fill up the space I built between us so easily.

  So I don’t speak. I just kiss him.

  “Oh,” he says when I pull away, and then smiles at me, a giddy, glorious smile that turns me inside out. “Why didn’t you just say that before?”

  “I was trying—” I say, and break off, make myself stop.

  Make myself be honest.

  “I was afraid. You make me—I’m happy when I’m with you and I … I want that. I want you.”

  He smiles again, a smile that should stop the world but doesn’t because it’s shining on me, just me, and leans in, touching my face with one hand.

  “Abby,” he says, and he doesn’t have to say he wants me too because I see it. It’s written in his eyes, in his smile as our mouths meet again.

  I kiss him back and open my arms to him, touching his shoulders, his arms, and his hair. Touching him. I let myself go. I let myself have this moment.

  I let myself be here because this is where I want to be.

  I let myself open my arms, my heart, because I’m ready to believe in happiness.

  I’m ready to believe in me.