Elizabeth Scott - Between Here and Forever

“Yeah, you did.”

He pauses for a moment. “Here’s the thing. I … I’m half Japanese, part black—and this is what counts in Milford—part white,” he says quietly.

“And?”

“And that, just now, was me tel ing the one person who doesn’t care what I am exactly what I am,” he says. “It’s—you know. You don’t like to say

‘coma.’ I don’t like being divided into little pieces of color. And I … let’s just say I understand what it’s like to be angry. But you … you’re so—”

Horrible. I wait for it, or some word like it.

He swal ows.

“Strong,” he says very softly. “I think you’re strong.”

“Strong?” My heart starts to pound, and he nods.

And then he says, “And sad. You’re … I think you’re the saddest person I’ve ever met. It’s like you’re drowning in it.”

I push away from the table and stand up so fast my chair fal s over as I rise. I grab it before it hits the ground, then slam it into the table as I grab my bag.

And then I pretty much race out of the cafeteria. I force myself not to run, but I’m moving fast and my eyes are stinging and I’m angry, I tel myself, I’m leaving because I’m angry.

But I’m not. I’m scared.

I’m scared because he saw me. Because he sees me.

“Abby!”

I hear him behind me, but I ignore him, cutting around a cluster of people waiting by the elevators and heading for the entrance.

When I get outside I force myself to stop. I know he isn’t going to fol ow me. I am not the kind of girl that guys chase, much less guys like Eli.

I’l find him on Monday and I’l just take him straight in to see Tess. No more talking to him.

“Abby,” he says right behind me, and to my embarrassment, I jump, I’m so startled.

“Do I look like I want to talk to you?” I say, trying to throw as much anger as I can into my voice, but he came out here, he came after me, and I don’t sound very angry at al .

I sound frightened.

“No,” he says. “But I—about what I said before, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t upset me.”

He looks at me then, and I can tel he knows I’m lying. Hel , I know I’m lying and doing a crappy job of it too.

“Okay, you did upset me,” I say. “I don’t want or need you feeling sorry for me.”

“I don’t—”

“Yeah, you do. Drowning in sadness? I look like that to you? Real y?”

“Yes.”

That’s it. One word. He doesn’t say it with any sort of force or anger or anything like that. He just says it like it’s true and I find myself spinning away from him again.

“No, wait,” he says, touching my arm, and I stil . “I wish … I see what you’re doing here. Every day you come and you hope and you—you’re so fierce. So determined. And I wish … I wish I could be like that.”

I force myself to look at him. To say something that makes this about him again because I can’t believe he sees things that aren’t grubby and awful in me. “So you could go home?”

“So I—so I could do a lot of things,” he says, and shoves his hands into his pockets. “Do you … do you want me to meet you tomorrow?”

“It’s Saturday.”

“I know.”

“I come at night,” I tel him, and I’m not ashamed of having no life, I’m not. Except I haven’t ever been somewhere with a guy on a weekend night.

(Or day, for that matter.) “My parents come during the day and I come—they let you stay til eight, so I usual y come around seven.”

“Okay.”

“Oh.” I can’t help it. I didn’t think he’d agree. I thought he’d have plans.

But then, Eli is rapidly turning out to be a lot more complicated than I thought he was.

“So I’l meet you in the waiting room by—by where Tess is?” he says, and I nod, then turn around and walk off to the bike rack.

“See you,” he says, but I pretend I can’t hear him. Not only is Eli more complicated than I thought, he’s also a lot more interesting.

He’s …

No, I tel myself. No. He’s nothing to me. He’s for Tess. She’l wake up. She’l see him. He’l see her. That’s al it wil take. That’s al it ever takes, and then he’l be hers and I’l be …

I’l be just fine.

I wil .

that I never went back to see Tess. I got so caught up in my strange conversation with Eli that I …

I forgot about her.

I slink home, where Mom and Dad are waiting for me in the living room like they know what I’ve done.

Except they don’t, because when I come in they both say hel o, Mom’s voice as warm as ever, but strained, and Dad sounding—and looking—

far away.

For al that Mom said I reminded her of him the other day, right now he’s reminding me of Tess and how she was when she was out of public view and got upset, right down to how he’s staring like he’s not here, like we’re not here. Like Tess would sometimes do. Like she did when she found out about Claire, or when she came home from col ege before the accident.

At the time, I figured she was worried about her grades, but now I think about how Beth said Tess was going to move out, and wonder if Tess had lost another friendship, if Beth had done something Tess couldn’t bring herself to forgive.

“What’s wrong?” I ask Dad, and he blinks like he didn’t see me come in even though he’d said hel o.

“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” Mom says, glancing at me before she looks back at Dad, who glares at her so strongly that … wel , if I were her, I’d smack him.

“Nothing?” I say, my voice rising, and Mom looks back at me.

“Not now, Abby.”

“Not now? Are you—?”

“Go upstairs,” she says, in her voice that means “no arguing, or else,” and I stomp outside instead, slamming the door hard as I go.

Then I sneak over to the living room window, crouching down so they can’t see me.

“You know what the doctor said, Dave,” Mom says. “It’s not—it’s not that simple. Tess is—” She breaks off.

“I know,” Dad says, and there’s silence for a moment.

When Mom talks again, her voice is muffled, like she’s leaning into him. “I’m worried about Abby.”

I stiffen and press myself against the house, closer to the window.

“Abby?” Dad says. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Mom says. “And that’s the problem. I looked at her the other night, and she just—she reminded me so much of you when you first came back after John died. She’s so—she’s so quiet. So angry. So scared. But she hides it, or tries to, and Tess was always so—she was—”

I stand up then. I know what Tess was. So happy. So blah blah blah. So not me.

I head down the driveway and walk to Claire’s house. Al the lights are off, but Claire is sitting on her front porch, soaking her feet in what looks like a bucket.

“Is that a bucket?” I ask.

“Mom borrowed the footbath she got me for Christmas last week and I haven’t seen it since,” she says. “My guess is she said she thought it wasn’t working right and Daddy took it apart and it’s in pieces out back and she can’t bring herself to tel me yet.” She swishes her feet around in the water. I hear it splashing against the sides of the bucket. I pop open the gate and walk up to where she’s sitting.

“What’s going on with you and Eli?” she says. “Everyone was talking about how you ran out of the hospital and he fol owed you.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“No?”

“Nope. I didn’t run. I left. Quickly.”

She laughs. “So he did fol ow you.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like how you’re saying it. We were talking about Tess.”

“Oh,” she says. “Why?”