Elizabeth Scott - Between Here and Forever

She looks at Dad, who nods at her, and Mom closes her eyes.

When she opens them, they are wet with unshed tears. “Do you remember when Tess went to see the col ege admissions counselor during her senior year?”

I shrug, but I remember. How could I not? She pitched such a fit about everything, and my parents wanted to help her get into the school she wanted to go to, wanted to—

Wanted to help her.

“Oh,” I say. “So senior year, she wasn’t—al those times she went to talk about getting into col ege, she wasn’t talking about col ege at al , was she?”

“You must have noticed how she acted after Claire got pregnant,” Dad says. “She was—”

“Upset,” I say, and think of how Tess’s sometimes moodiness had come more often and gotten stronger, worse. Al those things she did—like the meatbal s, that sudden furious, frightening outburst—and I never thought—

“I didn’t know,” I say. “I thought … She was Tess. She always—everyone said she was so amazing. So perfect.”

“She wasn’t,” Dad says. “She was … she was very unhappy.”

“But she got better,” I say. “Right? She went to school and met Beth and—” I pause, look at Mom and Dad. “Did she ever tel you that she and Beth were together?”

“No,” Mom says. “We’d hoped she would, but I guess after Claire she was—I think maybe she was afraid she’d get her heart broken again.”

I broke my own heart .

I swal ow.

“So, what exactly happened with Claire?”

“We don’t know,” Dad says. “We knew they were seeing each other, but how it ended—we assume it’s because Claire got pregnant, but we didn’t even know about that until Tess told us. Do you remember when she did that?”

As if I could forget that day, Tess coming home and going straight up to her room, not even taking phone cal s, and when Mom asked how Claire was at dinner, Tess had stared at her for what felt like forever before she final y said, “Pregnant,” spitting the word out like it was poison. After that, she’d left the room whenever anyone said Claire’s name.

I look at Mom and Dad, so close, so together, and think of the last two photos of Claire and Tess. The first one, Tess lit up like an angel, sleeping in Claire’s bed as if she belonged there. The second, Tess staring at the camera and smiling even though her eyes were so not happy.

Your Choice.

“I have to go,” I tel them, standing up, and they both rise too, questions in their eyes.

“I have to get out of here, I have to think,” I say. “Today has been … I thought I knew Tess, but I—was she ever who I thought she was? Is anyone who they say they are?”

They don’t answer me.

They don’t have to. Tess wasn’t who I thought she was, and you can never ful y know anyone, not ever.

I see that now. I see so much now.

I leave the house and start walking down the street.

Claire is sitting on her porch, staring up into the sky, and I stop at the end of her driveway, wait for her to look down. Look away from whatever she’s watching—or thinking about—and see me.

up at the sky like she’s reading it, like the stars are speaking to her, and so I clear my throat and say, “Hey.”

She looks away from the sky then, looks at me. It’s hard to see her face from where I stand because she’s sitting so the porch light cuts her into areas of light and dark, shadowing her eyes but showing the fingers of one hand curled up tight.

“You want to talk about Tess,” she says, and there’s no question in her voice at al .

“I found—” I say, and then stop, thinking of the photos. Of Claire’s face turned toward Tess’s, of the two of them smiling. Of the picture Claire took of Tess sleeping. Of how Tess had them al hidden, like she wanted to pretend they never were.

I bet that’s what Claire wants too.

“I found out,” I say. “I figured it out.”

Claire moves into the light then, motions for me to sit on the porch with her. “Just—be quiet, okay? Cole’s asleep and you know how he wakes up super easily.”

“I know.”

“I know you know,” she says, and then sighs. “How did you figure it out?”

“Wel , you were—there was everything you said in the car, you know,” I say. “And then I went home and started thinking. And then I walked by Tess’s room and remembered how, um—”

“You found something,” Claire says, and for the first time, she sounds surprised. “Tess kept—she kept things?”

“Pictures,” I mutter. “On her computer.”

“Oh,” Claire says. “So you know know.”

“Yeah. Or at least, I think I do.”

“If you saw what I think you did, I don’t see how you can not know,” Claire says. “Wait, did that make any sense?”

“No,” I say, and she grins at me.

“I didn’t—if I’d known we’d be friends I wouldn’t have—”

“Kept it from me?”

“Ever talked to you,” she says. “I don’t—”

She takes a deep breath.

“I wanted Tess to go away and never come back. I wanted her to—I wanted her to tel me she was wrong. That she was sorry.”

“I’m sure she is,” I say, though I’m not real y sure at al . How can I be, when the Tess I knew never spoke Claire’s name, but the Tess I didn’t kept pictures and remembered her every time she used her computer?

“No,” Claire says. “She isn’t. She—I had to drop out of school because of her, Abby. She made my life hel .”

“Wel ,” I say slowly because she’s right, Tess did ruin high school for Claire. “I guess she—I guess she was so hurt when you got pregnant that she felt like she’d broken her own heart for thinking you wanted her like she wanted you, and—”

“What?” Claire says, and the word is so sharp and loud that down the street, a dog barks, and inside Claire’s house, Cole stirs, cal ing,

“Mommy?”

Claire gets up and goes inside. I can’t hear what she says to Cole but I hear the sound of her voice, a faint, calm thread. Eventual y, it fades into silence.

I sit on the porch, waiting until I start to think Claire isn’t coming back out. She final y does, though, a pack of cigarettes in one hand, a lighter in the other.

“I thought you were quitting,” I say, and she says, “I thought you wouldn’t stil be here,” and sits back down next to me.

“I don’t know the whole story,” I say.

“Are you sure you want to?”

I nod and Claire pul s out a cigarette and lights it. Its scent rises up to me, harsh and with a chemical tinge that reminds me, weirdly, of the hospital. I wave the smoke away.

“It’s funny, but I didn’t start smoking until I got the job at the hospital,” Claire says. “I was so excited back then. Final y, I had my GED, I had a job, I could take care of me and Cole—wel , at least take care of us if we lived at home. But that place, it just—”

She looks at me. “There’s no good way to die, you know? No way I’ve seen, anyway. It al ends with tubes and bedpans and IVs and I just—

smoking gets me out of there. Gets me outside, gets me away from al the—”

“Sick people?” I say, and she shakes her head.

“Away from my life. This isn’t—I wanted to go to col ege, Abby. I wanted …” She sighs. “I wanted Tess. But she—she didn’t want me. Not like I wanted her.”

“She must have, because I know you two—”

“Yeah, we had sex,” Claire says. “And she even said she loved me. But she didn’t—I asked her, right before senior year, to stop with the guys.

To stop pretending. I mean, I know it’s Ferrisvil e, but it’s not like we’d have gotten lynched. Your parents already knew, and mine—wel , what did I care then? I was going to get out of this place.”