Elizabeth Scott - Between Here and Forever

“I’m not,” I say, but he gives me this look, this I-see-through-you look, and I go upstairs and slam my bedroom door.

I know what I saw today. Tess heard something in that guy’s voice, something that grabbed her, and now I know exactly what I need to do.

I can’t reach her, but maybe someone else can.

I get up, open my door as quietly as possible, and slip down the hal into Tess’s room. It hasn’t been touched since the accident, and her bags from school are stil on the floor, and photos of her and her col ege friends are sprinkled al over her desk.

I slide my hands over them, see Tess smiling in the sunshine. She has my dad’s bright smile, al warmth, and I wonder about the guy she was smiling at. Did she like him? Or did she like the guy with the black shirt who shows up in the next photo, eyes on Tess and ful of longing as she reads something he’s holding in one hand?

Or what about the guy two photos later, the one who is grinning at her as she examines a tattoo on his arm, watching her fingers on his skin? Or is it the guy holding the camera in al the photos?

Whoever he is, he hasn’t come to see her—none of them has—and Beth, as nice as she is, is just her roommate and can’t and won’t make up for that.

But that guy today could. I can almost see her sitting up and smiling at him now.

I wonder if she can see it too, and think that maybe, just maybe, she can.

after school the next day. She’s standing in the tiny alcove the hospital has set aside for smokers, hidden off to the far side of the building. Milford is a no-smoking town, and self-righteously proud of it, but Ferrisvil e isn’t, and since Milford people can afford to go to better hospitals—and do—this is where people from Ferrisvil e come. And a lot of them, like Claire, smoke.

I fan the air around me and her, and she makes a face at me.

“I thought you were quitting,” I say.

“I’m working on it.”

“How?” I squint, pretending I can’t see her through the haze of smoke.

She sighs and stubs out the cigarette. “Fine, Mother. Hey, what did you think of that guy yesterday?”

“He can make people walk into doors.”

She laughs. “That was the best, wasn’t it? You should see Eli when he’s working in the gift shop, though. People stop and just stare at him like this …” She makes a zombie face.

“You one of them?”

“No, I’m off guys forever after everything with Rick,” she says. “Trying to get him to pay child support—ugh.”

“Guys suck,” I say, and she shakes her head at me and says, “Yeah. You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with al that crap. Tess always …” She trails off, like she’s said something she shouldn’t.

Like she’s said something I don’t know.

Like I don’t know that Tess is easy for anyone and everyone to love and I’m—I’m not.

“Hey, I’m glad I don’t have to deal with al the stuff Tess did. Al those guys cal ing and tel ing her that they loved her, or sending her stuff, or wanting to take her out, and me? Wel , I don’t have that problem at al .”

Claire bites her lip. “You know what I meant, Abby. You’re very—you have—”

“I have a sister I have to go see,” I say, stopping her before she has to try and finish her sentence. “And the sooner she wakes up, the sooner she can go back to breaking hearts. See you later.”

Look, I know I’m not pretty. As Tess once told me, not so much to be cruel, but just because she always wanted to know about our family and its history, I have my mom’s mother’s eyes, a muddy brown-green with weird blue flecks in them, and dark blond hair that likes to defy my brush and nature and just stick up wherever it wants to. Also, I’m built like a twelve-year-old girl. (That part no one had to tel me. It’s just obvious.) And it would be fine if I was stil twelve, but barely fil ing out an A cup at seventeen is pathetic. As is the fact that I can buy—and wear—boys’

pants because I’m barely five foot two. And also have no hips to speak of.

But now I know the guy I saw yesterday is Eli, and that he can be found in the gift shop. He must be fairly new to the hospital—I know everyone who works here—and I can work with that. I know what I saw yesterday.

I know what—who—Tess needs in order to wake up.

doesn’t respond, but that’s okay. I bet she needs to hear his voice again. When she does, she’l do what she did yesterday. She has to.

If Tess doesn’t wake up, then she isn’t—then she won’t be here. Not truly here, you know? And she’s always been the bright star my family revolves around. She’s been the person who people in Ferrisvil e talk about with reverence in their voices. Tess is pretty, young, kind—al the things people want each other to be. Al the things people so often aren’t.

The only problem is, I don’t know how to get the guy up here. I think about it as I tel Tess about my day, mostly lingering on the candy bar I bought before last period because Tess is a sucker for candy. She even ended up living with Beth because of it.

When I went to visit them last fal , she told me she knew she had to swap roommates and move in with Beth the very first day she came to campus.

“I walk into my room,” she said, “and there’s this girl sitting on the floor eating a Nibby Bar. You know, the one with the cocoa nibs in it?”

I’d nodded and made a face because Tess’s love for bitter chocolate, up to and including chocolate with pieces of twiglike chocolate in it, made no sense to me.

“And I think, wow, this is going to be amazing, because I love Nibby Bars too,” Tess had said. “But it turned out Beth lives across the hal , and just stopped by to say hi. I knew things would work out, though. And they did!” She’d turned and grinned at Beth, who shook her head at Tess, but stil smiled.

“How about some candy?” I ask Tess now. “A nice bar of chocolate, maybe? I’l get you one, I swear. You just have to open your eyes.”

Tess doesn’t move.

“Fine,” I say, and my voice comes out more angry than I mean it to. I swal ow hard and look at the floor.

“Someone wanted a copy of, um, Sassy You ?” a voice says out in the nursing area.

The voice. It’s that guy. Eli. I hear someone else murmur something, but I don’t listen.

I don’t listen because behind Tess’s closed eyes, I see something move. I see her body hearing something. I see it responding.

I know what I have to do, and so I go out and say, “It’s mine. I mean, I want the magazine.”

The guy—Eli—looks at me. If I thought he was real y looking at me, and not seeing someone who wanted a copy of the world’s stupidest magazine (and if I looked like someone he’d want to see), I swear my knees would melt. (That’s right, melt. Screw going weak. Eli is beyond that mortal power.)

“Um, excuse me, but I asked for that magazine,” one of the nurses says. “Mrs. Johnson loves it.”

Mrs. Johnson is in worse shape than Tess. She can’t even breathe on her own, and no one ever comes to visit her. I guess al her family is dead, or something. She just lies there in her room, al alone, day after day, air pumped in and out of her lungs, keeping her breath flowing, her heart beating. The nurses don’t pay much attention to her, and the first week Tess was here, I had nightmares about Mrs. Johnson every night.

I started sneaking into her room once in a while and saying hel o to her, and the nightmares stopped. I stil do it, and although I’ve never spoken to her, I’m sure Mrs. Johnson wouldn’t want a copy of Sassy You , with its stupid articles about how to get guys to want you “al the time!” and profiles of celebrities whose greatest achievements are tossing their hair around, smiling, and swearing that their latest trip to rehab “changed their lives.”