Elizabeth Scott - Between Here and Forever

“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 tel she knows there are things I’m not saying. I can also tel 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’l ever see Tess smile again.

None of us do.

soon after the accident, when everything was stil 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, al the fears about the future, al my worry for Tess. Al my anger at her. And I’d thought that trying to move past that would make it different.

But it doesn’t. It’s stil sad to see al 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 wil ing 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 real y 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 stil , 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’l 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 tel 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 stil 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 stil 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 tel ing 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 tel her about Eli. I tel 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 tel 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.

I’l run into Claire, or Clement, or … someone. Anyone. I real y 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. Real y gets to me. And I think that’s okay. I think it might be al 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 fil ed with boys getting into their expensive cars, and there’s an ease about how they move, as if they know the world is okay, ful of promise, and always wil be.

I only ever saw one person in Ferrisvil e 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 stil 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 Ferrisvil e forever.