Allyson In Between ✔︎

Chapter Four

|photo by Nadi Lindsay from Pexels|

The morning sun is peeking around the edges of my closed blinds. Which means I slept through dinner. I kick out of the covers and reach for the bedside table, patting around for my phone. I have to unplug it from the charge cord, so I can hold it close enough to read the time. Because my head is still fuzzy from the medicine I took after I got the headache Penny warned me I'd get if I kept staring at the tiny screen. 

But she was only half right. It wasn't just the act of reading that brought on my symptoms. Those IM transcripts tell a story, and the main character is...someone I don't want to know.

My neck and shoulders tense, like they're reaffirming the thought. So. Maybe I should stop reading the conversations all together.

I sit up extra straight, allowing my lungs to expand as far as possible. Lindsay still hasn't replied to the text I sent her last night, long before the migraine symptoms started, but I think I can answer my own question now. She wanted me to read these conversations so I would see that Samantha Zhao was judging me too, that I was the only character in the whole stupid story—that was my actual life—who couldn't see that all my "pain in the ass" little sister was trying to do was hold onto the relationship we had in North Carolina.

We were close then. Friends, but more than that, I protected her. Like when that jerky kid, Jimmy Smoot, pushed her out of the tree fort in our backyard. I chased his stupid butt all the way back to his driveway; then came home, patched up Lindsay's skinned elbow and spent the next hour excavating mulch bits from her thick curly hair.

I don't know how I became the kind of person who'd plot to an eleven-year-old alone in a convenience store—and really, I don't want to—but I understand why Lindsay acts like she's mad at me. I pushed her away after I made "the first move" on Noah Dodge. I was so focused on my infatuation with the adorable boy with the birthday cupcake that I couldn't see how much she needed me.

Is that the reason she showed me the app? Maybe when Lindsay said I should reach out to Samantha Zhao, she was trying to tell me not to contact Noah Dodge. I check the time again: it's 8:07. If it takes two hours to drive here from Summerfield, then Noah might already be on his way. But I guess it's not too late to ask him to turn around. I find his name in the contacts and type: I'm sorry, but I've changed my mind. Please don't visit me at Faircrest.

But I don't press send, because I haven't really changed my mind. If anything, I'm even more curious. The smiling boy from my dream is the reason I didn't abandon Lindsay in that convenience store—he wouldn't let me.

I flop back against the stiff mattress, groaning. If there's any chance that I'm right about Lindsay, then I have to show her I'm not that person. Right?

Yes. I roll onto my stomach and send the text. Then I open the bumblebee app, because of course I'm going to keep reading those freaking conversations. I have to know everything Lindsay wants me to know—all the horrible things I've done to her—so I can...

Wait. Why is it asking me for a password? I press the home button, swipe the app closed and then re-open it—and the screen is the same.

Crap. How can it need me to log in if I never logged out? I type the numeral equivalent to Mags into the second window, but I know—even before the bossy window pops up to tell me—that it's wrong.

"Crap."

But oh. It looks like there's a way to... I touch my finger to the phrase, Forget Password, and type in the email address that was already in the username window. The app promises to send me a code to verify that the account belongs to me. Good. Now all I have to do is wait for the email.