The In Between

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Tara

I try to open my eyes and fight to the surface, but I get pulled back into the coldness. I can’t feel my arms or legs. I am swimming underwater.  

I try to think, try to make my brain grasp onto something, anything, but I can’t. I keep drifting down. A chilling fog fills my veins, weightless, encompassing.

From a long distance off, I hear my name.

Justin. Justin is calling for me.

I have to get up. I have to get to him.

But I keep slipping back in, back under, into the whiteness, into the clouds.

I tell him to wait, I’m coming, but somehow I know the words are just thoughts. I’m the only one who can hear them.

I lie very still, waiting, hoping, listening. He will call for me again, he must—

I have to get to the surface. I have to find Justin. I begin to thrash my way through, determined to move my arms and legs. I’m not sure if I am actually moving or not. I feel something holding me back, trying to restrain me. There is a sharp jab in my arm.

I stop fighting. I slip back under.

It’s warmer now. I don’t have to struggle. Relief washes over me—Justin is with me, holding me, stroking my hair, telling me it’s okay, I’m okay. “Sshhh,” he soothes me in the voice, I love so much. “Sshhh.” 

I say his name and this time I can tell real words are forming because my throat hurts as they make their way out. My mouth is sandpapered, raw, parched. I say his name again. Justin.

I relax under his touch. I need to open my eyes andlook into his.

“I love you,” he whispers, still stroking my head, and it spreads like warm honey through my veins. “I love you.”

I smile, too tired to speak and tell him I love him back, but he knows. We are one.

“Tara,” he says my name as if it is a prayer. “Tara.”

But even as he says it, he stops stroking my hair, he stops holding me. I can’t feel him. It’s as if he’s dissolving into the fog, slowly, irrevocably, until he is gone.  Panic rises up in my throat. 

“Justin?”  I call his name but it comes out as a whisper. I try again, “Justin?  Please. Please.”  

Slowly, I peel my eyes open…to a world of whiteness.

The bright lights are too harsh and I shut my eyes, light-headed.  

When the spinning stops, I try tentatively to open my eyes once more. A face drifts before me, blurry, impossible to make out. I concentrate on the voice attached to it, deep and resonant. “Tara.”

I blink, willing myself to focus.

The man’s face comes becomes sharper and more delineated. It is not Justin.

I try to look past this stranger, to find Justin, but I can’t. The panic returns.

“Tara.”

I hear another voice, soft, filled with concern. It is my mom’s voice, at once so familiar and so foreign. I feel her hand on my head, stroking my hair. Our eyes meet and she leans down to nestle her cheek, wet with tears, against mine. “Sweet pea.” She hasn’t called me that since I was eight. She kisses temple, my forehead. “Thank God, thank God.”