The In Between

Chapter 27

Chapter 27

Justin

The letter worked. It happened fast, so I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but I feel it—it’s the only thing I feel. For a moment, I was with her. But before I could even process it, I was back in Quonset Hut 894, in the gray, colorless world of the In Between.

Now it’s over and for whatever reason I’m fixated on the photograph of my family on my bedside table, which is eerily is blank. If I concentrate, the details come back into view, the faces of my mom and dad and Sam emerging for a blink of time, then fading away all over again.   

It triggers my memory. I remember a show my Dad made me watch on one of those news programs about a guy who won memory championships. He built a house in his mind and put everything he loved in it. He said the trick to remembering all the details was to imagine them in silly or unexpected ways. Like putting a bathtub in front of the TV instead of a couch, or picturing your mom as a contortionist or something. I try it out with my parents playing Wii soccer, screaming and cheering their heads off when they score, instead of nagging me to turn it off and do my homework. I imagine Sam soulfully strumming my guitar instead of teasing me for writing such corny songs. But I don’t need a trick to remember Tara. I just put her in my room wearing the dress from the night I died.

“There is always a winning strategy,” Coach used to say. “It is your job to find it.”

I need to find a strategy to spend more time with Tara. The old man alluded to “methods,” ways of “building up.” I need to know what that means.

I go out into the gray again and walk next door. I knock on the door, find it unlocked and walk in—but his hut is empty.

I head to the center of town until I reach the village square, where people cluster in small groups or wander alone aimlessly. I stop a woman who is knitting with translucent needles, a twenty-foot long pearl gray scarf unfurling down her side and puddling at her feet.

“Excuse me. Have you seen an old man?” I ask.

She raises one colorless eyebrow, the knitting needles clicking together. “There are lots of old men here,” she remarks.  

“He had bushy eyebrows, a cough?” I prompt.

She shakes her head and returns her attention to her knitting. “I’m busy,” she says, dismissing me. I roll my eyes, moving on.

I see a couple walking side by side, like parallel lines, their steps in sync though they do not say a word to each other.

“Excuse me,” I say, going up to them.

They don’t seem to hear me. They part, walk on either side of me, then fall in step once more. I watch them turn a corner and disappear.

I sigh, about to give up, when a stooped, elderly woman with three long curly gray hairs growing out of her chin stops me. “This man you’re looking for. He had skin hanging from his jaw? Always sounded like he was going to cough up an ocean?”

“Yes, that’s him.” I answer hopefully.

“Worked as a school custodian back there?”

“I don’t know,” I admit.

The ancient woman frowns. “Just like he said, no one ever noticed him. Walked right by him day after day while he worked. Made him bitter, if you ask me. He began to resent your type.”

“My type?”

“Kids, teenagers, generations of them never even bothering to learn his name. He got a little bitter. Tough to get over being ignored all those years. He couldn’t let it go, had him all knotted up inside. It doesn’t bode well.”