Between Here and Forever

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.”

“So, who gets it?” Eli says, looking at the nurse and then at me. “I gotta get back down to the gift shop. Nobody else is there today.”

I point at the nurse and go back to Tess.

“Sorry,” I whisper. “I’l —” What? I have no idea how to approach him. I don’t approach anyone.

But this is for Tess. For Tess to wake up.

“I’m going now, but I—I’m going to get Eli for you, okay?” I say. “Don’t go anywhere.”

I pretend her mouth curves up into a smile. I pretend she can hear me. I take the copy of Sassy You the nurse swore Mrs. Johnson wanted from where it lies unopened on the stack of magazines the nurses “read” to Mrs. Johnson by standing there and reading the magazines themselves, and shove it in the trash.

“Sorry you had to see that thing,” I tel her. “And, hey, I’m going to get Tess to wake up. She has to, you know. Otherwise …” I trail off.

Otherwise this is Tess’s future. A long, slow decline. A lifetime without life.

A lifetime of me tied here, because if Tess doesn’t get better, my parents wil give up everything to keep her alive and end up with nothing. I wil have to stay and help them, be the rock they can lean on. I wil sink into Ferrisvil e, and I wil decline too. I wil have a lifetime without a life, and I don’t want that.