Inbetween

“Help! Somebody help!” I screamed until my throat felt raw. “Cash! Finn?” Someone, please find me, I pleaded silently as I crawled to the door, one hand clutching the wound on my neck. Sticky liquid seeped between my fingers, churning my stomach. I didn’t have to look to know it was blood.

The way the room was spinning and turning dark around the edges was enough to tell me that.

The window blew out like it had been hit with a wrecking ball. I tried to crawl away but white-hot pain bit into my calf, the fiery sensation of metal grating against bone. I closed my eyes, praying for anything that would make the pain stop. Make it go away, I prayed through the pounding in my head.

Steady as a drum, it pounded louder, louder, louder, until a final burst drowned the sound out with shouts and screams.

“Emma. Oh my God, Emma, what happened?” Cash’s breath was warm on my face, his hands replacing mine around the wound on my neck.

I screamed. The sound choked off into a strange gurgle as he slid the piece of broken mirror out of my skin. Everything was blurry even behind my closed lids, a gray catacomb of never-ending fuzziness pulling me deeper into an ocean of forgetting. I fought it, concentrating on the feel of Cash’s fingers on my face. I needed to talk. I needed air. I needed…

“Finn,” I whispered, and then everything went black.

Chapter 26

Emma

“Don’t you dare die, Em.” Cash’s voice sounded like he’d been wrapped in cotton. “I mean it. I’ll follow you to the grave and kick your ghostly ass if you don’t stay with me.”

My eyes rolled around behind my eyelids. I couldn’t open them. Couldn’t make my lips move to tell him not to worry.

“Sir, we’re going to need you to back up,” a woman’s voice said. I felt pressure against my neck. So much pressure. A prick in my wrist. A plastic mask around my mouth. Then warm, familiar fingers laced through mine. Cash.

“He really cares about you,” a girl said.

I blinked, confused by the fact that I was suddenly sitting on a bench next to the drive-in concession stands with a girl I didn’t know. In front of us, the back of the ambulance was a flurry of action. I had never seen a pair of hands move so fast as the paramedic worked at bandaging my neck. Cash rocked back and forth, staring at our linked fingers. My body looked pale and empty on the gurney.

“I’m dead,” I breathed. I looked up and had to blink away the golden spot that bloomed across my vision before the girl came into focus.

She smoothed her white dress over her legs. “You’re not dead.”

“Then what is this?”

She cocked her head to the side, inspecting me with golden eyes. I watched her thumb rub the pearl handle at her side. “You’re close,” she said. “But I think you’re going to be fine.”

“Th-then why are you here? What do you want?” The back of the ambulance started to spin. I gripped the sides of my head and stared at my lifeless body.

“We’re losing her!” Monitors started to wail. A choked sound seeped from Cash’s throat.

“Okay, I don’t have much time,” the girl said. “Come here.”

I jerked away from her touch. “Why?”

She sighed. “Because I’ve been given permission to show you something that I think you need to see. The only reason I can show you now is because you’re straddling the line. After they finish with you”—she nodded to the paramedic—“I lose my chance.”

Hesitantly, I nodded.

“Trust me. You’ll thank me later.” She smiled and raised her palm to my forehead, pausing just before making contact. “Oh, and Emma?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell Finn he owes me.”

She pressed her palm to my forehead, and I was engulfed in light.

…

The shock of cold was too much. It burned through me until it was something else altogether. Cold like this wasn’t just a temperature. It was pain. Throbbing. Cutting. Consuming. I tried to gasp for air, but nothing came in. Nothing got out. Ice laced with the blood in my veins. My legs felt like slabs of concrete.

A hand touched my cheek. Peace flooded through those fingertips like warm honey. Numbing me.

Calling my name.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” a rough voice said. The hand was jerked away. I felt lost without it. Cold. “You don’t touch them. Ever.”

“I wasn’t—”

“I don’t know what’s going on with you today. Just do your job. Got it?”

The voices stopped and the snow crunched beside my face. The warmth moved away. And then… pain. Darkness. Everywhere. I screamed inside my head but I couldn’t feel the sound on my lips.

Couldn’t find the light with my eyes. Something sharp sliced through me. Splintered me in two. And then I was weightless. Blissfully numb.

I opened my eyes and blinked at the shadow of a boy who stood in front of me. His green eyes swept over me thoughtfully, like he was waiting for me to break. Or at least realize what was happening. I glanced behind me at the body lying in the snow. Her lips were blue. A red halo of blood stained the snow around her blond head of hair.

She was me.

“I-I’m dead.” I stumbled back, feeling afraid and hopeless, but two hands caught my shoulders.

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered. “I’m going to take you somewhere now. Somewhere safe.

Away from this.”

I turned around in his arms and nodded against his chest. This was what was supposed to happen when you died. Just like Mama said. I shouldn’t be afraid anymore. The nothingness was something to be afraid of. Not this. I looked around, waiting for my tunnel of bright white light. The one they talked about in church. “W-where’s the light?”

The boy cleared his throat and put a little distance between us. “Actually, you’re going somewhere else.”

“Where am I going?”

“The Inbetween.”

I gaped. “The what?”

The boy grimaced and stared up at the dull, dimming sky. “The Inbetween. It’s a sorting ground for souls. This is where you go until they see you’re fit for another chance.”

“Another chance? Like reincarnation?”

“Among other options, yes. When and if they think it’s right, you’ll get the chance to go somewhere else.”

I looked out at the blue Chevy half-submerged in the icy river, then down to the lifeless body of Zach Murray. I was supposed to ride home with my sister, but I made her cover for me so I could ride with Zach. I didn’t know he’d been drinking till we were on the road.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” the boy said. “Not of me. Not of this place.”