The Place Between Breaths Read online

  Hannah looks like she is going to cry again.

  I hold up my hands. “Wait, wait. It’s going to be okay, Hannah. We are going to get through this. I’m your Frog or your Toad. Who’s the optimist again? Whichever it is, I’m your amphibian.”

  I can see Hannah beginning to smile as I shift out of park. We silently drive through town until we reach the high school. The concrete buildings jut out in odd places, additions tacked on over the years as this part of the small farm community grew into a suburb to the city. Mounds of dirty snow lie scattered along the outskirts of the school. There are a few bare patches of gray-green frozen lawn exposed near the buildings of this holding pen they call high school. Small groups of kids stand on the sidewalk talking, huddled together against the cold.

  Hannah stiffens as she scans the crowd. I press on the gas and try to pass the groups as quickly as possible in case Dave Ridley happens to be in one of them. Once we are on the far side of the parking lot, Hannah slowly uncurls from her seat. She leans forward, resting her forearms on the dashboard.

  “I can’t go in there,” she says. “I don’t want to bump into him.”

  “Just ignore him.”

  Hannah stares at me. “Just pretend I’m not pregnant? I don’t know how not to be pregnant, Grace. I have a baby growing inside me.”

  “It’s not really a baby. It’s a zygote.”

  “Do you always have to be the scientist?”

  “I can’t help the way my mind works.” I shrug. “You know you have choices, right, Hannah?”

  “I know,” she says, her voice hollow. “But so does he.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She twists her mouth to one side. “I mean, what if he wants to keep it?”

  I stare at her incredulously. Does she really believe Dave wants to have a baby with her?

  Hannah refuses to look up. She has the granola bar wrapper out. “He said he loves me.”

  “He loves you,” I repeat. Love. It is an emotion like no other. Wars, murder, heroic deeds, sacrifice, suffering, all in the name of love. What is it to know this kind of love?

  I study myself in the rearview mirror. My eyes so much like hers. The slope of my cheekbones. The curving upper bow of my lips. Hers. But the rest of me, the small moles marking secret places on the body, the freckles across my nose and cheeks, the way I walk—feet slightly pigeon-toed—that is my father. In me lives everything that my parents hoped and dreamed for all those years they were alone and dreamed of finding a love singular and true. I remember the way they looked at each other. Like thread and needle, each useless without the other. Dave Riley has never looked at Hannah that way. How do you tell your friend that he probably doesn’t love you enough to have a child with you? To marry you?

  “Your mom and dad did it,” Hannah says, her eyes pleading with me to agree. “They had you when your mom was nineteen, you said. It was the love story your father had always dreamed about.”

  “Yeah, but . . . that was different.”

  “How? How is that different for your parents and not for me?”

  I look away from her. How do you tell someone the truth? “Dad really loved Mom.”

  I hear the click of her seat belt. The car door slams and she is gone.

  • • •

  From my peripheral vision, I catch glimpses of Hannah throughout the day, but she disappears behind bodies and corners each time I approach. At lunch I sit by myself at one of the tables in the back, waiting and hoping Hannah has forgiven me. Waves of people move through the cafeteria, but Hannah is not one of them. I gaze down at my fries and grilled cheese, and the heavy, greasy odor begins to choke my senses. I push the tray away, but relief will not come. Instead I can feel the warmth, the pulsing heartbeats of all the people around me, a fine mist of sweat and breath mingling together and coating my skin like a slick layer of oil. I stand up and leave my tray on the table, rushing for the double doors. Shoving my hip hard against the horizontal metal bar, I push open the door and run out into the hallway.

  In the distance half a dozen kids walk toward me. I catch sight of Dave in the pack. The way Dave jostles into his friend, leaning in to say something private as he points to the girl walking in front of him, makes me sick. Hannah has said over and over that Dave is a really good guy. Sweet, even. But everything I’ve observed and noted does not support that conclusion. In fact, I would say the exact opposite. He is a pig and Hannah would be so much better off without him. Dave looks up and catches me staring at him. He lifts his chin at me in recognition. I quickly turn and head down the hall toward my next class, journalism, which is really just working on the school newspaper and the yearbook.

  Everyone is already at the conference table, looking over a few of the full-page spreads. I’m in no mood to talk or listen, so I head over to a computer and pull up the photo account to see what new pictures have been posted. Ashley Pines has posted a bunch of selfies of her and the cheerleading squad at the all-you-can-eat burger fund-raising night at Fuddruckers. There are a few good ones that I save of the whole group and one of Ashley chowing down on a burger, and I delete the rest. There are also a bunch of photos and selfies from the Academic Decathlon. They actually placed first in the state. I save a few of them standing with their trophy and delete the ones where they are partying like crazy.

  “Hey, King,” Justin shouts from across the room. “Did you finish the spread of Enchanted Sea Night?”

  I sit back in my chair and crane my neck to see Justin. “It should be there. I uploaded it a few days ago.”

  “I didn’t see it posted. Can you check it? Maybe the server crashed before it finished.” I watch Justin go back to flirting with Amber, who is the senior quotes editor. Their blond heads merge together like a shampoo commercial. I would say they would have perfectly towheaded children except that I saw Amber’s roots when we were working together on the senior portraits page. Luckily for them, if they want to have blond kids, they just have to insert a blond-generating SNP, otherwise known as a single-nucleotide polymorphism, a regulatory gene for hair color, into their embryo. Ahhh, genetics. It’s like magic, but real.

  I return to the photo account and save a few more pictures of the track team and the girls’ lacrosse team before I switch platforms and look for the Enchanted Sea Night spread. Damn, it did crash before completely uploading. I hit upload again and watch the bar slowly crawl across the top of the page. The upload will take a while. I notice a small photo of Dave Riley in the corner, but he is with another girl whose face is turned away from the camera. He is smiling so wide you can see both rows of teeth. Could he really love Hannah? For her sake, I want it to be true. I want it so bad, I am even willing to stop the upload and go back in to Photoshop the black-haired girl out of the frame. There. At least Hannah won’t see that he went with someone else to that stupid dance. I hit render and watch the new reality take form.

  After school, I pace outside next to the administration building, waiting to see if Hannah will show up so I can give her a lift to her usual drop-off spot. As the minutes gather with no sign of her, the realization dawns. She is not coming. And I’m not surprised—why would she want someone like me as her friend? Who am I to tell Hannah that Dave doesn’t love her? That he probably just used her for sex. What do I know about falling in . . . love? Dad ruined his whole life for love. An entire lifetime wasted on someone who was never going to come back. And if by some great miracle she did return, what would she have to offer him? Or me? Her love? Or just a life spent in a drug haze, moving from hospital to hospital like the first time?

  Love is a word. A four-letter word that means nothing and everything to the wrong people. I start kicking at a bush by the sidewalk, thinking about all the times Dad made us move in the name of love. Most times I never even had a chance to make a friend before we were packing and leaving again. All for another lead at another lab. Another possible discovery. To help HER. I kick hard at the shrub and then reach down, begin yanking and pullin
g at the leaves. They scatter and fall to the ground. My anger and frustration pour out as I destroy this living thing until a calm begins to settle over me.

  “Nice gardening work!”

  There is a group of guys laughing and staring at me. Their eyes pass over my face, my body, their gaze like a physical presence of their judgment. My palms are streaked with green stains. I rub them on the sides of my jeans and walk quickly to my car. I can still see, from the corner of my eye, the group laughing. I jump into my car and gun it, screeching out of the parking lot. Rounding the corner, my front wheel hits the curb and my ribs smash into the steering wheel. The last ball of anger deflates in one motion as I pull over and clutch my side, panting.

  The image of the group snickering at me plays over and over in my mind. Stupid. Idiot. Their mockery echoes loudly in my ears. I lean back against the headrest, massaging the knot on my rib cage that will show black and blue by tonight. A truck passes and I glance over. Was that Hannah in the passenger seat? The misty silver of Dave’s truck turns the corner and disappears.

  Holding my breath, I try to make everything fade away: the pain in my ribs, the stench of school, Hannah, Dave, the leers, the green stains under my nails, Dad’s irrepressible hope—I just need everything to stop for a minute. The swirling images and whispers gnaw at me until I am dizzy. The bright afternoon light streams in through the windshield. Pressing my fingertips hard to my temples, I close my eyes and force my mind to quiet. The sun presses against my closed lids, turning my world red.

  Summer

  The sun will beat against the closed lids of your eyes. Pools of blood will swim in your vision. You will believe for a moment that you are lying on a beach. Warm air blowing lightly across your face. A hand reaching over to cup the roundness of your shoulder as the voice murmurs, Don’t fall asleep. You’ll burn.

  You will open your eyes, but the person is gone. Who? You search and search for the name, but the whispers crowd into your ears, erasing all your memories.

  They will find you. They will find the shell of you lying on the street. You will try to tell them you are just sleeping, but there will be no sound. Your throat parched shut. You will watch them move around you, their lips like fish in speech. Though the sounds once familiar are now nothing, just wind speaking through trees, you will try to understand what they are saying. They pluck at your skin. Your clothes.

  You will struggle away from them. Crouch down and hold your hands over your ears, but the voices are not outside. Are they? Are they, you stupid fuck? Stand up. Get up. Worthless. You’re better off dead. Coward. Who do you think you are?

  You will begin to cry. What do they want? You will begin to scream.

  The warm breeze lifts the trash around you, blowing leaves, bits of torn paper, raising ghosts from the streets. The birds circle above, floating on the currents, dark shadows piercing sunlight. The red and blue lights flashing in your eyes, the men in black hats, the patch of gold on their dark shirts reflecting glints of light into your eyes. Until they close and roll back. The darkness will lift your body into the air. A weightless burden carried up up up on the riptides of grief like a particle of dust in a tornado.

  Spring

  Large flakes of snow swirl and drift all around me as I step out of my car in the parking lot of Genentium. Above me the brilliant azure sky dots with white flakes. I marvel at the sight, opening my mouth to taste the blue that flits down on my face. Cold and clean, of light and air, I want to stand here all day in the perfection of this moment. I feel myself lifting into the sky. If I died right now, I would be happy. Forever.

  But too swiftly, the sky grays over with clouds, the blueness disappearing, and the fading light dulling my vision. I lower my eyes and turn toward the building in which I will spend the rest of my afternoon. From the outside, Genentium looks like a bank consisting of sheer walls of glass on three sides. A waiting area with lounge chairs, a couch, a receptionist sitting behind a high counter, and a few security guards loitering around to finish off the resemblance. In reality, Genentium is a bunker filled with scientist bees working toward a common goal led by a queen, Dr. Mendelson. With each step toward Genentium, the idea of work tames my mind and I feel a part of a larger organism that tethers my body. I step inside the aquarium building and wave to Connie, the stooped-back receptionist, as I show security my badge.

  On the elevator down to my lab, the doors open on B4, the animal floor. A guy with a tan too dark to be real for this part of the world pushes in a cart loaded with small compartments holding rats, two, sometimes three, per cage. I glance down at the rodents climbing up against the bars and sniffing the air. A few begin to squeak loudly. The elevator doors close and I find myself facing the guy with the fake tan. He briefly flashes me a smile before turning his attention to the squealing rats on the lower shelf of his cart. The noise is getting louder and louder. I stare at the numbers lighting up as we pass the floors. Why does my lab have to be on the lowest floor? The odor in the elevator is getting unbearable, not to mention the noise. The tan guy keeps checking the rats and then glancing up at me as though I am somehow responsible for their craziness. I start breathing through my mouth. I am just about to ask the guy what is wrong with them when the elevator doors open and he steps out backward. He easily swings the cart around and heads down the empty hallway. The fluorescent lighting turns the skin on the back of his neck a tropical orange. A slight screeching noise from a wheel is the only noise emanating from the cart now; the rats have suddenly become silent. The elevator closes.

  On my floor, all the labs are hidden behind heavy metal doors. From the hallway, it’s hard to imagine that there are close to a hundred scientists, lab techs, and assistants scurrying around the building. I remember my first day when Dr. Diaz, the supervising scientist for all the interns, gave us a guided tour as she introduced us to the various lab teams working on finding microscopic mutations—an extra gene sequence on some chromosome—chasing after a genetic history to different illnesses with a hereditary factor like breast cancer, diabetes, heart disease, depression. They were all down there searching for the clues that would lead to a discovery, and the hope for a cure, or at the very least, medication designed to target that specific condition. What Dr. Diaz didn’t say, but Dad made clear as soon as he started working for Genentium, was that there was a shitload of money in patents to be made. Money that funded all the doctors that Dad could lure with abandon to work on what he wanted most—our family again.

  I open the door to my lab and nod at some of the scientists standing at their stations. In a small room off to the side, I stow my gear on some shelves and change into my lab coat.

  Norah and Eddie, two of the interns, are whispering over by the wall where Dr. Diaz posts the schedules and charts for us. Buttoning up, I walk over to them.

  “Are you sure they are going to announce?” Eddie asks in a low voice.

  Norah shrugs, glancing at me.

  “What did you hear?” I ask as though we haven’t heard the rumors snaking through the halls for weeks now.

  “It never adds up to anything,” Norah scoffs. “I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

  Eddie vigorously shakes his head in disagreement. “No, Mango has been whispering about this for a few weeks now.”

  I cock my head. Dr. Diaz is one of the lead scientists in the research group that named themselves Mango. Some story about one of the doctors bringing in dried mango and no one liking it except that it’s the only snack left to eat at the end of the night so they all ate the mango. If there are hints from that group . . .

  Norah jerks her chin at Eddie and gives him the dirty-eyeball stare. He presses his lips together and the two move away, whispering furiously at each other. I know Norah doesn’t think I’m worthy of knowing the inside scoop. She likes playing quarterback in our little intern group, setting up after-work parties and getting all the gossip on the lead scientists. I haven’t kissed her ass enough for her to warrant me an exclusive.

  I
try not to care about Norah’s little jab and instead focus on searching for my assignment. Maybe it’ll be a glamorous action-packed day of labeling blood work or wheeling carts of dirty test tubes, beakers, and equipment down to the sterilizing room. Anything is better than what I normally do, which is sit at a computer screen and input dates and numbers that don’t make sense because it’s part of some larger result that no one bothers to explain. Today Dr. Diaz has benevolently assigned me centrifuge duty. Boring as doing laundry, but at least it’ll leave me time to catch up on some homework.

  At first, it all seems very exciting being picked out of hundreds of applicants all over the city for this prestigious internship. It’s couched with a certificate and a handshake while the local papers take pictures, but basically you are free labor. Another set of hands to do the grunt work. Because there is a lot of it. Even the scientists with certifiable PhDs and brains the size of boulders have to bow down and respect the hierarchy. There is always someone right above you who has the ability to command you at will. I’ve seen grown men with degrees from Yale and Harvard spitting mad enough to cry because they didn’t get the approval or funding or whatever else they thought they deserved instead of the lowly task of replicating results to test for consistency.

  I read over the chart to see what the other interns are doing. Norah, of course, has the best job today. She gets to record while they split some cells. That’s the most exciting task out of all the chores. I suppose knowing what the leads like and baking them their favorite cookies gets you somewhere. I do have to hand it to Norah, though, she has drive about this work for some reason, not like most of the interns, who don’t really care what the Genentium scientists do down here. For them, working in the lab is all about the quid pro quo. This will look great on their college applications, and hopefully, if they’ve cleaned their lead’s goggles enough times, they might even get a paragraph-long letter out of it. The outcome is reassuring. The results predictable. Which is why I love this place. Everything has an order. Even the social network. There is nothing more soothing than knowing exactly where you stand, why, and how you can or cannot change it. Make a discovery and you are a rock star. Aid in an assist to a clue, or key insight, and you can swear off shit work for years. Sit on a winning team and you eat well. Feast or famine.