Tab Bennett and the Inbetween (27 page)

“I figured,” was his response.

I liked having him there. I hated to admit it, but I did. And it wasn’t just the view of his perfect ass encased in dark blue jeans that his position on the floor provided me, although I appreciated that a lot. It was his company; it made me feel good just knowing he was there.

While I gagged on that, the phone rang again.

“It’s Nina,” I said.

“Hmmm.”

She also wanted to know when I was coming back to work. Not because she was worried about the bank being short staffed. She wanted me to tell her if I thought a certain married customer was flirting with her. She thought yes, not surprisingly. “He practically frenched me right at the window!” she squealed, laughing her loud, infectious laugh until I couldn’t help but join in. “I was like, is that a roll of quarters in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

I reminded her that the customer was married and that she was dating my cousin. She said I was no fun and told me to quit moping around the house and come back to work.

“You have a nice laugh,” Alex said when I hung up the phone.

“Thanks.” I didn’t tell him how great I thought his butt was even though it was right on the tip of my tongue to do so. I might have, but my phone rang again and stopped me.

“I don’t recognize the number,” I said as I flipped open the phone. “Hello?”

Allison’s normally quiet voice was even harder to hear over the phone. She sounded like she was calling from very far away and inside a tin can.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“In a tunnel.”

“Did you say a tunnel?”

She cut me off. “Did you read the postcards yet?”

I was embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t so I made excuses instead. “Um…not yet. There’s been kind of a lot going on here. My friend Alex was hurt…”

“Yes, I know.” She sounded impatient. “But he’s better now and you really need to read them.”

What if they revealed something I didn’t want to know? What if Allison gave them to me because they would hurt me? What if the things I read totally changed Rivers, made her into a person I didn’t know, couldn’t ever know?

“I’m going to read them now,” I said. “Should I call you after?”

There was a strange banging sound in the background that I couldn’t place. I tried to figure out what it was while I waited for her response.

“If you have questions call me, but otherwise don’t. I’m in enough trouble as it is. I’ve got to go, Tab. Read them. Be careful.”

And then she hung up the phone.

“That was mysterious,” I said, shaking my head. I still wasn’t sure if Allison was my new best friend or my assassin. I didn’t think I’d know for sure until she was pulling me down into the ground with her.

“Who was that?” Alex rolled over onto his stomach and looked up at me with heavy lidded eyes.

“Allison. I don’t know where she was but it sounded like she was calling from the center of the earth.”

He pulled himself up to a sitting position, crossing his legs in front of him. “Interesting girl, that Allison.”

It was completely ridiculous but I felt a pang of jealousy. I didn’t want him to be interested in other girls even though I wasn’t completely willing to admit that I wanted him to be interested in me. “You think?” I asked casually.

He was thoughtful. “To tell the truth, I’m not sure she’s entirely human. There’s something about her.”

I didn’t tell him I thought she was one of They but I nodded. “I got that too.”

 “She’s not Elvish, obviously. She might be a Lesser of some sort. A Brownie maybe. Or a troll.”

I laughed. “I’ll be sure to tell her you think she’s a troll.”

With one lightning quick move, he jumped up and grabbed me, pulling me into his lap. He brushed his lips against mine and then pulled away holding the pile of postcards he’d plucked from the pocket of my sweater. “Was she calling about these?”

“Give them back.”

He held them over his head just the way George or Matt would have when we were kids. He waved the letters around, making it impossible for me to grab them. “What are they? Love letters from Robbin?”

We laughed as I struggled to get the postcards from him and he fought to keep them away from me. He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me closer to him, holding my body against his. I kept trying to get away until he said, “I’m not responsible for what happens if you don’t stop wiggling like that.”

I stopped wiggling, suddenly aware of him beneath me.

He scanned the short message on the front of the first postcard. He flipped the card over and looked at the picture of two elephants standing side by side.  It was from the Columbus Ohio Zoo. He looked at a few other postcards, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Anaheim California, New York City.

“Where did you get these?”

 “Allison gave them to me. She and Rivers were friends I guess when Rivers ran away. At first she wouldn’t tell me anything but the other night she just sort of opened up. She told us all these stories about her and Rivers and then right before she left she gave me these. Weird, huh?”

I was happy that his voice sounded suspicious when he asked, “When did you say you met her?”

“Pop hired her to work at the bank right after the funeral.”

He listened to what I was saying – even though I was still sitting in his lap – while I told him everything. About Allison and my initial suspicions of her and how Robbin told me I was crazy. About how surprised and touched I was when she gave me the postcards. About how I thought she might be waiting for a chance to kill me.

At some point I’d laid my head against his chest; he’d begun slowly running his fingers through my hair. “So why haven’t you read them yet?” he asked softly as I pulled myself away from him.

 “I always said I wanted to know where she went and why but now that I have the chance to find out, I’m afraid.” I moved back to my own side of the couch, pulling my legs up against my chest. “She just disappeared one night with no warning, all of a sudden. It was really hard for me, not knowing where she was or if she was okay. I thought she was dead. We all did. When she came home she wouldn’t talk about it, wouldn’t tell me anything. It changed our friendship.” I took a deep breath and looked out the window while I tried to keep myself from crying. “What if whatever I read changes it again?”

Alex laid his hand on top of mine. It felt warm and strong, like something solid and reliable. “I’ll stay with you while you read them, if you’d like.”

“I would like that.”

He handed me the first postcard. It said:

Dear Ally,

Compared to Ottoville, Columbus is New York! London! Paris! I like it here. Maybe I’ll stay awhile.

Love from Rivers

During the first year she was gone, she lived in ten different places if you counted Ottoville, then seven the next year. She moved three times the year after that. She settled in Florida for about eighteen months, working as a waitress at a Waffle House about three miles from Disney World. The postcards she sent from that time all featured Mickey Mouse and said things like Greetings from the Happiest Place on Earth.

Reading about her travels, hearing her voice coming through in the short, funny messages she wrote to Allison made me miss Rivers in a bittersweet way. It reminded me of how funny she was, made her seem real again instead of like the ghost she was becoming. It hurt to think about her, but it felt good to remember her.

“Thanks for doing this with me,” I said. “Having you here with me…it makes this easier.”

“So I’m easy now? Instead of complicated?”

“I guess so,” I said, avoiding his eyes so I could avoid thinking about exactly what that meant.

I heard him chuckle. Then he said, “Ready for the next one? It’s from New Orleans.”

It said:

Dear Ally,

You were right, New Orleans is great! I feel very comfortable here! I already have a job and a closet-like apartment to call home! Come see me for Mardi Gras! I miss you.

Love from Rivers

“That’s a lot of exclamation points,” I said.

“Maybe she was excited.”

“Maybe, but she wasn’t really an exclamatory kind of a person.”

As we moved through the stack, the tone of her notes got more sarcastic, a clear indication of just how unhappy she was. By the time she’d reached Miami she wasn’t making an effort to hide how lost and alone she felt.

Dear Ally,

I’m moving again. Don’t know where I’m going. Anywhere but here isn’t a destination so I’ll let you know where I am when I get there. 

Love from Rivers

“There are two more. One is post marked about three months before she finally came home. It says: This is me checking in. But nothing else.”

I knew Rivers well enough to know she was angry when she wrote it. I recognized her angry handwriting—all long lines and capital letters—and her clipped tone from the many, many angry notes she’d left taped to our bathroom mirror over the years. I wondered what Allison had done to piss her off. Rivers’ was always so slow to get angry, which was a good thing since it took her forever to calm down once she did.

“This is the last one.” He handed it to me.

It was postmarked two months later from Austin, Texas. Rivers’ looping writing filled the box set aside for text and then curled around the perimeter of the card. We had to turn it around to read it all.

Dear Ally,

Nicholas was waiting for me when I arrived in Austin this morning. He was standing there at the bus station holding had a sign that said “please say yes.” Like there was ever a chance that I would. He says They’re still offering the same deal but now I’m running out of time to accept it.  I told him to go to h – e – double – hockey sticks.

I think I’m done running. I mean what’s the point when I ALWAYS end up getting found? I’m tired of being alone and scared and lonely. I’m tired of the way bus stations smell at midnight. Do you think it would be okay if I went home? Come get me if you think I’ll be okay. Hope to see you soon.

Love from Rivers

I stood up and took the card from Alex’s hands so I could read it again on my own, searching for some clue we might have missed the first time. His eyes followed me around the room as I paced back and forth reading and rereading the two short paragraphs. “What do you think offered her?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“He was following her around the country so she must have had something important to him. Something They really wanted.”

I imagined how scared she must have been. I pictured her looking over her shoulder everywhere she went, always scared, always running, always expecting to see his pale face in the crowd. Never feeling safe.

“It was me. I’m what he wanted.” I knew I was right. There was no question of it in my mind. “That’s what Nicholas offered her – her life in exchange for mine.”

“You don’t know that.” He was wondering what he should do if I started crying, trying to think of ways to distract me if I did. But I didn’t feel like crying. I felt rage, fury, and a tickle in the air I instinctively recognized as magic about to begin.

I could tell the moment he sensed it too. “What is this?” Alex asked, looking around. “Tabitha? Are you doing this?”

“No.” But the power danced around me, a physical thing that took up space and air. “Not on purpose.”

“Try to stop it,” he warned.

“I don’t think I can.”

The magic grew and swirled around me, swelling to fill every available inch of space. It crushed against me, leaving little air or room to breathe. Then in an explosion of color and heat and light, it collapsed on itself, becoming a concentrated point that burned in my chest. I could feel it there, slicing through me like a knife, like something sharper that makes a cleaner cut. I fell to my knees, driven there by the kisses of flame that raced up my spine. The magic spread like wildfire down my arms, blistering my palms, scorching them. The heat tore through me, white hot, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant and I was never afraid. When the pain was gone, burned through, a light, bright and gold spilled from my hands, filling the room, changing everything. It lasted a second, then disappeared.