Trapped Between

I struggled to get to sleep that night. I was full to the point of bursting, full of stones and regret and a sickly feeling of foolishness, like if I rolled over I would vomit it all out, all over my bedroom floor.

I thought about everything that had happened since I found out about David Pearson, found out about Drew, and had had my life turned upside down. Eventually, the creeping, numbing fingers of tiredness pushed their way into my eyes and I fell into a dreamless and uncomfortable sleep.

When I opened my eyes the next morning, I felt no better. No resolution had come to me in the night, no way of knowing how to move forward.

I looked up at my ceiling and felt like screaming, opening my mouth wide like a banshee and letting all the anguish spew out. I was a stupid girl, who had somehow fallen in love with a ghost, and when I had laid my cards on the table, he had turned away and disappeared.

When I thought about his beautiful face, his grey eyes, I could still feel the flame smouldering in my chest, but it hurt now. I could feel it, licking the fresh wound from the razor blade, turning the edges into black, charred skin. I slowly rolled out of bed, and moved through my morning routine like I was a ghost, the dark irony wasn’t lost on me. I drifted through the bathroom, glided into some clothes, floated my way through breakfast and then slipped out of the front door.

As usual my mum asked me to go up to the market with her bonkers list; I took it from her without complaints and slipped through the front door. Dad was already outside, apologising profusely that I was going to have to walk. The car, which had failed its MOT, was in dire need of some tender loving care, so Dad was going to be up to his armpits in car bits and grease for the foreseeable future so I was free to ghost my way up the street without interruption.

There was no one else about, not a single soul; it was like I was in another world. Yet again the morning was frosty, it would be hours until it would thaw into the ever present drizzle, and I watched my breath curl and cloud in front of me, like shimmering mist.

As I neared the market, life made itself known again. People, wrapped up in coats with their faces turned down, hurried into the market, focussed on getting their hands on the goods they wanted before anyone else could get them. The dog eat dog nature of Newlington market, the seriousness of snapping up a bargain, usually made me laugh, but not today. A gust of cold air hit the back of my neck as I made it to the narrow entrance making me shiver.

“Beth, I’m sorry.”

I shrieked, spun round and came face to face with Drew.

He was stood right behind me, pushing his unruly fringe back from his grey eyes, his fingers twitched with a feverish energy. His eyebrows were pulled in together; his lips screwed up to the right making him look like an adorable, troubled child.

He was so close to me, close enough to hear how loud my heart was hammering in my chest. I couldn’t think of any way to muffle it, to quieten it. I was in shock by his sudden appearance but I was also panicking, if he heard my heart, heard the effect he had on my body, he would disappear again.

He stood motionless, as if he was waiting for me to respond, but I couldn’t speak, I was afraid that if I opened my mouth I would say something wrong, something foolish again. I stayed mute, hardly breathing, waiting. The only sound was the thundering of my heart, like a traitor, a turncoat spilling all my secrets.

“Beth, I’m sorry for how I acted yesterday,” he said. His eyes churned with a hidden turmoil, and his words came out stilted, disjointed, and formal. “I shouldn’t have left you. I didn’t want to…it’s just that…I was upset about my parents…confused about how I was feeling…” He stopped and just looked at me, his eyes intense with an unidentifiable emotion.

My thrashing heart took off, beating with the strength and sound of a thousand tiny hammers. My head was in a spin, one thought danced around my mind, over and over. He hadn’t wanted to leave me. He hadn’t wanted to leave me. He hadn’t wanted to leave me.

Yet still I didn’t speak, I’d been here yesterday, declared how I felt and been left bleeding on the floor.

I looked away from his eyes, unsure of what the intensity meant, and gasped, suddenly very aware of where we were stood. I whipped my head back and forth, frantically checking to see if anyone was staring at me but the market goers were all going about their business, no one was looking in our direction; no one seemed to have noticed me apparently talking to myself.

He gave a sheepish grin and waited for me to say something. I didn’t know what to say, I couldn’t look at him so I focussed my eyes on the pavement at his feet.

“Drew! Your trainers!” I exclaimed in a high pitch voice. His trainers, laced up with his silver laces, were a now rich green. It didn’t make sense. I snapped by head up to look at his face.

He just shook his head, bemused and shrugged his shoulders. “I know. I was just thinking about everything, well, about you actually, and it just happened.”

He shrugged again, but it wasn’t a completely relaxed gesture, there was a cord of tension in his shoulders holding them stiff.

I didn’t know what to say.

“I think it all happened, when I realised,” he said simply, grey eyes searching mine.

The air went still, quiet, and everything around us fell away to utter blackness. It was like we were the only two things left, bound together in a black, silky void.

“When you realised what?” I whispered, my voice nothing more than a wisp in the cold. My mouth went dry and I couldn’t get enough oxygen. I felt light headed; my vision became distorted, the edge of his face blurred into the surrounding blackness. The only things left in focus, in hyper definition, were his grey eyes.

“When I realised that I wanted you,” he shrugged. One cheek lifted, pulling his face into a lopsided smile, as if he was trying to lighten the intensity of the moment. I held my breath, afraid that if I moved, even the slightest tremor, that I would burst the bubble.

His smile remained but his eyes turned serious.

“I felt it the first time I ever saw you, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I understood what it was. Look, I know that I’ve got nothing I can give you, but I’m too selfish not to say anything now. I’ve never felt anything like this before, not even when I was alive.” He took a deep breath, steadying himself, and his eyes burned into mine. “Beth, I think I’m in love with you.”

The bubble burst and the colour of the day zoomed back into focus, bleeding through the blackness. The grey, frosty day seemed filled with brightness, and I felt like I would take off, soar over the clouds, up to where the sun would be shining brightly.

I had been right yesterday, when I’d thought I’d seen him feel the flame radiating out of my chest. He had felt it, and it hadn’t burnt him like I had assumed, it had lit something inside him, brought something to life, that seemed to smoulder with as much energy as the plume inside me.

He reached for me, hesitantly, and like before, I felt the white heat searing my cheek. This time I kept my eyes open and could see that it was the feel of his hand touching my skin, brushing across my cheek.

I couldn’t feel the contact, not in a physical way like a human touch, but I could sense where his hand was and I leant my face towards it. It was strange, there was no flesh to rest my face against, but I could feel him there, feel the brand of his touch burning my skin, marking me forever.

“What made you change your mind?” I breathed.

“Change my mind?” he asked absentmindedly, running his fingers across my cheekbone, amazement and wonder swimming in his wide eyes.

“Yes,” I gulped. The feel of his touch was so overwhelming that I had to take a moment to collect my thoughts, work out how to speak again. “Yesterday, you seemed so horrified.”

It was difficult to say it, to explain how broken I had been when he had left me; I felt the usual flush in my cheeks, and I looked down at my feet, taking a moment to pull in a much needed breath. I struggled to phrase what I wanted to say, struggled to admit how exposed I had been, so I stripped it all back and said it in the simplest form I could.

“I made you leave,” I said. The memory of his horrified eyes still hurt, the wound left by the razor blade was still raw and black at its edges.

“You made me leave?” He looked at me in total shock, like he was stunned by what I was saying, like it was the complete and utter last thing he had expected me to say. The look of astonishment faded from his face leaving it open and soft. “You could never do anything to make me turn away from you. I made myself leave, even though it was impossible. I left because I couldn’t bare feeling like this when it’s a hopeless cause. Beth, how I feel about you hasn’t changed from the first time we spoke; I just hadn’t allowed myself to think it until yesterday.”

Joy surged through me; the plume of light in my chest exploded like a brightly coloured firework, blasting the stones in my stomach to smithereens. I felt like I had shot into the sky and was floating beyond the clouds with Drew, just the two of us suspended in the morning sky surrounded by millions of brightly coloured sparks, blues, greens, golds, there was nothing else. There was just him.

He carried on speaking, totally unaware of my jubilant flight into the grey sky.

“I know I shouldn’t be saying any of this, but I needed to be fair, to be honest with you.” His eyebrows puckered and he looked down, with a helpless look on his face. “I understand if I’ve made it impossible for you to help me now.”

He shrugged as if he was resigned to the fact that he had said something that would make me back away from him, from my promise.

I knew my mouth was hanging open, I knew I must look like a total gawk but I couldn’t find the muscles in my face to lift my jaw back up.

Unbelievable.

Amazing.

He genuinely believed he had just admitted something that would make me run a mile. I could have laughed out loud at the turn of events; it was the complete opposite from what I thought had happened yesterday.

I was flabbergasted that my love for him wasn’t as obvious as I thought it was. I was sure it had been painted on my face; there in every blink of my eye, in every word I uttered, I was so sure it was my feelings that had made him look at me so coldly yesterday, my feelings that had made him leave.

“But you left me yesterday, because of how I-”

“I left you yesterday because I was frightened by how I feel about you,” he interrupted. His words came out in a rush, like it was vital for him to tell me why he had acted how he had. “I left you because I knew how I felt…how I feel about you is wrong. I have no right to feel like this, to love you, I have no way of giving you anything, but that doesn’t make me want you any less.”

I shook my head at him in amazement and laughed, it felt good to allow the tension out. I struggled to get the words out through the giggles that were becoming uncontrollable.

“You are describing how I feel about you.” I giggled, as I wiped away a tear that had squeezed out of my laughing eyes.

He froze, eyes wide open, and stared at me in disbelief. The giggles stopped and my voice turned serious, I needed him to understand how I felt.

“I thought you left yesterday because it was so obvious on my face how I feel about you.”

“You feel the same?” he gasped. His question was quiet, amazed, a soft wind curling around me, cocooning me and warming me in its breeze.

“Yes.”

It didn’t feel crazy or ridiculous. Yes, it was a ghost and a girl declaring their love for each other, but it felt right, it felt perfect.

He stood in front of me with such an amazed and breath-taking smile on his face that my heart expanded, pressing on my ribs, robbing me of my ability to breath.

He was unbelievably beautiful, even as the grey reflection of the boy from the picture. But he wasn’t all grey, not anymore; he had been subtly changing since the first time I had met him. First his shoelaces had changed from grey to silver, then his belt buckle had transformed into the brightest gold that I had ever seen, so bright it had blinded me. His trainers were the odd one out, what hadn’t they changed into a bright metallic as well? Why had his trainers changed to a dark, earthy green?

I was so side-tracked by the query of his changing clothes, so busy wondering what it all meant that I hadn’t realised that something else had changed right before my eyes.

“Oh my god, your tee-shirt!” I exclaimed, shocked at what must have happened right in front of me without me noticing. I waited; tense, for him to note the change as well.

“What?”

He held open his jacket and looked down at his tee shirt, the same tee-shirt he’d been wearing since Saturday, but it wasn’t exactly the same anymore, it was now a rich navy, the colour of a midnight sky.

It occurred to me that his trainers and tee-shirt were now exactly the same colours as the ones that had been frozen in the photograph at his parent house, but I didn’t know what it meant.

“Who knows what it means, and who cares?” he shrugged and the puzzled look in his eyes filtered away. “I certainly don’t care.” His tone turned flippant, like the changes of colour meant nothing and it was easy to allow my own bewilderment to slip away, it was all too easy to allow the intensity of his eyes and the warm feeling of love encircle me once again, massaging away any unease, any concern.

“You’re going to miss the bargains, Beth,” he smirked.

The warm cocoon, which had been holding us cupped together, unravelled and I blinked, shocked that we were still stood on the cold pavement. It was like waking up after a very long and deep sleep. I couldn’t believe that everything must still be the same, exactly how it had been before Drew had appeared behind me. I felt as though the whole world must have changed. To me it looked like the grey sky had turned into silk and the hard pavement had transformed into a sheet of diamonds dusted with the frost of finely sieved icing sugar.

I hesitated. I couldn’t make my feet move, couldn’t walk away from him, couldn’t bear to be separated from him.

“Come with me,” I implored.

“Where? Shopping?” he laughed.

I knew that I wouldn’t be able to speak to him in the market. No one else could see him, so everyone would assume I’d lost my marbles if they saw me stood on my own talking ten to the dozen. They’d call my mum or even worse, a doctor but I didn’t care, I couldn’t let him leave now.

Drew stayed at the edge of the market as I zoomed around the stalls, wanting to be finished as quick as I could be. I couldn’t focus on anything shopping wise, every time I look over at him, which was a lot, he winked at me, and I struggled to keep a straight face. I felt myself blushing, the sensation of having Drew’s grey eyes on me was unbearable, delicious and excruciating and the same time.

I looked towards him for what seemed like the hundredth time and my heart felt like it would explode in my chest. He pointed to the memorial sign and I nodded, smiling widely.

I finished the shopping in record time and grabbed all my bags. I even managed to successfully dodge Whittaker who had spied me and started lumbering towards me with a spine-chilling smile on his face.

Thinking of seeing Drew at our usual place filled me with a warm joy, it fizzed upwards from my feet, like a bottle of lemonade that had been shook up and opened. The joy bubbled and shot its way upward to my brain, cascading out around me in a shower of sweetness.

As I walked with a wide smile stretching my face, I realised there was one thing that was dampening my happiness, one thing that threatened to push away the bubbles, I had been neglecting my friendship with Jess.

My smile faltered and my eyebrows dropped into a frown. I was couldn’t tell her about Drew, but I could still hang out with her, it was unacceptable for me to disregard her like I was doing. Before this week had happened I had spent pretty much every moment I could with her, she was my best friend so I needed to make a conscious effort to rectify things. I knew that she felt I had changed somehow, but she had no idea what had happened.

I would have my chance to sort things out with her at the gallery. I was pleased with how perfectly the timing of our trip had fallen, yesterday afternoon agreeing to go out with Jess had been the last thing I had wanted to do but now that things with Drew had become perfect I felt so much more at ease about spending the afternoon with her. Admittedly it was much easier knowing that Drew would be waiting for me. I still craved his company as much as ever but I knew that he wanted to be with me just as much now, and that knowledge made me feel more balanced, more okay to share my time.

I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and typed a quick text to Jess saying how much I was looking forward to seeing her that afternoon. Before I had managed to tuck it back away it beeped, flashing up her reply. Her message said what time and where we were supposed to meet and I frowned at the last bit, where she had asked me to text her back promising that I’d definitely be there. It made me sad to know that she needed me to confirm that I would still be going. I reaffirmed with myself that I would be a better friend, the friend that she expected and deserved.

I typed a reply, ending my response with a smiley face made out of a colon and a bracket. Her reply came back instantly with a semi colon and a bracket, a winky face.

I breathed a sigh of contentment; it was funny how just a few silly punctuation marks had made things feel so much better with Jess, more like normal. I quickened my pace, eager to get to the memorial, eager to get to Drew.

He was leaning against the statue, all smiles and shining eyes and I had to stop to take a moment or two to catch my breath. With the late morning light shining down on him, it was easy to imagine the wings that should be unfolded from his shoulders, easy to imagine his face in Heaven. He belonged there, amongst the other perfect creatures.