Time Between Us (8 page)

Bennett releases my hands and holds my face instead, and I hear him say the words, but it’s like he’s far away, muffled. “You’re okay, Anna. Breathe and don’t talk. Just listen carefully and do what I say. I’ll explain everything, but right now I need you to listen to me.”

I nod, wide-eyed and blank.

“First, I need you to run to the coffeehouse. Order me an espresso and two big glasses of tap water without ice, and sit down and wait for me.” He looks into my eyes. “You can do this, Anna. I need you. Can you trust me?”

I nod again.

“Okay, run. Don’t talk to anyone, just order the coffee and water and sit down.”

I turn and run to the coffeehouse.

I’m trembling so hard I can barely get the words out, but the barista is kind and offers to carry my drinks to a table for me. I lead him to the couch by the window and collapse.

The sirens grow louder and louder until two police cars skid to a stop in front of the bookstore. I can’t make out much from this angle, but I see their headlights shining on the building, and I watch the cops draw their guns and creep toward the entrance. They quickly disappear from view, and I press my forehead to the glass to try to see what’s going on. I’m waiting for them to reappear when I feel a weight next to me.

Bennett falls forward, his elbows on his knees, his fingertips gripping each side of his head. He lets out a small groan between heavy, labored breaths, just like the night in the park.

Without even letting myself question it this time, I begin rubbing his back. “What can I do?”

“Water…”

I leave one hand on his back and give him the water glass with the other. He lifts his head and empties it in three giant gulps. “More…”

After the second glass, his breathing becomes more regular.

He looks up at me and smiles. “Hey, you’re still here.” He reaches for the shot of espresso and throws the hot liquid down his throat. I stare at him. I want to say something, but I can’t, because every time I take a small breath, my own body seems to shoot it right back out. I try a deep inhalation, the kind I know will slow my heartbeat and get my limbs to stop shaking, but my lungs won’t cooperate.
What the hell just happened?

I don’t realize that I’m staring at him until he wiggles his fingers in front of my face and says, “You’re in shock.” He holds up one of the empty glasses, waves toward the barista, and gestures toward me.

“Drink this,” he says. I take the glass with both hands, since I can’t trust my shaking limbs to pull off a task as complicated as lifting a cup to my lips. Bennett speaks in measured breaths. “I need you to listen to me, Anna. We have to go talk to the police in a couple of minutes—they’ve probably called your parents, and I’m sure they’ll be looking for you.” He grabs my shoulders and pivots me around to face him. “I promise, I’ll tell you everything that just happened, but for now I need you to stick to a story. Can you do that?”

I finish my water and nod.

“Good. Keep the first part true: The man stormed into the store and he forced you to open the safe. But then say this: when he wasn’t looking, you saw a break and you ran out the back door into the alley. I saw you there and stopped to help. We waited down the street and returned once we saw the police had arrived.” He lifts my chin. “Can you do this?”

I nod again, eyes wide.

“Don’t worry. I’ll do the talking. Just stick to the story.” I can’t seem to do anything but nod.

We head toward the window to look out at the last two remaining police cars parked outside, their lights swirling. I stand in the store, mute, while Bennett explains what happened. The officer captures every detail of the break-in and my escape through the back door in his black leather–bound notebook. I listen, still nodding, but I know that Bennett’s lying, because I’m well aware of what happened. I did
not
run into him in the alley.
How did he get into the store? How did we get out?

The officer reviews his notes. “Stay here,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”

I’m surprised to hear my own voice say, “Officer?” He stops and turns to face me. “Did you catch him?”

“Yeah. We caught him when he had some trouble with the lock on the back door. This long winter seems to be making some people pretty desperate. But don’t worry, he won’t be going anywhere for a while.” He turns again to walk away.

“Officer?” I repeat and he turns back to me. “How did you get here in time?” Bennett puts his arm around my shoulders and gives me a light squeeze as the cop flips through some of the pages in his notebook.

“Looks like it was an anonymous tip. Someone called and reported a robbery in progress.” He looks up at me with a sympathetic smile. “One of your neighbors must have seen him break in. You have a guardian angel, young lady.”

Dad bursts through the door with Mom on his heels. Bennett must have stepped back from my side, because suddenly there’s room for both of them to surround me, enveloping my body in two familiar sets of arms. “Anna…” Mom says, hysterical, stroking my hair and stopping every so often to kiss my forehead. “I’m so sorry,” Dad whispers repeatedly while he rubs our backs.

We all hear the officer clear his throat, and we look up. “Excuse me. I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need you and your daughter to come down to the station to press charges.” The police station is the last place I want to be. What I want is a hot cup of coffee and an hour alone with Bennett.

I look at my dad and ask, “Can we have a minute first?” I point to Bennett. It’s the first time my parents notice him standing there, but now he has their full attention.

“Hi, Mr. Greene, Mrs. Greene.” He offers his hand to Dad first, then reaches toward Mom. “I’m Bennett Cooper.”

“Bennett is a…friend. From school. He’s been helping me since—” My voice trails off when I see Mom’s face become contorted. But it relaxes and she smiles after I lie to her about the details, just as Bennett told me to.

“Well, thank you, Bennett.” She shakes his hand and keeps her other arm around me as her eyes dart between us. “I’m not sure what you were doing walking around in a snowstorm, but I guess it was a lucky coincidence.” She looks at me sideways and raises her eyebrows. I just shrug.

“Can we just have a minute?” I repeat to Dad.

“Keep it to five,” Dad says, looking at his watch.

I lead Bennett to the Self-Help section and we’re finally alone again, if only for a few minutes.

“So…” I look at him, my expression serious. “I take it this is the big secret?”

“Yeah.” He laughs under his breath. “Pretty much.” He reaches over and grabs both of my hands in his. His hands are warm and soft. “I have a lot to tell you.”

“Good.”

“Are you sure you want to hear it?”

I nod.

“Think you can angle to stay home from school tomorrow?”

I look at my watch. It’s only eight thirty, but it feels closer to midnight. By the time I’m home from the police station, it may be that late. “I think my parents would be cool with that, under the circumstances.”

“I’ll come over at ten a.m. We’ll go somewhere we can talk.”

I look at him for answers I don’t want to wait until tomorrow to hear.

He leans close and whispers, “Are you afraid of what I can do?”

I look around the room, toward the police and my parents, and back at Bennett. I’m not afraid, although I suspect I should be. Right now, I’m just happy to be alive. And to see that the pieces of this puzzle that Bennett has been since the day I met him are finally starting to fit together, snapping into place and forming an image I may someday comprehend. “No,” I say. “Not even close.”

My room is still dark, but I sense that it’s morning. I roll over and stretch and steal a glance at the digital clock radio on my nightstand. Nine fifteen. I can’t remember the last time I slept past seven, especially on a school day.

Then everything that happened last night comes rushing back, and it hits me—Bennett will be here in forty-five minutes.

I leap out of bed, pull on my sweats, and bound down the stairs. I haven’t eaten anything since lunch yesterday, which explains why I’m starving. I find a note on the counter by the toaster:

A—

Glad you’re sleeping in. Dad’s at the bookstore and I’m at work. Call if you need
anything
. We’ll both be home by 5. Relax. And please, no running today.

XO,

Mom

I grab a bowl from the cupboard and fill it to the top with cereal. I’m eating so fast I can’t really taste anything, but the cornflakes and milk are filling the uncomfortable void in my stomach. All of a sudden, I start to feel nauseated again. I had a knife at my neck. I was in danger, and in an instant, I wasn’t.

Bennett can disappear. And reappear. He can make other people disappear and reappear. He has a secret talent, I’m the only one who knows about it, and today he’s going to tell me everything.

I shower and wash my hair, and as I’m drying off, I reach for the body oil that smells like vanilla and makes my skin soft. I apply a little mascara and some lip gloss, and dart to my closet to find something to wear.

When the doorbell rings, I fly down the stairs and land with a thunk in the foyer. I take a deep breath and fling the door open. “Hi.” I’m beyond giddy.

“Hi.” He looks confused. “God, you look…actually…excited to see me. You do remember what happened last night, don’t you?”

I smile at him. “You saved my life. And today, I’m going to find out how you did it.” He still looks confused. “You
are
still going to tell me how you did it, aren’t you?”

He raises his eyebrows. “Do I have to tell you from the porch?”

“No. God, I’m sorry. Come in.” I step back to give him room and close the door as he looks at me with a relieved smile. I hang his coat on a hook and he follows me into the kitchen. “Coffee?” I ask, but I don’t wait for the answer before I begin pouring. I hand him an oversize mug with a picture of the Northwestern Arch on one side, and we sit opposite each other on the kitchen bar stools. It’s silent as he sips his coffee, and I watch, perched on my seat and ready for him to disappear into thin air again at any moment. He doesn’t appear to be going anywhere, but he does look a little bit terrified.

“Are you okay?” I’m holding my coffee cup, but I haven’t even had a sip yet, so it can’t be the caffeine that’s making me twitchy, ready to burst out of my skin.

“Yeah.” He shifts on the stool, plays nervously with the handle of his mug. “I’m just not sure where to start.”

I give him an encouraging look. “Start from the beginning.”

“You have to know you are, literally, the first person I’ve ever told.” He stops and looks at me, like he’s expecting some kind of reaction. “My parents know, my sister knows, but I never
told
them. They sort of found out by accident. But that’s it—my family, and now you.” I nod so he’ll continue. “I honestly had no intention of telling anyone else. If last night hadn’t happened—”

I get it. He barely knows me, and there are probably countless other people with whom he’d prefer to share this precious secret. But I’m not about to let him off the hook. I can’t. Not now. “You can trust me. This is your secret, not mine. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thanks,” he mutters, and then he’s quiet again. “The thing is…you don’t know how big this is. I don’t want to freak you out.”

I rest my elbows on the kitchen counter and look at him. “I promise I will not freak out.” He narrows his eyes, as if to say that I shouldn’t be making this promise. “I will try very hard not to freak out,” I revise.

He leans forward, elbows on the countertop. Those smoky blue eyes are striking, especially in contrast with his skin and that hair of his. He looks adorable like this, all nervous and jittery.

“Look, Anna. This—” he says, motioning back and forth between us like he did that night on the sidewalk, the night he almost kissed me in the coffeehouse. “This is a really bad idea.”

“Probably,” I agree.

He laughs and shakes his head, like he’s kicking himself for giving in to me. “I’ll make you a deal. When I’ve told you everything, you can decide what to think, and if it’s all too much, I’ll totally understand. I’ll go back to being the transient weirdo, and you can go back to your friends and your life.”

“Or?”

“Or…you’ll think it’s all very interesting. And maybe a little exciting. And somehow that will offset the fact that I’m a complete freak of nature.”

“You’re not a freak. And besides, I’ve already seen what you can do, Bennett, and it’s huge. If that didn’t scare me, I can’t imagine what else you could do or say to change the way I feel about you.” Crap. I didn’t mean to say that last part. I pull back from him so I can see his expression.

He doesn’t look fazed at all, though, and I think I may have even made him happy. “That’s good to hear. But you only know part of it.”

I let out a nervous laugh. “How much more is there?”

“More.” He stares at me. Then he pushes back from the counter and stands up. He takes his mug to the coffee machine, tops it off, and drops in two ice cubes from the dispenser in the freezer door. “Where do you keep your water glasses?” He’s all business, like a salesman preparing to demonstrate a miraculous new cleaning product.

“That cabinet there,” I say, gesturing, “to the right of the sink.”

He pulls out two matching glasses and fills them with cold tap water. He sets the glasses and the cup on the counter and comes back around to sit on the stool.

“Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “I want you to sit here and watch. I’m going to go away, but I’ll be back in one minute.” He checks his watch. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.” I nod and try not to look anxious.

He looks at me for a moment and smiles. Then he closes his eyes. And I watch him become transparent—I can see through him to the photograph of my parents and me on the wall behind his translucent frame—and he’s like that for less than a second before he’s gone. The stool is empty. I walk around to his side of the counter and touch the surface.

Yep. He has disappeared completely.

I feel my breathing become shallow as I wait for what seems like more than a minute, never taking my eyes off the stool, and suddenly he’s back. Exactly where he had been. Opaque and solid as he is supposed to be. As if it had never happened. But it did.

He gulps down both glasses of water, then chugs the coffee.

“Do you need anything?”

He shakes his head no, looking down at the tiles.

“Where did you go?”

“My room. I counted to sixty and came back.” He looks up and watches me with a tentative expression as he weighs my reaction.

“What’s with the water and the coffee?” I remember the specificity of his requests last night at the coffeehouse, the water bottles and coffee mugs strewn around his room that night I visited him uninvited.

“Traveling makes me dehydrated, and caffeine helps with the migraines. I don’t usually experience pain when I travel
to
a location. It’s the returning that kills me.”

“Like the night in the park.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, so you can disappear and reappear? That’s it?”

“You make me sound like a third-rate magician.” He laughs. “That’s not enough for you?”

“Of course,” I say nervously. “I just meant—”

“I’m kidding.” He gets serious again. “Actually, that’s just the first thing.”

“The first thing?”

“Yeah. I told you. There’s more.”

I look at him. “How much more?”

“Two.” He shrugs. “Two more.”

“Wait a minute,” I say. “The fact that you can disappear is the first of
three
things?”

He nods. “I told you. I won’t explain everything today, but I’ll tell you…a lot.”

“What? You don’t think I can take it?” My heart starts beating fast as I question my own question. Or maybe it’s just that Bennett’s face is so close to mine.

“If anyone can take it, you can. But it’s still a lot of information to process.” He looks at me like he’s waiting for me to argue with him. Which I’m considering. “Look, today I’ll tell you how I got you out of the bookstore last night. And eventually I’ll tell you the rest. Trust me on the baby-steps thing, okay?”

He looks determined. Like arguing with him won’t pay off anyway. “Okay.” I straighten up in my chair and give him my full attention. Which takes zero effort. “I’m ready. Start from the beginning.”

Bennett matches my posture, sitting straight up in his chair too, like we’ve discovered a cure for this magnitude of nervousness. He takes a couple of deep breaths to prepare, and then he begins.

“One night, when I was ten, I was in my bed reading this book on Greek mythology—I was really into gods and myths when I was a kid—and I thought how cool it would be if I could go there. So I sat up in bed,
Star Wars
pajamas and all, and I tried to ‘will’ myself there. I closed my eyes and pictured ancient Greece and repeated the date over and over again. And…well, nothing happened. But I started thinking about the next best thing, and it got me thinking: picturing the rows and rows of mythology books at my school library. So I closed my eyes, pictured the library, and focused. And the room felt cold—a lot colder than my bedroom—and when I opened my eyes I was standing in front of a metal bookshelf. That’s when I kinda freaked out. It was dark, and everyone was gone, and I took off running for these big steel doors that led outside. But I stopped. Forced myself to calm down. I closed my eyes, pictured my bedroom, and focused. When I opened them, I was back home.”

He reaches for his coffee and takes a deep sip, and I just sit there hanging on every word, watching his mouth pucker against the rim of the mug and his tongue lick the residue from his lips.

He rests his coffee cup back on the counter, and I force myself to look at his eyes instead of his mouth. “Wait. You actually
went
to your school? In the middle of the night?”

He nods. “I did it a few more times again that week, staying close to home—the park, the movie theater, the grocery store. I never stayed more than a minute or so. Eventually, I started interacting with people to be sure they could see and hear me, and they could. I was
really
there.”

“What about the migraines?” I ask.

“I didn’t have them in the beginning—it wasn’t painful at all. The big problem back then was that I had no idea how to tell my parents. I was terrified they’d take me to doctors or just straight to a mental ward.”

I can’t imagine keeping that kind of secret from my parents. Not at sixteen, let alone ten.

“When I was twelve, I decided to find out what happened to me when I left. I set our video camera on a tripod, pressed record, and focused my mind on a seat in the back of the theater just down the street. I sat there and timed myself with my stopwatch, waited exactly ten minutes, and returned. The video shows me sitting in my room with my eyes closed; then I disappear, and the film continues, taping an empty chair. Ten minutes later, I reappear.”

He stops and looks at me, then continues. “A few weeks after that, my parents found out. My mom woke up in the middle of the night and found my bed empty. She combed the house, and when she couldn’t find me, she decided to call the police. She’d already pushed nine and one when I reappeared before her eyes. Scared the crap out of her.” He smiles at the memory. “I told them everything that night. Showed them the video.”

He stops again. “How are you doing with this?”

“It’s sinking in.” At least, I think it’s sinking in. I can feel my head nodding, so I must comprehend it at some level. “So, what did your parents do when they found out?”

He rolls his shoulders backward and gives his arms a little shake. “Mom freaked out. She still hasn’t gotten over it. She wants me to see doctors and psychiatrists—anyone who can ‘fix’ me—even though I’m not allowed to tell them what’s ‘wrong’ with me. But my dad…Now, Dad loves it. He thinks I could be, like, some comic-book hero or something. And he sees that I have total control over it, so he doesn’t worry, but he’s gotten a little pushy.” He looks down at the counter. “Anyway, they see it differently, so when my parents aren’t fighting with me about my ‘gift,’ they’re fighting with each other about it.”