Free Between Here and Forever by Elizabeth Scott Page A

And admitting I noticed.
    “Oh,” he says. “You—I didn’t see you.”
    “Why would you? I wouldn’t notice me.”
    He blinks at me, and his fingers still for a moment. “You wouldn’t?”
    “No,” I say, really regretting my question—and honesty—now. “I mean, I know what there is to see, you know?” My voice cracks a little on the last few words—stupid, so stupid—and I clear my throat. “So, what were you doing?”
    His fingers start tapping again but he looks at them like he’s seeing them for the first time and then presses his hands flat against the chair arms.
    “Drawing,” he says quietly. “I was drawing.”
    “Oh,” I say. I hadn’t expected that, but it figures. Gorgeous and an artist. “Do you—?” His fingers have started moving again. “What’s up with all the tapping?”
    He stands up so fast it’s like someone’s kicked him out of the chair. “I—I just remembered I have to … I’ve got to do this thing for school,” he says.
    “Oh,” I say again. “Okay. But Tess—”
    “Tomorrow,” he says. “I’ll meet you tomorrow.” And then he’s gone, practically running out of the unit.
    “I guess I shouldn’t have asked about his drawings,” I tell Tess. “Tomorrow I promise I’ll ask what you would. I know you want to see him again.”
    I do too.
    Not … not that I like Eli or anything, but he’s—there’s something different about him. Something that seems almost … fragile. Like there’s a part of him that he wants to keep hidden. That he has to.
    I can understand that. I don’t want to—not with him, not with anyone—but I do.
    I don’t tell Tess this. She has to think Eli’s perfect. That’s what she wants.
    But I want to know more about him.
    I want something for myself and I lean over and rest my chin on my hands, looking at Tess. Reminding myself why I’m here. Reminding myself why want isn’t something I should feel.

eighteen
    Dad gets home late that night, long after even Mom has gotten home from the hospital. I’m still up, sitting in Tess’s room again, looking at all the things she brought home from college and was going to take back. Laundry, books, some pictures. Her laptop. Her nice, shiny laptop.
    I have a computer, sort of. It’s the one Dad got back when Tess was sixteen. I got it when she went away to college, and by then it was still sleek-looking but bordering on outdated. Now it’s basically useless, and the hard drive that Tess carefully wiped clean, her “gift” to me (“It’s just like new, almost!”) churns whenever I turn it on, and if I open more than one program, it freezes.
    Tess had a job at college, filing papers for some archive project the library was doing. The school gave all incoming freshmen laptops, but Tess saved her money and got a nicer one, and part of me wants it.
    I could use it for just a little while, until she wakes up. I could experience being able to write papers without having to save them every ten seconds, look something up online without wondering if the browser will be able to show the whole page.
    I turn her computer on, and am met with a password screen. I didn’t expect that, but I guess it’s something you have to do in college.
    I try Tess’s birthday: month-day-year.
    Nothing.
    I try it backward.
    Nothing again.
    I try her name, then Beth’s name and everyone else she’d ever talked about from college, all the guys smiling at her in the pictures she’d brought home.
    Still nothing.
    “Abby?” Dad says, and I freeze, fingers hovering over the keyboard, but he doesn’t ask me anything else, just says, “I was out for a walk. I used to—I haven’t gone on a long walk in ages.”
    He comes over and picks up the pictures lying next to the laptop. “She looks—doesn’t Tess look happy?”
    I nod, a little frightened by the intense and yet somehow lost look on his face.
    “I hope she was,” he says, looking down at the pictures.
    “Is,” I say, and he blinks at