Free Between the Lives by Jessica Shirvington Page A

thump.
    Mom gasped and Dad looked at me as if every terrible thought he’d ever had about me had been leading to this moment of ultimate disappointment. Before I could think my mouth was open.
    ‘I can explain! Let me explain.’
    Mom nodded, squeezing my hand and then releasing some of the pressure. Dad raised his eyebrows at me.
    ‘Go on then, Sabine,’ he said. ‘Explain.’ His tone was flat and dubious.
    I took a deep breath, tried to start and failed. Heart pounding, I took another breath and mentally counted to ten. And then, my life of hidden truths, of divided worlds, my secrets, my wrongness …The walls I’d worked so hard for so long to construct tumbled down around me. I didn’t know if it was because I’d been caught out thanks to the change in the rules, or due to some dire need to defend myself and shock my quick-to-judge parents, but when I searched in the bottomless barrel of lies that never seemed to fail me … Nothing. Not one little excuse sprung to mind.
    ‘I have two lives,’ I blurted.
    Mom looked perplexed. Of all the things she’d expected me to say in my defence, this was certainly not one of them. But then, as her mind ticked over the possible explanations for that one comment, the colour drained from her face and her expression changed to horrified.
    I took another breath. ‘I’ve been this way ever since I was born – living every day twice. I wake up in the morning here, in my bed with you as my family, and I live my day. But every night, at midnight, I go through this kind of Shift – that’s what I call it. One second I’m here in this life. The next, I’m in another life and for the next twenty-four hours until midnight I’m in that life, with my family there. When I get back here, it’s as if no time has passed.’
    Tears slipped down my face as I looked at my parents, desperately willing them to see past the crazy of my words to the truth in my eyes. ‘I know this is weird. It’s why I’ve never told anyone – I never thought there was anything I could do to change it. But … but lately something has changed. Before, if something happened to my body it would affect me in my other world – like when I got tonsillitis in this world, I had it there too. Now, for some reason things aren’t crossing over. So I’ve been … trying to figure it out.’ I swallowed.
    ‘You live in two worlds ?’ Dad said very softly.
    ‘Dad, please believe me.’
    ‘You have two different families?’ Mom said, equally stunned, eyes welling.
    ‘Look, I know this sounds crazy. But I can explain it all so you understand. I just need you to know why I have the pills …’ I glanced at my bag’s incriminating contents, ‘… and the other stuff.’
    Finally Dad nodded and turned to face me. ‘Well, make it clear to us, Sabine.’
    ‘Okay,’ I said, blowing out a breath, relieved he seemed to be at least willing to hear more. ‘I don’t know when the change happened, maybe since I turned eighteen, but when I broke my arm, that was the first sign. When I Shifted the other night, my arm wasn’t broken in my other world.’
    Mom was silent, but Dad nodded me on and I couldn’t help but feel a rush at finally being able to tell them all of this. My deepest fears of him yelling ‘liar’ and throwing me out of the house weren’t coming true.
    I sat up in my chair. ‘After that, I decided I needed to know for sure. I mean, the physical parts of me have always been connected, but now … Well, if they aren’t, everything is different. So I started conducting tests. First my hair.’
    ‘And how did that go?’ Dad asked.
    I felt myself nodding. ‘Great. I mean, for the first time I was able to cut my hair and not have it change in my other world.’ I couldn’t help the hesitant smile. Dad made a feeble attempt to return one. I took it as another encouraging sign. ‘When I went back there I had my hair dyed blonde, and it didn’t change anything here either. And then …’ I