Excerpts from The In-Between
Chapter One — Last Day of Eighth Grade
The teenage years lie somewhere between childhood and sanity, and Mark Russo was losing his grip on both as he scribbled a note on the back of a summer-reading list. The purple ink was fresh on the ditto paper, and he fought the urge to inhale, chasing the tease of a mimeograph high.
1986. Last day of eighth grade. Last period at Roger Williams Junior High.
The classroom air was thick and smelled like seafood dinner trash left out in the sun. Miss O’Neil cracked the windows and killed the fluorescent lights as if it would give them any relief. It didn’t.
In twenty minutes, the chains of middle school would be behind him.
Roger Williams was one of those New Deal buildings that looked more like a Civil War barracks than a junior high. The red brick outside passed for cheerful, but inside, the bile-green and mustard subway tiles wrapped the halls in a permanent hangover. The colors matched the sawdust-soaked vomit that Mr. McKee, the janitor, pushed down the hall with his oversized blue dry mop.
Mark finished the note, folded it into a neat origami square, and wrote Beth big across the front.
When Miss O’Neil turned to the blackboard, Mark nudged his buddy Joe. “Pass this up.”
The note traveled desk to desk until it reached the front row. Beth grabbed it, tucked it under her desk, and unfolded it when she thought no one was looking. When she finished reading, she glanced back and smiled at him, like it was just for him, and his head went a little light.
Her lips were glossy: Kissing Potion Bubble Gum, the same shine from when he first saw her in Home Ec last year and got lost in her eyes.
Can you meet me outside after school?
Beth folded it and slipped it into the pocket of her stirrup pants.
Chapter Three — Detective John Murphy
Detective John Murphy lit a Pall Mall and sipped a Piels beer in his dark, one-bedroom apartment. The only light in the room came from the Red Sox game flickering across the twenty-seven-inch console TV—the same set he grew up watching. Sixty-eight years since the Sox had last won a World Series, and down 13–1 in the eighth, he didn’t have much hope for this year either.
He reached for the phone beside his recliner and spun his ex-wife’s number on the rotary dial.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Can I say goodnight to the kids?”
“It’s 10:30. They’re sleeping.”
“I tried earlier. No answer.”
“I took them for ice cream.”
“Good for you.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No. I just wanted to say goodnight to my kids.”
“Go to bed, John.”
“Maybe if you didn’t move twelve hundred miles away, I’d be able to say goodnight to them in my own place.”
“Don’t start.”
Silence.
“Call back tomorrow.”
John slammed the phone down. It bounced off the cradle and clattered to the floor. He hadn’t seen his kids in six months. His ex had moved to Florida after the divorce.
He opened the refrigerator. A sour half-gallon of milk, a bottle of ketchup, and an old fish-and-chips container stared back at him. He counted the remaining beers quickly. Enough.
Back in the recliner, he lit another Pall Mall and watched the Sox try to summon a miracle in the ninth.
The phone rang.
“Hello?”
“John. It’s Peter. We have a situation. You need to get down here.”
Peter gave only the address. No explanation. After five years working under him, John knew the silence was the warning.
Chapter Five — Louis & Sons Funeral Home
Friday morning. Mark leaned his Huffy against the garage at Louis & Sons Funeral Home and walked around back looking for the office. A white sign with black cursive lettering pointed down a steep flight of cement stairs. The morning dew had already soaked his sneakers from crossing the lawn.
At the bottom of the stairs, the temperature dropped. Damp, cool air wrapped around him as he knocked on the solid maple door.
“Come in,” a voice called.
He stepped into a dim hallway leading toward a lit room. The air carried the smell of damp rocks, a chill that didn’t belong to summer. The rust-colored carpet was worn thin in the center, bare cement showing through—nothing like the perfect landscaping above: impatiens lined like soldiers, bright pine bark, bed edges carved at perfect ninety-degree angles.
Inside the office sat a portly older woman behind a battleship-gray metal desk. Her head looked nearly as wide as her shoulders, her cheeks sloping downward. A cigarette burned in the tall ashtray beside her chair.
“You don’t need to knock. Just come in when you get here,” she rasped, a wet wheeze slipping through the last word. “I’m Mrs. Gagnon, the office manager. Mr. Louis will be down in a minute; he’s meeting with a family.”
She braced both hands on the desk and pushed herself upright like she was preparing for a bench press, then handed him a manila time card.
“This is your time card. Follow me.” She inhaled deeply from her cigarette, the tip flaring orange, then crushed the butt into the mound of filters already buried in the ashtray.
Mark followed her down the hallway. She shuffled toward a door he hadn’t noticed earlier, her feet dragging like every step cost her something. Inside sat a small break room: a card table with two chairs, a dorm-sized refrigerator, a stainless-steel sink, and a plywood-covered workbench that served as the counter.