The In Between

Chapter nineteen

• Time To Go To The Place That I Didn't Want To Go To In The First Place •

Ricky

• November 10 •

"Sooooo... today is the day, right?" I asked james. He nodded, a slight smile on his face. We had found a little glade in the middle of the forest, and slept there.

"I swear I've gained like, fifteen phobias in the past two week."

"Such as?"

"Blood, sharks, shadows, birds, to name a few."

"So like, haemophobia?" James looked at me, then blinked.

"What?"

"The fear of blood."

"How do-- how do you know that?"

I shrugged. "I don't know, I just do."

James narrowed his eyes. "What's the fear of bats?"

"Chiroptophobia."

"Water. Snakes. Eyes. gay people"

"Hydrophobia, ophidiophobia, ommetaphobia, homophobia?"

"Huh. i mean, you could just be saying random words and i wouldn't know the difference, but still, that's kinda impressive."

"Thank you."

James stood up, and spun around in a slow circle.

"whaaat are you doing?" I asked him.

"We need to go... there." he said, facing away from me.

"You can sense Tamir?" I asked him.

"Wow you actually got it right." James said, peering through the trees. I rolled my eyes. Sometimes James could be a bit too... James.

"How do you know."

"There's a slight pulling in my chest, I guess. Almost unnoticeable if I don't... focus on it." there was a slight strain in his voice, like it was hard for him to talk and focus on the pulling at the same time.

Then he turned to me and smiled. My stomach flipped over which was not a very pleasant feeling and made me pretty angry.

"Ready to die?"

"Again?" I didn't want to die. But you know, I kinda did at the same time.

"Basically."

"Great."

We walked. And we talked. About Tamir mostly, though some other things got mixed into our conversations.

"It's dark mostly, it's only light for like, six hours, which kinda sucks, especially since I don't like to eat and light is basically food, so," James shrugged, but weirdly because he was holding my hand. "But there's Taylor and Asja and they make up for it mostly."

"Who are they?"

"My roommates. I kinda got shoved into a random room and was still in the denial stage of my death."

"That would be kinda hard to do cuz you know, you're literally walking proof of your death."

James nodded vigorously. "And then Asja got super protective over me and I'm still not sure if Taylor likes me that much but I think he does, and that's how we became the super-weird-friend-group-of-floor-forty-eight."

"That's what you call yourselves?"

"That's what other people call us. But some people substitute 'friend-group' for 'family.'"