Allyson In Between ✔︎

Chapter Five | Part 2

|photo by Screen Post from Unsplash|

Noah goes to work, swiping and tapping my screen. He gives the phone back to me with a head bob. Then he does this kind of flourish thing with his hands. Like in his head, he's saying, "Tada!"

"Check your email again," he says, confident. "They're going to send a temporary password."

"Okay. But that's what I did before and I never got it."

"Huh." He holds out his hand, asking for my phone with wiggling fingers and a hard frown that makes me smile. I hand it over and he squints at me. Annoyed, obviously, by my inappropriate reaction to his grumpy show of determination.

I press a palm against my mouth and he goes to work, swiping and tapping the screen. It takes longer this time. He switches apps, swipes and taps some more, and then he says, "Oh," drawing out the word, with hiked eyebrows, like he's just made some hugely important discovery. "The email addresses are different. Your phone is set up to get mail from a Gmail account, but the username on the app you've been using is from Yahoo."

"I have more than one email address?"

"Yeah," he says, offering me the phone again.

When I take it, he shoves his hands in his pockets like he's done. So I hold back my next question. I guess I can ask Lindsay to help me find the Yahoo account.

"That might be an old address," he says. "It'd probably be easier to access it on the computer at your house. Are you going home anytime soon?"

That's a really good question.

"Yesterday my mom asked if I wanted to visit our house. In...um..."

Noah kind of leans forward and his face starts to scrunch with anticipation that looks a little painful. So there's no way the word I'm looking for—which is the name of the town we live in now—is going to surface anytime soon. 

"I'm going there this Friday," I say. Like I've already made up my mind.

And maybe I have. Because right now, visiting our new house feels like a good idea. It would give me a chance to spend some time with Lindsay—like time alone without Mom hovering around us. And then we could finish that conversation.

No, I want to start the whole thing over again so I can see her eyes when I deliver the apology I know she deserves. I have to prove to her that I'm not the person in those IM transcripts.

"How long of a visit?" Noah asks.

"Mom said two nights. But really..." I twist around. The stately red brick mansion and the gardens surrounding it are beautiful. And the staff here has been friendly and helpful. But it doesn't feel like home. The home I remember is gone forever and there's nothing anyone can do to change that. So. I guess it really is time for me to move on.

"There's no reason for me to stay here," I say, turning back to Noah. "Dr. Dabney says they've done everything they can to rehabilitate me. And my psychologist has an office in Richmond—which is close, right?"

"Yeah, it's only thirty minutes from your house."

"There's also this transition support group I can go to. Like a weekly meeting. One of the counselors is...he had a traumatic brain injury when he was about my age. But he was able to finish school and go to college, and now he's a therapist." Obviously.

"What about school?"

"Oh. Um, yeah. Well. I haven't really...I mean, I've thought about it—of course. But I don't know."