An Na - The Place Between Breaths

Also by An Na

The Fold

A Step from Heaven

Wait for Me

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Childrens Publishing Division

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the authors imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright 2018 by An Na

Jacket illustration copyright 2018 by Levente Szabo

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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Book design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover and Irene Metaxatos

CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-4814-2225-3 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-4814-2227-7 (eBook)

With gratitude and love for my sisters:

Jin, Jacqueline, and Juliet

Life begins on the other side of despair.

JEAN PAUL SARTRE

There are many versions of a story. Many sides and lenses that can distort, change, illuminate what is seen and unseen. What is heard and unheard. What is felt and unfelt. In the end, truth is but a facet of a diamond, a spark of ray from the sun, a forget-me-not flower seen from the eyes of a bee. What lives and breathes as reality is a perception, so who is to say what is possible and impossible?

Call it fate or simply coincidence, but the shorter version of how I found you begins like this. There was a dark speck on the side of the barren winter road that grew larger and larger as I drove closer. Expanding from a dot to a stone to a tree stump until I screeched to a halt. A few dozen feet away from a headless coat turtle-shelled on top of the snow. Both of my hands released the steering wheel and coned over my mouth. Was it a body? There was no movement. I slowly opened the door and stepped out. Had someone frozen and died overnight? It wouldnt have been the first time that something like that happened around here. I took a step forward, and then another, the fragile crack of ice and gravel rippling through me. My breath misted before my face.

A head emerged.

I shouted in fright. You scared the hell out of me! A large vapor cloud formed as I exhaled long and slow.

Your disheveled black hair framed your face, petite, round. It was hard to tell how old you were, but something about your eyes told me you were older than you looked.

Slowly unfurling each limb as though in pain, you stood up.

I walked forward in relief.

You looked like a dead body.

Your brows gathered as you lifted and dropped your shoulders before bowing your head slightly. Sorry.

Then a brief wave of your hand and you started walking down the side of the road.

Do you need a ride? I called to your back. You stopped. Im on my way to town, I said.

You gazed back, your eyes roaming my face before you turned and kept walking down the long cold road. Away from me.

That is the short version of how we met. You didnt tell me then why you were so tired that you had to rest hiding inside your coat by the side of the road, but since then, after meeting again, you have shared a few of your truths. The longer story of us is like the horizon. We can only know what we see, and all that we wish we could understand is beyond vision.

The alarm beats relentlessly into my mind and I choke for air, ragged heaves pushing in and out as though I have been underwater far too long. My hand moves swiftly to turn off the incessant noise. The soft morning light flickers into my eyes before I close them again. The fading remnants of my dream, my mothers face, haunt me. They come and go like spring rains, sometimes light and steady, sometimes fleeting mist, and then the occasional, torrential downpour. Her profile lights my mind. The dark line of her eyebrow. The labyrinth swirls of her ear. The gentle round of her nose and the sharp blade of her jawline.

In my worst moments, I wish her dead. At least then I could truly mourn. But to be missing for such a long time without any sign, lost or dead, just a name in the police data bank... The yearning for clarity sifts through me until all that lingers is the cancer of uncertainty. I have only the briefest memories, and these dreams, to tell me that she even existed at all. I glance over at the clock and finally force myself out of bed. The routine for school, if nothing else, is comforting in its predictability.

In the kitchen, I make the coffee and pour two cups. Cradling my hot mug, I check the outdoor thermometer from the window above the sink. Fourteen degrees. It has got to warm up any day now. I have said this for the last two weeks and the average temperature still hovers at twenty. The wind rattles the window above the sink.

Nineteen.

I turn around and find Dad standing in the doorway, dressed for work.

Close, I say. Fourteen.

Dad throws his blue tie over one shoulder and walks to the counter for his coffee and his laptop.

You look tired this morning, Grace. Dad tips his head to the side as he stares into my face. I lower my eyes and turn away from his hawk gaze.

Just dreams, Dad, I say lightly. And I have midterms coming up.

I can feel his focus shifting away, since hes satisfied with my answer.

Maybe you should cut back on some hours at the lab, Gracie.

I dont bother to respond. The internship at Genentium is coveted by high schoolers looking for a way into the best colleges. I know that the other interns and doctors there think I landed a spot because of Dad, who works on the corporate end, and that means constantly proving I belong. But Dad doesnt understand or maybe doesnt care. He is too busy already at his computer, buried in the database of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons Systems site, checking his e-mails, his science journals online.

His winter pallor makes him look tired too, though most people couldnt tell you if he had a tan or not because of his darker complexion. For a white man, that is. But then who can say if he really is white? With his olive skin tone and coarse black curly hair, he could be part black or Southeast Asian or Native American or Latino or Mediterranean. We joke and change his ethnicity based on the restaurant we are eating in. Dad was adopted and has never attempted to locate his birth parents. An irony not lost to someone who lives and breathes for genetics. Ive tried to get him to take a DNA test, but he says he likes being a chameleon. The genetic history that he cares about the most is not his, but hers. And there was never any doubt of her Korean heritage or the disease that destroyed her. My mothers bloodline, after all, is mine.

By trade, Dad is a headhunter for one of the most prestigious labs in the country. The world. It is his job to know the research, the routines, the likes and dislikes of the top scientists in the field of genetics. It is his job to lure them away from where they are to come and work for Genentium.

By heart, Dad is looking for a miracle. It is not a coincidence that he came to work for this lab. We moved here specifically, strategically, so he would have the funding, the power, and the reputation to entice the best scientists in the world to work on the research and treatment for genetic diseases like sickle cell anemia, Parkinsons, cancer, Huntingtons, schizophrenia. Dad never talks about cures, only speaks about the research and the scientists making discoveries every day. But I know what he wants. I know like I know without a doubt that I am his daughter. We are looking for a cure. It is a race he and I lost long ago, the moment my mothers schizophrenia overtook her again, forcing her to step out of the house one last time. But that doesnt stop Dad from still crawling to the finish line, hope lashed to his back. He waits for her to return, to be found. And finally, finally, their love, our family, whole again, just as they had always dreamed.