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  Inside Out

  Lia Riley

  New York Boston

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  Table of Contents

  An Excerpt from Upside Down

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  Copyright Page

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  For Nick, because HEA, matey

  Acknowledgments

  Where to begin? I am in many people’s debts. Emily Sylvan Kim, many thanks for being my agent and friend. I value your insight and perspective more than you’ll ever know. Team Forever, all the love! Glitter rocket launch to Lauren Plude and Madeleine Colavita—you worked editorial magic on this book and it’s SO MUCH BETTER because of your involvement. Elizabeth Turner, this cover is my hands-down favorite (shhhhh, don’t tell the others). Jamie Snider, sorry for burning your eyes with my errors; you are a copyediting dream. Kristine Fuangtharnthip, for being a subsidiary-rights diva. Marissa Sangiacomo, I require a Jurassic Park laboratory to genetically engineer a Thankliasaurous for you and your amazing support.

  Piatkus and Hachette Australia, you guys have been fab. In particular, tackle hugs to Grace Menary-Winefield; you’re a delightful partner and your e-mails always brighten my day.

  Jennifer Blackwood and Jennifer Ryan, ladies, thank you. I need far better words than these poor eight letters, but they are meant from the bottom of my heart. Beyond grateful, my appreciation is a messy thing.

  Lots more people to thank:

  Don Hood and Gabrielle Covers, cutest cover models in history? Yes, I think so.

  Jennifer Armentrout, for a killer cover blurb. Also, Melissa West, Kristen Callihan, and Cindi Madsen for generously reading and giving such nice love notes.

  Megan Taddonio, for dishing on the Peace Corps and sharing truly horrific worm stories.

  My writing peeps, for keeping me as sane as possible.

  To the readers/bloggers who’ve walked with Talia and Bran for three books: you took a chance, and it means the world. (Sil, Chester the Chinchilla is yours, if you want him, but careful what you wish for.)

  My friends and family, for (mostly) putting up with me and (mostly) accepting that I’m often stuck in a plot rabbit hole and unbelievably crappy at returning phone calls. I am alive and do think of you often.

  J & B for choosing me as your mama; it’s my life’s privilege.

  Nick, for continuing to teach me what a real HEA means. It’s not always easy, but it’s so damn worth it. I love you.

  The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.

  —Ernest Hemingway

  Chapter One

  Talia

  Mzungu!” The village kids can’t get enough of daring each other to spy through my mud hut’s single window. “Mzuuuuuuuuuuungu.” They break into convulsive giggles.

  Mzungu means “white person” in Chichewa, Malawi’s national language. Since arriving in Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, the word follows me throughout the day. It’s taken the last three months in-country not to cringe at the term and to accept the truth stamped in my pigment. I am an outsider.

  “Hey, mzungu!”

  I uncurl from child’s pose, push off the straw mat, and wince. Yoga therapy isn’t doing much in the way of curing my abdominal crampage. Still, I manage to make it to the front door. “Boo!”

  My barefoot students scream with delight and scamper toward the shoreline. Lake Malawi is one of the largest in Africa. Mozambique is on the other side, the distant hills obscured by a hazy plume, as if the water itself is on fire. Weird. Maybe it’s going to rain? The wet season is long over, but this country is nothing if not unpredictable. I swipe my hand over my brow. The noonday sun is pleasant, nowhere near hot enough to justify this much sweat. My mouth fills with saliva.

  Great, here we go again.

  I shuffle around the side of the hut to the latrine in the backyard. Eighteen steps. Twenty at most. I enter just in time, thighs quivering from the effort and get quietly sick for the fourth time today. How the hell did I catch a stomach bug? I’m anal-retentive about using a water filter and iodine purification tablets. Still, there was clearly a breach in my defenses. Local families have taken turns hosting me for dinner since my arrival in a sweet, generous gesture of hospitality. It doesn’t take an expert in cross-cultural communication to know it’s impolite to drill people on their household food preparation methods if you’re the guest of honor. No matter how teeth-clenchingly bad you want to do exactly that.

  My stomach roils, painful to the point that a moan escapes. I brace my hands on my knees and pant. What if parasitic worms are hatching in my stomach or burrowing through my liver?

  I step back outside and linger in the mango shade, resisting the urge to scratch the welts speckling my arms. Mosquitos are eating me alive, so taking antimalaria medication has become an acceptable nightly ritual. The dark cloud over the lake drifts closer. A trio of local women skirt my yard, swinging plastic utility buckets and handwoven baskets. Their lively chatter makes me miss my best friends, Sunny and Beth. I wonder what they’re up to? I’ve avoided their e-mails since Bran and I got back together.

  To say my girls aren’t Bran’s biggest fans is a rather epic understatement. In December he morphed into a Big Bad Wolf, shredded my heart as easy as a straw house. After a cooling-off period—literally, in his case, as he joined a marine activist organization dedicated to preventing illegal whaling in the Antarctic—he wrote an apology and asked for an opportunity to set things right.

  I’ve seen Bran at his worst, know his best, and somehow reconcile the two. He’s broody, unpredictable, and twists my brain like a pretzel, but my love for him isn’t a word, it’s an involuntary, instinctive act, like breathing. Our connection is the one thing I trust in this far-too-fragile world. Despite his past wounds, he craves heart-peace as much, maybe even more, than I do. When he finally mustered the guts to step up and show courage, there was no way I could say good-bye. I want to believe he has a chance for happiness.

  I need to trust we both do.

  The women notice my stare and slow their pace, brows knitting. I haven’t been at my site for long. The mandatory three-month volunteer training in the capital, Lilongwe, wrapped a few weeks ago and here I am. Home. Sort of. The village is quietly assessing me, and I’m not exactly putting my best foot forward. This is my fifth day out sick from teaching. Hardly a confidence booster.

  I raise a hand in forced cheer that the women return with shy waves. Once they’re safely out of sight I double over. It takes serious diaphragmatic breathing before I can hobble back toward the refuge of my bed.

  The doorway provides a welcome rest stop. Fussy stomach aside, I’m glad I came to Africa, right? I mean, in a great many ways, I’ve gotten exactly what I wanted—plus a guy who loves me and has come around to accepting that long-distance relationships don’t mean doom. I should be happy. Am I happy? Sometimes.

  And sometimes not.

  When we get what we want, the dream becomes real, and real life is never perfect. I realize some of my naïveté in joining the Peace Corps. I think deep down inside I believed something would shift in me, in my life, like I’d wake one morning and it would be a whole new world. Instead, I’m still me. Just here, in Africa, teaching English as a Second Language in a rural school.

  I adore my students and their sweet enthusiasm, but my assigned project? Not so much. ESL
isn’t the work I want to ultimately pursue. I’m no grammar whiz and get nervous talking in front of groups. Every morning I wake hoping today is the day where I’ll stop second-guessing and start to thrive, and every night I fall asleep uncertain, listening to the mosquitoes’ unrelenting hum.

  I was having a twentysomething crisis when I applied to the program, running from big decisions on what to do with my life. The Peace Corps was one of many pipe dreams that floated around during my undergrad, and in a desperate Kermit flail I snatched the opportunity with both hands.

  My Facebook feed was littered with people from my major squee-ing over cool jobs, internships, or graduate school admittance, and I wanted in on that success. The Peace Corps seemed like the perfect way to have an adventure while advancing my future. But just because an idea is good in theory, doesn’t mean it works in practice. Now that I’m actually here, I can’t shake the sense that I’m an imposter, a fraud. Am I an intrepid development worker, decked in head-to-toe khaki and ready for anything? Not by a long shot. I should like being here more. And I don’t.

  God, whatever, Talia. Pack away the tiny violin.

  Got to stick it out because ultimately, I like the stigma of failing even less.

  I shuffle to the plastic milk crate beside my bed. Inside are seven crinkled pieces of paper. I’ve printed each of Bran’s e-mails. Our communication has been infrequent. He’s not able to write much from the ship, and I have to hitch to Lilongwe to source reliable Internet access.

  When we met in Australia during my exchange, I tried to convince myself he was a little adventure, some uncomplicated fun. The first time he touched me, my body went, “Ah, okay, there we go.” Bran revealed himself to be the exact puzzle piece I was missing. I ease onto my bed and peer at the first dog-eared page.

  Hey Darling,

  Wait a second. My lids twitch and vision goes wonky. I blink to refocus.

  Hey Darling,

  What the hell? Words skitter in every direction. I try to give chase, but my eyes no longer operate in unison. Pain explodes behind my sockets like a hand grenade, radiating through my temples. I’ve never had a migraine hit with such sudden intensity. Maybe I’m dehydrated from throwing up so much. I fold Bran’s note and tuck it inside my shirt, next to my heart as my stomach constricts again, from agony and mounting dread.

  At one point or another, most everyone confronts debilitating sickness during their Peace Corps placement—practically a part of the job description. The other volunteers regard parasitic worms as an African red badge of courage. More power to them. Me? I’m content to play the coward.

  The doctor blew off my vague symptoms—fatigue and nausea—at the health clinic this morning. He was nice enough, but the halls were filled with villagers suffering from actual diseases like AIDS and hepatitis. Part of me wanted to demand tests, but I’ve freaked out about so many phantom ailments in my life that a little voice kept whispering, What if the sensations are all in your head? Guess I should have rethought the decision to go home and sleep it off, because this feels different. Something is wrong, really amiss. I’m the Boy Who Cried Wolf who’s finally in the shit.

  Cracks fang over the hut’s interior walls like sudden lightning. I hunch forward, dig my elbows into my thighs, and count them off in sets of two. I hate that I keep doing this but it’s the only way to ground myself. I never sought appropriate cognitive therapy and stopped taking my medication because mental health issues posed clearance challenges to becoming a Peace Corps volunteer.

  Sucking it up and trying harder, my two plans for coping, don’t seem very successful.

  I miss a crack. Shit. Now I have to go back and begin counting all over.

  No! Not again. Stop it. Just…stop.

  I wrench my gaze from the wall and push down the dread that if I don’t count exactly right something terrible will happen. I breathe deep but the anxiety lingers, and I debate whether or not to grow into an angry monster or slink into my subconscious.

  Better not to give it a choice. I need a mission, something to distract me. A tin pail sits in the corner of my makeshift kitchen, a grandiose title for what amounts to a table, rickety stool, and bowl of cassava. I don’t have a shower—no indoor plumbing—but a sponge bath might be the thing. I’m exhausted, restless, and jittery from discomfort. Fresh air makes everything better, right? I shuffle over, lift the handle, and muster the energy to trudge outside to the nearby water pump, wincing in the sunlight.

  Meghan, my neighbor, fellow Peace Corps volunteer and HIV-prevention coordinator at the clinic, is there chatting with other women in fluent Chichewa. Her upper lip is too heavy for the lower, and dips into an almost-but-not-quite frown at my approach. Pretty sure she secretly believes I’m a total wimp ass.

  I take my place at the end of the line and hope it doesn’t look like my intestines are contorting themselves in figure-eight knots.

  Meghan adjusts the intricately patterned chitenje that wraps her otherwise thick black hair. These large fabric squares are cheap everyday wear in the village, and I have one tied around my T-shirt and skirt as a sarong. Envy constricts my rib cage as she balances a full-to-the-brim bucket on the top of her head with casual ease. I’ve yet to manage such coordination, much to the merriment of the village women. It takes time to learn the little skills that make you invisible. Aside from the glaring difference of my pigment, I’m still too conspicuous, prone to making a dozen tiny errors in a single outing. The teasing is never mean, but sometimes yeah, I wish I fit in better.

  “What’s up, T?” Meghan’s sharp gaze takes my measure. Can the newbie hack it?

  Africa has the highest volunteer dropout rate of any continent. There is no way I’m going to early terminate. The very idea is taboo. I gave the Peace Corps a two-year commitment. Here’s my big chance to show my spirit animal isn’t a scaredy-cat. I’m a girl with fortitude, spunk, and great gobs of mettle—need to dig deep and see this decision through to the flip side.

  Meghan tries to hold my gaze, but I don’t let her. Instead, I study the ant marching across my bare foot. “Sorry if I seem pathetic—can’t kick this stupid bug.”

  She’s from North Carolina, and her twenty-four-month contract finishes next month. After Malawi, she hopes to score an aid position elsewhere in the sub-Sahara.

  “Got to keep on keeping on.” Meghan squints at the horizon with a thousand-mile stare.

  “Doing my best.” I take a deep breath through my nose. When people toss out those empty phrases, I kind of want to pat their heads, with a hammer.

  “Sorry I haven’t checked in on you since getting back.”

  She’s going all hot and heavy with one of the two clinic doctors, a lanky Médecins Sans Frontières guy from Belgium. They recently returned from a week-long getaway climbing Mount Mulanje in the country’s south. She’s strong and independent, exactly who I aspire to be. In the meantime, I crave her approval. I want her to think the best of me, even if that means hiding my worst. The fear. The uncertainty. The moments of sheer I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing terror.

  I’m unable to speak as my abdominal knot tightens.

  “Stomach again?”

  A wave of dizziness tumbles over me. I nod, not trusting my voice.

  “That sucks. Hey, we all get sick. Adjustment takes time. I had giardia three times my first year. Lost almost twenty pounds.”

  My own clothes hang off my frame. I’ve never been big, but I sported more curves than not. These days my body’s flat, battening down the hatches, reduced to two dimensions.

  “Lay low and rest.”

  “I’ll brew a pot of ginger tea,” I mumble. “There’s a bag left over from my last care package.”

  “Good idea, and, hey, if you need anything, you know where to find me.”

  Wow. Quick, someone nominate my fake smile for a Best Supporting Oscar, because Meghan’s answering grin makes it seem like I’m not this big bummer.

  Screams rise from the direction of the lake—the good kind—la
ughter harmonizing with joyful squeals. The women around me abandon the pump and race to the water. The weird cloud from earlier hits the shore, breaks apart in furious wings and discordant buzzing. Flies. Everywhere. I swat my face, strength depleting faster than bathwater spiraling into a drain. Women and children swing any available container through the air, collecting as many insects as possible. No one passes up free protein in this region.

  Pain lances my side. An invisible knife rips through my torso. What’s happening to me? No way anyone hears my useless squeak. My heart flops in an erratic rhythm as blue stars cascade past in a psychedelic stream. Flies hum in my ear, crawl over the back of my neck.

  Help. Please. I need help.

  My knees hit the soil and I pitch forward, grappling the Hey Darling letter pressed to my heart. Bran is my sanctuary. If anything will keep me lucid, centered, it’s him, but the blackness pulls too strong, rushes through my brain like a wild flood, dragging me into the shadows.

  * * *

  “Talia? Talia, can you hear me?” That deep rumble could be mistaken for calm and in control until the under-the-breath expletive. “Fucking hell.”

  My fingers slide to a narrow wrist, a leanly muscular forearm. A flash of recognition. I read this body like braille. A name flits past, a firefly illuminating the darkness, but only for a split second.

  Bran?

  No way. That’s impossible. He’s on a boat in the Southern Ocean.

  Can a hallucination brush warm lips across the side of my neck? I blindly clutch the strong fingers laced with mine, trace faint calluses. This contact is an anchor, holds me fast, safe from the hungry dark.

  Bran.

  A wordless prayer. For a moment, wild joy blooms. He’s so close. I want to tell him I’m within reach, but speech is impossible, like trying to smile without a mouth.