Page 59
Story: Grave Matter
This time, I’mnotleaving.
Another knock.
Then…
“Sydney,” a girl’s voice whispers excitedly. “Hurry up. It’s happening! It’s actually happening! Meet me at the field.”
She sounds familiar.
She sounds just like…
Amani?
But it can’t be.
The floorboards creak, followed by the sound of someone running down the stairs.
I quickly slide on my slippers and put on my housecoat, unlocking the door and pulling the key out of the lock. The hallway is empty and still poorly lit, but at least the power is on this time.
With my heart in my throat, I make a point of locking the door and then slipping the key into my pocket. Then I run down the stairs to the common room just in time to see the front door closing.
I hurry along, the fire down to embers, the room dark, and then burst out into the night. I catch sight of Amani running around the corner, and I follow along the path, running after her until we go past the lab and hit the gravel road that leads from the boat launch to the maintenance yard, the ground crunching beneath our feet and echoing in the trees.
She keeps going into the grassy field where empty boat trailers sit and then stops and starts twirling around with her arms raised to the sky.
“Isn’t this amazing?” she cries out.
I stare at her, trying to figure out what’s happening,howit’s happening, when I realize why Amani is spinning around and grinning like a fool.
White flakes are falling from the air.
It’s snowing.
It’s fuckingsnowing.
The cold hits me at once. My shins, my nose, my cheeks, the exposed section of my chest as flakes hit my skin and melt. I hold my robe closer, wishing I could make sense of this, wishing my brain could just keep up.
“They said it doesn’t snow here, not even in winter, and yet look at this!” she cries out, her breath freezing in the air. “This is a dream come true.”
I can only stand where I am and stare, blinking away the flakes that gather on my lashes. “You’re not real,” I whisper.
“Aren’t we lucky?” She continues to twirl, then points at me. “You’re so lucky that Everly didn’t care about your scholarship. Teacher’s pet that you are.”
I slowly walk toward her, terror starting to seep into my bones like the cold because Amani was sent home on the plane. Amani isn’t here. Someone else took her place.
But what if Amani didn’t go home at all?
“Amani. Are you okay?” I ask her, my voice shaking. “What happened to you? Where have you been staying? How do you know about Everly and my scholarship?”
“Sydney Denik, the golden child,” Amani says, laughing now. Round and round she goes. “Who would have thought? Well, that Professor Edwards dick will rue the day you become more successful than he is.”
I stop. No. None of this is right.
I look up at the sky. It’s still snowing, the flakes illuminated by the lights from the barn. It’s so quiet outside, so still, and the snow is getting thicker.
It’s getting colder.
This is real, I tell myself, feeling the flakes on my skin and in my hair, the biting ice. Snow in early June, strange but possible.But is she real?
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59 (Reading here)
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143