From Bad to Cursed

And Lydia was dead.

I didn’t even know what “okay” meant anymore.

At least I had my sister.

I rested my head on her shoulder, and we watched the service for a few minutes. The casket was painstakingly lowered into the ground, and a slow procession formed as people walked past the grave and dropped roses down on top of the coffin. Kasey and I ended up in line, and then suddenly we were looking down into the hole, at the earthen walls covered by a thin green cloth. A smell like a rainy summer day wafted up toward us.

Kasey tossed her rose, and then I went to let go of mine.

Something hit the back of my knee, making it buckle underneath me. If Kasey hadn’t been holding on to my arm, I would have fallen into the grave.

The people around me gasped, and Mrs. Small let out a fresh burst of choking sobs.

I practically hurled my rose into the hole, managing to pierce my thumb on the nub of a single thorn that the florist hadn’t lopped off.

“Come on,” Kasey whispered, tugging at my arm.

But before I moved, I glanced past Mrs. Small, off into the distance, where the older gravestones, gray with moss and mildew, dotted the hill.

And I stopped.

And stared.

At Lydia.

She stood under a tree, her body almost solid but somehow hazy, like a distant road on a hot day. She was probably a hundred feet away, but I could feel her eyes burning into mine across the distance, feel her anger like a thunderstorm gathering on the horizon.

“She needs to move on,” someone behind me in line said, and I looked at them bewilderedly until I realized that they meant me, that I needed to move on so the rest of the line could pay their tributes and then get into their air-conditioned cars and go home.

I ignored the murmurs and stared up the hill for a long minute.

Suddenly Lydia’s figure shook, and then she was rushing down the hill, toward the crowd of mourners, toward all of us. She disappeared among the people around me, and I cried out like a car was hurtling at me.

But she never emerged.

Then Kasey’s grip on my arm got firmer, and I looked down into her eyes, to see if there was a flash of recognition.

Nothing.

I was the only one who’d seen anything.

“Let’s go, Lexi,” Kasey said.

My body limp, I let her lead me back toward the car.

Mom was there waiting for us, wiping her eyes with her fingers and staring into the cloudless sky. Kasey climbed into the backseat, and I went around to open my door.

On the pavement in my path was a single yellow rose. I bent down and picked it up, once again stabbing my thumb on the nub of a single thorn.

“Those poor parents. This is so awful,” Mom said, sniffling back tears. “Thank God it’s over.”

As we drove out of the cemetery, I searched the hillside where Lydia had been standing.

She was gone.

But it wasn’t over.