The Exhibit

Graveyard

Kendra 🌙
I watched the ship burst into enormous flames.

If we were any closer, our faces would have melted off. Different parts of the ship flew in every direction.

We had to duck many times. One last piece of ship debris rolled toward us: the glass tubes we trapped the pirates in.

From inside the tube, Black Bart looked around. "My..my ship. It's destroyed. If I ever get to be human again, mark my words, I'll-"

"YOUR ship?" Long Ben interrupted. "More like MY ship. I've done the most work to build it."

"Obviously not much work", Josie muttered.

Hannah snickered at her comment. "Hey! I heard that lassie!" Long Ben said. Josie scowled at him.

"What? It's not like I didn't say anything that isn't true!" The two of them began arguing.

Onyx ignored their bickering and turned to me with a huge grin on her face.

It looked like she was in pain, like her face wasn't used to grinning. "We did it! Now, I should be back to normal any second!" I returned the grin.

"Yes! Things should return to normal." The two of us stood there, waiting for something to happen.

Anything. I was getting worried. I could tell by the look on my friend's ghostly face that she was getting worried too.

Why wasn't everything normal? Why wasn't Onyx human?

"I...thought things would work by now." Onyx stammered.

"Don't worry. It should happen any time now", I reassured her.

But in all honesty, I was having trouble convincing myself.

We've been standing here for ten minutes.

Josie and the pirates finally stopped bickering. "Hey? Why isn't anything happening?" She asked. "I thought we did what we needed to do."

"Yeah!" Onyx agreed. "I should be human now!"

Even the pirates looked confused. Suddenly, a big purple cloud appeared right in front of me.

It hovered over my hands and dropped a small piece of papyrus tied with a red ribbon: the scroll.

I glowered at it. "I thought we were done with you. But there MUST be more, huh?" I unrolled the scroll and read it aloud: "In order for things to be normal, YOU must give the pirates closure".

At the bottom of the papyrus scroll, there was a drawing of a shovel. I suddenly put the pieces together.

I knew what we needed to do. "Guys! We need to dig a grave for the pirates. Look at this drawing."

I showed the others the drawings. Hannah gritted her teeth. "Ugh. I hate dirt. You better be right, Kendra."

"Yeah", Onyx agreed.

I pursed my lips. "It's worth a try right?"

Josie scoffed. "Everything we've done today was, 'worth a try'."

"But, those plans worked. Now come on. To the graveyard!"