Elisabeth Edley's father has three skeletons in his closet. One is aged taupe and named Olivia. The second has a dent in the skull and has been donned A.P. The third is a photograph of a blonde, dead girl.
~ A five part story that I wrote for my Cre...
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The days leading up to the end were sluggish and slow and stormy.
I shut everything and everyone out, just like I had when Momma had left.
I thought about calling her, but I couldn't bear to do it. It didn't matter anyway. She had never been there for me before, so why would she be here now?
Rebecca was my next option, but I knew she wouldn't want to believe it. I knew that I couldn't bring Sara into it, and I had already hurt Waylon.
I was alone.
The day started like any other one.
I woke up late as usual. I got dressed for school in a hurry. I glanced at Angela's bear on the top shelf of my closet and sighed before shutting it into darkness.
I ate breakfast with Rebecca quietly as she spoke to her most recent boyfriend on the telephone, it's cord wrapped around her forearm like a tattoo. She talked and talked without a care in the world. She didn't know that everything had gone to flames.
I drove to the middle school with Father like I had every morning before. I didn't look him in the eye when he asked me if I had studied for my biology test, or when he told me about the salmon he had planned for dinner. He drove carefully, his knuckles tight around the steering wheel, like the vines around my window. So easily could he have drove us into the forest right then. He could have killed me, too. But, he didn't.
Time went by. Sara asked me why I had been so quiet. I told her I had been having trouble getting to sleep. It wasn't a total lie.
When I walked home from school, I could feel Waylon glancing at me. When I looked back at him, it was as if he knew that something was about to happen, before I did.
He opened his mouth to speak, but before the words could spill, I bolted for home through the fog.
Father got home before me that day. He was nowhere to be found downstairs. Rebecca sat in the kitchen on the phone. Frances sat on the piano bench, hitting random keys distractedly.
I ran upstairs to my bedroom before either of them noticed my presence.
When I swung open my door, I could sense that something was wrong. I dropped my backpack in the doorway of my bedroom and stood in the middle of the room. I glanced around, searching for what was out of place.
My closet was open.
My eyebrows furrowed. I thought I had closed it before I had left for school.
On instinct, I looked to the top shelf.
The bear was gone.
My eyes widened and I rushed to my closet. I quickly threw everything out. Shirt after shirt and book after book were thrown to the side as I searched. It was nowhere to be found.
My adrenaline was pumping, moving quicker than I could have ever imagined. I didn't think, I just did.
He was in his office, as I had expected him to be.
