Getting Thin: A Ghost Story

Chapter One

Chapter 1

The woods are quiet. Peaceful. Birds sing in the trees, their trilling voices echoing in the early morning air, which is silvery and pinkish gray, like the inside of a pearl. A soft mist of humidity clings to the black, fern-grown earth near the river, and snakes up from the slow moving, mud colored water in smoky tendrils. I am sitting on a rock, a large, gray boulder that looks strange and out of place here in central Illinois, something that does not and never did belong. Just like me. It was brought in by the same family that once lived in the ruined house before me, placed in this once lavish courtyard when there was laughter and music pouring out the windows rather than weeds. There isn't much left of the structure, a couple ground floor rooms that are missing at least one wall each, exposing them to the world like the rooms of an open dollhouse. The upper floors are little more than a shadow of a memory; only a few, blackened boards remain, the last of what was once pictured in magazines and admired for its architecture. The stairs are utterly gone, a few rotten, spiked bits of wood thrusting out of the wall to show where the grand, sweeping staircase once stood. I don't have to imagine it in all its glory; although it was gone long before I was born, I have seen it. I sit upon my rock and study the charred, black ruin and think it is ominous that I can relate so well to this ruined mansion left to rot here in the woods. It is just more proof that I am broken beyond repair. The thick rope wrapped around one of the remaining beams creaks softly above me, but I don't look. Not yet.

This is, perhaps, not the best place for me at this moment, but here I am anyway. I am waiting for him in this wild, forgotten place and thinking deep thoughts. Mostly about Roxy, my best friend, the root of the ache in my heart, the reason for the empty longing that has swallowed all other emotions. Thoughts of Roxy are, as always, predominant, but sometimes other things creep in a little. Like my Uncle Sonny and what happened to him. It's really just flashes of him the way he used to be before the 'Incident', back when I was still small enough for him to toss in the air, back when he used to call me 'his Evie,' and never Eva. I think about his long fingers dancing over piano keys, about his deep laugh and warm voice, and about how he would come get me from home just to teach me something new, like how to bait a hook or how to track a deer through the woods. I remember how close he could get to a doe and her fawn, how they would look at him with huge, liquid eyes full of trust. I think about how much alike everyone always said we were and I think about how much pride I took in that, even after he was gone. I see now that our similarities did not end with the things people could easily see, such as our ash silver hair and pale, luminescent gray eyes, but with those things that no-one ever wants to discuss. Roxy, pushes her way back in, though, and it is a relief; thoughts of Uncle Sonny are like razor blades against my soul, slashing the delicate fabric of me into shreds, changing everything I thought I knew. Roxy is dancing around in my head with a sort of wild joy as my memories of the last year swell over me like a tsunami, a vast wave ready to break and swallow what little sanity remains to me. I sit on this granite rock, picking at a spot of blood on the sleeve of my letterman's jacket and waiting with the shadow of my deeds hanging over my head and I think. Of Roxy. Roxy running as if she were born wild, her endless legs stretched taunt, golden face glowing with a fierce joy, so bright that it would frighten me at times. Roxy dancing as if the music she listened to had possessed her. Roxy, who was always laughing, laughing, laughing. I think about her warm hands and the cool silk of her cheek and her stubborn streak, which was wide enough to keep us both going when I wanted nothing more than to quit. I think about Roxy, my hero, my destroyer. And I think about getting thin.