Circle Nine by Heltzel Anne

Author:Heltzel, Anne [Heltzel, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5615-7
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2011-03-20T05:00:00+00:00

Shady Ridge High School will be holding a memorial service on Tuesday for 18-year-old Katherine James, a May graduate, and her younger sister, Addison James, who had just completed her sophomore year. Both girls are believed to have perished in the July 8 house fire that also claimed their parents: 47-year-old Justin James, a locally respected handyman, and his wife, 42-year-old Luanne James.

The service is open to the public and will be held in the high-school gymnasium at 4 pm.

I feel overwhelmingly sick. The shot is a professional one, possibly a high-school graduation photo. Her luminous smile radiates warmth, and nothing about it is affected or posed. This is a girl who was open and honest. A girl who was happy. And that’s when I notice her necklace, a thin gold chain barely peeking out from below her yellow blouse, holding a piece of gold script just at her clavicle. I might not recognize it if I didn’t know it so well.

It is just like mine.

I reach up to my own throat, fingering the necklace that lies there. I peer closely at the photo. Katie, said hers. Abby, says mine. There must be a million girls with these same gold necklaces. But something inside me knows that this is not a coincidence. This can’t all be a coincidence. But there was no Abby in the article; there were only two girls, and the second was Addison. My heart sinks; I realize I wanted to be Dream Girl’s sister. I’d felt certain these people I dreamed were mine. I wanted it all to make sense; I wanted to be the fourth. But maybe all along, I was connected in some other way. An outsider, just a friend.

But I feel closer than that. I look down at my Abby necklace again. Maybe I am trying too hard to make everything fit. I feel so close; I’m desperate and perplexed.

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