Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain

Author:Ginny Myers Sain [Sain, Ginny Myers]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2021-09-07T00:00:00+00:00

My head bounces against his shoulder as he carries me through the storm. And I stop fighting then.

I turn my face up toward the sky and wait for the rain to drown me. Death in the water. Like Mackey said. What does it matter if the water swirls and bubbles up from below or if it falls from the sky? Water is water. And dead is dead.

16

The next day is Friday, and I make Mackey bring me his high school yearbook.

“I thought she killed herself,” he tells me when he stops by the Mystic Rose that morning to drop it off. “Threw herself in the river, maybe.” Mackey glances over his shoulder, nervous. “Hart doesn’t like us to say it. But that’s what I thought.”

He has on basketball shorts and worn-out tennis shoes, and he reaches down to slap away a huge fly that lands on his shin.

“I figured that’s why she ignored my warning about death in the water.” His eyes settle on the stack of flyers by the register. The ones with Elora’s picture. “Because she already knew she was gonna die.”

When he leaves, I flip through the yearbook and try to compose a list of every boy I ever heard Elora mention.

Dalton Guidry

Jamal Tilman

Evan Richard

Matteo Arredondo

And on and on.

But it feels hopeless, because there were lots of older guys she ran with, too. And I don’t have all the names. Besides, who’s to say she didn’t meet someone totally new since last August?

I know she had at least one new friend.

I add Zale’s name to the list.

Erase it.

Add it again.

Cross it out.

The truth is, it could have been any boy south of New Orleans and east of Lafayette.

After lunch, I step out on the porch for some fresh air. Evie’s put up a bunch of new wind chimes. I hear them ringing, even though I can’t feel any breeze to speak of.

I wave when I catch her watching me from her bedroom window. But she pulls the curtains. So I don’t get to ask again about what happened last night.

Why she freaked out. Whose voice she’s hearing.

Not that she’d tell me anything.

We stay busy in the shop all afternoon, and after dinner I try to sneak out to meet Zale, but Honey wants to start teaching me the tarot. Now that we know I have the gift, she says, I might as well learn how to use it.

“Don’t fear the Death card,” she tells me when the bone-white face shows up in my first reading. “It doesn’t represent physical death. The skeleton riding horseback foretells the end of something less concrete.”

But I can’t stop staring at those hollow eyes set deep into a grinning skull.

“You know, Sugar Bee,” Honey says, “as spiritualists, we celebrate life by embracing death as a natural part of the cycle.”

“What happens when the death isn’t natural?” I ask her.

“Ah.” Honey reaches over to pat my hand. “That’s another thing altogether.”

That night, when she goes to sleep, I take the tarot deck and sit on my bed for hours.

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