Future Flash by Kita Helmetag Murdock

Author:Kita Helmetag Murdock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Published: 2014-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

LANEY? LANEY? ARE YOU OKAY?” I CAN HEAR Lyle’s voice. It has an echoing dreamlike quality, like he’s talking through a long tube. The whole world has shifted in an instant. Lyle and the rows of canvases have become a whirl of bright colors surrounding the only thing I can focus on. The painting of me. It has to be me. The pink blanket, the black swirl of hair, the cheeks rosy in the cold night air.

And yet it’s impossible. What would a painting of me be doing in Lyle’s mom’s art shed? How could there be a painting of a moment that only Walt and I know about? Walt and I and one other person, the person who dropped me off.

I pick up the painting and clutch onto it with both hands.

“I need to talk to your mom,” I say to Lyle, my eyes not leaving the painting.

“What? Why? No, you can’t talk to her!”

“You don’t understand. I need to.”

“Laney, I should never have showed you all this. I did this as a favor to you. You can’t—”

I push past him and through the art shed. Once again I stumble over the art box, tipping it over and spilling the paint tubes across the floor.

When I open the door, the glare of the outdoor light is momentarily blinding.

“Laney, stop!” Lyle calls from behind me.

I squint into the intense sunlight and run toward his house, the painting pressed against my chest. I run up the porch steps and to the back door, hesitating for only a second before pounding on it with my fist.

“Laney,” Lyle says, running up the steps behind me. “What are you doing?”

I keep knocking on the door.

“She won’t answer, you know,” Lyle says. His voice is quiet. I stop knocking.

“Why? Why won’t she answer?”

“She won’t talk to anyone, it’s not just you. She’s been like that since my dad died.” His voice is still quiet. I can see him in the reflection of the glass in the door, standing there on his back porch, scrawny and wet, blinking. I should drop the painting or say something comforting to Lyle, but the urgency of understanding why I found a painting of me in Lyle’s shed shoves away my other thoughts.

“I need to talk to her, Lyle. It’s really important.”

“What’s so important about that painting? You freaked out when you saw it.”

“It’s me. It’s a painting of me.” I continue to clutch the painting, but face it toward him so he can see. He looks at me, then the painting, then back again.

“It does kind of look like you—”

“That’s because it is me!”

“I mean, you have the same gray eyes and black hair. But Laney, it mostly just looks like a painting of a baby. It could be anyone. I mean, anytime anyone knows someone else with red hair, they tell me I look just like him. Do you know how many times people have told me I could be twins with Ron Weasley in Harry Potter?”

“What? No, Lyle, it’s not like that.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.