Grave Images by Jenny Goebel

Author:Jenny Goebel
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2013-10-19T21:00:00+00:00

THE MOMENT I PUSHED THROUGH THE HEAVY DOORS, I KNEW something was wrong. I knew it from the tingle on the back of my neck and from the nagging echo of my footsteps as I treaded lightly as I could down the marble hallway. I could tell something was wrong at Sacred Heart Parish the same way I could tell when a house was empty, or when someone was lurking in the shadows. I could feel it.

The door to Mrs. Evans’s office was open and I slipped inside.

When I saw her, I wanted to think she was just bent over in prayer. The way I find Mimi sometimes — peaceful and closed off to the world. But when she didn’t respond … when I touched her arm lying stretched out on the desk, and it felt cold — colder than any living arm should be — I knew.

Mrs. Evans was dead.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been quite so shocked. Maybe I should’ve seen something like this coming. I couldn’t have possibly believed that Mr. Stein would stick to people that I only kind of, sort of, knew. But it caught me way off guard nonetheless. Death always does.

I thought to myself, I really should be screaming. I couldn’t, though. I couldn’t make a sound. My mouth hung open. Ready. But my heart was too busy shattering for me to let loose the wail stuck in my throat.

When something finally did shift aside and the noise was able to claw its way to the surface, it escaped my mouth in one long, shrill “Nooooooooooo.” So trilling and animal-like was the sound that I didn’t even recognize it as my own. The sound was eerie enough to call Father John out of the chapel to investigate (when not many things could), and it didn’t stop until he grabbed me by the shoulders and shook.

“Enough, Bernie! I have to phone for help, and I need you to be quiet so they can hear me.”

I was quiet then. Deathly so. I waited and watched in silence as the paramedics arrived, as Mrs. Evans’s vital signs were taken, and as shaking heads passed on what was obvious. I waited and watched as her body was covered with a sheet and — like a ship’s billowed-out sail — was rolled away.

I think questions were asked of me. I know they were. I had fuzzy images in my head of faces appearing in front of me and mouths moving, and of my arm being gently squeezed once, maybe twice. Then I was alone.

How different I felt walking out of Sacred Heart Parish than before I’d walked in. I’d left Michael’s feeling stubborn. Feeling blown up with my grand reason for telling Mrs. Evans I couldn’t join her dumb outreach committee. How quickly things could change. Why hadn’t I learned that already?

Back outside, the sun was still hot. The air, still dry. The smell of charcoal and sizzling red meat wafted over from the grill across the street. On the sidewalk, people (most of whom I recognized) had bunched together.

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