Haunt Me by K. R. Alexander

Author:K. R. Alexander [R. Alexander, K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2020-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

At dinner, Mom and I sat at the too-big table together. Dad once more refused to come down. I thought maybe he’d join us since he’d actually spoken to me earlier, but apparently that had been more than enough human interaction for the day. Mom and I poked at the lasagna in silence, classical music playing faintly on the radio. I wasn’t hungry at all. After the strange things that had happened today, food was the last thing on my mind.

Especially because nowhere felt safe anymore. Not here, and not outside.

I glanced up at Mom while I ate. She was looking at her food, distracted, and it was then that I realized she looked older, too. When she wasn’t forcing herself to smile or be busy, she had a sort of sadness to her, something deep and immovable, similar to how Dad seemed. There were lines at her eyes, and even though her black hair was shiny and radiant as ever, I could see thicker streaks of white in her ponytail that I didn’t think she had a few months ago. She was so sad, but she hid it so well …

She looked up, and her smiling mask slid back on, and I quickly looked away, staring instead at the photos Dad had taken that lined our walls.

There were nature shots that he’d been hired to shoot for magazines—the aurora over a snow field that he said was something called a long exposure, a bonfire crackling on the beach while stars glittered overhead, a desert dune under a blazing sun—all large-format and glossy. But the other photos—the most plentiful ones—weren’t ones he did for work.

There were photos of him and Mom on their wedding, her in lacy white and looking happier than ever, him in a sharp tux with a ridiculously large flower pinned to the front. Photos of their vacations to tropical beaches or camping in the wild. And even more numerous were the photos of us. Isabella and Mom and me—sometimes with Dad in the frame, but usually without since he would often take the photos and forget his tripod at home—at parks or museums or in front of the school building. There were photos of Isabella blowing out her birthday candles, shots of me and her dressed as queens in regal robes that were actually bedsheets we stole, pictures of us as babies or toddlers or little kids.

We were everywhere.

And I thought, Maybe that was why Dad didn’t like eating down here.

There were too many reminders of what he’d lost.

I swallowed hard.

Would he keep taking photos?

Would there be pictures up there someday of just me? Me in front of the school when it should be me and Isabella. Me graduating. Me getting a car or moving out or …

Me growing up.

Alone.

Suddenly, even though Mom was still in the room, I felt terribly alone, as if the future was one long, bleak hallway that I couldn’t stop walking down.

Isabella, I wish—

A cold hand clamped down on my shoulder.

I yelped and jerked, but there was no one there.

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