Life Sentence by Kim Paffenroth

Author:Kim Paffenroth [Paffenroth, Kim]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Horror & Ghost Stories, Zombies
ISBN: 9781934861110
Google: n3993JDRFccC
Amazon: 1934861111
Publisher: Permuted Press
Published: 2008-10-15T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

It was funny how things went on pretty much as normal, both after my vows and after the death of Ms. Dresden’s baby. I always wonder if it’s a resilience or sturdiness that we all have, or the kind of hope that Milton talked about, or just stubbornness. Sometimes I think it’s more a kind of inertia of living matter—a gross, wet weightiness that keeps life flowing or rolling forward like a flood or a glacier, depending on the situation. The living stay alive; they even keep living after they’ve died. It’s not good or bad, it’s just the way it is, and you have to plan on it and work around it.

So we kept going as we had, through the mundane but sometimes pleasant activities of our lives. School was done for the summer, but I had one more ballet lesson with Ms. Wright. On my way to class, I walked by Mr. Enders at his little desk. He had dozed off on this hot, sultry day, leaning against the cool, plaster wall with his eyes closed and his mouth open. I went past him quietly, since there was no need to bother him.

I joined Ms. Wright, Vera, and the other girls in the classroom. “Hi, Zoey,” Ms. Wright said. She was much more stern and intimidating than her husband, Mr. Caine, but I still liked her. She always looked comfortable in her body, which was the opposite of how I felt that year. Her skin was a very dark brown, rich and mysterious. Like my mom, her black hair had some grey in it, but unlike my mom, she kept it closely trimmed. Her body was muscled in the way a dancer’s is—an average or even slender torso with powerful, toned legs.

Besides her skin, her big, brown eyes were the most strikingly beautiful thing about her—they were large, open and frank, but always a little serious. Not sad, but keen and hardened, like they had seen and absorbed far too much of the world’s mystery and pain.

“Hello, Ms. Wright,” I said as I set down my gym bag.

“You okay?” She touched my shoulder and looked at my blackened left eye.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” Bald, pale, with a purple-yellow bruise around one eye—it was everything I could do to go out in public at all.

She gave a hint of a smile. More of her seriousness, I thought, that she seldom smiled and never laughed. “You did good, Zoey. You always do. I hope you know that.”

The room we used for dance had windows along one side, so it was brightly lit now in the afternoon, and with the windows open it remained comfortably cool. Most of the tables had been moved to other classrooms, but a few were left under the windows. Sometimes we’d use them as props when we practiced scenes.

On the wall opposite the windows, there were two doors—one near the front of the room, one near the back. They were old-fashioned, with a smoked-glass window on the top half, and wood on the bottom half.

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