The Law of Inertia by Sophie Gonzales

Author:Sophie Gonzales [Gonzales, Sophie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Contemporary, Young Adult, mystery
ISBN: 9781944995874
Goodreads: 40967934
Publisher: Amberjack Publishing
Published: 2018-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-ONE

JAMES

October 2018

THE FOOTBALL TEAM WERE practicing when I passed. Without me. Like they’d done all year.

They didn’t need me. I didn’t need them.

I didn’t like to take the long walk home anymore. Unlike our rock, which I could stand, this route was painful for some reason.

The ghost of Ash walked by my side, taunting me. Did you appreciate our walks, James? Did you watch me, filingmemories away? Did you listen to every word I said? Or did you ignore me, rambling about assignments and languages and sports scores?

Did I exist then as much as my absence exists now?

James?

Jaaammeess?

You’re alone now, James.

I put up with it for today. I had to go to the bridge.

You weren’t allowed to climb over the fence that ran parallel to the rail tracks. It guarded the river bank. A steep drop. Probably, back in the nineties before everyone got all anal about safety, people had slipped over the edge. To the water below. Or, more accurately, to the roots and bushes and rocks that lined the bank, and then to the water below.

Screw safety fences. They were only there to protect stupid people. I’d be able to scale to the bottom easy.

I hopped the fence and lowered my legs over the edge, finding a foothold in the earth. Gripping onto an exposed root—and giving it a tug first, because, as above, I was not one of the stupid people who fell down river banks—I began the climb down.

Athletics, at least, was something that’d always come easy to me. It only took me a few minutes ’til I landed, unharmed, on the grassy slope by the water.

Me and the river had a hostile relationship. Whenever I saw it, all I could see was Ash. I could picture it flooding his lungs, encasing his body, and dragging him downstream so forcefully that he couldn’t fight back. I didn’t wanna think he’d suffered. That left option number two. That he’d been unconscious when he hit. Which leads me to the hostile relationship I had with the rocks.

The water level was higher this year than it’d been when it’d happened, so they were underwater, hiding from me. But I knew what they’d done. They’d broken Ash’s body. Snapped his back or crushed his head. They’d murdered him. Thinking of it (snapping, crushing, crunching) made me want to vomit. I almost did, retching, mouth metallic. But I got a grip. Straightened.

The police would return here soon. And we’d find out for sure, wouldn’t we?

Had Elliot been here?

Had he stood on that bridge? Smiling? Had he dived into the water after Ash? Or was he the reason Ash was in the water? Had he been a reactor, or an instigator?

You knew what happened, Elliot, I thought. You spoke to him. You saw him. You did something. And you hid it.

But what? And why? Why?

The river kept running. It didn’t give a shit. Nothing was gonna stop it from doing its thing. Not even the death of the world’s most beautiful person had stopped it.

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