Touched by Balog Cyn

Author:Balog, Cyn [Balog, Cyn]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780375899065
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2012-08-13T22:00:00+00:00

“No.”

I hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but it must have broken through my lips. My numb lips, useless as the rest of me. Because Taryn, who’d been talking about how her father had picked up the car from some lady in Island Heights, stopped midsentence, baffled. “No what?”

I took a small, feeble step backward.

She turned to Devon, shrugged, then alarm flooded her eyes. She tried to move closer. I backed away again. “Do you … did you see something?” she whispered.

I held out my hands in protest, and as I did I stumbled on a rock or a curb behind me. I nearly threw up my breakfast when I looked over and realized it was the gravestone of Mommy’s Little Angel. Devon was looking at me as if she was rubbernecking a horrible, ghastly car accident on the side of the road. “I think we should just go,” she muttered for the thousandth time to Taryn, but Taryn didn’t even sway.

I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t care what normal was; I knew this wasn’t it, and yet I didn’t care. “No. I can’t do this. I really can’t be near you,” I sputtered.

I half-expected the ground to open up and swallow me. After all, Mom and Nan would bury me here when I died. When we died. So I turned and broke into a run, back into the cemetery. A blind run, not really sure where I was headed. The cemetery was surrounded by a small line of trees. I didn’t know what was behind them. Maybe I could go and live the rest of my life there. Away from Taryn. Away from everyone.

Like my mother.

When that thought hit me, I slowed down, breathing hard once I reached the chain-link fence by the trees. By the time I turned back, the girls were gone. A minute later I saw the Jeep heading toward the exit. So Devon had finally convinced her to leave. They were probably still watching me, wondering what was up. Well, maybe not Taryn. She knew. She knew what was bothering me. Most of it, anyway. Devon obviously thought I was two cashews shy of a nuthouse.

I realized I could have just taken Taryn aside and told her. She would have understood. We could have vowed to stay away from each other, and that would have been the end of it.

Or would it have been? Maybe it would have been like when we decided not to let Nan bring my mother breakfast anymore. She was still on course to die, but the pieces of Mom’s breakfast were no longer around her head in the memory. Maybe Emma’s death put the wheels in motion for something terrible to happen. Maybe evil would always follow us now, no matter what we did to prevent it. Maybe we were destined for bad things, and nothing could stop it.

I started walking back to the Buick, still breathing hard. As I walked, I loosened the tie, which felt like a noose, and undid the top button of my dress shirt.

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