by Lisa McMann
She is out of tears.
She kneels by the grave as the snow falls on it. Closes her eyes and pictures him, long blond hair swishing around his head, that grin. She smiles back at him. “I’ll miss you,” she whispers. “Good-bye, Nico.”
At Hector’s that evening, Jacián and Kendall sit around the table with a computer and catalogs, researching.
“There’s NYU’s Tisch in New York,” Jacián says. “Or FSU Dance. That’s Florida. What about Hartford?”
Kendall pages through the options. “There’s a lot of dance schools,” she admits.
“San Diego, Ohio, or hey, maybe University of Arizona. That’s down where we used to live.”
“No potatoes?”
Jacián smiles. “No potatoes. Lemons, limes, avocados. Horses nearby.”
“I like horses. Hate potatoes.”
He squeezes her thigh. “You’ll have a lot of excellent choices once you pull your grades up again.”
Kendall sighs. “Yeah. I guess spending all that time ignoring everything wasn’t such a good idea, grade-wise.”
“Hey,” he says. He turns her chin so he can look into her eyes. “You survived it.”
She nods.
“Let’s go take a break.”
They slip their jackets on and step out onto the porch. It’s bone cold outside. Jacián leans against the railing and pulls Kendall to him. He kisses her softly. She leans into him and holds him, feeling the shape of his body through his shirt, his heartbeat against hers. She counts the beats lazily, more as a comfort than a compulsion.
“I smell a bonfire,” Kendall says after a while.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Want to walk? Go check it out?”
“Sure.”
They walk hand in hand until they can see the flames, hear the crackle. Hector and old Mr. Greenwood hold shovels. The firelight against their bodies makes huge jumping shadows along the tree line behind them. The carcass of the desk stands on metal legs, fire licking, angry smoke erupting from it.
Jacián and Kendall approach with caution, and then they watch, silent alongside the solemn-faced men thinking about the boys who died on that desk so many years ago, and the students who died this year because of it.
Kendall clears her throat. “Whatever happened to the boy in the story? Piere?” she asks.
Hector pulls himself from his thoughts and glances at old Mr. Greenwood, who frowns mightily at the fire. “He made it,” Hector says softly. “He did himself proud.”
When the wooden desktop collapses in on itself and shudders in the ashes, Kendall feels a rush of cold escape her lungs and hears a faint drawn-out scream.
But then it’s gone again.
WE
We feel the heat, and for a moment, We believe! Life is back. But this heat is intense, not gentle. Not submissive but searing. Painful.
We moan, scream, Our face cracking like gunfire . . . like a whip. Thirty-five, one hundred. One hundred! ONE HUNDRED!
The fire consumes Our wooden host. It burns, breaks, explodes. Releases Our remaining souls to travel to Our final resting places.
Or.
To find new places to hide.
And wait.
Touch me.
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Lisa McMann explains her techie knowledge and what songs inspired Cryer’s Cross in this exclusive eBook video. (1:20)