The Accident Season
Page 22
The council rebuilds the bridge: a proper, sturdy stone archway over the river. There is a small plaque in the middle with an engraving that reads: IN MEMORY OF ELSIE MORRIS.
Maybe I just need to be remembered, she said, so we remember her. Every time we cross the bridge, we remember her.
I think it must have felt like drowning, catching death that way. I think about Seth hitting his head on a rock, I think about hands holding me under the water. I think about Sam in secrets, Alice in fire, my mother in memories. I think that we all drown, in one way or another.
Every so often I look closely at a picture I’ve just taken and I get a glimpse of mousy braided hair, a sensible brown shoe, a lace collar, a tartan skirt. The worry lines have been replaced with half a smile. Accidents happen. Our bones shatter, our skin splits, our hearts break. We burn, we drown, we stay alive.
These days after school we walk home the long way, past the remains of the ghost house. It isn’t empty anymore; there are carpenters in all the rooms. We can hear them from half a mile away. They hammer and bang and saw with electric machines that dust over the tracks our feet made on the floor. Sometimes I imagine going there and stealing a door handle or a key, a hinge or a pane of glass. But there are no windows left, and anyway, I would be too afraid. There are words there that can’t be painted over.
We walk along the river and listen to the carpenters’ song. We sit on Elsie’s bridge and drink my mother’s lemonade. In the daytime we flavor it with lavender water. Some evenings we spike it with stolen gin. Sam and I and Bea and Alice nestle close.
We raise the jam jars we use as glasses. We toast the river and we say the words together.
One more drink for the watery road.
About the Author
Moïra Fowley-Doyle is half French, half Irish and lives in Dublin with her husband, their young daughter, and their old cat. Moïra’s French half likes red wine and dark books in which everybody dies. Her Irish half likes tea and happy endings. Moïra started a PhD on vampires in young adult fiction before concentrating on writing young adult fiction with no vampires in it whatsoever. She wrote her first novel at the age of eight, when she was told that if she wrote a story about spiders, she wouldn’t be afraid of them anymore. Moïra is still afraid of spiders, but has never stopped writing stories. The Accident Season is her debut novel.
Find Moïra online at
ecritureacreature.tumblr.com
/teacupfrenzy
@moirawithatrema
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