Cinnamon (Shooting Stars 1)

"How are you doing, dear?" Mrs. Fogelman asked, coming up behind me.

I shook my head.

"Is your father on his way?" she asked.

I stared at her, bit down on my lip, and then smiled.

"The moment he gets an opportunity," I told her. "He'll rush right over."

She stared at me. Hadn't I said it right?

Or was it the rapid and constant flow of tears over my cheeks and chin that confused her?

I flicked them off, smiled at her again, looked back at Mommy and fled.

Clarence was so involved in his reading he didn't hear or see me until I opened the car door. By then, I had stopped crying, but he couldn't miss my red eyes.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"She's worse. She's in a coma."

"Oh no. What do they say?"

I looked at him.

"They say what they're supposed to say. They say, 'Don't worry.' They say pretend this isn't happening. They say go on with your life and ignore it, ignore all of it, put on a good act, recite your lines, stay in the spotlights so you can't see the audience."

I started the car.

I saw rather than heard him mouth a curse.

I drove him home. He kept asking me what I was going, to do now and I kept saying, "I don't know." He especially wanted to know if I was going to confront my father with what we had seen today,

"Would you?" I asked him.

He thought a moment and shrugged.

"I probably wouldn't be as surprised by it as you are," he finally replied. ''But I'd like to help you." he said when I pulled up to his house. "Just don't be afraid to ask me for anything."

"Thanks, Clarence."

"Am I still coming over tomorrow night to meet your spirits?" I smiled at him.

"Sure," I said. "We'll talk about it in school."

"I'll call you later," he promised. He leaned over to kiss my left cheek and then got out. I watched him walk away. He paused at his front door to wave goodbye and then I drove home. I don't know how I managed it. The car must have known the way by itself. One moment I blinked and the next I was pulling up the driveway.

The house never looked as lonely and dark to me as it did now. I didn't go inside. Instead. I walked around to the rear and then up to the knoll where the Demerests were buried. I stood before the old tombstones remembering the times Mommy and I were here.

The wind was blowing harder, the sky looking more bruised and angry, reflecting my mood. I could feel the cold rain threatening. We might even have flurries tonight. I thought. but I ignored the frigid air. Anger made my blood hot anyway. I could never understand the rage Medea felt toward her husband. Jason, when he betrayed her in the Greek tragedy, Now, I thought I could.

I charged toward a broken tree branch, scooped it up and dug into the ground, scratching away the earth like some madwoman searching far buried treasure. Finally, exhausted. I stopped. The hole, was big enough for what I wanted anyway.

I reached around my neck and undid the charm necklace Daddy had bought me on my sixteenth birthday. I dropped it into the hole and covered it up.

It was as if I was burying him.

I jammed the stick into the ground like a grave marker and then I walked away without a backward glance.