My mom is so freaking insistent.
“Yes,” I tell her. “Yeah, I trust you. But mom, it’s not a problem for me. Because when Finn’s on his meds, he’s almost normal. He’s fine.”
Almost. There’s only been a few break-through episodes. And a few periods of depression. And a few delusions.
Other than that, he’s been fine.
“Except for the times that he’s not fine,” my mom answers.
“But…”
“No buts, Calla,” she shuts me down, quickly and efficiently. “Honey, we’ve talked this into the ground. Now, I’ve gotta go. I forgot my reading glasses so I’m on my way back to get them. But the rain is bad so I need to focus on the road—“
She interrupts her own sentence with a scream.
A shrill, loud, high-pitched shriek. It almost punctures my ear-drums with its intensity and before I can make heads or tails of it, it breaks off mid-way through. And I realize that I heard something else in the background.
The sound of metal and glass being crunched and broken.
Then nothing.
“Mom?”
There’s no answer, only loaded pregnant silence.
My hands shake as I wait for what seems like an eternity, but is actually only a second.
“Mom?” I demand, scared now.
Still nothing.
Chills run up and down my back, and goose-bumps form on my arms because I somehow know that she won’t be answering.
And I’m right.
Mom died as she was screaming, as the metal crunched and the glass broke. The EMTs say that when they found her at the bottom of the ravine, the phone was somehow still in her hand.
2
DUO
Calla
-AFTER-
Astoria smells like dying.
At least, it does to me.
Embalming chemicals. Carnations. Roses. Stargazers. These things mix with the sea breeze and pine trees blowing through the open windows, forming an olfactory cocktail that smells like a funeral to me. That’s fitting, I suppose, since I live in a funeral home. And my mother recently died.
Everything reminds me of a funeral because I’m surrounded by death.
Or mortem, as Finn would say. He’s obsessed with learning Latin, and has been for the past two years. I don’t know why, considering it’s a dead language. But then again, I guess that makes total sense around here.
My brother, on the other hand, only makes sense part of the time. We’re supposed to be preparing for college, but all he’s interested in is scribbling in his journal, learning Latin and looking up morbid facts about death.
His journal.