Trying to Live With the Dead

Beautiful is sick, so we’re here to smother her back to health.

Pull something out and show me.” I said thoughtlessly. Isaac started snickering, Ethan joined in. Asher was holding back a laugh, his cheeks turning pink. I thought about what I said and started laughing. There are just some things you can’t say in a room full of guys.

Wait a minute, I thought all girls liked those tragic love stories?" Isaac asked as we turned down another hall."I guess I'm weird." I shrugged. "I prefer a good happy ending to a story, there are enough tragic ones in real life.

The dead still come to me every now and then. But the lulls between are getting smaller. They are finding me somehow. I tell them why they can’t move on. I listen to their lives and talk to them if they need it. I still draw their portraits in my sketchbook, with their stories. I put Mary Summer in there too. Someone should remember.

. “Everyone has a dark side, Zeke; the key is not to let it make you its bitch.

Some days alive is the best you get. But, there’s always tomorrow.

You’re home now, Lexie,” Rory said, smiling a small smile. “You’re stuck with us.

Everyone has a dark side, Zeke; the key is not to let it make you its bitch.

Then she’d start drinking on the weekends, then at night, then all the time. Over the years, she started doing drugs. A little at first, then that went on just like the drinking. She’d be so wasted she’d lose her job. Since I turned sixteen, I always had to keep a part-time job just to keep us going. Then suddenly she’d decide we needed to move and start over again.” I tried to keep my voice calm, but my voice was cracking. “And it would all start over again. We did that again and again.” I took a deep shuddering breath; Miles was a warm, soothing presence beside me. I don’t know what it was about him, but something about him made me feel calm. “I was sleeping in my bed when she came home drunk and high as hell. She yanked me out of bed, screaming that I was a devil child, that I was a demon. She had found one of my dad’s old belts and had it in her hand.” I looked down at Miles hand in mine as I remembered everything again. “She started swinging and swinging. When the buckle broke off, she used her fists, then her feet. She stomped the hell out of me. I didn’t even realize I was screaming until the cops broke in the door and dragged her out.” I looked back out at the trees.