Gravity - By Abigail Boyd Page 0,72

as hard as I could.

The little girl turned and walked silently away. I remembered where I'd seen her — she was the little girl that went missing a month ago. The knowledge that her name was Alyssa entered my mind, and I pictured Claire watching the news the night we had gone out to dinner. I could faintly see the hallway through Alyssa's raincoat. The lights dimmed, everything taking on a bluish hue, like we were underwater.

I knew she was dead. But for some reason, I wasn't frightened anymore. Tranquility settled over me. Calm in knowing that what was happening was real.

I walked towards her slowly, and called her name. She turned around. Her eyes were completely black, like those of an insect.

"Everyone's been looking for you," I said. She stared almost through me. I couldn't really tell if she knew I was there or not, as if we were in two different but very close parallel worlds, or I was looking at her through broken glass.

"What happened to you?" I asked.

As if in answer, Alyssa's small hands went to the hood of her coat, and pulled it down. I stifled the gag in my throat. Her neck was cleanly sliced from side to side. Even though there was no blood, it was grotesque.

And then she was gone, and the blue of the walls melted into the regular cream that I saw every day.

"Ariel, what are you doing?" Theo called.

I turned around, and saw my three friends waiting for me.

"Nothing," I called. "I'm coming back."

I jogged back to them. I didn't tell them about seeing the girl. I didn't have any urge to; it was my own personal gift.

We walked to the front of the building, where the police were questioning the now-sobbing Lynn. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks now, and she was having tremendous difficulty speaking.

When I was a little girl, burglars broke in to the house across the street. The police came to the neighborhood, and talked to Hugh about it, asking him if he had seen anything. Jenna and I stood behind him the whole time, so excited that a real life drama was taking place in front of our eyes.

It was less exciting when they grilled me after Jenna left. Why had I let her go? Did I know if she was involved in drugs? A hundred questions were aimed towards me, and I couldn't answer them fast enough.

As we departed Hawthorne, treading over the torn purple carpet and fallen paper bats on the floor, listening to the woman sobbing and being taken off by a family friend without her daughter, it was all I could think about.

Chapter 17

School felt like a crime scene. After my parents received word of Susan's disappearance, I wasn't allowed to walk to school anymore. I had a feeling that the time was coming, but getting rid of the one big freedom I treasured was still a blow.

The fact that I saw a ghost didn't surprise me as much as perhaps it should have. Instead, I felt more relief than anything. Even though it was entirely subjective, I felt like it proved that I wasn't crazy, especially after hearing about Eleanor from Corinne. I had inherited mommy's, well, grandma's little gift, after it skipped a generation. But I didn't know what to do now. I kept expecting her to pop up again, but I didn't see anything unusual, for a change. But I knew with total certainty that what I had seen was real.

Hugh dropped me off Monday morning. I had forgotten to set my alarm, and the bell was due to ring in a few minutes. I wasn't late yet but I was close.

I walked up the stone steps and opened the door to the vestibule, rubbing sleep from my eyes. When I took my hand away, I gasped.

Jenna laughing. In front of me. And next to her was Alyssa.

Their faces were printed on black and white flyers that someone had taped to the entrance doors, and Susan's face joined them. The word MISSING was typed in thick font below each photo. Shaken, I opened the door and walked inside.

Lainey and Madison sat at a metal card table, like they were at a bingo meet, in the front hall. Stacks of neat flyers were piled in front of them. Their own missing girl committee. My stomach did a somersault.

I walked over to the wall and ripped down one of the Alyssa's flyers. I couldn't bear to do it with