The Chosen One - Carol Lynch Williams Page 0,50

it over to my Russian Olive tree and climb as high as I am able. Straight up into the branches. Into the thorns. Even when I am stabbed, I don’t care.

My friend is dead.

I cry with my mouth open, but I don’t make a sound. Not a sound. I cry until I’m gasping for breath, and once, I almost fall from my tree. I cry until I am hoarse, even though I’ve not made one bit of noise.

My family calls for me in hushed tones, “Kyra. Kyra, come home.”

I don’t. I stay in the tree and cry.

Poor Nathan. Poor Emily. Waiting for Patrick to come home. I cry until the moon is high in the sky.

Then I go back home.

I crawl into bed beside Laura. That is when I realize, lying next to my sister, that I am not me anymore.

I’m not sure who I am. Mother Claire and Father and dead Abigail and Emily and Laura and Joshua and music and Patrick and books and death—no, murder!—it all has changed me. If I looked into the mirror, I am pretty sure that everything about me, under the bruises and cuts, would be changed. I would not have the same eyes. Would not have the same face shape. Would not have the same hair color.

I am not me anymore.

I go to sleep knowing that.

I am not me. Any. More.

I HAVE NO IDEA what time I wake up. It might be ten minutes after I went to sleep, it might be almost morning. One thing I know is that I am still changed. I am not me, still. I think I’ve grown hollow.

In the semidarkness I see my wedding dress hanging from a coat hanger on the closet door. It’s like a ghost.

Quiet, I get out of bed and go looking for Mother’s sewing scissors. On the living-room floor, where Mother laid out the fabric before Abigail died, I cut the wedding dress into strips. Thin strips. Too thin for even a quilt. So thin you could only start a fire.

“Kyra?” Laura stands in the doorway of our room.

I start. My hands are full of fabric. I see I’ve dropped some of it. It’s there on the floor, at Laura’s feet.

“What are you doing?”

When I open my mouth, no words come out at first. There! Now Laura will see my change. She’ll see I’m different. How does she recognize me? At last I say, “I’m leaving.”

She pads across the floor, puts her arms around me and the strips of fabric. Presses her lips to my face.

“Where are you going?” Her breath is warm and I close my eyes.

“Away from here,” I say because the changed me doesn’t care where. Just out. Just get out.

When I look at her, there are tears on Laura’s face. “Don’t go,” she says. But she kisses me good-bye. Again and again.

“I love you,” she says.

“I love you, too,” I say.

She stands on the porch and watches me walk away. Her voice follows me into the near darkness. “Good-bye, my Kyra.” Her voice tells me she’s still crying.

I stop off at Uncle Hyrum’s place. Spread the fabric all over the steps, all over the bushes near the front, on the lush grass of his yard. If he hadn’t wanted to marry me, I wouldn’t be leaving. If he hadn’t wanted me, Joshua might still be here. Baby Abigail would be alive. Patrick would be alive.

But no, that’s not completely right.

This all goes past Uncle Hyrum.

It’s not just his fault. Maybe not his fault at all.

I stop and squeeze my hands tight, then start back toward my Russian Olive trees. Mother and Father believe. They believe they are doing right. I am sure of this.

Or I was before I changed.

THE DOOR TO THE Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels opens without even a noise. I pull it shut behind me, but not quite all the way. Then I untuck Patrick’s cell phone from where I’d hidden it in my dress and turn it on. My hands shake like crazy.

No service. That’s what it says. I look back at the spilled books.

There’s an extra key in the Ks. He said that. Patrick said it. A key to the van, I’m sure.

It’s hard to walk in the almost dark, through all these novels. Do I step on stories I’ve read? Is that first book, Bridge to Terabithia, in this mound?

A few books move under my foot and I slip to one knee. I crawl to where the Ks are. The