Dead River - By Cyn Balog Page 0,69

feel her inexplicably enormous weight on my waist pushing my back into the ground. When she grabs my hand, not at all gently, I don’t know what to expect. Suddenly the world dims and I’m floating through a blur. When the world comes into focus, after a moment, things look strangely muted again, like they did when I was alive. My body is gone. Vi is gone, although, oddly, I can feel the intense pressure of her hand on mine. I swivel my head around and at once it’s obvious I’m not in the same place I’d been in a second ago. The pines are gone, and now I’m surrounded mostly by leafy trees. The ground is no longer covered in pine needles; instead, I’m up to my ankles in muddy water. There is a smell in the air, like burning coal from a grill. Each way I turn, I see nothing but trees.

Before I can panic, a voice greets my ears. Out of nowhere. I see the girl, Vi, coming down the path, skipping. This time, she’s different. Her pink dress is clean and unwrinkled, her shoes are unscuffed. She is singing a nursery rhyme about a man who lived in the moon, and I know right away that I have slipped into one of my visions. But what a vision! Unlike before, it is so real, I feel I can almost reach out and touch her. She even smiles at me, like she can see me there. But suddenly there is another voice. Angry. “You took them from me!”

Another person comes into view. Lannie, wearing the familiar white dress, but what is unfamiliar is the way her lip curls in hate as she storms after Vi. Vi turns, her eyes wide with fear. “I’ll give them to you,” she says in a voice I don’t recognize. I realize I don’t recognize it because I’ve never heard it, but it’s sweet, soft, and so full of fear I want to grab her and hug her to me. Protect her. She bends over and begins to roll her sock down as Lannie says, “They’re silk stockings, you know. For women. They’re not kneesocks, like babies like you wear.”

I stare at Lannie. I remember how she taunted me before, when we played, but it was always good-natured. It was always just fun, wasn’t it? She’d never done anything horrible to me. Not at all. Then I turn in time to see Vi lift her foot out of her white shoe. She loses her balance and her foot touches the dirty forest floor.

“Look what you’re doing! You’re getting them all muddy! And I just bought them!”

After some more struggling, Vi manages to take both stockings off. She slips her bare feet into her knee-highs and shoes and holds the white stockings out to her sister. Lannie takes a step forward, and for a glimmer of a second before she reaches out, I see the fear in Vi’s face morph into defiance. Vi throws the stockings to the ground and grinds them into the mud with the sole of her shoe. She smiles triumphantly, but it only lasts for a single instant before Lannie begins shrieking loudly enough to pierce eardrums. She lunges at Vi, screaming, “You brat! You’re always in my things!” and it doesn’t help when she reaches for the stockings and slips in the mud. Vi makes the mistake of laughing. I know it is a mistake and yet there is nothing I can do to stop it. I know the outcome.

They struggle in the mud. The little girl is small and bony, not strong and nearly fully grown like Lannie. It’s not long before Lannie has handfuls of her little sister’s long brown hair. They both fall to the ground in a heap of mud and grunts and once-crisp Sunday clothing. Vi presses her muddy palm against her sister’s face, flattening her nose, trying to push her away, but it’s no use. Lannie grabs her by the back of the neck and pushes her down against the forest floor. Harder, harder …

Then she straightens and, blinking away mud, her sister’s handprint still upon her face, picks up the stockings. The forest is grave-quiet as she stands, and at first I want to run when she turns to me, but it’s the same as with Justin and Angela: she doesn’t see me. She walks through me, swiping a stray lock of hair behind her ear. I stare at the motionless