Blackwood by Gwenda Bond Page B

it seemed like everyone eventually died of cancer. Phillips had possessed the glow of celebrity all new kids have in a small town. She'd been standing against the section of lobby wall that belonged to loner misfits. He walked toward her like he was in a trance. The other kids in the lobby laughed as he reached out a hand and touched her hair. He said things to her, about her. Things that didn't make any sense, but that scared her. He called her a bad thing. He called her a liar. A traitor. A carrier. A snake.
      The other kids loved that – a snake. They thought he was being funny. The funny new kid, picking on the Blackwood girl, something most of them had wanted to do for a long time.
      The principal had stepped in to pull Phillips away, and called her dad to pick her up. What people whispered about their family was bad enough, and had gotten worse since her mom died. Their curse had been confirmed. Her dad ripped through a half-case of beer when they got home, getting angry. He loaded her in the car at midnight and drove to the Rawlings' house. Two months later and he wouldn't have been able to – that was when his license got grabbed for good, and he sold the car for drinking money.
      Chief Rawling tolerated her dad yelling and taking a swing at him, though he didn't let it connect. Phillips came downstairs and stood at the screen door. When he saw Miranda, he ran outside and whispered to her, "There were voices talking in my head. They said things about you. But they're just voices." And then he gave her that look. She could tell he was sorry. Even then, she didn't believe he'd done it on purpose.
      Chief Rawling sent Phillips back inside. Then he drove her and her dad home in their Oldsmobile. His pretty wife with the black hair followed them in his police cruiser. Miranda had been surprised that Phillips didn't turn up at school the next day. His mother home-schooled him for half the year, rumors of his escapades around the island traveling the halls anyway.
      She studied his profile, just inches away. She'd always wanted to ask him if his voices had said anything else about her. She wanted to know. Maybe. But she didn't ask that. Instead she asked, "Do you mind if we stop by there?"
      A thick black fence thrust from the ground like jagged teeth, a forbidding boundary made of painted iron. The evening light made shadow spears that thrust toward the gentle slope of ground the fence protected.
      "I can't believe I'm about to say this," he said. "But, why not?"
      He turned up the dirt drive and drove them into the graveyard, dust ghosts trailing the car.
     
    Miranda got out first and wandered through the chalky white tombstones, some carved with angels or winged skulls. There weren't many recent burials in this part of the cemetery. Phillips didn't follow her. He stayed in the car. She figured he'd join her if he felt like it.
      She was alone now. Alone in the world.
      She walked up the slope, grass that could have used mowing tickling her ankles. She turned back and saw Phillips still inside the car. She started down the other side of the small hill, leaving his sight. The markers changed to reddish marble and gleaming black. There were plain gray stones mixed in, but not many of the oldest pale ones.
      Miranda didn't care for modern headstones. When her mom died, they'd only been able to afford a smallish marble rectangle to mark her grave. She had wished for something large and sweeping that captured her mother's spirit. Or at least something small and noble, like those old ones. She was pretty sure the guy at the Outer Banks Monument Company who sold them their stone had already cut them a deal though. There hadn't been any way to ask for something more.
      She reached the not-so-special gray stone. Kneeling, she traced the letters of her mother's name with her fingertips. Anna-Marie Blackwood. Miranda leaned against the stone, and said, "I didn't forget my promise, but I wasn't