Ghost Hand by Ripley Patton Page A

seemed appropriate, since that was exactly how he’d left me.

8
    MY MOTHER
    On the way home, I kept looking over my shoulder, but if Marcus or the CAMFers were following me, I didn’t see them, and the blades had fallen completely silent, which seemed like a good sign. At the cemetery’s south gate, I made quick work of the lock, then jogged up North Elm Street and turned onto Durley. My house was the two-story, second on the left. The lights were on, and my mom’s sky blue VW bug was in the drive. Now, all I had to do was face the onslaught of her anger and get to my room where I could hide the blades until I figured out what to do with them.
    I walked up the path to my front door and turned the knob. It wasn’t locked. No one locked their doors in Greenfield unless they were going out of town. Even then, sometimes they left them unlocked so their neighbors could feed the cat and water the plants. I opened the door and walked into the entryway.
    The overhead light was off, but a sconce on the wall illuminated one of my favorite paintings by my dad. He had painted it when I was four, around the time my parents had informed me that I was never going to have a little brother or a little sister to play with. It was an oil-on-canvas of a pale, glowing girl on a deeply black-blue background. The girl was ethereal and ghostly, except for her right hand, which was the most realistic, fleshy hand I had ever seen. It looked like you could reach out and take that hand in yours. Everyone who saw the painting said that. My father had titled it The Other Olivia , and I had fought long and hard to keep that painting in the entryway after my father had died. My mother had packed up all his other work and stored it in his old garden studio out back.
    I smiled at The Other Olivia and pulled the front door closed, making sure to lock it behind me.
    “No, she isn’t home yet,” my mother’s voice was saying to someone on the phone, and then, “Olivia, is that you?”
    “Hey,” I rounded the corner into the room’s arched doorway, the brighter lights blinding me for a second.
    “I have to go,” my mother murmured into the receiver and hung up without even saying goodbye.
    “Who was that?” I asked.
    “I’ve been waiting for you for over an hour,” she said, staring at the phone, her voice tight and throaty. “I can’t believe you’d disrespect me like this.” She looked up and her mouth dropped open in surprise. “What on earth!” She jumped up from the brown leather couch. “Olivia, you’re bleeding.” She didn’t sound concerned as much as she sounded annoyed, but I was pretty used to that. My mother wasn’t great at personal empathy. She was paid to be professionally empathetic but, apparently, she used it all up on her clients.
    “I had a little accident on the way home,” I said. “It’s just a few scratches.” I’d realized that Marcus was at least right about one thing; telling my mother that CAMFers had been chasing me was not a good idea.
    “Little accident? You’re bleeding and you’re filthy,” she said, taking my left hand and pulling me further into the light.
    I gasped and jerked my hand away.
    “What—?” she grabbed my wrist and turned my hand palm up. It was bright red, and oozing blood and dirt. “How did you do all this? It’s not that difficult to walk home from Emma’s.”
    “I took the cemetery shortcut,” I said, “and I tripped on a tombstone in the dark. I tried to catch myself with this hand, but I ended up landing face-first in a bush.” I wasn’t a great liar, but I could usually pull one off when I had to.
    “The cemetery,” my mother said, shaking her head. “This is getting ridiculous, Olivia.”
    “What is ridiculous about the cemetery?”
    “Oh come on. We both know you just go there to be dramatic and get under my skin.”
    “Really? Because I thought I was going there to visit Dad,” I said, yanking my hand out of hers.
    “For clarification, you visit