CHAPTER SIXTY ONEThere Is No EndLightning did not hit our sweet Bryony. The same time it flashed, a car came spinning out of nowhere, and its headlights were stark and bright and almost blinded our dear girl. Her heart shivered and stopped momentarily, quite knocked out of sorts by the extreme overload, but soon came back to itself and began to beat resolutely.Car doors slammed and feet hurried over to her.“Bryony!” cried out a voice, a familiar voice, a dear and good voice. Bryony raised her head and looked through the veil of water to see death had been kind enough to send her an angel who looked, sounded, and, oh my, felt just like her Eddie.“Bryony, I will never leave you again, I swear it. Never, never,” he said, and buried his face into her wet hair, and kissed her cold face and lips and cheeks and fingers. He gently caressed her burst stitches and tried not to cry.A man walked up from behind him and held out a blanket. Eddie helped Bryony to her feet and she was soon
CHAPTER ONEA Body is FoundBryony Adams was the type of girl who got murdered.This was always so, and it was apparent from the way men looked at her as she adjusted her knee socks, to the way women shook their heads in pity when she rode by on her bicycle.“I made you a present, Mrs. Lopez,” she said, dragging her backpack over to the desk. A vivid orange poster hung on the wall, demonstrating how to tie shoes. Bryony was well versed in tying her shoes, and could even double knot, but that was because she and her father worked very, very hard on it at home. Now she was working on counting to one hundred and was almost there, although sometimes she got lost while wandering around in the ever elusive eighties.“Oh, did you? What a sweet girl you are. What did you make?”Bryony pulled the gift out of the backpack, and set it on the desk. A bookmark, made of bright construction paper with cheap sequins glued to it. A cockeyed Mrs. Lopez was painstakingly drawn in crayon, her smile
CHAPTER TWOBryony’s First KissSo Bryony lived.She lived past second grade and third and fourth. In fifth there was a bit of nastiness when a car swerved onto the sidewalk and nearly hit her while she was roller skating, but a thirteen year old boy zipped by on his skateboard and pushed her into the neighbor’s roses. It saved her life, but scratched her up terribly, and Bryony refused to talk to him for the next three years. When he was sixteen and she was thirteen, she realized with starry eyes that he had been her hero. When he was seventeen and she was fourteen, she wrote biting notes to his girlfriend that she never sent. When he was eighteen and she was fifteen, he joined the military and was killed that very year. Bryony once again felt the fangs of death striking at her ankles, pricking her skin but not wounding her directly. It was a warning, like everything else was a warning. She knew that she would die in high school.How does this knowledge affect a young girl? How do
CHAPTER THREEIt ComesIt is time.It is time.She always knew this day would come.
CHAPTER FOURDefy the DesertBryony gave her father a kiss on his withered cheek.“I can’t live here anymore, daddy. The desert is calling out for my bones. Do you understand that?”Of course Stop Adams understood it. He’d known it for years, ever since she was a baby, practically. His wife had tried to tell him since the day Bryony was born, but he never listened. Finally she had packed up.“I can’t stand here waiting for my little girl to die, Stop. I can’t take it one more minute. One more second. I will always love you, and her.” She kissed them both on the cheek, just as Bryony kissed him now.They both said the same words.“I can’t live here anymore.”“I understand, baby girl,” Stop said.His heart quietly broke in half, but he knew that he would shuffle home and sew it back together again. Old men break and break and break into smaller pieces, going on until there is nothing left. He always had something left, as long as he had his daughter. He knew that on the day she
CHAPTER FIVEA Killing Sort of LoveBryony ran.She ran for many years, bouncing in and out of school, and discovering that she did not care for (in this order): journalism, engineering, dancing, creative writing, psychology, or dirt biking. Dirt biking was more of a fluke, a class that she joined in an out-of-this-world moment of sheer whimsy, because she wanted to do something fun and free and different. The bike itself wasn’t a problem, but a bike plus dirt equaled a hot, cranky, sweaty Bryony, and that is never a good thing. So, no. Dirt biking was right out.But a degree is a degree, regardless of what it is in, and all of the world looks fondly upon said degree, so Bryony slogged through her psychology classes. She also briefly considered Criminology, but figured that most of the people there weren’t as interested in capturing criminals as they were about criminals learning to avoid being caught. She was a butterfly, fluttering around joyfully. She was not stupid.But she wa
CHAPTER SIXPiece You TogetherBryony walked out of school with a degree and several quirky friends who despised each other greatly. But she often found herself thinking about how the smell of fireworks would forever remind her of gunfire and blood and of her dear Jeremy who, even with his skull in pieces, remained tall and darling. His death decorated her spirit with sharp, crystalline stars of sorrow, and this moved the hearts of her dear friends, who loved Bryony and vowed to come to her funeral when the time came.“Poor girl, she is not long for this world,” they all thought. “I wonder how they will do her hair when she is dead. I hope that they fill her casket with roses/irises/daffodils. I will write her a tragically romantic love note and slip it inside. I will shake the hand of her father. I will cry bitter tears and mourn her.”Then they all scurried back to work on their dissertations and fell asleep at their desks, dreaming sweet dreams of an exquisite corpse.Bryony ha
CHAPTER SEVENEddie Meets BryonyEddie Warshouski didn’t have anything that he really loved besides his guitar. He called her Jasmine, and grudgingly shelled out the money so that he could buy the permit necessary to play her down at Seattle’s Pike Place Market. The crowd was good there; happy, wide-eyed tourists, wide-eyed locals who came for the flowers and to support each other. They stopped by the first Starbucks and ogled the mermaid. They stopped by the tables and sampled honey and candies and pointed at the jewelry and crocheted hats that were always beautiful, but seldom sold. They made a solid wall of noise behind Eddie’s brain, and he liked that. Anything to shut out the visions. Anything to shut out the voices.Eddie put his head down and played.His music got him through the days, and it was even more essential during the nights. He closed his eyes and picked out an intricate melody. He heard some change drop into his guitar case, and forced his lips into a congenial sm