Abandon Read Free Page B

just ended up making things worse. The bird panicked and half flew, half leaped into the side of a nearby crypt, crashing against the bricks.
    Then it just lay there. As I hurried to its side, I realized with horror that it was dead.
    Naturally, I began to weep. I’d already felt pretty sad, considering the fact that I’d just been at the funeral of a grandparent I’d never met, then been kicked out of the cemetery sexton’s office for my misbehavior. Now this?
    That’s when the man had come along the path. To me, a first grader, he’d seemed impossibly tall, almost a giant, even after he knelt down beside me and asked why I was crying.
    Looking back, I realize he was only in his teens, hardly a man at all. But as tall as he was, and given that he was dressed all in black, he’d seemed much older to me than his actual years.
    “I was t-trying to help,” I’d said, nearly incoherent with sobs, as I pointed to the bird. “She was hurt. But then I scared her and made it worse. Now she’s dead. It was an ac-ac-accident.”
    “Of course it was,” he said, reaching down to scoop up the limp, fragile body in one hand.
    “I don’t want to go to hell,” I wailed.
    “Who said you were going to hell?” he asked, looking bemused.
    “That’s where murderers go,” I informed him tearfully. “My grandma told me.”
    “Well, you aren’t a murderer,” he assured me. “And I think you’ve a bit of time before you have to start worrying about where you’re going after you die.”
    I wasn’t supposed to speak to strangers. My parents had drilled this into my head.
    But this stranger seemed nice enough. And my mother was only just down the path, inside the office. I was sure I was safe.
    “Should we find a coffin for her?” I asked, pointing at the bird. I was bursting with knowledge I’d just learned at the funeral that afternoon. “When we die, we’re supposed to get put inside a coffin, and then no one sees us ever again.”
    “Some of us,” the stranger had replied a bit drily. “Not all of us. And yes, I suppose we could put her in a coffin. Or I could make her come alive again. Which would you prefer?”
    “You can’t make her come alive again,” I’d said, so startled by the question, my tears were forgotten. He’d been petting the bird, which was very definitely dead. Its head drooped over the top of his fingers, its neck broken. “No one can do that.”
    “I can,” he said. “If you’d like.”
    “Yes, please,” I’d whispered, and he passed his hand over the bird. A second later, its head popped up, and with a bright-eyed flutter, it took off from his hands, its wings beating strongly as it flew off into the bright blue sky.
    I was so thrilled, I’d cried, “Do it again!”
    “I can’t,” he said, climbing to his feet. “She’s gone.”
    I thought about this, then reached out to take his hand and began tugging. “Can you do it to my grandpa? They just put him over there —” I pointed towards a crypt on the far side of the cemetery.
    He’d said, not unkindly, “No. I’m sorry.”
    “But it would make my mom so happy. Grandma, too.
Please?
It’ll only take a second —”
    “No,” he said again, beginning to look alarmed. He knelt down beside me once more. “What’s your name?”
    “Pierce,” I said. “But —”
    “Well, Pierce,” he said. His eyes, I’d noticed, were the same color as the blades on my ice skates back in Connecticut. “Your grandfather would be proud of you. But it’s best just to leave him where he is. It might frighten your mother and grandmother a bit to see him up and walking around after he’s already been buried, don’t you think?”
    I hadn’t considered this, but he was probably right.
    That’s when Grandma came looking for me. The man saw her. He had to have seen her, and she him, since they exchanged polite “good afternoons” before the man turned and, after saying goodbye to me, walked away.
    “Pierce,” Grandma said when