Fiction River: Fantasy Adrift Read Free

Gramma.”
    “I’m not going with you?” I looked to my mom but she wasn’t saying anything. Looks like this would be a united front.
    “Angie,” Mom said, “Gramma will protect you.”
    I looked over there at the lump sitting on the couch. Not likely. I didn’t even think that she liked me.
    “You’ll be safe,” Dad said. “See.” He reached out to the light switch under the rack where the keys were usually hung and flipped it. “We’ll turn on all the lights. Criminals, bad people, they don’t like the light. They’ll stay away.”
    They were really going to go. I held onto his sleeve. “I don’t want pizza. You don’t have to go.”
    “It’s OK,” he said. And with that they left out the front door and then to the driveway to where the gold Mazda GLC hatchback was parked, the car Dad used to go to work.
    The wind started to pick up. The neighborhoods were so old and trees had grown so big that sometimes the roots would break out the concrete on the sidewalk.
    The world where you could see everything in the daylight transformed at night into a place where you couldn’t see beyond the trees that whipped into the house as the sky growled at you.
    The warning tone sounded on the television drawing my attention.
    IT IS 7 PM. DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR CHILDREN ARE?
    The question was if I knew where my parents were. I didn’t. They’d left me there alone.
    If we’d stayed in South Carolina, I would have been able to run over to my aunt and uncle’s house just over the crest. My parents probably would have dropped me off and I’d be eating strawberry pie and talking to Aunt Lou about her massive collection of costume jewelry. Junk she had called it.
    A game show came on after the news. With their noises and cheers, they irritated me, but at least they were better than the wind. It was these times that I realized that the house was just particle board. There was nothing to stop anyone from coming in and doing anything to you. A house was not protection. People were protection and my people were gone.
    Gramma had moved some. She was a creature in and of herself with a crocheted pink shawl, her feet bandaged and her hair covered. Gramma always had something on her head. Usually a tiny piece of fabric that had to be pinned down on top of her head with the gray curls sticking out. The only time I would see her with her head uncovered was at her funeral.
    I headed to my bedroom. The house was small even with the attention that had been made to expand it. The front room was the living room with the television and then that led to the dining room to the right which we hardly ever used. Around the side of the house was the long kitchen that held the kitchen table. The kitchen didn’t have a lot of width, but mostly length and the room led out to the back yard. The bedrooms were off the hallway behind that big room that was the living room. It was a compact house.
    My room was decorated in sunny colors as Mom called them. The dresser was white decorated with gold trim and the bedroom bedspread was yellow with ruffles along the edges. Mom had found a good deal at the outlet store for the yellow blackout shades with scalloped edges and fringe at the end that was supposed to block out the sun.
    The brooch sat stuffed in the bottom of my underwear drawer. It was a starburst pattern but to me it looked like a blue glass dahlia. And certainly nothing a ten-year old girl would be wearing. It looked more like a brooch the church ladies would wear. The brooch was royal blue so that they would probably have paired it with their whites after Easter with blue shoes and a blue bag to match.
    My Aunt Lou had given it to me the day we left for Atlanta. The shimmer of magic clung to it. I’d taken to carrying it with me to school. Having it on my counter made it easy to grab on the way out the door whenever one of the parents weren’t with me. I didn’t know how long the protection spell my aunt had cast on it would last, but I