The After Girls Read Free Page B

scratch, and the wind cooed again.
    It’s just a branch it’s just a branch it’s just a branch …
    She took a deep breath, and she whipped her sheets back. She ran to the window, and she used all her courage and curiosity to open the curtains. There was nothing, and it was really just a branch. As she turned, the shadows looked so dark and yet soft, like a girl, or a bird, running and flying. Falling.
    Ella ran to the door and flipped on the light as fast as she could, and the bulb cast a glow that filled the room, hiding the shadows.
    Ella lay back in bed, and she closed her eyes tight, and she took deep breaths,
in and out and in and out
, but she still didn’t feel alone.
    • • •
    Sometime in the night, she’d managed to fall back asleep, but she was tired when she woke up. She couldn’t remember any more dreams, but she still felt rattled. Unsettled.
    She could hear her mother downstairs, making coffee, but she didn’t want to see anyone right now. So she walked up to the studio, where she knew she’d be by herself.
    Ella squinted as her eyes adjusted to the light cascading through the arched windows, spilling onto a cracked wood floor littered with crumpled newspapers, damp rags, and remnants of clay. She sat down at the wheel. She didn’t know what else to do.
    The clay felt raw, good between her fingers. Malleable.
    She forced it into a mound on the wheel in front of her. It was fresh and new — unformed — it could become anything, anything in the world that she wanted it to.
    She pressed her foot down and the wheel began to spin, the clay whirling, taking shape. She dipped her hand in the water and placed her fingers along one edge, turning the lump into a mini mountain, rising up — becoming — right before her eyes.
    She dipped her hands in the water again; then pushed her fingers into the middle, turning the mountain into a volcano — tall, strong — rising, growing — she could still do this.
    Ella spun the wheel faster, and the volcano rose, grew taller — ready to burst, to explode any moment. Faster and faster.
    Ella pressed her fingers along the edge, and it turned, became something again. Hourglass.
    Rising.
    Existing.
    It felt good to have something real in front of her. Not sounds or scratches or visions of her friend or shadows dancing along the wall.
    And the hourglass rose, just as it should, and it spun faster. It was a vase. A beautiful fabulous vase that she would sell at the fair — she and her mom always made a bunch of pieces to sell at the fair.
    Even now, she could still make.
    Real. Fired. Solid.
    Existing.
    But she blinked and Astrid was before her again.
“Something is wrong.”
    And she heard her name being called. Echoing. “
Ella. Ella.”
    And then she spun too fast and the perfect pretty twirling hourglass crumpled before her. Ruined.
    The failure startled her, and then she heard her name called clearer. Her mother.
    Ella pushed the clay down so it crumpled even further. And she found herself scooting away from the wheel, dipping her hands in the water, her fingers dripping all the way down the stairs, and then her mother was there, and she was staring at Ella, asking if anything was wrong, and it wasn’t, and okay, then, the phone’s for you.
    And Ella held it to her ear and she muttered hello, and for a moment it sounded so much like Astrid that she wanted to cry.
    But only for a moment.
    Because it wasn’t Astrid.
    It was Grace.
    “How are you?” Ella asked, trying to sound calm.
    “I’m okay.” Her voice sounded hoarse.
    Grace had always insisted upon being called by her first name, unlike most other moms in the South. It was one of the many characteristics that made her awesome. That had made Ella love her, like more than an adult, like a friend. Ella hadn’t seen her since the funeral.
    “I didn’t wake you, did I?” Her voice was just like Astrid’s. It was uncanny —
terrifying
, even — how much it sounded like her.
    Ella shook her head.