Read Online Beautiful Darkness by Kami García, Margaret Stohl - Free Book Online
Authors: Kami García, Margaret Stohl
Tags: Fantasy, Juvenile Fiction
Ads: Link
are. Just not the way they think.
When her bedroom door finally swung open, I dropped the sack and pulled her into my arms. It had only been a few days since
I’d seen her in person, but I missed the smell of her hair, the lemons and rosemary. The familiar things. Today I couldn’t
smell it, though. I buried my face in her neck.
I missed you, too.
Lena looked up at me. She was wearing a black T-shirt and black tights, cut into all kinds of crazy slits up and down her
legs. Her hair was squirming loose from the clasp at the back of her neck. Her necklace hung down, twisting on its chain.
Her eyes were ringed with darkness that wasn’t makeup. I was worried. But when I looked past her to her bedroom, I was even
more worried.
Gramma had gotten her way. There was not a burnt book, not a thing out of place in the room. That was the problem. There wasn’t
one streak of Sharpie, not a poem, not a page anywhere in the room. Instead, the walls were covered with images, taped carefully
in a row along the perimeter, as if they were some kind of fence trapping her inside.
Sacred. Sleeping. Beloved. Daughter.
They were photographs of headstones, taken so close that all I could make out was the rough stubble of the rock behind the
chiseled words, and the words themselves.
Father. Joy. Despair. Eternal Rest.
“I didn’t know you were into photography.” I wondered what else I didn’t know.
“I’m not, really.” She looked embarrassed.
“They’re great.”
“It’s supposed to be good for me. I have to prove to everyone that I know he’s really gone.”
“Yeah. My dad’s supposed to keep a feelings journal now.” As soon as I said it, I wished I could take it back. Comparing Lena
to my dad couldn’t be mistaken for a compliment, but she didn’t seem to notice. I wondered how long she had been climbing
around His Garden of Perpetual Peace with her camera, and how I had missed it.
Soldier. Sleeping. Through a glass, darkly.
I came to the last picture, the only one that didn’t seem to belong with the rest. It was a motorcycle, a Harley leaning against
a gravestone. The shiny chrome of the bike looked out of place next to the worn old stones. My heart started to pound as I
looked at it. “What’s this one?”
Lena dismissed it with a wave. “Some guy visiting a grave, I guess. He was just kind of… there. I keep meaning to take it
down, the lighting’s terrible.” She reached up past me, pulling the tacks out of the wall. When she reached the last one,
the photo vanished, leaving nothing but four tiny holes in her black wall.
Aside from the images, the room was nearly empty, as if she’d packed up and gone to college somewhere. The bed was gone. The
bookshelf and all the books were gone. The old chandelier we’d made swing so many times I had thought it would fall from the
ceiling was gone. There was a futon on the floor, in the center of the room. Next to it was the tiny silver sparrow. Seeing
itflooded my brain with memories from the funeral—magnolias ripping out of the lawn, the same silver sparrow in her muddy
palm.
“Everything looks so different.” I tried not to think about the sparrow or the reason it would be next to her bed. The reason
that had nothing to do with Macon.
“Well, you know. Spring cleaning. I had kind of trashed the place.”
A few tattered books lay on the futon. Without thinking, I flipped one open—until I realized I’d committed the worst of
crimes. Though the outside was covered with an old, taped-up cover from a copy of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
, the inside wasn’t a book at all. It was one of Lena’s spiral notebooks, and I had opened it up right in front of her. Like
it was nothing, or it was mine to read.
I realized something else. Most of the pages were blank.
The shock was almost as terrible as discovering the pages of my dad’s gibberish when I had thought he was writing a novel.
Lena carried a notebook
When her bedroom door finally swung open, I dropped the sack and pulled her into my arms. It had only been a few days since
I’d seen her in person, but I missed the smell of her hair, the lemons and rosemary. The familiar things. Today I couldn’t
smell it, though. I buried my face in her neck.
I missed you, too.
Lena looked up at me. She was wearing a black T-shirt and black tights, cut into all kinds of crazy slits up and down her
legs. Her hair was squirming loose from the clasp at the back of her neck. Her necklace hung down, twisting on its chain.
Her eyes were ringed with darkness that wasn’t makeup. I was worried. But when I looked past her to her bedroom, I was even
more worried.
Gramma had gotten her way. There was not a burnt book, not a thing out of place in the room. That was the problem. There wasn’t
one streak of Sharpie, not a poem, not a page anywhere in the room. Instead, the walls were covered with images, taped carefully
in a row along the perimeter, as if they were some kind of fence trapping her inside.
Sacred. Sleeping. Beloved. Daughter.
They were photographs of headstones, taken so close that all I could make out was the rough stubble of the rock behind the
chiseled words, and the words themselves.
Father. Joy. Despair. Eternal Rest.
“I didn’t know you were into photography.” I wondered what else I didn’t know.
“I’m not, really.” She looked embarrassed.
“They’re great.”
“It’s supposed to be good for me. I have to prove to everyone that I know he’s really gone.”
“Yeah. My dad’s supposed to keep a feelings journal now.” As soon as I said it, I wished I could take it back. Comparing Lena
to my dad couldn’t be mistaken for a compliment, but she didn’t seem to notice. I wondered how long she had been climbing
around His Garden of Perpetual Peace with her camera, and how I had missed it.
Soldier. Sleeping. Through a glass, darkly.
I came to the last picture, the only one that didn’t seem to belong with the rest. It was a motorcycle, a Harley leaning against
a gravestone. The shiny chrome of the bike looked out of place next to the worn old stones. My heart started to pound as I
looked at it. “What’s this one?”
Lena dismissed it with a wave. “Some guy visiting a grave, I guess. He was just kind of… there. I keep meaning to take it
down, the lighting’s terrible.” She reached up past me, pulling the tacks out of the wall. When she reached the last one,
the photo vanished, leaving nothing but four tiny holes in her black wall.
Aside from the images, the room was nearly empty, as if she’d packed up and gone to college somewhere. The bed was gone. The
bookshelf and all the books were gone. The old chandelier we’d made swing so many times I had thought it would fall from the
ceiling was gone. There was a futon on the floor, in the center of the room. Next to it was the tiny silver sparrow. Seeing
itflooded my brain with memories from the funeral—magnolias ripping out of the lawn, the same silver sparrow in her muddy
palm.
“Everything looks so different.” I tried not to think about the sparrow or the reason it would be next to her bed. The reason
that had nothing to do with Macon.
“Well, you know. Spring cleaning. I had kind of trashed the place.”
A few tattered books lay on the futon. Without thinking, I flipped one open—until I realized I’d committed the worst of
crimes. Though the outside was covered with an old, taped-up cover from a copy of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
, the inside wasn’t a book at all. It was one of Lena’s spiral notebooks, and I had opened it up right in front of her. Like
it was nothing, or it was mine to read.
I realized something else. Most of the pages were blank.
The shock was almost as terrible as discovering the pages of my dad’s gibberish when I had thought he was writing a novel.
Lena carried a notebook
Similar Books
