Grave Girl by Amy Cross Page B

anywhere near the cottage. "I'm not superstitious," she says eventually, "but still, I've heard stories about this place. You know, about the people who lived here before, about the other gardeners. It's nothing personal, I just feel as if maybe there's a kind of negative energy around here that might knock my own energy and make me less settled." She smiles at Sam, but it's a fake, nervous smile. "I spend a lot of time working on my energy. Like, properly, with crystals and stuff. If it gets all knocked out of whack, it might take me weeks and weeks to get it back to normal, and that'd kind of suck and..." Her voice trails off as she stands awkwardly on Sam's doorstep. "Can I just have the necklace? Please?"
    Sighing, Sam holds it out to her.
    "Thanks," she mutters, quickly grabbing it before turning and walking a couple of steps away. After a moment she turns back to Sam and stares. "So was that you last night? The one who, like, scared us away?"
    "Sorry," Sam replies. "It's local policy. Can't have people getting up to no good in here. I'd appreciate it if you could spread the word around town."
    "I guess," the girl says. "You just seemed bigger and scarier last night."
    Sam smiles. "What's your name?"
    "Anna."
    "I'm Sam. Sam Marker."
    "Okay." With that, Anna turns and hurries away, leaving Sam to stand in the doorway and watch her heading across the grass and toward the gate.
    While she didn't come to Rippon in order to make friends, Sam can't deny that she got a small buzz from that smidgen of social contact. It took her right back to the days of... As she turns back to walk through her kitchen, Sam looks over at the unopened bottle of wine on the counter. She's not really sure why keeps the bottle in full view; she had some vague idea about opening it to celebrate her first day at work, and then she decided to delay the moment a little while. The thought of having friends again, and opening a bottle of wine, makes her think back to the old days in Leeds. The fun days. The wild days. She feels this urge deep in her gut, begging her to open the bottle and take a sip. Even just one, brief drop, just a taste. Forcing herself to resist the siren call, Sam walks over, grabs the bottle of wine and puts it in one of the cupboards, where she can't see it. She still knows it's there, of course, but she figures she can wait a while. It'd be so easy to slip back into the old habits of drinking and hanging out with people, but she knows how that kind of things always ends. Taking a deep breath, she grabs her spade and heads out instead to do some more work on the grave.

Chapter Six
     
    As he makes his way up the hill, Dr. Wellington spots a young man standing by the wall of the cemetery, smoking a cigarette and looking remarkably as if he's up to no good. Dressed in a leather jacket and wearing old, faded jeans, the young man has the kind of callous, uncaring expression that Dr. Wellington finds so disturbing in the town's youth. In fact, the boy is such a stereotype, it's almost as if he's stepped out of some 1960s teen-terror movie poster. Crossing the street in order to give the young man a wide berth, the doctor is surprised to see a young girl hurrying out of the cemetery gate and making straight for the other youth. Then again, he thinks to himself, why should he be surprised? Hormonal idiots are attracted to one another the world over.
    "Did you get it?" the young guy asks as Dr. Wellington walks past them.
    "Here," the girl says, holding up a small necklace.
    "Can we go now?"
    "Yeah, it's just..." the girl pauses, as if there's something else she wants to say. "She's weird," she says eventually.
    Turning the corner, Dr. Wellington stops for a moment, keen to listen in to the conversation. He has an aversion to youth, and he tends to believe that most of the young people in Rippon are up to no good. Already, he's convinced himself on very little evidence that the young man's cigarette contains rather more than pure nicotine,