Hannah's Touch by Laura Langston

Chapter One
    A bee sting changed my life. One minute I was normal. The next minute I wasn’t.
    If you listen to my parents, they’ll tell you I haven’t been normal since my boyfriend, Logan, died. But they don’t get it. When he died, a part of me went with him. Plus, I could have stopped it. The accident that killed him, I mean.
    But I was normal. Until it happened.
    It was the third Sunday in September, sunny and warm. School was back in. The maple leaves on Seattle’s trees were curling like old, arthritic fingers. Fall was only a footstep away.
    I wasn’t thinking about fall that Sunday. Or school or maple leaves. For sure I wasn’t thinking about bees.
    I was at work, thinking about Logan, and I was cold. It was freezing in the drugstore. Bentley had the air conditioning cranked to high.
    â€œI swear, Bentley, it’s warmer outside than it is in here.” We’d run out of Vitamin C, so I was restocking the middle shelf beside the pharmacy. “I don’t know why you need the air conditioning on.”
    â€œIt keeps the air moving.” He was behind the counter, slapping the lid on a bottle of yellow pills. “Besides, fall doesn’t officially start until September 23.” He slid the bottle into a small white bag.
    Like that made any difference. But Bentley, who was the pharmacist, was also the boss of Bartell Drugs. As far as he was concerned, summer was sunscreen displays and air conditioning. No matter how cold it got.
    I only had to whine a few more seconds. “Take twenty,” Bentley said. “It’s quiet today.”
    I grabbed a soda from the cooler by the magazines, waved at Lila, our cashier, and wandered outside. The heat was better than any drug Bentley sold. I popped the tab on my can, took a sip, breathed in sunshine.
    â€œWell, well, just the gal I want to see.”
    It was Maude O’Connell, leaning on her turquoise walker, her uni-boob and gold chains practically resting on the top bar. An unfortunate orange and blue caftan covered her plus-size body.
    â€œMy gout pills ready yet, Hannah?” she asked.
    â€œBehind the counter and waiting, M.C.” I’d called her Mrs. O’Connell only once. She preferred M.C.
    Hanging from the walker was a basket lined with fake brown fur. Home to Kitty, a nearly bald ten-thousand-year-old apricot poodle (yes, Kitty is a dog) who couldn’t walk. When I leaned over to scratch her head, she growled and bared the few yellow teeth she had left. I pulled back. Not from fear, but because the smell from the dog’s mouth made me queasy.
    â€œâ€™Bout time,” M.C. complained. “I called Friday, and they weren’t ready.”
    â€œFriday was nuts,” I said. Three-quarters of the customers at Bartell’s were lonely seniors. I liked talking to them as long as they didn’t bring up bodily functions.
    â€œYour hair ’s growing in nice.” Like Kitty, M.C. was nearly bald. She obviously missed having hair, because she always commented on mine.
    â€œYeah.” Six months ago, I hacked off my long blond hair. After Logan died, kids I didn’t even know started coming up and asking if I was “the girlfriend of the dead guy.” My friends kept telling me I was different too. I didn’t need the judgment or the attention. But instead of flying under the radar, I decided to be different. So I hacked off my hair. It was a dumb thing to do.
    â€œThe color looks nice.”
    It was blond, the same color it had always been. “I’m thinking of dying it midnight black next month.” I played with Logan’s St. Christopher medallion. I’d been wearing it since the accident. “To mark—” I stopped.
    The one-year anniversary.
    Everybody kept telling me I had to get over Logan; I had to move on. Like I could get over him. And anyway, my sadness kept him close. My sadness and his medallion—they were the only things