The Boy in the Cemetery by Sebastian Gregory

arrived and crept past her parents’ closed bedroom door, without breathing, and into her own room. She caught her own reflection in the mirror on her wardrobe. The wardrobe was white with a square mirror in the middle—the length of an average-sized person. Carrie Anne always thought she looked trapped when she looked in it. There was the same sad reflection looking back at her, except now she was covered head to toe in mud and wet blades of grass. She stripped down naked. Her body, something that always made her feel ashamed, was an autopsy of pale skin and dark purple bruises. There was a footmark on her left side. She considered for a moment that the boy in the cemetery would never want her in the way boys want girls. He would protect her and love her and never need any physical affection; he would love her unconditionally and that would be unconditionally perfect for Carrie Anne. There was the sound of her parents’ alarm blaring, followed by the snooze button being hit. She screwed her dirty pyjamas into a ball and hid them under her bed. Next: into the bathroom; she ran a hot shower. The steam misted the windows and the shower screen and the water swirled the cemetery dirt into the drain.
    By the time she returned to her room with a towel wrapped around her and her long hair dripping against her neck, her mother was waiting for her, sitting on Carrie Anne’s bed. Carrie Anne was startled by her.
    “Mum, you made me jump.”
    “I was just checking on you, your dad is out for his early morning jog. Why are you up so early?” Carrie Anne’s mother was wearing her worn blue nightgown, her thinning, balding hair tied in a ponytail.
    “I was thinking I could go back to school.”
    “School? I don’t think you are ready; you need rest and stay here where it’s safe.” There was genuine panic in her mother’s voice.
    “I just want to feel normal again—” Carrie Anne thought about the words that her mother may want to hear “—so we can be a normal family, like Dad wants us to be.”
    Her mother thought about that for a moment. Without Carrie Anne’s father to bludgeon his influence over her, she was confused and a little lost.
    “I suppose,” she said.
    Carrie Anne sat next to her mother and put her arm over her shoulder.
    “I’ll be fine, I promise. I need this; I need to be less inward.”
    Her mother thought about it.
    “OK,” she reluctantly said.
    Carrie Anne smiled and kissed her mother’s cheek. She stood up and began to find her uniform. Her mother went to shuffle out of the room.
    “I’ll walk with you,” she said. Carrie Anne had no intention of going to school, so her mother walking with her, trying to take her there, would be a disaster.
    “Mum,” she said as casually yet as persuasively as she could, “I need to do this on my own. I need to fit in.”
    Again her mother’s eyes flickered as she thought of the best course of action.
    “If you think that’s best, if you think that’s best.”

Chapter Eleven
    Carrie Anne kissed and hugged her mother before leaving for “school”. What she wanted to learn would not be taught in school. She needed to know how to talk to the dead.
    The morning was cool and clear now that last’s night storm had drained the clouds. Carrie Anne headed over to the library, located just in the centre of town. Her progress was slow because of her ongoing injury holding her back, but despite that handicap she was eager. She also had to contend with avoiding anyone who would recognise her from the school. She pulled her hood over her head and went on her way. The town was quiet for this time of morning. Only a few cars passed by, splashing the road puddles onto the pavement. As she reached the town, where the houses stopped and the pound shops and sandwich shops began, there was eeriness to the precinct, as if the morning was a dream and the town was not real. Only a few people went by like ghosts. As she walked past the shop windows, her reflection was