The Lingering Grace (35 page)

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Authors: Jessica Arnold

Tags: #death and dying, #magic, #witches, #witchcraft, #parnormal, #supernatural, #young adult, #teen

BOOK: The Lingering Grace

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Luck was not with her.

Eva looked up and paled.

“Hey,” Alice whispered.

Eva mouthed hello, but if she spoke, her voice was too quiet for Alice to hear.

For a moment, they stared at each other. Eva was far from radiant today. Her eyes were puffy though it didn’t look like she’d been crying when Alice walked in. Her hair was stringy, as though she hadn’t combed it for days. She pawed at her cheeks as if by habit, but there were no tears to wipe away.

As Alice looked at Eva, at the despair in her eyes, the guilt she had been battling all morning melted away. Another stronger emotion swept through her, head to toe. She ran and wrapped her arms around Eva with no thought of justice and no concern for what was fair. Eva buried her head in Alice’s shoulder.

Maybe Alice should have been angry. She wasn’t sure. But there wasn’t any anger in her. Just pain by proxy. Sadness for a friend and for a loss. That was all.

“She’s dead,” Eva said, with the dry pain of someone past tears.

“I know.”

“She’s really dead. I didn’t think it would come to this. I didn’t think I’d have to let her go.”

“Do you have to?” asked Alice. She pulled away and studied Eva’s red-rimmed eyes. The one-minute bell rang and it didn’t matter. It may as well have come from another world.

“I do. That’s what—” Eva paused. Her eyes darted to the floor. “That’s what she said.”

Alice didn’t ask the question.

Eva sighed. “I heard Penny. I heard her for a minute.”

“But how? The spell?”

“When she was coming alive—I could feel it. And she … she said she didn’t want to—that she was happy. She said I have to let her go.”

The hallway was silent. The bathroom was absolutely still. It was as if the very air were holding its breath.

“She said that she forgives me for the accident. And she said … ”

Eva paused so long, her mouth sagging, that Alice was afraid she might have fallen asleep.

“What did she say?” she asked as softly as she could.

“I have to live.”

Silence fell again. At the back of her mind, Alice wondered how much trouble she was going to be in if she missed first period entirely. Between skipping classes and being escorted home by a police officer, she was becoming quite the truant.

But it hardly mattered. None of that—not schools, not spells, not even magic—had ever felt as real as this moment, as Eva’s quiet breathing. As her pounding heart. As that word—
live
.

“I guess that’s all I need to know,” Eva sighed. “But I still don’t know how … ”

“To live?”

Eva nodded.

“You’ll learn,” Alice said quietly. She remembered how she had felt the first weeks after escaping the curse, as though time were a foreign material that she had to force her way through. But life was a patient teacher, and things came back to her slowly. She began to remember who she was again. She knew who she was now, as she took Eva’s hand and said, “Day by day, minute by minute. You’ll learn. The time will pass either way.”

“I just wonder if it will ever feel right to be … ” She shook her head. “I never wanted to be the sister that lived.”

“It never feels right to live when someone else has died. But Penny wouldn’t have wanted to be the only one alive, either. Neither of you
wanted
to be the one left behind. No one wants to linger. That’s just how it happens sometimes.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Eva, though she didn’t sound comforted. “I guess time will pass anyway.”

“It will. I promise.”

And the seconds did tick by, slowly but surely. They slid past the two girls sitting on the bathroom floor. And, when they both got to their feet several minutes later, the seconds slipped through their fingers and trickled into a past they would never return to.

For once, Alice didn’t regret that she couldn’t go back. The future might be uphill or down, but she would walk it, one second at a time. She was alive, and she would live gratefully, as gracefully as she could.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As always, thanks go out to my agent, Carrie Pestritto, and editor, Mandy Schoen. Thank you to Georgia McBride and the Month9Books team—a group of hardworking people who make so many books happen.

And to my family: I don’t think all the acknowledgments pages in the world could begin to thank you for your love and constant support.

Finally, special thanks to Maya, for always being her own furry self.

JESSICA ARNOLD

Jessica Arnold lives (in an apartment) and works (in a cubicle) in Boston, Massachusetts. She has a master‘s degree in publishing and writing from Emerson College.

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