Page 1 of The Dearly Departed

PROLOGUE

Age Twelve

“What’s that?”

I looked up from my book to glance at Anna, holding her stuffed white rabbit with the pink ears, huddled beside me on the library’s cushioned window seat. She held a book on her lap—something about a ballerina—but her attention wasn’t on what she was reading. I followed her gaze to the open page I was on, where an illustration of a plague doctor was printed.

“You mean this?” I asked, pointing to the picture.

“Yeah,” she replied, nodding her head against my arm.

I shifted in the seat to lift the book higher, trying to give her a better view of the page, but she was sitting so close, practically pinning me to the window frame.

I held in a sigh, not wanting her to know I was annoyed. Because I wasn’t bothered by her. It was just that this stupid seat was so small, there wasn’t enough space for both of us, and I would’ve happily sat on the floor to give us both more space if she hadn’t insisted on me sitting beside her.

Anna was always like this with me. We had met a year ago when she was placed in the foster home where my brothers and I were staying. She was only seven when she showed up at Jim’s house—she turned eight a couple of months ago—and from the very second we met, she’d been stuck to me like glue.

Shawn thought she had a crush on me, and Ike thought she was just an irritating little kid for always wanting to hang out with us.

But I didn’t find her annoying at all, and I wasn’t so sure about the whole crush thing.

To me, she seemed scared. I wasn’t sure of what, but I thought that maybe, with me, she felt safe.

“That’s a plague doctor,” I told her, pointing to the book in my hand.

“Why do they look like that?”

I shrugged and began to read the caption printed below the picture, “The plague doctor was a physician in the seventeenth century, hired to treat those who had fallen ill with the bubonic plague, also known as the Black Death. Today, it is a historic symbol of mortality, death, and the fear of disease.”

“What’s a … a physician?” she asked, the word tumbling from her mouth like it didn’t fit quite right.

“It’s, um … it’s a doctor,” I said with another shrug.

I didn’t always feel very smart. I didn’t do well in school. Actually, I didn’t even like school. But sometimes, when Anna asked questions and looked at me like I might have the answers, I felt like maybe I was smart after all.

She peered at the picture. “It looks scary.”

“I mean, it kinda is scary,” I said, my eyes skimming over the excerpt about the bubonic plague. “A lot of people died then—they were really, really sick—and these doctors were some of the only people brave enough to try and save them.”

She turned to look up at me, a horrified look on her face. I met her big, dark eyes and smiled reassuringly.

“You don’t have to worry about that though,” I told her. “This isn’t happening now. The seventeenth century was, like … hundreds of years ago.”

“But people still get sick,” she argued.

“Yeah, but not with, like, the plague.” Or at least, I didn’t think so … but I wouldn’t tell her that.

I didn’t want her to think I wasn’t smart.

“What does the plague do to you?”

I sucked in a deep breath and leaned toward the book to scan the page for more information. Anna always had questions. She wasn’t much younger than Ike, but Ike never asked questions the way Anna did. She wanted to know everything, and I liked that about her. Because when she asked me questions, I got to learn things too.

“Fever, chills, cough,” I rattled off.

“Cough?”

I nodded. “Yeah, it’s a, um … respiratory thing. Like, uh … I don’t know … when you get sick with something and it goes into your lungs.”