Page 171 of Midnight Curfew

Community property…The wheels in my head turn.

“Anna-Katherine,” he prompts, and I watch my stepsister flash me another smile just before she turns on some music.

Rising, I leave the classroom, fisting my keys in my pocket.

The community won’t like it…Jerome had said.

Community property.

Wealth.

The history…Jerome had said.

Cemeteries are protected lands. Laws prohibit disruption of the grave sites, and to move a burial ground is…

I charge out of the school, rushing to my car.

Moving a burial ground takes a shitload of bureaucracy, especially if those fucking graves are historically significant.

Passing a cop, I speed over to the Bay in six minutes, turning left at Mariette’s and coasting down the dirt road. Stopping at the Bay’s only cemetery, I get out of my car, the morning wind sweeping through my hair.

The new construction is visible immediately, and I step up to the massive Jaeger family tomb, three steps leading up to a wrought iron double door. The weather has already cast a haunting decay over the angels on both sides and ivy climbs the side. Plaques sit posted on both sides of the door, waiting for more names to be engraved.

Only two are written there now.

Axel John Jaeger

Trysta Eva Jaeger

His parents weren’t here before. I remember seeing their graves when we came to fuck around that night back in high school and search for the treasure rumored to be buried in the graves. Of course, no one believed there was real treasure, but I looked for any excuse to run into Dallas after he ended our fling.

Traipsing through the overgrown grass and weeds, I move for the far corner, near the woods, keeping an eye out for snakes. I pass old headstones, some cracked, some broken, some in the dirt, half-buried.

I read the names. Perez, Batista, Castillo, Lopez…

When I come to the end, a small bouquet of short-stemmed lavender roses lies on a patch of grass. Fresh flowers, still sprinkled with whatever rain came in last night. I look over to the tomb again and back down to the land with no headstone, the space beside it empty of a marker, too.

It doesn’t look dug up. It’s possible they could’ve exhumed them years ago while I was at school, and the earth settled, the grass grew back.

But the flowers…

I glance at the tomb again, my heart starting to race. His parents are still here, in the ground.

What’s in the tomb?

As I look around the graveyard, the ground appears different in front of certain headstones. Some of the oldest ones, in fact.

Rather than being covered with overgrown grass, the soil appears rounded, the sprouting grass sporadic.

As if the burials haven’t settled yet, but they’re hundreds of years old.

Why do they look…

I turn my head to the tomb and back to the graves. Dropping my eyes to the flowers, I start to smile, understanding dawning.

Tipping my head back, I laugh. “Oh, you motherfucker.”

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