Page 106 of Lamb

I stumbled, knees faltering beneath me as grass caught my collapse. My glasses fell from my face as the damp dew of the field soaked into my leggings and chilled between my fingers. Cold winds whipped at my exposed skin, and goosebumps scattered across my sweaty arms and face.

The noise of the party disappeared with the slam of the metal door behind me, and silence fell on my world. I was cold, and tired, and exhausted all at once, wanting nothing more than to drop into the earth in front of me and lay myself to rest, once and for all.

My eyes burned with unshed tears as I dropped my head against my muddy knuckles, letting the cool air run in and out of my lungs at a steady count in my mind. Four breaths in, eight breaths out.

With each cycle repeated, calm settled the gallop throbbing in my ears, soothing it into a tremoring hum. It brought quiet tomy mind and outside noises began to seep back into my world—the white noise of the party smothered by the emergency door, the rustle of the wind in the dense trees surrounding the back of the compound, the soft buzz of crickets roaming even this late into winter, and the gentle release of a willowy breath.

I whirled, my escaped hair slapping against my face.

I was too far away to make out the face, but it did not matter. The pale skin, light hair, and the bright blur of red. I knew that figure. Would know it blindfolded. I saw it on the back of my eyelids when I slept and heard her voice in the hollow of my ears when all other noise would fade.

“Anna …”

Her name left my lips in a whisper, and those horses began to canter as I stumbled up from the grass, finding feeling in my limbs and shoving myself forwards.

I anchored myself out of reach, but now I could see her.

For the first time in a year.

White hair, longer than I had last seen it, was tied in a low ponytail, a few strands caught in the breeze. Her features were relaxed, cast in a golden glow from the security light, her mouth in a soft circle around her cigarette, embers glowing with her inhale.

She leant comfortably back into the wooden bench, one elbow propped up on the backrest, legs extended, ankles crossed.

Ice crept under my skin, my muscles turning to stone, and my once-racing mind was hollow. The last I had seen of Anna, she had been wielding back a fist, face full of fury and hurt. My jaw burned hot with the shadow of the punch Anna had landed, and I resisted the urge to reach up and soothe it.

I need to get out of here. I cannot do this. Not right now. Not with her.

A burn travelled into my limbs, fighting to break apart the stone shell encasing them. I lifted my foot and turned my body towards the door I had just come through. Even that hell would be better than this.

“Channel 2.” Anna’s voice cut through the chilling air. I stiffened. “Seven a.m. and eight thirty p.m.”

I turned, slowly and stiffly, to look at her. Anna had not moved, not an inch. Her baby blue eyes looked distantly over the field, taking another long drag of her cigarette.

“That’s when the national news is on,” Anna said. “Crime segments are usually the first; that’s where they announced dead bodies; the unsolved murders, suicides, and police fatalities.”

“What?” The word dropped from my mouth. I was struggling to catch up; it had been so long since we had seen each other, and she was talking about thenews?

“They even post photos of Jane and John Does. You know, the unidentified bodies, just in case people might recognise them.”

“What does that have to do with—” Ice water poured back over my skin, winter reaching its claws inside.

The Jane Does. Unidentified bodies. Suicides.

With the path I had been on, that channel had been my destination. Whether I had ended up killed in a drunk accident, found dead in a ditch somewhere with no identification, or if I had become another statistic of unsolved murders. It all would have been announced there.

“You never turned up,” Anna stated, her eyes sliding in my direction for the first time in over a year. Cold winds channelled in its wake. The claws dug deeper.

The baby blue was still bright, even in the dimming twilight and, as usual, they pierced straight into my soul. Anna had been the one person who knew me inside and out. No walls. No misdirection. No hiding.

False hope batted its wings for a fraction of a second before I staked it back into the cold earth. I stared at the person who had once been my entire world. Who, perhaps, still was. She had been a part of me I had carved out, only an empty, cold hole left hollow in its wake.

A different voice whispered in my ear. It was cruel, but it was honest. It looked between the lines of Anna’s words and the implications carried in them. The words I had never wanted to ask. The words I had hoped to bury in shadow came creeping forwards. The whispers grew into a shout, and from a shout into a scream.

“Were you relieved?” I breathed. “Or disappointed?”

My hand slapped against my mouth, the taste of dirt on my tongue and grass on my lips, but it was too late. The words were free.

I wanted to cover my ears and never hear the answer. My hands did not move.

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