Page 29 of Scattered Glitter

This may not be Rosalee’s grave I’m sitting in front of now, but I learned a long ago that sitting with her helped—talking to her helped. So when the loneliness started creeping in again when I moved to Vegas, I came here and wandered through rows of strangers’ graves, looking for anything that felt like her. And I found it. A headstone with a stone rose carved into the side.

Rose ‘Rosie’ Lane.Beloved daughter, niece, and sister.

She died when she was sixteen, too, like Rosalee, even if it happened six years earlier.

Rose Lane.

Rosa-lee.

Rosie.

On the days when I feel like half a soul, and the weight of her absence presses down on me so hard I can barely breathe, it’s close enough. I sit by this stone and pretend it’s hers, letting the memories wash over me as I talk to her like I always have.

I lost myself the day she died, and whatever was left of me has been slipping away ever since. All that’s left is a girl who’s drowning in grief that clings like glitter, stuck on my skin, impossible to brush off.

After the accident, when I woke up in the hospital with a cracked skull and a shattered heart, I was told I missed the funerals of both my boyfriend and sister.

Ace isn’t buried where Rosalee is. My foster parents told me that Ace’s father had taken his ashes home, and when I showed up to see him unannounced, Ace’s fathersaw me coming and stormed out of the garage, cussing me out, telling me I took his son from him.

He wasn’t wrong.

He almost hit me. I ran that day, and I never went back. That’s why I got the tattoo. I had to carry Ace with me somehow. He’s always in my heart anyway, but the ink keeps him closer.

I need him close.

And I need Rosalee contained at a place where I can visit her, where she can’t always stick to me, or I might lose it completely.

Here, at least, I can pretend she’s still listening, still laughing, still somewhere nearby.

I glide my palm over the short grass.

That she’s the one buried six feet under me.

I take another long sip from the wine bottle, raising it toward the headstone and letting the rest of the liquid spill onto the ground in front of it. “Cheers, Rosie.”

A fluttering sound near my ear breaks the quiet evening air, and I almost jump out of my skin, my heart lurching as sharp claws nip into my shoulder. A soft, throaty coo follows, and I jerk my head to the side to find a pigeon perched on my glittery shoulder, its beady black eyes staring right at me so close it’s blurry.

I blink.

How fucking drunk am I?

She coos again as if to say she is, in fact, real.

I laugh, the initial shock dissolving into amusement. “Hey, pretty one,” I murmur, cooing back at the bird. I’ve always been fascinated by them, the way they survive, unnoticed, in the cracks and crevices of the city.

They aren’t a plague like the people of Vegas believe.

They’re survivors.

The pigeon flutters to the top of the gravestone next to me, cooingand ruffling its gray feathers. I grin, feeling a crack form in the wall of loneliness I’ve been carrying all day. “What are you doing here?”

“That’s what I was going to ask you,” a voice says from behind me.

I freeze, the warmth of the wine fading as a rush of adrenaline floods my veins. I scramble to my feet, heart pounding, and turn around to find myself face-to-face with two of the most recognizable faces in all of Vegas.

The Lane brothers—the infamous magic twins.

Koen, the Mentalist, and Levi, the Illusionist. They run one of the biggest magic shows in the city, pulling off mind-bending tricks and dazzling the crowds with sleight-of-hand. And Levi? He’s known for working with pigeons, using them in his performances like they’re more than simply street birds.

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