Burden Falls

by Kat Ellis

  When they first arrived in Burden Falls and I locked eyes with Dominic, I will admit to having the teensiest pang of absolute thirst. But then I saw him and his sister looking at a painting hanging outside the art studio later that day, and Miss Shannon told them it was mine.

  “Typical Thorn, stomping all over my turf,” Freya muttered once the teacher had drifted away. “Do you think her artwork’s better than mine?”

  Dominic smirked at her. “As if.”

  Any totally superficial appreciation I might’ve had for Dominic Miller died a cold, hard death right then.

  Ever since, Freya has taken every opportunity to needle me—away from the adoring gaze of everyone else, of course—and it only seemed to get worse after the crash that killed my parents. Dominic mostly just ignores me, like the self-important asshole he is. I decided that if they wanted to keep the feud going between our families, that was fine by me.

  The Millers have been trying to screw my family over for generations. Dad told me that every few years they try to move in on our business or our land, and when they get nowhere they stir up trouble. Dominic’s grandfather campaigned to shut down the Thorn distillery back in the seventies, and I’m sure Madoc Miller tried to get Dad kicked off the town council years ago over some bullshit to do with permits. I never saw any of it firsthand because Madoc and Lucille Miller moved away from Burden Falls before I was born, but I’ve heard all the stories about them, and now I get the joy that is the Miller twins in my face every day. They’re spreading through every part of my life like a fungus.

  My fingers curl painfully against my scarred palms. How long have Dominic and Freya known they were moving into the manor? Days? Weeks?

  How long have they been laughing behind my back?

  I glare at him, like the heat of it might draw out the answer.

  Dominic must feel my eyes on him, because his gaze cuts to mine. He rakes back the dark hair falling so artfully forward to give me his fiercest glower. It only lasts a split second before he turns and walks away, apparently bored by Mateo’s increasingly gory descriptions of the poor girl’s body.

  What was that look about? Did he see me at the manor last night?

  No. If he knew it was me, he’d have called the cops for sure.

  Maybe Dominic was just grossed out by Mateo’s showboating. I know I was. Though I doubt Dominic is easily grossed out, considering he makes videos about dead people all the time.

  Shit.

  With a dead body washing up just outside the property, there’s no way he won’t use it for an episode of Haunted Heartland. There’s also no way he’ll miss the chance to do an exposé on Dead-Eyed Sadie—and the manor she haunts.

  SIX

  One failed algebra test later, I’m in the art studio, working on a sketch for my final project, when I look up to find Freya Miller hovering over me.

  “Hey, Morticia,” she says. Freya has one of those voices that grates no matter what she’s saying.

  “What?” I say, instantly on guard.

  “Just wondering what exactly this is meant to be. Is it a rocket ship? A cigar? Some other phallic object? It’s hard to tell.”

  “A tower,” I tell her flatly. It’s actually the very first panel of a webcomic I’m supposed to be almost done with by now, but I can’t seem to get past this first image. It shows a girl—only a silhouette, really—looking out from the top of a stone tower on a hill, with rows of gravestones circling it like sharks’ teeth. Gnarled hands reach up from the graves like fleshy, rotting flowers.

  I’ve already posted the digital version of this image to my online portfolio under the title Mostly Deadish. As far as Uncle Ty and Miss Shannon, the head of the art department, know, I’m now working on the rest of the panels that’ll make up my final project. But the story stubbornly refuses to come. Whatever sketches I try to freestyle, they don’t gel with this one.

  I’m screwed, in other words. Not that I’m about to tell Freya Miller that. So instead I tell her “Fuck off.”

  She makes a show of looking aghast, checking to see if any of her adoring fans have overheard, but nobody’s listening. Her friends are all huddled at the far side of the art room, probably still speculating about the girl who washed up in the river. I wonder if it really was Claire Palmer.

  And if her eyes really were gone . . .

  Uncle Ty is sitting at his desk up front, gaze fixed on his laptop screen, “grading assignments,” which probably means checking the latest racing results online. Freya picks up my sketchbook before I can stop her. She holds it at arm’s length and squints at it.

  “I was only asking what you’re working on. It’s a little . . . basic, don’t you think?”

  “Don’t be an asshole, Freya,” I sigh. “Give it back.”

  But she holds it out of my reach, acting like she didn’t even hear me. “You know, I heard they’re choosing the student to put forward for the summer art program soon.”

  I lean in, despite myself. Madame Bisset’s summer art program in Indianapolis only allows one student from each state high school to be nominated for their full-scholarship art program each year. There’s always fierce competition among the arty seniors to get chosen for the spot. But the fact that Madame Bisset is a graphic-novel artist like I want to be . . . well, I’m hoping that’ll win me a few points. This art program is the one good thing I’ve been focused on all year, and I’m so close to getting it.

  Miss Shannon decides who’s nominated from Burden Falls High. Freya and I are at the top of the list, although I’m sure the only reason Freya even put herself forward for consideration was to screw me over. There’s no way Freya would actually give up whatever modeling and acting jobs she’s booked for this summer.

  “Where did you hear that?” I ask her. Because Uncle Ty hasn’t said a word to me about it—not that he’s allowed to play any part in selecting the candidate, of course. Choosing between me, his one and only niece, and Freya Miller, asshole daughter of the man who killed his brother and sister-in-law . . . ? Yeah, it wouldn’t really fly.

  Freya smiles, catlike. “A little bird.”

  With that, she drops my sketchbook on the floor and marches back to her desk at the back of the studio. I lean over to pick it up, then sigh when I see it. She deliberately stepped on it, so now there’s a dirty shoeprint right across the sketch.

  “Asshole,” I mutter.

  “Ava.” Uncle Ty gives me stern eyes over his laptop. I must’ve dragged him away from his game of Minecraft or whatever.

  “Sorry, Mr. Thorn.”

  I go back to my spot, still staring at my ruined sketch as I sink down into the seat.

  And feel something wet seep through the back of my jeans.

  “What the hell?”

  I jump up. There’s a red smear—paint, I hope—across my chair. And now across the butt of my gray jeans. I whirl around, and immediately lock eyes with Freya. She’s standing with Mateo and Casper, all the way across the room, watching me in absolute delight. One of the two boys must’ve put paint on my chair while she distracted me with that sketchpad bullshit.

  “You’re such a bitch, Freya,” I hiss at her. The previously buzzing room falls silent, but I don’t care. A collective ooooooh goes up around the studio, and I know instantly the crowd is not on my side. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I roll my eyes.

  Uncle Ty jumps to his feet. “What’s going on? Ava?”

  I hold up a hand, smeared red where I’ve tried unsuccessfully to wipe the paint off my ass. For a second, I’m right back in the wreckage of the car, blood pouring from the wounds in my hands, my whole world broken.

  Drip, drip, drip . . .

  “Oh . . . uh . . . do you need to go to the nurse’s office?” Uncle Ty asks, snapping me out of it.

  “Nurse’s office?”

  “If it’s your . . . ah . . . time of the month?”


  A snicker rolls around the room.

  “It’s paint,” I snap. “So no, I don’t need to go to the nurse’s office.”

  Uncle Ty’s nostrils flare. “Tone it down.”

  “But she did this!” I insist, pointing at Freya—who could not look more innocent if she sprouted wings and a halo. And now I’m very aware of the fact that everyone’s staring at me.

  “Actually . . .”

  I turn and find Yara, a girl who sometimes sits beside me in art, holding up a squashed tube of acrylic paint. “I think I might’ve leaned on this and . . . you know”—she points with her chin—“got your seat. Sorry.”

  “It was you?” Yara shrugs apologetically. “But . . .” I was certain Freya had engineered this.

  Uncle Ty glances from me to Yara and back again, then shakes his head. “Ava, go get cleaned up.”

  “Aren’t you going to make her apologize to me, Mr. Thorn?”

  It only takes that one sentence delivered in Freya’s obnoxious voice to bring the rage flooding back.

  Uncle Ty sighs. “Ava?”

  I blink at him. I mean, he can’t be serious. Apologize to a Miller? Uncle Ty might not be as open about it at school as I am (he is a teacher here, after all), but he hates the Millers as much as I do. He can’t expect me to apologize to the spiteful little brat. Even if she didn’t orchestrate the paint, she still ruined the sketch I was working on.

  “Here’s your apology,” I snap, and hold up my middle finger.

  “That’s enough!” Uncle Ty bellows, making me blanch. I’ve never been shouted at by Uncle Ty before. Especially not in public. “Go get cleaned up, then head straight to the principal’s office.”

  “But—”

  “Now!”

  This earns me another round of oooohs from the class.

  “Quiet, all of you!” Uncle Ty cuts in. “Unless you want to go see the principal too? Didn’t think so. And Mateo Medel—you’re not even in this class. Get out of here, or you’ll join Ava.”

  Unfortunately, Mateo does join me as I’m stomping out. I try to hold my bag so it’ll cover the red mess on my jeans, but I don’t think it’s working.

  Mateo leans in just as we leave the art studio. “I guess I see why they call you the Bloody Thorns now.”

  I step away from the pig, but he’s already bouncing away down the hallway. I have to ball my hands to keep from running after him and smacking him. Except it’s not really Mateo I want to hit.

  It’s Freya.

  I chew on that feeling all the way to the principal’s office, through the rest of the day’s lessons, and to the end of detention.

  SEVEN

  Daphne: The body has officially been IDed as Claire Palmer. So sad, they found her dog waiting for her at the riverbank in Kinnerton. Looks like accidental drowning.

  I let out a relieved breath. What with Mateo spinning his stories at school and everyone whispering Sadie’s name, there was some tiny part of me that started to . . . well, not believe, but wonder.

  Stupid.

  Now that I know who the dead girl is, and that she died miles away from here—walking her poor little dog too—it makes it all very real. Very not ghostly.

  I’m glad Daphne always makes a point of getting the inside scoop from her dad.

  Carolyn’s the only one home when I get back to the cottage after school. She sits at the kitchen table, a neat stack of papers in front of her, and she’s tapping away at a calculator. Her blond hair is as perfectly groomed as always, her simple jeans and sweater on the cuter side of preppy, but she looks tired.

  “Hey,” I say as I ditch my coat on the back of a dining chair. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Working on the budget.”

  She’s been doing this every week since my parents died, trying her best to figure out a way to keep us from starving. Carolyn works at a pharmacy in town, and the pay isn’t great. Even with Uncle Ty’s teaching salary, they struggle to keep up with all the bills. I throw in half of what I make at the Pump’N’Go, but that probably doesn’t even cover my coffee bill.

  A year ago, I never used to think about money. It was there if I needed anything, no worries. Looking back, that was pretty gross. But God, I hate how money is everything when you haven’t got it—how it grips your insides with stiff fingers until it’s all you can think about.

  Carolyn smiles. She looks much older than twenty-three tonight. “Just checking we’re on track.”

  I grab a chilled coffee from the fridge, trying not to pull a face when I see it’s decaf. Carolyn has been threatening to wean me off my beloved caffeine for a while now. Looks like she wasn’t kidding.

  “Did you hear about the girl who washed up in the river this morning?” I ask before taking a wary sip.

  “Yeah, terrible,” Carolyn says. I can tell she’s still half focused on her paperwork, but then her gaze snaps up to mine. “Sorry, Ava. Was she anyone you knew?”

  I shake my head. “It was that girl on the local news—Claire Palmer. The one who fell in the river and got swept downstream last week. Mateo Medel’s dad found her. It was super weird about her eyes, wasn’t it?”

  “What about them?”

  “I heard they were missing,” I say.

  Carolyn’s brow furrows. “That is strange. Pretty gruesome.”

  “Doesn’t it remind you . . .” I trail off, hoping Carolyn will see what I’m getting at without my having to pour the crazy right out there.

  “Of . . . your dad?” she asks.

  That wasn’t where I was going, and the unexpected mention of what happened to Dad hits me right in the gut. I put down my coffee, gripping the edge of the kitchen counter so I won’t just keel over.

  Damn it.

  I thought I was getting better at this—at holding it together. Or appearing to, anyway.

  “I . . . no, I meant did it make you think of Dead-Eyed Sadie?” I force the words out. Force air back into my lungs. Force my fingers to unclench.

  “Sadie?” Carolyn blinks, surprised. “Oh . . . yes, I suppose so. And it does seem like odd timing, doesn’t it? As soon as we move out, someone dies in a way that could be interpreted as being the work of our resident spook. Maybe she’s angry there are no more Thorns at Thorn Manor,” she adds with a thin smile.

  “But why would Sadie be pissed about that? She wasn’t supposed to be one of us, was she?”

  I’ve never heard anyone say she was a Thorn, though I’ll admit I wondered about it as a kid. But Grandpa had a framed family tree on the wall of his study, and I checked it a bunch of times to see whether there was a Sadie on it. There wasn’t. The closest I could find was a Sarah Thorn who died in 1882. Grandpa, usually a walking Wikipedia when it came to Thorn Manor and its history, gave me a tight-lipped look when I asked him if Sadie had been a relation of ours, and told me to “go on and play.” Even at six years old, I knew that was Grandpa’s way of telling me I was getting on his last nerve.

  “I honestly have no idea,” Carolyn says, but she has this thoughtful look on her face that tells me she’s still considering the possibility. I look down at the papers in front of her, feeling a pang of guilt.

  “I’ve distracted you from your budgeting. I’ll go make a start on my homework,” I say.

  “Wait—I almost forgot. Ty called earlier and told me about what happened in school today. It sounded pretty rough. Are you okay?”

  I pause halfway through the door to the garage. “Oh, the thing in art class? What did he say?”

  “That another student accidentally spilled paint on you, so you swore at her and he had to send you to the principal.” She grimaces at my outraged look. “Is that not what happened?”

  My mouth opens, ready to spill the entire episode, but as the words form in my head I realize it sounds just as pathetic as Uncle Ty’s version. I allowed Freya
to get under my skin, then humiliated myself in front of the entire art class. I also had to walk around all day with a borrowed sweater tied around my waist so people wouldn’t see the washed-out red smear on my butt.

  “Uncle Ty could’ve taken my side, though,” I grumble. Carolyn lifts her eyebrows questioningly, but says nothing. “Fine, he couldn’t. But it still sucked getting yelled at by him in front of the whole class.”

  She nods. “Yeah, I guess he could’ve handled that better. But I think maybe you both need to cut each other a little slack right now. It’s a tough time for you two, isn’t it? With the anniversary in two days.”

  My grip tightens around the plastic coffee cup, so I set it down before it can split open. I think I’ve splattered my clothes enough for one day.

  “Does it feel like it’s been a whole year to you?” I ask quietly. “I know it’s different for you—you’d only just moved into the manor when they died, and you hadn’t really had a chance to get to know Mom and Dad. But doesn’t it feel like it just happened yesterday?”

  Carolyn reaches out and squeezes my hand, reminding me of Mom for a split second. Then I realize she’s just stopping me absently rubbing at the scars on my palms. “Is that how it feels to you?”

  Hot tears burn my eyes, but I force out a steady breath through my nose. “It feels like someone stole my life, and I don’t know who I am anymore.”

  “Sure you do.” Carolyn leans back and smiles, arms folded. “You’re a Bloody Thorn, aren’t you?”

  * * *

  * * *