Bury Me

by K. R. Alexander

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

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  42

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  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Scare Me Sneak Peek

  Copyright

  No one ever leaves Copper Hollow.

  No one really questions why. We don’t have much, but everything we need is right here. Nothing is great, but nothing is terrible either. Nothing bad ever happens here. It’s Copper Hollow. It’s always been the same.

  Some people might get bored, but not me. Not with my imagination. I can transform any situation into an adventure. I can make even a sleepy old town like Copper Hollow seem exciting. At least, that’s what I tell myself. When the summer days are super long, or when I realize that this day feels exactly the same as the one before, I try to use my imagination to make everything new again. Most of the time, it works. There are times, though, when it feels like even my imagination isn’t enough.

  It’s like a part of me is waiting for something. A real adventure. A real thrill.

  But Copper Hollow never changes. There are no real adventures. No true thrills.

  At least, not until the doll appears. Then everything changes.

  * * *

  Maybe I should have tried leaving Copper Hollow earlier … while I had a chance.

  “Captain Kimberly, our ship is sinking!”

  Alicia’s voice calls out to me, the cannons firing all around us and the smell of burning wood and sea salt in the air. James is high up in the crow’s nest while Alicia fires our own cannons at the Empire’s ships and I control the great steering wheel. I survey the many ships around us and shout out their locations to Alicia and James. “Starboard! Three o’clock!” Alicia tries to follow my commands, tries to aim her cannon at the ships, but we are surrounded. She can’t fire fast enough. We are the final vessel of our fleet, and the Empire’s cannons are too strong, too many. Our ship shudders.

  Alicia is right. We’re sinking.

  “Abandon ship!” I yell out to her, steering our great vessel away from the Empire’s fleet. I know we can’t make it, but I want to try to get James and Alicia to safety.

  “We won’t leave you!” James calls out.

  “Never!” Alicia responds, blasting a hole through the side of another enemy craft.

  I smile at my brave crew. Always there at my side. Always there, to the bitter end. I change course—straight into the heart of the Empire’s navy.

  “Then let’s give them the fight of the century!” I yell.

  Alicia and James cheer. We steady ourselves, prepare for one last hurrah—

  And James’s watch begins to beep.

  “Aww, no,” Alicia huffs.

  James says, “How is it dinnertime already?”

  He stops the alarm on his watch and frowns from atop the derelict fountain. The sculpture is twice as tall as he is, which means it’s a great lookout spot for whatever story I’m telling. I stand on the other side of the overgrown gardens, holding an old bicycle tire, while Alicia sits on the balustrade, a piece of plastic pipe on her shoulder.

  This abandoned place is ours. No adults for miles around to tell us to stop playing make-believe or yell at us to be careful and not to climb on things. No adults, no rules, which means no limitations to what my friends and I can dream up. In the entire town, this is the one place that actually feels fun. At least, for me. James and Alicia don’t always feel the same way, but they know we can do whatever we want out here, so they usually agree with any plan I have.

  I take the last step out of my story and let my imagination fade into reality. The ships are all gone now, replaced by trees and ruins. The sun sits just above the tree line, casting sharp shadows over the wild backyard.

  Over the last few years, the forest has closed in on this old property, like it’s claiming back the land. Vines twist over every surface, and trees and saplings poke up from the gardens while birds roost in the enormous fountain in the center of it all.

  I can almost imagine how this place once was—owned by some rich mining family, perhaps, the lawns all neatly mowed, the gardens filled with beautiful flowers and apple trees. Everyone walking around in fancy dresses or suits, holding parasols to keep out the hot summer sun. I’ve dreamed up stories about this place many times, making my friends pretend we are royalty, all money and drama. I have a feeling, though, that my imagination doesn’t come close to how amazing this place actually was.

  I squint and pretend, the mansion this garden belongs to stretching grandly in front of me, all glittering windows and white columns and flowers dripping from trellises. Then I blink again, and I’m staring at the burned-out husk of a devastated building. Most of the top floor is gone from the fire, though there are parts we can still reach. The once-white walls are charred black and crisped brown, windows gaping and shadowed.

  The whole place is full of shadows.

  I have no idea who lived there, or what happened. No one seems to know.

  No one seems to come here.

  Just us.

  “What are you having for dinner?” Alicia asks, hopping off the balustrade. She sets her makeshift cannon lovingly beside a patch of dandelions.

  “I don’t know,” James says. “I think my parents are making spaghetti.”

  “Yum,” Alicia replies. “Mine are making tacos.”

  There’s a moment of silence when I don’t say anything. They know what that means—my mom is at work again, which means I’ll be eating alone. Again.

  I wait for them to say, Hey, Kimberly, do you want to come over for dinner? They don’t. They never have.

  It hurt my feelings at first, but I got over it fast. They’re still my best and only friends, so I can’t really complain when they don’t have me over to their houses. It’s not like I can really invite them over to mine. I’ve never heard them invite each other over either.

  This summer, we’ve stuck to the woods.

  Here, there’s always an adventure to be had.

  I set the bicycle tire beside our cannon while James climbs down from the fountain.

  “Same time tomorrow?” I ask.

  “Definitely,” Alicia replies. “Maybe tomorrow we’ll blast off into space.”

  “Or explore a haunted house,” I venture. We all look at the abandoned mansion.

  The last time we played haunted house, we got so scared that we couldn’t return to the mansion for weeks. It didn’t help that we disturbed a flock of birds while playing. Their caws sounded like laughing ghosts as they flew off, knocking down statues and ceramics in their kerfuffle.

  “Maybe not a haunted house,” I say. “We could play castle?”

  Again, they look uneasily at the mansion.

  “Maybe,” Alicia says. “Or we could do a scavenger hunt in the woods!”

  “That would be a lot of fun,” James chimes in.

  I begrudgingly agree.

  They’re sc
ared of the mansion.

  I’m intrigued by it.

  The truth is, the only reason they’ve ever gone near the mansion is because I convinced them to. It was so strange—the first time we walked past, it was like they didn’t even see it. I had to get them so close that they were practically walking into the walls. Then they startled, as if I’d blindfolded them and was finally allowing them to open their eyes. It took a lot of convincing to get them to go inside, and even now it’s like they forget it exists unless I bring it up.

  I don’t understand why they’re so frightened of it. It’s just a burned-down building. The worst thing we’ve ever seen inside was a dead rat.

  And damage. So much damage. But none of it is from vandals—there’s no graffiti or broken bottles here. Just nature.

  Damage by fire.

  Damage from weathering countless storms and scorching summers.

  Damage by years of neglect.

  Even though it’s broken, even though it could be dangerous, I love the mansion. I want to know everything about it.

  Who lived here?

  When was it destroyed?

  What happened to it?

  Why isn’t the rest of our town so grand?

  As Alicia and James start walking away, I think maybe I’ll come out again tomorrow on my own if they’re too scared. I can pretend to be a princess locked away in her tower, waiting for her knight to come home. Or I can be the brave knight storming the castle, rescuing my waiting prince … Yeah, I like that version better. I just need to find a good sword and shield.

  I take one last look at the mansion before we tread down the path back to Copper Hollow.

  It seems to be smiling at me. The black-window eyes, the crooked stone teeth of the front porch.

  As if it knows I will always return.

  As if it knows I can’t escape its pull.

  It takes us about fifteen minutes to get back to town.

  Copper Hollow isn’t huge, but it’s not super small either. I don’t really know what to compare it to—I’ve never been anywhere else, except for the places I read about.

  We pass by the library, where I get all of my books. It’s old like everything else in town, with white walls and large windows that let in just the right amount of sunlight to read by, but not so much that it’s too hot in the summer. Right beside that is the police station, though we don’t really have crime here, so our one police officer just sits and reads the paper or whatever the librarian, Mr. Jones, brings over for him. There’s a grocery store and a post office we don’t use anymore because no one gets mail. All of this sits along the main street, the rest of our town spreading out around it in small houses and browned yards with fading picket fences. It doesn’t spread very far before hitting the woods and mountains that circle around us, giving our town its name.

  I don’t live in town. I live on the outskirts, back by the woods. But I’m in town a lot.

  There’s a new book I want to get, and with Mom not coming home until later, I’m in no rush to get back to our empty trailer.

  Sometimes, even my imagination can’t compete with the loneliness of that small space.

  Saying goodbye to Alicia and James makes me feel even lonelier than when I’m back in the trailer. Because I know the hours between now and when I see them again will stretch on and on.

  We pause outside the library.

  “Well then, mateys,” I say, putting on my best pirate accent. “I’ll see yer both tomorrer.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” James and Alicia say in unison.

  We salute one another, and then the two of them wander back toward their homes while I stand and watch them go, that familiar pang in my chest. Before I can get too emotional—captains don’t get emotional—I salute their backs and head into the one place in town that truly feels like home.

  * * *

  The library is old. It feels older than the town itself.

  Bookshelves tower above me in the open entryway, reaching far above my head. The ceiling is a faded mural. I think it once depicted our town’s history, but it’s faded to nothing but blurs of color and faint shapes. Sunlight filters down from the windows, dappling the shelves with orange and yellow.

  Mr. Jones is at his usual spot behind the desk facing the entry. He’s reading a big leather-bound book with his feet propped up on the desk. He glances over the book at my arrival.

  “Hello, Ms. Rice,” he says in his papery voice. “How can I help you today?”

  I think Mr. Jones may be older than even the library. His hair is wispy and his beard is snow-white, and when he moves his bones creak and snap so loud you can hear it on the other side of the library.

  “I’d like to check out my next book,” I say. I have to talk a little louder than normal so he can hear, which feels wrong when in a library, but there aren’t ever any other people in here to mind the noise.

  I have a long list of books I want to read at the library. Mr. Rice keeps them in a stack behind his desk, because no one else comes in to read them and he gets tired from going back and forth between shelves. He often makes me exchange my old books for new ones so I don’t leave them around the trailer, but I left my bag at home and he doesn’t seem to mind lending me one more.

  He shuts his tome and sets it on the desk, then reaches below and pulls out my next read.

  “I still think this is too dry for a lady your age,” he says.

  I shrug. We’ve had this talk many times. I love reading. Especially books that no one else wants to read. I spend hours browsing through the shelves, picking out the dustiest volumes I can find, no matter their title or subject. I don’t always read them, but I like to think that I’m doing the books a favor.

  No one likes being forgotten.

  Mr. Jones knows what I’m doing. It makes him smile. I don’t know if anything else makes him smile.

  I don’t think he likes Copper Hollow much. But he shows up at the library every day. Like it’s his duty, rather than his job. Or like he doesn’t know what else to do with his time.

  He slides the book over to me and writes my name and the book title down in an old ledger, along with today’s date. Then he slides the ledger over to me and I put my initials beside it. In fact, my initials, K. R., fill the entire right column. I guess no one else really does come in here.

  “Enjoy, little lady,” Mr. Jones says.

  Mr. Jones is pretty much the only one in this town who helps entertain me, but I do wish he’d stop calling me little lady.

  I smile anyway and take the book—a history book about our area that’s so old it doesn’t even have a title embossed on the cover anymore. Mr. Jones is already lost in the pages of his own read as I head out the door.

  It’s like he and the building have reached an agreement, the same agreement everyone in this town has made with their jobs or their homes:

  He stays here, and he does the same thing every day, and he doesn’t question what else is out there, or what else he could do. And because of that, nothing bad happens. No crime, no disease, no evil—nothing that I’ve read about in the books that no one else seems to touch.

  I glance at the cover of my book, at the worn fabric and lost name.

  No one questions. No one wonders what else is out there.

  But I do.

  Which makes me think that, maybe, asking questions isn’t safe.

  Maybe it puts me in danger.

  Copper Hollow is sleepy in the early dusk light.

  Everything looks dusted with orange and rose as the sun sets over the tree line. A few people walk home from work. Otherwise, the streets are pretty empty. No one is out on the park benches or walking their dogs.

  They’re all at home making dinner with their families. Same as they do every night.

  I glance down the street to the diner where Mom works. For a moment, I consider going in and grabbing a booth and reading. It’s not like it’s going to be busy. I don’t know why they keep it open all day when only a few people show
up to eat.

  Anyway, the thought of going there crosses my mind—maybe Mom will sneak me some French fries and I can sit there and read my book and watch her—but I quickly let it go. I don’t know why, but I feel awkward sitting around while she works. Like I should be helping her out. She let me do it once. She even let me keep part of her tips so I could buy a milkshake the next time I went in. Then her boss yelled at her and I was never allowed to help out again.

  Some days I think that I’ll help her at the diner again when I get old enough.

  Most days, however, I think that when I’m old enough, I’m going to leave. Just like my dad did years ago.

  “Lost in thought, Kimberly?”

  I jump and look over to Mr. Couch, our mayor. He’s a smiling old man who doesn’t look super official, but he’s apparently very important. Currently, he’s wearing a faded Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts. They look as worn out as he does.

  “Hello, Mr. Couch,” I reply. I give him my widest smile, the one I give every grown-up when I don’t really know them. “How are you this evening?”

  “I’m doing well, thank you. What have you got there? A new book?”

  He gestures for it, and I begrudgingly hold the book out to him. He takes it and flips it over a few times before opening the pages.

  “Oh, well, I’ll be, this looks like a history book.”

  “Yeah,” I reply. “It’s the history of Copper Hollow. I found it in the way back corner of the library.”

  He makes a hmmm noise under his breath and flips through a few pages. Maybe it’s my imagination, but his eyes seem to glaze over. He flips a few more pages, then closes the book.

  He doesn’t hand it back.

  He doesn’t say anything.

  He just stares out at the sunset, still as a statue. The hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up.

  “Umm, Mr. Couch,” I venture.

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “Hello? Mr. Couch?”

  He jolts and shakes his head like he’s waking up from a long nap.

  “Sorry, Kimberly. Hope you have a nice evening.”

  And he begins to walk away.

  “Mr. Couch!” I yell, polite as I can.

  He stops and looks back at me.

  “Yes, Kimberly?”

  “You still have my book.”