Natalie's Legacy [sequel to Natalie's Diary]

[8] Eight of Cups

EIGHT OF CUPS

Rhys

The view from a grave looked a lot like looking through a window. A sky swirled above, gray and translucent as my moral. A stinging of lungs that forgot how to work, that wouldn't, without force.

Bia's voice echoed above. "I'm so sorry, Jane."

It wasn't so easy to come out of the dream, back to myself. Jane pressing against me let me see something that didn't belong to me. If I could ask Natalie one question, it might've been that. An accidental brush could have been all she needed to know Hunter would die. Was it because I passed her scissors in class? Because Cam tagged her it at recess? Maybe she Hunter fall through his own eyes, looking up from his own burial beneath gnarled tree roots.

My limbs were my own and moved somewhere beyond the dark, wet earth. When I blinked, it was not the sky above me. My lungs found air like it had been knocked out of them, harsher gasp then I meant.

Jane stirred next to me.

Bia was alive while Jane lay in the grave. Jane was there when Bia disappeared into a black abyss. Two mutually exclusive possibilities. Nothing else made sense, but how did events topple one way or another?

"Wait," Jane mumbled, fumbling for my wrist in the tangle of the quilt. "It's like 9:47! I should be sending you Snapchats from Chemistry right now."

I pulled my arm back, propping myself up on one elbow. Honestly, I didn't remember falling asleep in the first place. I didn't think we would. Quarter to ten or not, we couldn't have gotten more than a couple hours.

"That's what you're worried about?" I asked.

"Snapchat?"

"I meant Chemistry."

Jane rubbed her eyes, groaning. "I need chemistry to make non-drowsy medication."

At least her current prescription didn't make her want to climb into a tub fully dressed.

"Do you smell toast or am I having a stroke?" Jane asked, dragging herself out of bed. Toast and bacon. Clearly it was not Lucas cooking breakfast in our apartment.

"Your roommate, not mine," I said. Mine was a whole other issue. Don't trust anybody, or they'll turn out to be implicated in criminal activity.

"Oh, she's stress cooking." Jane buried her face in her hands. She hopped up and so did I, just slower. I had to get dressed. Jane hadn't come to apartment 202 that prepared. The red flannel in my closet was uncomfortably familiar but I grabbed it anyway. Maybe seeing the future regularly explained how Natalie's wardrobe became so nondescript in the end.

I followed the smell of bacon into the kitchen where both Bia and Jane had gathered around the stove. Jane tore off tiny chunks of bacon from the plate Bia was gradually amassing next to the

frying pan.

"Bia, you know this isn't your apartment?" I asked.

"I'm coping!" Bia flashed a smile. "So, I hope you're hungry."

Well, it was probably better than having coffee for breakfast. Bia had a pot of that going too.

"Where's Lucas?" The kitchen was noticeably lacking a particular insidious roommate.

"Lucas left about two hours ago," Bia sing-songed.

"Lucas doesn't work early on Friday," I said, like I expected him to have left Bia with some