Deadly Serious by Sian Webster (e reader txt) 📕

A thin layer of frost covered the ground of the cemetery, the dull green grass crunching under the footsteps of people who were visiting loved ones to lay flowers or wreaths for Christmas, or worse; people who were here for the funeral. It was a crisp winter morning; Christmas Eve to be exact. Usually this morning brought excitement, but then it only brought depression.

Rows of seats were set up before a raised open coffin, people lining up to pay their respects to the dead and the dead’s family. Inside the coffin lay the body of a gorgeous 15 year old girl known by the locals as Phoebe Barnes. Her black hair lay over her shoulders in ringlets; her strange but beautiful purple eyes closed peacefully, her lids lightly covered with purple eye shadow, her lashes highlighted by black mascara. A thin coat of blush covered her cheeks and red lipstick made her lips stand out against her stark white face. If you didn’t know better you could’ve said she was sleeping.

As the funeral party, all dressed in the traditional morbid black clothes, took their allotted seats in front of the grave, the priest began to speak.

“We are gathered here today to celebrate and commemorate the life of 15 year old, Phoebe Barnes…”

Many of the people dabbed at their eyes with lace handkerchiefs, being careful not to smudge their make-up if they wore some. Others let their tears flow down their cheeks without trying to hide the fact that they were crying. The priest droned on about Phoebe’s life and how she was gone too soon. For most of the people attending, the burial service passed in a blur of tears. Soon they were lowering the coffin into the ready dug grave waiting in front of them. Everyone laid flowers around the grave, not bothering to read what was written on the grave stone past “Phoebe Barnes, 18 February 1997 – 31 March 2012, Gone too soon.”

What was written below that, half covered in snow, you ask?

“Ζήστε για πάντα και δεν έχουν ποτέ ειρήνη.”

Live forever and never have peace.

“Heads up!” Someone behind me called.
I turned around just in time to feel a cold, squashy, wet substance collide with my face. I wiped the snow from my face and out of my hair and saw my friend Patch doubled over, laughing. Taking advantage of this, I scooped up a handful of snow from my feet and threw it in his direction. Unfortunately, it flew straight past his head.
“You missed!” He laughed even more. “For the first time in her life, Phoebe Barnes missed!”
I narrowed my eyes at him and tackled him to the ground instead. “Didn’t miss that time,” I snapped.
“What’s got your knickers in a knot?” He asked, offended, as he dragged himself off the snowy footpath and brushed the snow out of the creases in his coat.
“I missed.” I smirked.
Patch fell in step with me and pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders, trying to fend off the cold winter weather as much as possible. “I knew you’d be pissed off about that.”
“I wouldn’t be on the A grade netball team if I couldn’t throw straight, Patch.” I reminded him.
“Yeah, but the netball season is in spring, not winter.” He pointed out. “Maybe all this cold weather is going to your head.” He drew imaginary spirals in the air beside my head.
“I do wish it would hurry up and get warm again.” I admitted. I should probably explain; Patch’s real name wasn’t actually Patch; it was Patrick, but when we were in primary school, he moved to our school and I got forced to show him around. When I asked him what his name was, he mumbled it and I thought he said Patch, and ever since, that was what I called him. We had been best friends ever since.
“See? I told you!” Patch joked as we rounded the corner and through our school gates. I looked over at the sign that said ‘Davidson High School’. Something else was written beneath it, but I couldn’t read it. Curse my dyslexia, I thought sourly.
Patch caught me looking at it, trying to decipher the scrambled letters. “Winter Wonderland Ball next Friday,” He read for me.
I looked down at the ground, embarrassed. I hated people acknowledging my dyslexia. “Thanks,” I mumbled.
“I don’t understand why you get embarrassed like that,” Patch muttered, “it’s not like you can help it. You were born with it, Phoebe.”
“I was born with a disease that makes me unable to read like a three year old.” I grumbled. “And it’s the only thing I can’t change about myself.”
“Phoebe…”
“Leave it, Patch. It’s like you said; it’s not like I can help it.” I gave him a sharp look and he knew me well enough not to argue. We walked to our roll call room in silence. When I took my seat at the back of the room next to Patch, someone threw a screwed up piece of paper onto my desk. I flattened it out on my desk and my brow furrowed in frustration as I tried to decipher the words on the page. It was written in cursive, making it even harder for me to read. My dyslexia was normally only a problem when I was reading things from a distance, but cursive was just horrible.
“What’s wrong, Phoebe?” David, one of the soccer jocks called from the front of the room. “Can’t read it?”
I screwed the piece of paper up again and threw it back at him. Thankfully, it hit him straight in the face. Maybe Patch was wrong about all this cold weather going to my head. It didn’t help, though; the rest of the jocks in the room had started laughing along with David.
“Maybe you should go back to preschool!” David laughed. “I’m sure you’d be great friends with my little sister.”
“Maybe you should go back to preschool, David,” Patch snapped. “Maybe then you’d learn to have more decency than to tease people for something they were born with. I mean, you don’t see anyone teasing you about that annoying voice of yours, do you?”
David gave me and Patch one heck of a death stare while his friends all laughed at Patch’s comment. David wasn’t used to being the one getting picked on.
“What’s wrong, David?” I asked, mimicking his tone from when he asked me the same question, “Can’t handle getting picked on yourself?”
“Hypocrite.” Patch muttered under his breath.
“Me? A hypocrite?” David asked exasperatedly. “I’ve been called a lot of things, Patrick Evans; I agree with a lot of them too, but hypocrite isn’t one of them.”
“Well maybe you should open your eyes then.” I snapped.
Just then our roll call teacher stumbled through the door of the classroom carrying a huge pile of books with our roll balanced neatly on top of them.
“Morning everyone, quiet down now, David don’t start teasing Phoebe about her dyslexia again, and Phoebe, if he already did, I apologise for getting here late and not witnessing it so I can’t give him detention.”
“Missed it again, Mr Harper.” Patch sighed.
“Sorry,” Mr Harper shrugged. “The traffic in the city today was horrible.”
“But, Sir,” One of the girls at the front said, “you live three blocks away. You don’t need to go through the city to get here.”
“I was visiting my mother, Annabelle,” Mr Harper sighed. “She isn’t well.”
“Oh.”
He sat at his desk then and called everyone’s names, marking down if they were in attendance. This was a typical day at school in my world. The kids attending were as predictable as they were stupid, so it was basically the same crap, different day; it never changed.
As always, for the rest of the day I sat next to Patch in class, copying down his work that he had copied from the board. Thankfully, he didn’t write in cursive so I could actually read it. I got picked on for my dyslexia, stared at for my strange purple eyes and complimented for my wavy black hair that everyone loved for some reason.
I sighed. Why couldn’t life be different for once?

***

Patch and I had just stepped out of the school grounds when it started to snow. Fierce cold winds whipped around us, blowing little white tufts into our hair as we pulled our coats tighter around ourselves.
I groaned. “It’s bad enough having to walk to and from school, let alone walking in snow.”
Patch smirked. “What’s wrong? Scared of my awesome snow ball throwing skills?”
I mocked horror. “Excuse me? Did you not see this morning when I threw that paper right in David’s face?”
“Yeah, but that was paper, not snow.” Patch pointed out. “There’s quite a big difference if you hadn’t noticed already.”
“Yeah,” I smirked back, “starting with paper being a lot lighter and harder to throw on target.”
“You’re trying to steal all my glory,” Patch joked.
“Oh, I don’t need to try to do that.”
Patch looked offended and I quickly ducked down and grabbed a handful of snow from my feet before shoving it in his face.
“Better?” I asked slyly.
“You’ll pay for that.”
“Will I really?” I asked innocently, batting my eyelashes whilst giving him puppy dog eyes.
“Yes, you will, really.” He smirked.
Knowing exactly what was coming next, I ran. People stared at us as we dodged between them, Patch hot on my tail with a snow ball in his hands. Being me, I knew that his weakness was a moving target, so I ran as fast as I could, hardly staying in a straight line. I turned a corner and a crowd of people blocked my way. I spun around, about to run in the opposite direction, but Patch was too close.
I looked around frantically. My only escape was taking a short cut through the cemetery. I hoisted myself up and over the three-foot-tall black brick wall surrounding it and hit the ground running. I tried to avoid stepping on peoples’ graves because I remember hearing somewhere that apparently that was bad. I was nearly at the top of the hill when a shiver shot down my spine. My Dad used to say that happened when someone walked on your grave, but that never made sense to me, because how can you have a grave if you’re still alive?
I was near the other side of the cemetery