“There’s a problem with Mr. Belledyne’s skin. I think Mom and Dad are worried it’s contagious,” He said darkly.
“Like a disease? Like cancer?” I asked hurriedly.
“Cancer isn’t contagious stupid. It’s not a disease either. It’s just the fact that Mr. Belledyne is black,” Jonathan said.
My life there would have remained dull and happy and glow like a post card if Mr. Belledyne had never moved into the house at the end of the lane.
He didn’t want the game to end. Each time he took her to the brink of consciousness, to the point where she hoped that she would slip over into the black and never return, but she survived. Natalie hated games.
I tried to remember him younger but I only saw his face in those final weeks, gaunt, shrunken, and a trail of yellow-green mucus streaming from his nostrils
If she had been new to this, she would have cried. She would have lashed out and beat her fists on the interior of her car until her hands were bruised. Now, there was only a sense of falling through thick, stifling air.
I glanced at the clock. It was 2:12 a.m., but light flooded through the windows of my house as if it were midday. That wasn’t the strange part.
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