“You can see me?” I asked, jerking back.
“No shit, I can see you.”
“Laura, you’re thirteen,” I reprimanded. Out of the corner of my eye, Paul Michael shook his head. “Fourteen?” I asked. He nodded. I continued. “Why do you think you can start swearing?”
“Because I watched you die.” She ground her teeth as she spoke, revealing two rows of new braces. “I’m not some innocent, helpless child.”
Solely to prove her point, she swore like me: a whole string of beautifully chosen four letter words, listed in ascending order from least to most offensive. I was so shocked by being yelled at by her that I had to contain laughter. Paul Michael stared in awe and horror as though he would have to go repent for merely hearing those words. For the oldest child, he was also the most innocent.
"Listen, kid,” I began but she interrupted.
“No, you listen. What gives you the right to think you can come back here after all this time and make me face you again?”
“You don’t want to see me?” My stomach plummeted down through my body, through the roof, through the house below us, until it buried itself in the earth.
She ignored my question. “Why a whole year, Sadie? You die and don’t come back for more than a year.”
“They didn’t let me out until now,” I whispered. Laura’s bitterness made my ears ring. I looked at Paul Michael for help, but he only looked at me with calm eyes and his mouth in a thin line. He had a plan that he wanted seen through until the end.
“You cannot imagine what it was like to watch that accident,” Laura said. Her glare stabbed me. “Do you know what it was like to hear it? It was like the whole world was screaming. I still hear it.”