In Stone Read Online Free Page A

smiley. She belongs on children’s television, not in a room filled with guns. Her head bobs about as she speaks. A lake collects in my palms.
    “I have a knife,” I blurt out. It’s as much of as a surprise to me as it is to the blonde. Her sweet smile falls like a leaf to the floor. Now, she just looks nervous. “Not in like a Mrs. Voorhees, deranged slasher, kind of way,” I try to correct, but simultaneously start stabbing the air with an invisible knife, like I am exactly the sort of psycho I’m trying to convince her I’m not. I have no idea why I’m doing it. Reflex? I stop and slap my own hand away, but only after the woman’s face morphs from nervous to horrified. I notice her free hand creep to her side and slip under her jacket. Is she reaching for a gun?
    “Wait! Can I please start that again?” I splutter nervously. “I’m sorry. I’m not a crazy person. I’ve just never done anything like this before, and I’m really nervous,” I assure, holding my hands up in surrender.
    The blonde nods slowly. No sudden movements around the crazy girl. I don’t want to be here anymore, so I just go straight back into my explanation, only this time wrapping it in cotton wool. 
    “I found this knife in the park near my house. I don’t know who it belongs to, or where it comes from, but I saw your event on the news and thought I should bring it in.”
    The women nods. Her hand slips back out from underneath her jacket. My heartbeat slows.
    “If you come with me, I’ll sort you out.” She smiles and we head over to the table. “Is it in the bag?”
    I nod and go to dip my hands inside my satchel, but she shoots me a Medusa stare. I turn to stone, and her hands pick up from where mine left off.
    “It’s in the baseball sock,” I squeak.
    It takes her a matter of seconds to retrieve the knife. Her eyebrows shoot up into the middle of her forehead as she inspects it. She squeezes her eyes into slits and works her jaw in circles, trying to figure out what it’s made from and what the scrawl on the handle says no doubt. Good luck with that. A slight shake of her head tells me she knows nothing.
    Finally, she grabs a form, fills in the date and time and then writes a couple of lines of description.
    “Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Your continued support in community projects such as this is very welcome,” she informs me as she hands over a couple of bits of paper. Her thanks sounds generic, but I won’t take it personally. Concentrating on the slips of paper, I hightail it out of there. She’s given me a five dollar food token and the number of some local drop-in clinics. I hand them over to a homeless guy sitting in a shop doorway as I make my way back toward the bus stop.
    The knife is gone. I thought I’d feel better, but now my mind is free to wonder why the almost-corpse exploded in a shower of dust.
     

Chapter Three
     
    THE GUYS OVER AT GetYourFactsRight.com know almost everything. They know the exact measurement of a fruit fly’s wingspan. They know which letter is used most in the alphabet. They even know how many matchsticks it would take to build a scale replica of the Empire State building. What they don’t know is that bodies can explode into dust. According to Liam, the brain that was manning their online question center all day Sunday, this doesn’t happen. I told him he was wrong, that I’d seen it happen. And he told me that a number of contributing factors -- light, shadows, the reflection from my window pane -- might all have helped to create some sort of optical illusion. I cut the chat short and cancelled my subscription when he started asking about my family’s mental health history. I know what I saw. Maybe I’ll never know why he exploded, but I know what I saw.
    Monday, the halls of Plumbridge High are full of students yawning and wiping sleep from their eyes as they trip and crawl their way to class.
    Art room A2 is already full of my fellow artistes,