The wind slipped down the path after Lenore, snatching at the edges of her dress as she ran. Even though it was still summer, the leaves in the forest behind the house were already starting to yellow and fall, and the half-bare trees provided little cover. Lenore wound her arms tight around herself to guard against the chill, but it did little good.

Once she had made it a good distance in, Lenore paused and looked behind her. She could still see the house if just a little. Her mother, Terra, and Delilah were still on the porch, watching. She didn't know if they could see her, but at least they weren't following. Lenore let out a sigh of relief and turned back to the path, slowing to a walk.

The wind kept pace, swirling around her and playing with the stray hairs that had snuck free from her bun. Lenore wished she had a better companion—she wished her grandmother was with her now. She had many memories of the two of them walking this path together. On hot days, they'd come this way to picnic in the shade of the trees. The image was so vivid she could almost feel the heat of the absent sun and let herself be warmed by its memory.

In her mind, she was small again, toddling after her grandmother with a heavy armful of flowers plucked from the garden while Gran led the way with the old wicker picnic basket. In this particular memory, her grandmother looked little like the thin and wispy thing Lenore had just left behind. Here, she was warm and full of life, her dark hair only half-silver.

"How much faaaarther?" Lenore had whined to her as she dragged her feet over the dusty dirt path.

Her grandmother looked back over her shoulder, smirking. She never complained or snapped at her, even when Lenore knew she was being bratty.

"Not much," she had said, punctuating it with a wink.

"But I'm tiiiiired of carrying these flowers," Lenore had replied. She had picked too many, and the bundle was heavy in her little arms.

"Why don't you run ahead, then?" her grandmother had replied with a nod up the path. "You can say hello to grandpa first, and I'll catch up."

"Okay!" Lenore chirped. Her grandmother's permission gave her a burst of energy, and suddenly the thick bouquet no longer weighed quite so much. She raced around her grandmother and down the path, her little legs pumping as hard as they could go as her grandmother chuckles following after her.

Her grandmother had been right. Of course, there wasn't much further to go, but the measure of distance had still been foreign to her at the time. Soon the forest parted, opening up onto a lush green clearing... and an old graveyard. In the bright summer light, the graveyard was a calm place, almost pretty, with bright wildflowers growing between the slanting stones. The only real structure was an old mausoleum that sat at the very back, a simple, unadorned stone building closed off with a rusted metal gate and overgrown with moss that held the sleeping remains of her great-great-grand-somethings.

Lenore had paused at the low fence around the graveyard's edge, turning back to see if her Gran was following like she had said she would. She was, and she wasn't too far behind, even going at her own pace. She waved at Lenore. "Don't worry," she had called to her. "I'm a'coming. You go on ahead. You know the way."

Lenore smiled and waved back before crossing the graveyard's boundary and making her way between the stones. Her grandmother had been right about this, too. She did know the way. She knew it well, and if she didn't, well, the grass had been beaten down from their many visits, forming a new little path. It led around the side of the mausoleum and over to the far corner, coming to a stop in front of a familiar headstone. It was much newer and straighter than the ones surrounding it, having been recently placed.

"Hi Gramps!" Lenore had cheered at the sight of it. "I brought you flowers!" She dropped her armful of flowers atop onto the grass and set to work. She cleared away the old flowers—left from their last visit—and tossed them onto the empty spot next to his solitary grave. Then she carefully arranged the new bouquet in a tidy pile at the base of his headstone.

By the time she had finished, her grandmother had caught up. "That looks lovely, Lenore," she had said. "Good job."

Lenore beamed up at her.

Her grandmother placed the picnic basket down and pulled the blanket off the top, an old patchwork quilt. She spread it out on the ground, right over top of the grave, as if they were tucking her grandpa in for the night.

Lenore plopped herself down on it. "Gran, why do we have picnics with Gramps?" she had asked. "It's not like he can eat anything."

Her Gran had just laughed as she sat down, too. She beckoned to Lenore, who crawled across the blanket to sit by her grandmother's side. Her grandmother smiled down at her as she tucked Lenore's hair behind her ears.

"Because he's still with us," she had said. "Our loved and lost are always with us."

In the present, Lenore was now standing at that same grave. The cemetery looked much more grim in the shadow of the impending storm. And now, her grandfather's headstone was no longer alone. In the empty spot beside it, a new opening had been carved out of the earth, ready for her grandmother.

Staring down into the cavernous hole, Lenore felt her eyes well with tears. She tried to blink them away, but that just forced them to spill over and slide down her cheeks.

"Is that true, Gran?" she said aloud, thinking of her memory as the wind flitted around her, blowing away her tears. "Are you still with me?"

Overhead, there was a flash and the angry clouds out a sharp crack of thunder. And with that, the sky opened.

Lenore shrank under the sudden deluge. "Shit!" That had not been quite the answer she had been looking for.

She scanned the cemetery, looking for shelter. The naked trees would provide little cover, but she could run back to the house... Only she didn't want to. Going back to the house meant seeing her parents and talking to her mother. She shuddered—half from cold, half from disgust—and glanced around for something, anything, better than that.

Her gaze landed on the mausoleum. Its rusted gate was open, just a crack.

She didn't have a better choice. The rain was really coming down now. Besides, the dead were sure to be better company than whoever was waiting for her at the house. She ran towards it and threw herself inside.

Inside, the mausoleum was cool and dark but, thankfully, dry. Lenore had only come in here a few times, mostly out of childhood curiosity, and it didn't seem like much had changed. Unlike the outside, the interior was lavishly decorated, as if those laid to rest here needed something nice to look at. The stone walls, half in shadow, had an intricate design of leaves and vines carved into their surface. And there was a beautiful stained glass window set into the ceiling, though the light it pulled in was grey and dingy from the storm outside. In the centre of the small room was a large raised tomb, its marble top dusted with stray leaves blown in through gaps of the rusted gate.

Lenore wondered if whoever was in there would mind if she sat on top. She'd somewhere to sit and wait out the storm. She approached it, figuring they wouldn't mind. They weren't here to mind.

As she reached its edge, something moved in the shadows in the corner. Lenore leapt back from the edge of the tomb and let out a scream.

The shadow screamed back.

"Oh my god, I'm sorry!" someone cried, and a guy emerged from the shadows into the dim and dreary shaft of light that was coming from the stained glass window. "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to scare you!"

"What the hell?" Lenore snapped, staring daggers at him. "What are you doing here?"

The guy, who looked like he could be just a little older than Lenore, gave a nervous laugh and ran his hand through his shaggy brown hair. "I was exploring and it started raining so I ran for cover... Though, I could ask you the same thing. What are you doing out here?"

Lenore scowled at him. "This is my family's property."

The guy looked genuinely surprised. "It is?" He looked around the mausoleum like he was seeing it for the first time. "I thought for sure this place was abandoned."

"It's not," she said, with a roll of her eyes. "And don't pretend like you don't know." She didn't recognize the guy, but she was sure she'd probably gone to school with him—age would've changed him as much as it had changed her. She'd figure it out soon enough. "Everyone in Eden knows that."

"Well," the guy said, offering her a smile free of guilt. When he smiled, deep dimples appeared in his cheeks. "I don't." He shrugged like he was perfectly innocent.

Wait. Lenore studied the guy's face a little closer, especially the dimples. She couldn't remember anyone she knew from Eden who had dimples like that. Jessica Plintz had had a dimple, singular, but none of the other kids in her class did. Could dimples manifest spontaneously, or...

"You're not from around here," Lenore said. It was a statement of fact, not a question.

The guy laughed again. It was a nice laugh, bright and without even a hint of sarcasm. "Uh, no, I'm not. Just moved here. I'm guessing you are?"

"Something like that," Lenore said with a scoff.

The guy tilted his head, like he wondered what she meant by that, but didn't ask. Instead, he shot out his hand, offering it to her. "I guess I should introduce myself, then," he said. "I'm Victor."

"Victor," Lenore said like she was trying to place the name in her memories, in case he had been lying, for some reason—but there was no Victor in the list of people she knew—and hated—in Eden.

Victor stared back at her and raised an eyebrow at her, and she realized she had been staring at him for a little too long. She quickly grabbed his hand and squeezed it harder than she meant to. She gave a quick shake and let it go. "Sorry," she said. "I-I'm Lenore."

"Lenore," Victor said with a nod, wincing a little at Lenore's vice grip as he shook out his hand.

She went more than a little red.

Victor didn't seem to notice. Or maybe he was just being nice. Either way, he didn't mention it. "Nice to meet you, Lenore," he said. "So, uh, what brings you to your family's graveyard on this horrible afternoon?"

As if on cue, the storm let out another deafening clap of thunder.

A laugh burst out of Lenore, but she quickly caught herself. There was nothing funny about this. Okay, maybe a little, but not really. "A f-funeral."

"Oh," he said, and for the first time, the smile slid off Victor's face. He turned stone-serious. "I'm sorry. But I guess that explains—" he pointed to her dress, "all the black, then. I thought maybe this all was, like, a goth thing."

To Lenore's surprise, she gave another laugh before quickly smothering it. "No, not a goth thing."

A small smile reached Victor's lips again. "Right, I see it now. Really, my first clue should've been the fresh hole in the ground, duh." He pretended to knock himself in the head. "Though, I didn't think you could still bury people out here. Don't you have to bury someone in a cemetery? Like, as law?"

Lenore motioned to the very real mausoleum in which they were standing. "This is a cemetery."

Victor laughed now. "Yeah, I guess. But I mean, like, an official one. And you said this was your property... You can't own a cemetery, can you?"

"It is an official cemetery—just an old family one. From, you know, back when people used to bury people on their own land."

Victor raised his eyebrows. "But that was, like, a really long time ago, wasn't it?"

"This has been our land for a really long time."

"Really? Then your family must've been here for..."

"Since the town was settled."

"Wow. That's so cool," he said, nodding like he was impressed. "Y'know, that you still live here."

Lenore's expression soured, her nose wrinkling up. In what universe would living in Eden be considered cool? "Is it?"

"​​I don't know. I think so," Victor said, shrugging again. "I'm not really from anywhere, ya know? My mom's work means we travel a lot, so I've never gotten a chance to stay in one place for long."

Lenore frowned. "Staying in one place isn't all it's cracked up to be."

"I wouldn't know," Victor said with another shrug. He shrugged a lot, Lenore noticed. "Hey, so, you must go to the high school, right? I'm going to be starting there in the new year year and I'd love—"

But through the raging storm, Lenore heard someone call her name.

"LENORE!"

Even over the din of the storm, she could tell it was her dad. He must've come looking for her. Her shoulders sank—that meant she'd have to finally go back to the house. She didn't want to. If she was honest, she was kind of enjoying her time in the mausoleum, even if it was dirty and dark.

But there was no avoiding it now. At least it was dad who had come looking and not her mom.

"Sorry," Lenore said, wincing in apology. "That's my dad. He's probably worried about me. I should go find him."

Victor nodded, perfectly understanding. "Of course," he said but then finished with a little smirk. "It's your funeral."

Before she could stop herself, another laugh broke free. "Not quite," she said. "But it was, uh, nice meeting you."

"You too. I guess I'll see you again... at school, I mean."

Lenore fought the frown that tried to force its way onto her face. She knew she wouldn't see him; in fact, she knew she'd never see him again, but for some reason, she didn't want to say it out loud. "Yeah, maybe," was all she said instead. She gave him one last smile before slipping back out the metal gate and into the still-raging storm.

She quickly spotted her dad at the entrance to the graveyard. He had, thankfully, brought an umbrella though he was fighting to keep it upright in the blustering winds. She ran towards him and ducked under the umbrella's cover, though she was already soaked by the time she got there.

"I'm so sorry, Lenore," he began, pulling her into a hug with his free arm. "I didn't mean for it to get so out of hand. But your mom just..." He huffed.

"I know, dad," she said. "I know. It's okay."

He let out a big sigh. "Let's go and say our goodbyes—properly this time."

Lenore nodded against his shoulder but then lifted her head to look back at the graveyard. In her head, as she thought of the promise she made to herself as they crossed the city limits of Eden, she said her goodbyes to the place, to her grandfather, to the forest, and even to the wind.

But something sad gripped her then. She thought of her grandma and their picnics. She had good memories here, too, even if they had been paved over and crushed with a thick layer of shit. And as she thought of the boy she had just met, still waiting out the storm in the mausoleum. Some small part of her wished she could get to see him again, but that was unlikely.

"C'mon," her dad said, nudging her. "Let's go. I want to get out of here."

Lenore let him lead her back down the path. "Yeah," she agreed. Her promise was still on her mind. "And then I'll never come back here again."

Where's the weirdest place you've ever met somebody?