Oh Ick

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The graduation ceremony—as tedious as it was significant, Emma Lee supposed—was held on the football field under a cloudless, mid-morning sky. It ended, a murmuration of soaring mortarboards, a good hour before noon. May had parked her old Civic a few blocks from the high school because, she said, she wanted to be able to get away quickly. But, as Emma Lee predicted, May had to hug pretty much everyone before they left. By the time they got away, the parking lot and the streets were basically deserted.

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Somehow, the cemetery had earned a reputation of being haunted. Emma Lee figured this must be true of every cemetery, to some degree, but Redwood Memorial Gardens had made its way onto a few lists of creepy cemeteries: “The Five Scariest Cemeteries in the Sierras,” “The Top Ten Most Delightfully Haunted Cemeteries in Northern California,” and “California’s Most Haunted Cemeteries.”

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Unlike many of her peers, Emma Lee woke early. This had been true even before she left home at nearly seventeen, before she had moved into the trailer. Now, she woke even earlier, to make time before school for her early morning walks among the dead. In winter, when the days were short and the mornings near freezing, she’d shrug into her faux-fur-lined parka and make her rounds, sticking mostly to the main road and well-worn paths. In summer, though, she’d weave among the gravestones, worn and tilted and water-stained, and she would solemnly read, sometimes even aloud, the names and dates and epitaphs.

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Emma Lee Brown lived in a trailer next door to the cemetery.

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