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"Phantom Reach 1" by Marie_Quinn
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That day, I remember it so clearly, it's not something you ever really forget, but not in the way that fairy tales describe it, my death wasn't big and epic, or tragic, or magical, or even significant, it was quiet and sad, but it was mine, something just
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for me to know.
I was twelve when I ded, really, I wasonly a child I'd go out into the trees behind my house, climb the dragon hill, with it's twisted roads, in the rain, or gale, or stifling heat, I'd climb it to the little wooden shed we built there.
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I'd take juice and snacks, since I lived the closest of all of us, and we'd sit and talk and joke and read untill the sun came to rest on the tree line, we had a window over the door, which the sun would only shine through when our time was up, our
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parents didn't know where we played, didn't know about the clubhouse, so we always had to be home by sundown.
There were six of us that summer, me, My cousin ALex, my school friend Jasper, his Girlfriend Mimi and the twins Pem and Lin.
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by the time fall came there were three, it'snot happy, but it's interesting how it came to pass that way, maybe if we'd been a little smarter it could have been avoided, who knows?
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CHAPTER 1 It really is began on a Monday...
It really began on a MOnday, about halfway through summer, we'd bought all our things for the new school year, and we were hanging out at the clubhouse, Mimi called us out because she needed to ask us
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something, but the second I walked in, all the talking stopped, I'dnever understand why untill much much later, they were allso awkward around me, I thought, at first "maybe my hair was a mess or I had food in my teeth and they didn't want to say" and
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then Lin stood up and broke the silence with his chair clattering noisily onto the stone floor, the little table in the middle of the room scraped aside and he walked straight over to me, i knew he was pretty flirty but I was still surprised when he
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kissed me, right in front of our friends, then he smiled and looked around "everyone see that? this one's mine,don't get any ideas now that we're in high school" and then he went back to his seat as if nothing happened, but it did happen, and it messed up
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my head, I couldn't think, my cheek tinged and my face burned, my hands felt sticky and slimey, and the ground thundered heavily under my white sandals, the trees blurred together and the road lurched in the heat.
Then, all too fast,
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there was no road under me, the trees shot up, the cliffshot down, pain tore through my leg and I was free falling into icy darkness, it gave way around me and rsuhed into my lungs, the last thing I saw was my own hands reaching for a flecking of sunlight
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CHAPTER 2 It wasn't cold...
It wasn't cold anymore when I woke up, i was lying on the grass on my back, i was wet, my dress clinging to my back and legs, I felt bruised and the air was too hot, but at least I was safe.
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Not too far away I could hear people calling my name, and Pem's name, I couldnt see her, had she followed me maybe?
what I saw when I sat up was enough to set my head spinning again, Pem was lying face down on a smooth river rock less than a meter away,
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her life running in thin rivulets into the grass and dying the river, I screamed, I waved my arms, I jumped up and down, I did anything that might have drawn the others over, they didn't seem to hear.
By the time someone noticed her, Pem was gone, Jasper
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was the one, he brought Alex with him and they knelt over her, trying to get her to wake up, they ignored me, like I wasn't there.
The adults eventually came, Mimi found them, they kept Lin away, they gathered her up and took Pem away, no one even looked
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at me.
I followed them and watched as they put Pem on the couch at my house, I lay on the other one, my eyes cloudy and my wet hair stuck tomy face, watching me as I entered, I stumbled back in surprise, right through a wall.