20th of February

The waxing crescent moon was visible early in the evening, next to the brightest Venus that had been seen in years. Visitors insisted that the sky was clearer there than anywhere else in the country, but the townspeople knew it wasn't true.

Many of them went to the river that night, to look at the heavens and wonder at the clarity of the sky, interrupting the young couples who took their cars out on the weekend to be alone for just a while. Children played in the shallows, while their parents sat down on blankets and towels, and waited for them to calm down.

The first shooting star crossed the sky before it was dark. Soon, there were so many it was impossible to keep up with them, the credulous making as many wishes as they possibly could. The night was heavy with hope and wonder, it seemed like the town had been waiting years for that night, and there was nothing to do but enjoy.

Grace Mitchell was on the other side of the river, but she wasn't looking at the sky. She was looking at her cousins and her parents and her aunts and uncles, at her little sister and her older brother, at her sister in law. She wondered if any of them were wishing for her safe return home. She smiled sadly, feeling everything that she had missed aching somewhere between her right lung and her spine. She wondered if that was what pain felt like. She wanted to jump into the river and swim across and be with her family for one night. She wondered if Sandra would recognize her, if her mother would scream, if her father would cry. She closed her eyes and concentrated on a white wall.

The white wall was a brick wall, red originally, painted white. The paint job wasn't good, some parts of the wall had thick blobs of paint, other parts were painted over so thinly that one could almost think they were pink. There were cracks in the wall, like it was part of a very old building that had been abandoned, but that didn't matter. The cracks changed every time. That night, there was one along the left edge, a crack that climbed upwards, snaking into the front of the wall and dividing into half a thousand more cracks as it neared the top. Another one crossed the wall from the centre to the top right corner, shorter than the first, but thicker, and deeper. Some flowers and a few leaves of grass had sprouted from the crack, giving the wall a thin line of green with yellow interruptions. There were seven flowers, and Grace knew each of them, although she hadn't named them.

By the time she opened her eyes again any thoughts of her family had faded, and she was able to look at the people on the other side of the river indifferently. Just a group of people who were happy that night. She smiled, even though she wouldn't have been able to say that she was happy. It had been too long missing something she didn't quite know how to replace. She looked back at the sky. She didn't believe in luck, or in god, or in wishes, and yet she wondered if maybe the act of making a wish could change the course of events. She shivered. She knew that horoscopes only seemed to guess because they were easily remembered when they applied, that wishes only seemed to come true because they were promptly forgotten when they didn't. She rummaged in her pocket and found a quarter. It was the last one she had, so it had been eight years. She might not believe in god, but she believed in ritual.

She stepped into the shallows of the river, and prepared to be shocked by the coldness and the damp. She looked at the quarter for a couple of minutes, wondering exactly what she was doing, whether she was thanking destiny for taking her away, or cursing her luck. It didn't matter anymore, it was the last quarter, the last time she would stand in the river and look across. Maybe that was why the whole town was there, to say goodbye. She threw the coin into the water and turned back. As she did she could sense the eyes of the children on her back, and for a second she wondered. Some of the elders said that only children could see ghosts.