Lions

A gust of wind blew through the open window behind us and pushed the door open. We stood, silent, as a pink bed revealed itself, looking like it hadn’t been used in years. The light shone through the worn curtains and a dusty chandelier hung from the ceiling. My mother’s bedroom.


“Yeah. Okay, I’m gonna go wait outside. This is getting too creepy—“


“You are coming in with me,” I said as I excitedly grabbed Owen’s wrist and dragged him in the room.


We stood in the center of the room on the carpet soaked in sunlight. Little figurines sat on shelves and a desk was stationed in a corner.


“Isn’t this great?” I sighed.


“Yeah, if you consider rambling through an abandoned house great,” Owen said sarcastically.


Owen’s been my closest friend since the second grade. We’ve lived a block away from each other for as long as we can remember, and our parents quickly became friends, too. I thought it was kind of ironic how Owen had two moms and I had none.


My mother’s been dead for thirteen years, and I’ve never really known her. When she was alive, she was very sick—always in and out of the hospital—so I never got to see her. My dad never talked about her after she passed. It took him ten years to start dating again. I thought it was sweet but also sad that her death had such a lasting impact on him. Now, I was nineteen and ready to finally discover my mother.


“Look,” I breathed, moving towards the shelves. My fingers gently brushed past a figurine of a tightrope walker wearing a white tutu. “She must’ve liked the circus.”


“Don’t touch that. It might turn to dust in your hand.” Owen was skeptical, but I knew he loved me. He’ll threaten to walk out of this house, but he’d never leave me. “But yeah. Look at this drawing.”


I walked over to where he was standing by the desk. On it sat a piece of white paper with an image of a lion jumping through a hoop that was on fire. It must’ve been drawn with colored pencils. Across the top read the stylized text “Cirque de Soleil.”


“Did she draw that?” I wondered aloud. Owen pointed to the bottom right corner of the page, where the artist’s initials were: A.K. Abigail Krauss. “She drew this.”

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