The Casquette Girls by Alys Arden Read Free Book Online

begging me to not worry. I would have hugged her if she hadn’t been smeared in rotting foliage.
    At least I’d have some good news for my father – his work withstood the strength of the Storm.
    My father sometimes taught weekend metalsmithing workshops for adults at NOSA. I wished the school would allow him to teach us classes, but they weren’t too keen on allowing students to use blowtorches. Fair enough. Luckily, he’d been teaching me the art of harnessing fire since age six, after I snuck into his studio and burned off a pigtail (which gave me a very punk-rock haircut for a summer and nearly gave him a stroke). No matter what lengths he took to childproof his workspace, I had always managed to get in and meddle. Teaching me to correctly use the tools was his way of being better safe than sorry.
    My eyes teared at the thought of not being able to spend my junior and senior years at NOSA. Most kids hated school, but I ’d always felt strong and confident here.
    Adele, think about how much more other people lost. I wiped my eyes and started the trek back.
    Large orange X’s had been spray-painted directly onto the exteriors of the now-abandoned old homes. I ’d seen images of them on TV, but they were so much more upsetting in person. The numbers sprayed into each quadrant of the X indicated when the premise had been searched and how many dead bodies had been found. The dilapidated houses, formerly as vibrant as the Caribbean, encouraged me to flee, but I couldn’t help but pause outside one house: next to the X, a rescuer had taken the time to spray out the words “1 dead in attic.”
    The looming eeriness was suffocating.
    Glass crunched under my feet as I walked away – it had come from the shattered window of a black town car parked next to me. There was a man in the driver’s seat.
    I froze and stammered, “Hello?”
    He didn’t stir.
    I moved to see his face. His neatly groomed blond head was resting in the open window amongst a scattering of shiny glass fragments – his empty blue eyes looked straight through me.
    “Sir? Sir, are you okay?” Southern hospitality took over, despite knowing there was only one explanation for the stillness of his body and for his head to be turned at that unnatural angle. I extended my hand towards his neck to check his pulse.
    A bird squawked loudly, and I ripped my arm back in fright, barely aware of the broken glass grazing my hand as I spun around and broke into a full-on sprint. I ran through the remaining blocks of the Marigny, past Esplanade Avenue and back into the French Quarter. I kept running until sucking in the humid air became so difficult I had to stop and lean against a wooden fence.
    Panting, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed 9-1-1.
    The sound of the busy signal made me burst into tears. How many other people were trying to call the police at this exact momen t ? I’d never seen a dead body before much less touched one. Now, all I could picture were those blue eyes. I felt his dead skin on my fingers. My chest tightened, and an asthmatic noise croaked from my throat.
    Breathe, Adele.
    Tears dripped.
    I threw my arms over my head, determined to pull it together.
    The imposing concrete wall surrounding the old Ursuline Convent was directly across the street, which meant I was on Chartres Street, only about six blocks from home. My hand throbbed, and I felt liquid dripping down my arm, but before I could inspect it, a rattling noise caught my attention. I held my breath to create perfect silence, and heard the noise again.
    From my vantage, all I could see were the five attic windows protruding from the slope of the convent roof – two left of center and three on the right. (Blame my father for teaching me to always notice symmetry.) One shutter had become detached and was hanging loosely, rattling in the wind.
    I watched the shutter methodically flap open and snap shut again, but the man’s dead blue eyes stained my mind. What had happened to him?