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Kindred Souls by Kristine Kathryn Rusch The first time I noticed death's true power to make the ordinary into something extraordinary was my junior year in high school. There was a girl in my English lit class who had a self-done hair cut, wore the same t-shirt and frayed jeans every day, and who spent more time giggling with her friends than listening to Beowulf. I can't remember her name now, but I can remember her position in the row of chairs (two down from the door), her crooked smile, and the flat way her eyes assessed me every time I spoke up in class. She died at an unmarked railroad crossing on a Friday night, sitting in the backseat of a rusted Ford Fairlane, with three other friends, kids I had never met. They were all drunk. And her chair remained empty the rest of the year. I know I wouldn't have remembered her if she hadn't died. By now, twenty years later, she wouldn't even be a blip on the memory radar. But she's there. Every time death shows up in my life. And he shows up often. * * * * I'm an orderly in a nursing home, a far cry from those days twenty years ago when my biggest worry was whether I got into Princeton, Yale, or the state university. It's not a lack of skills that brought me here. Nor a lack of brain power. It's actually the availability of the work. In every town |
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