• “I’m very disappointed in you.” These were the last words I heard her say. The next day, it was all over the news. Somehow, Luchia had disappeared from her home, only to be found hours later in her backyard with a knife through her heart. Everyone thought it was suicide, but I knew better than that. I knew better than anyone else, besides my two older brothers, E.J., and Jake. She was a very happy person, never one to think negative thoughts. But then, her very first negative thought lead to her death only hours later.

    * * *

    It only Christmas Eve, a time of happiness and holiday cheer. Luchia, my mother, had said that I needed to get straight A’s if I wanted my Christmas present. My mother knew I was intelligent, just like my brothers. She knew that getting straight A’s wouldn’t be difficult. The opening of the report cards were always left for 11:50 pm on Christmas Eve night. Jake was considered the smartest one of all of us. He always read his report card out loud first. He was a college senior, and very proud about it.

    He began, his light brown hair covering his eyes, which were most likely shining with excitement, “Honors English 7: A+; Honors Calculus: A; Honors Chemistry: A+; World History: A”

    My mother grinned widely, showing her pearl white, even teeth, even though she knew to expect that of her eldest son. “Alrighty then, who’s next?”

    E.J. raised his hand. He was a college juniors, which he said was way better than sophomores and letting a little high school sophomore do anything ahead of him would “hurt his fragile pride“ as he‘d once put it. He opened his yellow report card envelope and looked at it. There was a huge smile on his face. He said, “A in everything except Photography, that’s an A-.” I could hear the relief in his voice. Up until last week, he had been failing most of his classes.

    Mother nodded and turned towards me, smiling. “Alright, MeiMei, it’s your turn.” I sighed and opened the envelope. I tried to glue a smile on my face, especially when I saw my grades. I gulped and looked up at Mother. “Um…A’s in everything.” I put my report card down. I felt ashamed. I had gotten a D in every single class, except for Spanish. That was an F.

    She smiled again and the large grandfather clock from the other side of the living room struck. I could hear cheers coming from the TV. Mother distributed the presents. E.J. and Jake opened theirs eagerly, while I silently stared at my present. I slowly opened it, taking my time to remove the tape that held the wrapping paper to the box. I gasped when I saw what was under the paper. It was a small white box, inside a golden locket.

    I could feel the tears in my eyes, my mom watching my silently, assessing my reaction. I held back a sob and I finally looked up. “For me?” My voice broke slightly.

    She nodded.

    I shook my head and handed it back to her. I put my report card in her hand and walked upstairs. I made my way to the third floor, where her room was and sat on her bed. Even with an entire floor between us, I could still hear her shocked gasp. Hearing footsteps, I ran to close my door, but not before my mother was already in the room. Her eyes narrowed and she held the box with the locket in her hand. “I’m very disappointed in you.” She set the box on my dresser and left without another word.

    * * *

    Now as I walked down the street I could feel tears in my eyes. I couldn’t go back home, there were too many police there, and besides, E.J. and Jake probably wouldn’t let me back inside.

    I walked into a little café that was on the other side of the small town I lived in, Silver Valley. It was named Silver Valley because of how the mountains looked when it was raining or if the day was foggy.

    As I entered I was hit, like always, by the smell of fresh pancakes and coffee. I sat in a stool by the counter and looked around. There was a man muttering to himself next to me, a waitress taking a family’s order and a small elderly lady in the far corner of the café. The muttering man was staring at me and I turned away. Another lady came up to me behind the counter.

    “What can I getcha?”

    “Just a coffee with some cinnamon, please,” I replied.

    “Alrighty.” She got out a mug and a pot of coffee, pouring the coffee into the mug. I felt uncomfortable as the man kept staring at me. I was still in my Christmas pajamas from last night, my hair unbrushed and probably covered in leaves. I knew it wasn’t the best outfit I could’ve worn, but I hadn’t had a chance to change. And besides, my pajamas were very warm, as were my reindeer slippers. The bells on my reindeer slipped jingled as I crossed my ankles.

    “Hello,” the man said low, rough voice

    I was startled. “Um…Hello.”

    He chuckled. “You know you’re in pajamas, right?”

    “Um…” I took a sip of my coffee, accidentally burning my tongue. “Yeah…”

    He nodded and looked at the newspaper someone had left in the stool beside him. “Did you hear about the suicide this morning?”

    I nodded my head, feeling the tears swell up in my eyes again. I was afraid.

    “Pretty crazy thing if you ask me. Did you know Lucia?”

    I just nodded again, my lower lip trembling.

    “I feel sorry for her kids. They must be going crazy with grief.”

    “Excuse me.” I stood up and half-ran out of the café, tears streaming down my face. I knew he was just trying to have a nice conversation, make some friends, but I couldn’t handle it. His name was Mr. Tounin, a guy who had moved in from the neighboring village a month ago. He still hadn’t had the time to meet everyone in our village, which meant he didn’t know that I was Luchia’s daughter.

    I didn’t care the E.J. and Jake would probably kick me out, I still ran back to my house. When I got there, I was breathless as I opened the door. I wished a hadn’t. I could barely recognize the living room, much less the people in it. E.J. and Jake stood out, the only people who looked calm.

    Jake looked up when he heard the door open and suddenly his face became blank. His bright blue eyes, just like E.J.‘s and mine, had a cold look to them. He turned away and started muttering something to E.J. E.J. leaned to his left, looking at me with a where-the-heck-have-you-been expression. I hoped my expression was calm as I walked towards them.

    E.J. was the first to speak. “MeiMei! You heard?”

    “Who hasn’t heard?”

    Jake frowned and stared at me. Suddenly, his face was red with rage. “Where have you been? Do you know how worried Momma was when she found your bed empty only minutes after she left your room? She asked us where you were and we couldn’t answer her! We saw your report card, too! How could you be so stupid?!” He kept shouting, not bother to keep his voice down. I took in his words calmly, waiting for him to get it all out. He was never one to hold anything back.

    When he was done, one of the investigators tapped my shoulder and I turned around. He said, “We found this,” he held up something small and gold, “around her neck. Looks like it was choking her.” It was the locket she had given me. I could tell that Jake’s shouts were about to get a lot worse.

    And they did. He shouted at me that she probably committed suicide because of my grades and that she used the locket so show us that. I took it all in silently, and in shock. He knew Momma much better than me and E.J. and he’s thinking she committed suicide? This was really pissing me off.

    “Can I at least see Mom’s body?”

    Jake looked at me, eyes narrowed. “Fine. It’s still out in the backyard.” He started walking towards the back door. I followed, head down.

    He opened the door to the backyard, and once again, I barely recognized anything. The yard was surrounded by yellow police tape, lots of men in blue police uniforms. In the center of the yard was a white sheet with something underneath, which I then realized was Momma.

    A policeman was uncovering the body and I peered over Jake’s shoulder to see. I ducked under the police tap to get a closer look, noticing that she had on a different outfit than the one I had seen her in that night. Seemed odd. She should’ve been too worried about me to change her clothes. I uncovered the body completely and gasped. Bruises covered almost every inch of her body. She wore a crimson t-shirt, but last night hadn’t she worn a white t-shirt? I titled her head up, examining the mark left by the locket. There was something odd about the mark, there was something odd about this whole “suicide.”

    I sighed and got up, covering the body back up. I looked back down and saw her hand was uncovered. As I kneeled down again to cover her hand, I noticed a something in her hand. It was a strip of baby blue cloth and a white paper, spattered with blood. I looked around, but everyone was looking anywhere except at me, so I quietly took the cloth and paper out of her hand and slipped them into my pocket.

    I stood back up and headed towards the forest. I climbed one of the tree that bordered our yard and sat down on the lowest branch. Almost completely hidden by the trees in front of me, I took the paper out of my pocket and opened it. I was confused as I flipped the paper this way and that. The only thing on it was a bloody heart. The blood was fresh, covering the tips of my fingers from where I held the paper. But if it was blood, how was the heart so perfectly wavy?

    The tops of each wave was exactly one inch apart. The bottom of the curves were flat, exactly like a heart.

    I held back a scream, nearly falling out of the tree. It was a perfect image of the locket. I jumped out of the branch, which wasn’t very far from the ground, and ran back, ignoring the stares of my siblings as I nearly crashed into an officer.

    “Officer, where’s the locket?” I asked breathlessly.

    “Uh…”He checked his pockets and pulled out a clear bag with the locket inside. I unzipped the bag and took the locket out, tracing the outside edges and pulling my finger away. The blood was still fresh, red streaks along my finger.

    I took the locket with me as I went back to the body. No wonder the markings seemed odd. Somehow, they were still red, even with the dried blood. This couldn’t have happened hours ago. This had to have happened recently. I touched her neck and frowned as I removed my fingers, which were bright red. Was this some kind of sick joke?!

    I patted my mom’s arm, whispering, “Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll figure this out.” There was definitely something strange going on. It was only until then that I noticed a reddish tint to the grass. My eyes darted to everyone in the yard, making sure they weren’t watching me as I carefully lifted up the side of my mom’s body. More blood, on her shirt and grass and my hand. Very carefully I put her down again and put my hand on her stomach. It was warm and wet. I noticed, again, the hearts. What the heck did this have to do with that stupid locket?

    I pulled the locket out of my pocket and pressed the button on the side to open it. Nothing happened. As I struggled to open it, I could feel every person in the backyard watching me. I looked up to see Jake, with narrowed eyes, stare at me briefly before walking back into the house. Geez, why does he hate me? Report cards, right.

    I pushed him to the back of my mind as I kept trying to open the locket. Not matter what I did, it wouldn’t budge. I got up and went back into the house, slipping the locket into my pocket, walked to the kitchen and rinsed my hands clean of the blood. I dried my hands on the dishtowel then stopped. There was a small strip of it missing. I pulled out the other strip, but the color didn’t match. The towel was a shade darker with a different design and made out of different material.

    “God, they made all those detective shows look so freakin’ easy!” I muttered.

    I felt a tap on my shoulder and spun around, finding myself face to face with E.J. “So…what do you think?” I stared at him with wide eyes.

    “What?”

    “What do you think about Mom? Suicide or murder?”

    “M-m-murder,” I managed to sputter out.

    “Why?”

    “Everything just seems so…wrong for it to be suicide. I mean, since when has Mom had any negative thoughts?”

    “Well, she could’ve been hiding her negative thoughts from us,” he replied, then laughed. “Weird, isn’t it? Only hours after her first negative thought, she dies, and her cuts are fresh, too.”

    “And…have you talked to any of the cops since they got here?”

    “Nope, none of them. Why do you ask?”

    I narrowed my eyes, turning away before he could see me. “No reason. I’ll see you later, E.J.,” waving before leaving.

    As I headed back to the backyard, I was too distracted to notice that Mom’s body had been taken away. I hadn’t noticed until I hit the trees and turned around, seeing only a dark spot on the ground where Momma’s body had been. I stormed back to the officers, shrieking my head off, “WHERE THE HELL DID YOU PUT MOMMA? BRING HER BACK THIS INSTANT.” The rest was much worse.

    The startled officer waited until I was done before calmly replying, “It was requested that we take her to be cremated.”

    “BY WHO???”

    “No can do. Private information.”

    “THEN WHERE???”

    He answered sarcastically, “Well, we have way too many indoor cemeteries to count, so hm….I wonder which one we could’ve taken her to!”

    Too mad to answer, I ran through the back and front door, still running to the only cemetery in our village, the Silver Cemetery. Surely whoever carried her there had noticed something strange?

    At the entrance, I saw 3 more police officers, stopping me when I reached the door. “What do you want? No one is allowed inside today!”

    “I say you let me in right now!”

    They looked at each other before laughing. “And you’re gonna try and get past us?” They all laughed again.

    I ran to the back entrance and sure enough, it was unguarded. “Back entrance” didn’t really describe it. It was the outside entrance to a cellar, which housed thousands of boxes for ashes. It always creeped me out, but I had to get inside. Luckily, the inside door to the cellar was unlocked and I was able to sneak into the cemetery. I ran through it, the gray walls seeming darker, the afternoon bells sounding much more haunting. The real back door was locked, which led to a large yard and on the other side, the place where all the bodies were cremated.

    “s**t!” I muttered to myself before going back through the cellar and climbing one of the few trees that lined the fence. From the top branch I could see Momma’s body barely being carried across the yard. I climbed down until I reached the closest branch to the fence, which was about 3 feet away. “Here goes nothing,” I muttered as I swung from the branch, trying to get my foot on one of the cement posts.

    My foot caught the corner before I swung back. I tried again and managed to keep my foot on the post. The fences being about 9 feet tall, it was nearly impossible to jump it, but I had done it dozens of times, always curious to see a funeral. I had grown too big for the closest branch and it had snapped, and I had fallen and broken my wrist. That had been 2 years ago, so swinging from the branch seemed new to me.

    I let my foot slip, swinging back again before managing to wrap my legs around the post. I quickly let go of the branch and hung upside down. “Crud.” My legs were slipping and I tried to reach the edge of the fence to pull myself up. I grabbed the edge and pulled myself up, jumping off the fences and landing with a loud thud on the grass below.

    I didn’t let myself be slowed down when I tripped over rocks, almost falling flat on my face, as I ran, already hearing the fire start up. The person that carried Momma still hadn’t reached the door, and somehow that didn’t surprise me. Momma wasn’t exactly the lightest person ever. I screamed as I jumped on the guy, knocking all three of us down onto the grass. He yelled as he fell and released Momma.

    Getting up and dragging my mom’s behind, I could feel my nearly sleepless night catching up with me. I rolled up my mom’s pants, where the bleeding seemed to be worst and gasped. Her skin was covered in small, locket shaped hearts. Again, the cuts looks fresh, but then again, that could’ve been from the fall. They didn’t even look hours old, though.

    I smiled as I half-dragged, half-carried my mom back to the house, which, even though it was a small village, was miles away. People stared at me as I walked, and I could definitely figure out why. My matter hair, blood-covered clothing, dragging a dead body with me would definitely be an attention grabber.

    When I finally reached the house, I went to the backyard through the side entrance. I was the one to tap the officer’s shoulder this time and when he looked at me, just screamed and stepped back, surprised by my appearance, I assumed. “Officer Gumbar? May I speak to you please?” I had done a lot of thinking that past few hours and I had enough evidence to prove my theories. Although I was deprived of sleep, I felt extremely observant.

    “So, who requested that Momma be cremated?” My expression was enough to make him tel the truth.

    “Uh…E-E-E-E.J., ma’am.”

    I nodded, my suspicions confirmed.

    “Wait here, please.” He nodded as I walked away, going into the house. I came back out, practically dragging E.J. out.

    I took out the strip of blue cloth I had found and looked at E.J. “Hm…E.J., take off your coat.”

    “Why should I?”

    “Officer, please tell E.J. to remove his coat.”

    “Take off your coat, boy,” the officer said.

    E.J. muttered to himself as he took off his coat. He wore a light blue turtle-neck shirt and light blue jeans. On his neck, there was a piece of cloth missing.

    “See?” I said to the officer as I put the cloth into the hole of E.J.’s shirt, making a perfect match. The cop’s eyes widened.

    “How the heck did you figure that out?” the officer asked, his eyes still wide.

    “Easy.” I also pulled the locket out of my pajama pocket. I turned red, realizing that this whole time I was still in my Christmas Eve pajamas.

    “This locket, this piece of cloth and a couple of E.J.’s words.” E.J. stared at me, fury clearly visible on his face. I giggled. “And his reactions.”

    “It’s pretty hard to explain. See, Momma wasn’t committing suicide. She was murdered by E.J.” The cop gasped and turned to face E.J.

    “I noticed that the cuts on her neck, where she had been ‘choked’ were actually very fresh, about an hour old. Of course, you needed a closer examination, maybe an autopsy, to confirm that, rather than the small glances your fellow officers did before covering her up. Covering her up was E.J.’s idea, too, am I right?”

    Officer Gumbar nodded. “Yep, now please, continue.”

    “Alrighty. Now, nobody would have noticed the change in her clothes if she was covered up. Last night, she was wearing a white t-shirt. All of a sudden, it was crimson, wet and warm. My explanation? Blood. E.J. actually used the locket to kill Momma. He used the chain to choke her, waiting until she was completely dead before cutting her. The reason you can’t open it is because he super-glued it.” I laughed and held up the locket. Sure enough, there was a thin strip of white glue between the edges of the locket, holding it together.

    “The blood had somehow managed to penetrate the gold and E.J. couldn’t rinse it off. That’s why a strip of the dishtowel is missing. It got smudged with blood and he didn’t want any evidence.”

    “But you also said it was something E.J. said that helped you,” Officer Gumbar interrupted.

    “Yeah, it was when I was washing my hands. He said he hadn’t talked to any of the officers, but he had. He made the request of her body being covered up. But he didn’t talk to you, did he Officer Gumbar?”

    “Nope, he didn’t.”

    “You were the only one who had any information on Momma’s body. None of the other officers knew anything about the body. How could E.J. have known that the cuts were fresh? He should’ve assumed they were hours old, just like everyone else here.”

    E.J. clapped, surprising both me and Officer Gumbar. “That’s a very nice story you got there MeiMei, but where’s the proof? Obviously, if I was the one that did it, wouldn’t I need some kind of motivation?” His smile was smug.

    “Actually, you gave plenty of clues as to your one and only motivation.”


    “Oh?”

    “Your motivation? The locket.”

    “Really? Why would I ever have such a need for a stupid little locket?”

    “Stupid little locket? Really? Would a stupid little locket be worth a million dollars? That seems like plenty motivation to me. You’ve heard Momma’s promises when I was small. Momma promised her mother and her mother promised her mother and so on, that the locket was to be given to the youngest member of the family. Only the youngest could know anything about the locket. She thought she wouldn’t have any kids after you, but she was sadly mistaken. She had already told you before she knew about me.” Now my smile was smug.

    “Well, I think I’ve heard just about enough.” He handcuffed E.J. as E.J. glared at me.

    “God, MeiMei. Solving a big time mystery and you can’t pass Forensics Science?” He shook his head.

    * * *

    The day passed by in a blur, but that could’ve just been from my lack of sleep. Once the officers had driven away, promising that he wouldn’t be out of jail anytime soon, I went back inside to tell Jake what had happened. He had missed the whole thing, in his room, grieving. I cried when he cried and we hugged until I eventually fell asleep.

    When I woke up, I could hear Christmas carols playing downstairs and I got up, stretching. I made my way downstairs, only to be surprised by what seemed like 20 people in the living room. Jake was the first one I saw, and I hugged him before looking around the room. It seemed to be mostly kids from our neighbor hood, with a few parents here and there.

    Jake whispered, “Merry Christmas,” in my ear before hugging me again.