Hannah Burns

Hannah Burns is a graduate of The New School’s MFA program in fiction, originally from Charleston, South Carolina, and currently resides in Brooklyn. You can find her work in Atwood Magazine, The Crawfish, and Public Seminar. When she is not working on her novel in progress, she is likely getting lost in Greenwood Cemetery. 

Amelia’s Party (Short Fiction)

There was a party at Amelia’s lakehouse. She was the rich girl, the only one we knew who lived on the water. The rest of us had to drive to a community dock to jump in, smoke, get on a little john boat to go fishing, but she had all of that in her backyard. She had paddle boards, kayaks, a two story dock with a boat lift, a sleek black speed boat and two jet skis. She had everything. She even looked rich, not an eyebrow hair out of line, nothing left unplucked. Her nails were always done, always the same shade of blush pink. She wore it gracefully, all that money. All the boys wanted her, but she always led them on. Had the biggest parties but never got too drunk. It was almost like she was watching us, feeding us the liquor, letting the drama brew, but sitting back, smiling, not sweating like the rest of us. Except this one night, new years. She had the party of the year and she was wasted, like I’d never seen before. Throwing herself, her slim hands, thin thighs, draped all over Ben. I wanted to kill her. We should have known something was up at that point, someone should have known. Nobody was that close to her, I guess, I mean, we all were and we weren’t. She was the grade above me, Ben’s age, but she never acted like she was better than me. She actually didn’t act like she was better than anybody, even though she could have. She could have gotten away with it. She was my friend in the sense that she was there the first time I got high. It was her house, someone else’s bong. But that night we were drunk, drunk, drunk, as highschoolers do, and staying warm in the house on the hill. The big house, a glowing monstrosity on the top of the green slope. The slope that went down into the lake. Nobody saw Amelia walk all those stone steps down to the water. Ben barely remembers shrugging her off. I didn’t see her when I was leaving, nobody saw her. It was like she was there until she wasn’t. They think she waited until everyone had left, long past midnight, well into the new year, maybe 3 or 4 in the morning. If she had waited a few more hours, she would have seen the sun rise, but she didn’t. She waited until everyone went home, wasted, she threw herself off the end of her dock into the dark black water. They say she was graceful, barely made a splash. They say she was a ripple. They say it was an accident, that she hit her head and never came up. I can picture her sinking, the light from her house growing dimmer, farther. I can picture her bobbing, bloated, like the fisherman that found her. The lake was more green than blue in the morning light, her light brown locks tangled, knotting, falling into her blank face. Sure, it could have been an accident. We would have believed that if she hadn’t said to Ben that she wished things were different, whatever that means. He still carries it with him, being the one she said that to before she did it. It’s not his fault that he didn’t know what she meant, or that he was too drunk to try and understand. But after that, things were different. Ben was different. A dark tunnel opened, shooting off to the side of our horizons, an abstract idea made physical like the fog hovering on the lake’s surface. Her body floating, gently pushed to shore. We stand around the courtyard once winter break is over, we hold hands in a great big circle and pray the rosary, her parents, a broken link, their crying like the wind we ignore to keep the prayers coming. Hail Mary full of grace, the lord is with thee. I don’t know if it was any comfort to them. Blessed art thou amongst women. I know they sold that house they were never in, always traveling, always leaving behind the daughter that maybe they wished they never had. And blessed is the fruit of thy womb. That’s what they said, the whispers in the pews, kneel, stand, kneel stand. Jesus Christ. They said her family barely even cared, the wake, the open casket that seemed so cruel, for tradition’s sake. She didn’t look like herself. She didn’t smell like the perfume she had always used since middle school gym class. Her nails were the wrong pink. I imagined them chip, chipping, her body growing smaller and smaller in her pretty wooden casket, until all she is is bones, I can picture it. All I know is things were different after that.