Hide and Seek

By Shayna Krishnasamy

One winter's night, two young girls venture out into a snowy neighbourhood to play a game of hide and seek. Only one will return home safely. But which will it be?

Will it be melancholy Clara, the one who lags behind, the one with the runny nose and the terrible secret? Or will it be playful Audrey, the one with the mischievous smile, the one who never looks for trouble because it's always looking for her?

From the author of the bestselling novella The Sickroom comes a dark story about the weight of loss, the importance of friendship, and the courage of letting go.

Two little girls: one who wants to be saved and one yearning to be lost. Who will win the game?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shayna Krishnasamy
• Release date: Dec 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9780981335230

Book preview

Copyright © Shayna Krishnasamy 2011

All rights reserved.

This short story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 9780981335230

Cover Photography: simonGman

Contents

Hide and Seek

About the Author

The girls shouldn’t have been out after dark, but only Audrey was delighted. Clara, slower and darker, wasn’t in the mood to be out at all, let alone wading through the snow as Audrey ran, her nose running, her aching fingers pressed into her armpits. She’d forgotten her mittens in the excitement. She’d forgotten her sense. Less than an hour before she’d been warm and tucked away in her bed and now….

Where are we going, anyway? she called into the wind, but Audrey didn’t hear her.

Clara watched her friend’s head bobbing as she hurtled through the dark, her yellow hair and powder blue scarf tails streaming behind. Turning, her rosy cheeks gleaming, Audrey cupped her hands around her mouth and called to Clara to hurry up or they’ll start without us! But Clara didn’t step up her pace.

In Clara’s experience, things didn’t start without Audrey. It was always Audrey who started them.

One after the other (Audrey pulling ahead and then pausing, practically jogging in place as she waited for Clara to catch up) they passed by the slumbering houses, the winter-muted neighbourhood hardly registering the padding of their feet in the powdery snow. As the wind started up, scattering the snow in drifts and covering their footsteps, Clara realized it was as though they’d never been there at all.

Nobody knew where they had gone, she thought to herself. She slowed to a walk, watching her cloudy breath extend and disperse, like ghostly fingers vanishing. And for days afterward nobody could find them.

Will you come on? Audrey shrieked.

On the uphill stretch of Beacon Avenue Clara lost her breath. Alone on the sidewalk, the cream-colored back of Audrey’s coat shrinking as she continued on, oblivious, Clara leaned forward with her hands on her knees and gulped for air. She stared down at her brother’s ratty hiking boots with distaste. (She’d had no boots of her own that year. What for? her mother had said when she’d asked for them. She’d said, You’ll never use them.)

The evergreens crowding the empty lot on the corner swayed violently in the wind, their dark branches catching, their needles scratching, like the claws of a wild animal. Wiping her nose on the sleeve of her jacket, Clara gazed into the mass of thrashing limbs, the wind howling in her ears. For an instant she had the perverse urge to grab hold of the wire fence and fling herself over, to jump right into the heart