"Jazz, I swear he's onto me !"
"Its been more than a year now, Ny. Why would he suspect anything after all this time ?"
"I don't know but…"
Lawrence, after spending three days torturing himself in how to approach Daniel again, because he had, for his own conscience at least, to make sure the boy and his friends were safe and not involved with ghosts in any way, was more than astounded to find the Fenton siblings at the cemetery on the first day of October.
(That the two of them still managed to surprise him this often, after the numerous, ghostly events of the last year was a testament to how shocking the children were on a daily basis.)
Lawrence himself was visiting a grave that day, his sister's, as he did every first of the month, when he spotted them, a little further away from the neat tombstones.
The Fenton children were conversing in whispers a bit further, where laid the oldest, sometimes nameless graves, dug before the county renovated the cemetery. There, under an old, weeping tree, were three tumbs, and a circle of 12 others around the tree trunk.
(Lawrence frowned. He'd never noticed this peculiar arrangement before.)
Jasmine was sitting cross-legged before a nameless (at least from what he could see) grave, one that seemed the oldest of the three, apparently tying a bunch of flowers and leaves together in a crown, while her brother, cup of steaming coffee (or any other hot beverage) in his hand and holding another basket of green material, was balancing himself onto the gravestone, legs dangling in front of the rock carelessly.
Daniel was sitting on a grave, and it seemed like he perfectly belonged there.
(Was there any thought more disturbing to a teacher, than to think their student belonged in a graveyard ?)
They were talking low, but Lawrence found himself just close enough to overhear most of their conversation.
"If anyone was to ever find out, you said yourself it would be him ! And he was acting weird, ever since we went back to school."
"Everyone is weird. This is Amity Park. And they seem especially weird to you."
"Doesn't mean I'm not right."
"I know."
The rest was too silent for Lawrence to grasp anything, and he didn't dare approach them any further.
No curiosity nor worry could warrant on spying over grieving children.
(Because, for all they smiled and laughed, joked and whispered cheerfully, there was something, in the atmosphere around them, that reeked of sorrow.
Of… despair even.)
The children spent hours there, until Jasmine had created 14 crowns and solemnly laid them on top of each grave, except for the one Daniel was sitting on. The last crown, simply a circle of myosotis, ended in perched on Daniel's dark locks, and he gave his sister a crooked, awkward little smile as he thanked her.
The children got up, stayed silent before the graves for a few minutes, before Jasmine slipped her hand into Daniel's and they left.
The sun was just setting.
They had spent the full day there, maybe even longer than Lawrence had.
He didn't knew what to think.
(Had he ever, with these children ?)