Free Over the Hills and Far Away (NOLA's Own #1) by Kelli Jean

up, wanting to talk with me and touch me. I gritted my teeth and bore it even though I couldn’t say it was done with any sort of grace. My head hurt with the effort it took me not to explode.
    Finally, they started to close Mom’s casket. Grandma and Da—who was weeping, weeping, weeping—stood next to it and watched as the oak lid descended over her waxed features.
    She was to be taken to the crematorium. She had never wanted to be buried, occupying wasted space, rotting in a box. She had wanted her ashes scattered in the flowerbeds in the backyard where she’d lived nearly her whole life.
    I need to get the hell out of here, I thought, and away from all these fucking people .
    I decided I was going to back out of dinner with the family even though I knew they would be upset. I didn’t want food. Everyone had kept bringing us fucking food, like greasy nonorganic casseroles I wouldn’t feed to a rat. With the amount people had been dropping off, one would think we needed to feed the whole fucking Tucker’s Farm Community.
    I should be grateful that so many people loved her and wanted to say good-bye, but I’m too broken to give a shit. One day, I’ll look back and be grateful, but right now, I can’t.
    “Right,” I grunted rudely after most of the people left. “I need to get out of here—”
    “Kenna, dinna ye dare think ye’re leavin’,” Da half-hissed, half-snotted at me, his Scottish brogue rumbling thickly through the waterworks.
    “I am leaving. I’m not going to dinner,” I told him flatly. “I need to have some fucking—”
    “Language!” Da barked at me, his already swollen red face going puce.
    “Really?” I scoffed. “I’m not hungry, and I’m not in the mood to be in another public place. I’m fucking leaving,” I snapped. I turned on my heel to walk out of the large room.
    “Let her go, Sigmund,” Gloria said. “She’s hurting badly. Can’t you see that?”
    No, he can’t because he can’t see past his own grief and despair to realize that his family is just as hurt and broken as he is. He wasn’t there to watch her life slowly get leeched away, day after day after day. No, he got to hole himself up with the mother of his other child and forget. I don’t care if Mom told him to go. He should’ve been around! He should’ve fucking given a shit about the rest of us!
    Alys and Lili ran after me, their heels clicking behind my long strides to the car. They had ridden with me on the way over, but that didn’t mean they had to come with me now.
    “Kenna!” Alys started to chide me.
    I could hear it in her voice that she thought I was in the wrong, and she was probably right.
    “Stay if you want. I need to leave,” I said, something in my tone halting her chastisement.
    “Where are we going?” asked Lili, hopping into shotgun position.
    Alys huffed angrily and jumped into the backseat.
    We would be going to that seedy backwater gas station that sold alcohol to minors. Normally, I didn’t drink. It didn’t ever do anything for me. I always preferred weed or even mushrooms. But I had the feeling that what I really wanted was to suck down something that would drown this rage and maybe help me cry.
    At the gas station, we selected colorful bottles of Mad Dog 20/20. I got blue, Alys went red, and Lili chose purple.
    We drove back to Grandma’s, and I was relieved to see that no one else had returned. We headed inside and changed out of our fancy black mourning get-ups and into comfortable clothes and sneakers. Instead of going out back, we traipsed over to the side gate that led to the Plantation House property.
    “Shit. It is fucking creepy back here,” whispered Lili.
    We picked our way through the dense foliage of ferns, vines, thick trees, and in some places, chest-high grass. Well, it was chest-high on me. Lili got swallowed up in it. The only way we could tell she was still with us was the fact that the grass tips were moving. It smelled like rotting vegetation,