Annaka

two in the morning. I don’t want you to wake up your grandmother.”
“It’s nothing.” I caught my breath and thought fast. “I just wanted to see some old photo albums and got spooked. There was a bat; it flew out the window.”
“A bat?!” She was alarmed. “Oh no.” She started shaking her head. “Was there just one? If there’s more, we may have an issue….” Mom had that stressed look on her face.
“There was just one, and it’s gone now. I promise,” I lied. I made my way to my room. I shut the door to my bedroom and covered myself with the blankets.
I couldn’t believe what had just transpired.
Clay was here all this time.
I had so many questions I couldn’t process, while my heart was beating out of my chest. It felt like I had motion sickness but I kept myself under the blankets with one eye peeking out. There was no sign of him.
That…couldn’t have just happened, I said to myself. He’s still here?! I was breathing real heavy and checked my phone: 2:23 a.m. I had to be up in less than six hours. I looked across my bedroom again and saw the inside my closet. There read Clay above some measurements, right beside mine.

Chapter 4
The next morning it felt like my very bones were shaking. Clouds covered the sky, and I was filled to the brim with grief and confusion. Today was Grampy’s funeral, but what I had seen the night before…I couldn’t get that image out of my head. I knew what I saw—someone who looked like Clay. He spoke like Clay. Except he was older. What could he want with my journal? Grampy had given me that journal, and it was the only thing of his I had left. I knew I had to find it.
These thoughts were filling my head while I sat near the entrance of the church. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone. I felt so out of it. I looked across the funeral home at the giant photo of my grandfather, and it made me think back to the last time I actually spoke to him. It had been my sixteenth birthday. He called me, as he usually did. And he told me the story he always told, about the first time he heard my voice. I loved the way he told it. That night I had lain on the roof of our apartment building in Halifax speaking to him. At one point he asked if I could see the same stars he was looking at. I replied, “You can’t really see the stars too well in Halifax.”
“That’s a shame,” Grampy said. “But I’m sure there’s more opportunity over there for you.”
“Maybe,” I replied. “But it isn’t nearly as fun. Not much space for campfires.”
“Oh, so you’re looking for a story, are you?”
“We do this every year.” I laughed at his slick transition. “You’re going to tell it to me either way, so let’s get it over with.”
“All right, all right, well here it is. The first time I heard your voice, I drove you, your mother, and Nan to the hospital. We were waiting and your stubborn butt wouldn’t come out.” (He would always say that line.)
“I inherited that from you,” I shot back. I had been waiting a good six months to use that one.
He laughed and continued. “A little later, your grandmother told me to head home and clean up the house. She said she knew you’d be coming any minute. And I replied, ‘We’ve been here for eight hours, what makes you say that now?’ She said that she had a feeling. So I drove home, cleaned up the entire house. Top to bottom. The floors were sparkling.”
“Sparkling?” I cut in. “That’s some serious elbow grease.”
“Oh, believe me when I say sparkling. I put in so much work that I fell asleep on the couch and couldn’t hear the phone rigging.”
“That sounds just like you,” I said with a roll of my eyes.
“I wasn’t asleep forever, only about an hour. But when I woke up, I saw a message was on the answering machine. It was from your grandmother and she was shouting, ‘Rudy, Rudy! Pick up the phone. Come meet your granddaughter! And dress nicely.’”
That was something Nan would say. I smiled.
“And in the background,” he continued, “all I heard was you crying up a storm. I thought to myself that you had good lungs. I knew you had something to say and always would. When they told me your name, a tear came to my eye. They told me, ‘Her name is Annaka.’”
Grampy had always really liked my name. A lot more than I did. I never knew why, and I never thought to ask…and now I’d never be able to. I guess the saddest part of that memory was knowing that was the last time I would ever hear his voice.
Fast-forward almost a year, and here we were. I could see Mom on the other end of the church with Nan. There were lots of black folks around. There is a big misconception about Yarmouth having no black people, but that’s where Nan’s people stem from. Nova Scotia isn’t as white as people think it is, even if it is pretty white sometimes. Though I didn’t remember any of them, they all remembered me.
“Look at how much you’ve grown, Annaka,” an older black woman said to me. “I’m so sorry about your loss, dear.”
“Thank you.” I nodded, not knowing what else to say. I didn’t correct her about my name; I wasn’t in the mood for the response it would bring.
“I’m your distant cousin, Carla,” the woman continued. “Not sure if you remember me.”
I wish I did.
“I remember,” I lied with a smile. I didn’t want to be rude, and it was probably a lot easier to just lie. To be honest, I didn’t feel like hearing stories about everything that happened in the last ten years, or having to