It was very weird seeing her full name on anything, let alone a gravestone – or metal graveplaque anyway.

Imogen Adél Farrago

There were no dates. Trying to be practical Imogen supposed that was lucky because one day when she was actually dead, her family would be able to put her ashes here if they stayed in Destiny City. Everyone else in her family to have died in the last eighteen years had been cremated in part because the urns could be moved from crematorium garden to crematorium garden should the living family members need to move. It was costly but her grandmother Erce believed that your kin should be nearby even in death. She had refused to move to Destiny City without her husband’s ashes coming here and if they hadn’t then Sarah and Imogen wouldn’t have moved here, unable to leave her alone in their old town. So, her grandfather’s ashes had been moved to one of the lower plots here and Imo’s own father had a plot in these gardens too now.

Imogen looked around as she knelt in front of her plaque. This place was a tiered rockery, with mosses and other hardy plants growing amongst the stones, pretty colours still showing in some little flowers. The trees that were scattered about were all bare branched and she had no doubt that her grandmother would think the building down the bottom of the slop where funerals andsuch took place was a bit too far away for her liking. All this sloping uphill walk to visit her granddaughter! But it wasn’t a bad place really. Quite and well kept like she guessed these places should be.

The ashes that had been placed here under her name had been removed for testing to see if they were human. Once the shock of having Imogen back had worn off her mother (and y’know, the authorities) had wondered just who or what she’d buried here. Supposedly there had been a body at the hospital after the car crash but Sarah chosen not to look at it. She'd been told and the (probably false) records had showed the head had been so badly damaged in the accident that it was unidentifiable by sight but supposedly dental records had matched and belongings and the fact Imogen never turned up… she’d been declared dead and the corpse cremated at the hospital chapel as her.

Except now it was being called into question if there’d ever even been a body. The records were there but no actual witnesses to actually seeing the body had stepped forward. Imogen hoped the ashes were from wood or something. Things were such a mess at Destiny Memorial, with so many students now alive when they’d all be declared dead of different things a year ago.

She fished out the key that the staff had given her down at the crematorium building. There were no flowers in the little holder by her plaque, the old ones cleared away when dead by the gardeners probably and her mother hadn’t come to replace them since Imo turned up alive. There was however on most plots under the plaque a little weatherproof lockable box and that was why Imogen was here, being weirded out by her own grave.

Some people kept little books in these boxes to write in every time they visited and her mother had put in the odd letter or note. Mostly however she’d put in things to be taken out to remind her of Imo. That included prints of favourite photographs, a lock of her hair from when she was little tucked into an envelope and small belongings like her favourite necklace. Her mother Sarah had mentioned needing to pick them up sometime but being too busy. Home for the weekend from Crystal, Imogen had thought that she could go get them for her mother, so she’d grabbed the documents from her mother’s desk and hopped a bus over here.

Imogen burst into tears. She shouldn’t have come. This was all very weird and it made it really hit home that her family had thought she was dead. That they’d been so sad was a thousand times worse than her terror and anger at loosing a year of her life to Barren Pines. She hated to think of her mother and grandmother grieving for a year when she’d been across the city. Taking lessons and mucking about with Aggie and…she could remember sending letters home from the school post box but obviously they’d never gotten through. Why had she never tried to visit them? She couldn’t imagine being in the same city for half a year and not visiting her family. Looking back even the half-year should could remember at Barren Pines hadn’t been normal, not really.

She hated all this. She just wanted to forget all this and get on with being happy. But every now and then something like this came up to make her think about it again. So much for 'drawing a veil' over BP.

Scooping up the letters and stuff into her bag, Imo quickly placed her charm necklace (a little acorn that had been her grandmothers first before it had been hers) around her neck. Then hightailed it back to the building. She needed to give back the key to the empty box and sign out. Then if she could just make it home before she broke down completely that would be grand.

It was very weird seeing her name on a gravestone – but it was even worse crying over it.