Rumor

Amelia Loeffler is a born and raised Kentuckian currently living in North Carolina and studying at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Rumor" was originally a finalist in Short Édition's Long Story Short Award contest, 2022.

Rumor has it the lake is a graveyard, she says.There are bones down there, tumbled smooth and collecting algaealongside sunken pennies, lost spoons, decaying bandages,secrets chewed like gum and spit off the dock at night.Bet you can't touch the bottom, she laughs.Her dare sounds like my favorite song played on a violinso I pike dive off the kayak and flutter my feet,heart, eyelids, fingertips, reaching for mud at the bottom,or the molten center of Earth, or the meterstick of breathbetween us when we sleep. Whichever comes first.Rumor has it two girls lived alone in those woods,at the end of t

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