The Secret Society of the Pink Crystal Ball Read Online Free PDF

on the other side of my mother, is holding hands with a woman dressed in a flowing, flowery sleeveless number. The woman has a giant graphic tattoo on her arm of a mother breast-feeding two babies at the same time.
    Then there’s the woman leading the service. She’s wearing a long black robe, her eyes are abnormally large, and her gray wiry hair is sticking up everywhere—as if she were struck by lightning. (Sorry. Bad joke.) She could pass either for a judge hopped up on amphetamines or a substitute teacher at the Hogwarts School.
    I’m also really uncomfortable (physically, that is), because my mother said that I had to wear a dress and high heels, and now. I’m having a hard time figuring out how to sit on the floor without flashing my underwear to the man sitting across from me in the circle (who, incidentally, has a gray ponytail and is missing four fingers on his left hand).
    But the worst part is that I’m too distracted by the oddity of it all to feel anything.
    The lady in the robe keeps talking about my aunt Kate, saying really nice things about her…and I keep glancing over at my mom to see if she’s going to start crying again. But she doesn’t, and I wonder if she’s feeling the same way I am. I look past my mom over to my dad, but I have to turn away because I can tell that he’s trying really hard not to crack up—and I know that if he catches my eye, we’ll both burst out laughing. I don’t want to be disrespectful. Although, Jerry Garcia’s palm is really sweaty, and I am wondering if it would be considered disrespectful if I were to let go of it and wipe my hand on my dress.
    â€œWill everyone now please rise,” says the lady in the black robe. “One at a time, take your turn to speak to our beloved Kate. Tell her whatever you need to. Help her in her journey into death.”
    Jerry Garcia smiles at me and drops my hand as he stands up. Oh, thank God . I notice, however, that he has tears in his eyes, and I wonder how he knew Kiki. Actually, I wonder how any of these people knew Kiki.
    The lady in the robe approaches the urn and kneels down next to it.
    â€œKate,” she says to the urn, “I wish you peace in the afterlife. May you be reborn into a better world.” She walks over to an empty spot on the floor and sits down, cross-legged. I notice that under her black robe, she’s wearing jeans and Birkenstocks. Her toenails are yellow, gnarled, and unpolished, and I’m sorry that I even looked at them.
    Everyone else has stood up and is now in line, waiting to talk to my aunt’s ashes, except for me, my mom, and my dad. I started to stand up when the lady in the robe said that we should, but my mom gave me a look of death, so I sat right back down. Now she’s staring straight ahead. Her teeth are gritted and her face is a deep shade of red. I recognize that face. It’s the same face she made when I was ten and I captured a squirrel and brought it into the house because I wanted it to be our family pet.
    â€œWhat do we do?” I finally whisper to her.
    â€œWe sit here,” she hisses. “And when this ridiculousness is over, we will take my sister’s ashes, and we will go home and have a proper memorial service for her. In a church. With chairs.”
    So that’s what’s bothering her. It isn’t the ceremony itself, it’s that she’s not in charge. Out of the corner of my eye, I see that Jerry Garcia is next in line. When he kneels down to take his turn, I strain to hear him. There are obviously a lot of things about Kiki that I didn’t know, but I can’t really imagine her as a bad-ass motorcycle chick.
    â€œKate,” Jerry Garcia says, dabbing at his eyes. “I will never forget how good you were to my Sadie. When she was a kitten and she broke her little paw…” His voice breaks, and the guy behind him pats him on the shoulder. “You just fed