When I Cast Your Shadow

by Sarah Porter

  “It’s a good look for you, Everett. I mean, talking to me.” She gives me the sweetest smile before she walks off.

  It’s enough to make me get flustered and quiet again, though not for too long. I mean, the only reason I don’t have a raging crush on Elena is that it would be so stupidly hopeless if I did. I try not to be more of an idiot than I can help.

  But if Dashiell kept on possessing me, maybe liking her wouldn’t be so pathetic. I wouldn’t still be a virgin when I hit twenty-five. My grades would go up. Maybe I’d still be a fat loser, but people would perceive that as a fabulous thing to be in my very special case.

  He isn’t taking me over outright, but it’s like he’s leaking, seeping through me. I’m me, but people can smell the him-ish-ness and they just eat it up. It’s like when Ruby bought that sexy velvet dress, probably, but I get the feeling Dash is deliberately going a little heavier with me. He’s letting me have the benefit of being more like he was.

  I catch Ruby looking at me funny. But so’s everybody else. I’m just sorry I didn’t wear the sweater.

  I told him he couldn’t bribe me—didn’t I? But possibly that’s not entirely true. Every man has his price, Never-Ever. I don’t know if it’s me thinking in Dashiell’s voice, or Dash oozing the words at me from wherever he’s hiding. By the end of the day I’ve been invited to a party on Friday by kids who would maybe say hi to Ruby, but never glance at me: they’re all achievement-oriented but also glamorous rebel types, destined to mouth off at their professors at Yale. And to know more than their professors do, too. They’ll be human rights lawyers and curate art museums and marry analogues of each other, and everything they do will be so inevitable that it’s almost like they’ve got no choice at all.

  It’s that kind of school, the kind that costs more than most colleges. Ruby and I are maybe overprivileged—I know we are, actually—but we pale by freaking comparison with a lot of the kids here. I could almost understand why Dashiell did the things he did, looking at them. He made bad choices, no one is arguing about that part. But choices are what they were.

  It was the fact that his behavior was so utterly, hopelessly bad that proved he was choosing. If that makes any sense.

  He lets me enjoy it until school lets out. Then it’s like, Playtime’s over, Never-Ever—though I still don’t know if it’s me or him thinking the words—and another mind kind of up and shoves my mind out of the way. There’s a nauseating sideways lurch inside my skull and the trees in front of me lean like a ship going under. But instead of leaning into ocean waves, they’re falling from the onslaught of headachey darkness.

  And then that’s all I see, darkness. Or maybe I don’t see it. I’m just lost in this not-place.

  I panic—because it’s disturbing as hell—and I try to shove back, to see, to claw my way to a surface I can barely sense. This isn’t the moment for that, Never, and this time it’s him for real. Just relax while I take care of things, and you’ll be back in the saddle soon enough. And for an instant my vision comes back like a strobe, I guess like how he said he could choose to let Ruby be conscious if he felt like it. I can feel my body, in this abrupt flickering way, enough to register my legs walking briskly. And I can see enough of the world to understand that we’re angling fast toward the 7th Avenue subway.

  That’s it for a while. I try not to fight, to just bob around in my black Jell-O galaxy. Because, I mean, I told him he could. We have a deal and this is my end of it. I can still think, but in a drowsy way where the processing goes at about half the normal speed. But I do get that this is why he usually waited until Ruby was asleep to take over her body; he didn’t want her struggling. He didn’t want to spend the effort to keep stuffing her down. Dashiell’s always hated competition.

  I don’t know how much time passes, but after a while he starts giving me little two-second windows onto where we are, maybe just for kicks. An ancient man in ragged blue stands in front of us in a subway car, swaying and singing to himself with his eyes closed. Some strange language; high, throbbing notes. Later there’s an ugly street with run-down salons and a live-chicken-slaughtering place venting a stink of blood and rotting feathers. A man walks by with a flailing bird stuffed under his arm. It’s definitely not a part of New York I’ve ever seen before, because I guess I’ve mostly seen the fancy parts. Then an African-American girl about my age, with corkscrew hair and a pink satin jacket, dancing down the sidewalk—I think just because Dashiell thinks she’s pretty.

  And then nothing, nothing, nothing, until the darkness has a beat.

  * * *

  I hear something outside the isolation chamber where Dashiell’s got me stuffed. I’m not even sure I hear it because he wants me to; it might just be so loud that he can’t completely keep it out. There was that time Ruby overheard us talking, so maybe his censorship isn’t always a hundred percent? A grinding noise. Then I get a quick glimpse: Dashiell’s hand—or technically that would be my hand—holding some buzzing, growling tool I don’t recognize. Did he shoplift it in my body? My hand vibrates and the tool chews away at a rusty chain. I try to look around and I just manage to see a boarded-up, rat-packed, fire-singed house a few feet away—this must be the place. Then Dashiell gets irritated; I’m grabbing for control, after all. He practically slams my consciousness back down into nowhere.

  But I find myself pushing back. Not even on purpose. I just want to see what’s happening, and it turns out that Dashiell can’t completely stop me, though I can feel he’s trying hard. It’s like my mind crests to the surface—and I see a busted-open mailbox shuffling with age-crisped Chinese takeout menus and crumbling leaves. The rusty chain, popped and dangling. Then Dash shoves me under. Then I’m up again, gulping at external reality—his hand, or that would be my hand, digging under all the crap. No wonder he prefers to do this with somebody who’s asleep, all weak and passive. Under again. If these were our bodies struggling and not our minds, Dashiell would be sitting on my head. In a completely nonmaterial way, I mean, that’s kind of what it feels like.

  I’m in the darkness and he slams me down hard: I’m knocked someplace where I can’t do anything but fall. All at once I’m sliding deeper, through these jagged icebergs of detritus that I can barely make out. After a while I feel myself tap down in whirls of reddish blur.

  Then maybe I’m adjusting to being here, because it’s starting to look like I’m in some kind of factory made out of shadows. I’m able to see shapes that resemble machinery: cylinders and gears lit in smoky neon green and flashing scarlet. In fact, whatever this place is, it’s looking pretty familiar.

  And I hear footsteps. Soft and stealthy, but whispering closer. Definitely more than one person; maybe three or four?

  The crazy thing is that the steps aren’t coming from the outside world, where Dashiell’s controlling the show again.

  They’re coming from the darkness behind me. Land of the Dead, Dash called it. And I know he hears them too, because I can feel his terror blasting through me.

  RUBY SLIPPERS

  Liv wants to hang out after school, and I’m glad to go back to her house since I need anything in the world that can distract me from the memory of what I saw last night: Everett speaking with Dashiell’s voice, Everett animated by Dashiell’s will. I would drive myself insane wondering if there was any way that could be untrue—because possibly, possibly Everett dreamed he was Dashiell and sleepwalked to my door. Possibly he was dreaming so hard that the dream took him over, filled him completely like helium swelling a balloon, and he talked to me and hugged me convinced he was our big brother. Alive again, warm and breathing.

  But I can’t take that idea seriously, because I promised Dash I believed in him. And besides, I saw how Ever was acting today, colored all over by Dashiell’s way of being. I know the truth.

  I have trouble focusing on what Liv is talking about, though—boys and clothes and teachers and clothes and more boys. It’s not that I think those things don’t matter, because I do, and I want
Liv to get everything that’s important to her, Aidan Clarke and that rhinestone-speckled sweater and a rain of flowers whenever she’s sad. But it’s hard to care about those things as much as I used to, because all of them are within the realm of possibility: even Aidan, even if Liv doesn’t think so.

  My heart now belongs to the impossible, to everything that is luminous and ascendant and free of everyday tedium. Whatever cannot, absolutely cannot be is the new center of the universe for me, and everything that used to matter is far away, orbiting so slowly and dimly that I can barely remember what it looked like. I know I won’t miss my old world, either.

  How could I not feel this way, when my brother who died has come back to me?

  * * *

  It’s November; the light gives up early. In Liv’s window the sky is first that incredible violet-blue: a blue that’s so beautifully close to impossible that I can really see it. Then plain, dull, starless black—and Liv’s house is up past Court Street, so it means a long walk over the Gowanus Canal and then through the industrial areas near it, which can feel a little spooky after dark. “I should go.”

  “You can wait for my mom if you want. She’ll drive you. She might not be home until later, though.”

  I don’t want to wait, not for anything. The night outside looks vast and wild enough to encompass anything, no matter how extraordinary. It looks big enough to hold me. “That’s okay. I feel like walking.”

  Liv looks kind of worried; she’s always nervous about muggers and perverts and creatures spun out of candy wrappers and air. But she doesn’t say anything, because she doesn’t want me to make fun of her. There’re a few more minutes of chitchat to get through, but then I’m outside and in my new world where the crazier something seems, the truer it has to be.

  And since I am a walking miracle myself, I believe I’ll be perfectly at home here.

  As I step through her front door I completely lose track of myself for a long, drowsy moment. My mind disappears inside a black velvet kiss; that’s been happening to me recently, and I’m learning to accept it.

  Then I’m back on Liv’s stoop, conscious again, holding tight to her railing and staring down at a potted rosebush by the gate. One wilted apricot flower still clings there, its petals shuddering.

  At first I don’t want to go straight home. The night is so fresh and cool that it crystallizes in my hair, bright and flashing. I wander down Smith Street, and in the store windows the dresses waft on invisible gusts and wave to me. For a while I sit in a café sipping cocoa and just absorbing how beautiful everything is, every last shadow on the sidewalk outside.

  But then it occurs to me that Dashiell might be waiting for me back at our house, Dashiell in Everett’s body. I’ve known for days now Dash needs us, that we have to be ready, and maybe I’m finally about to learn why; I can’t just leave him hanging! I jump up and run out into the street again. A few more blocks and I’ve reached the Union Street Bridge. The Gowanus has its usual rank, yellowish smell but I stop for a moment anyway to catch my breath and watch the rippling reflections: brilliance suspended on the dark.

  “Ruby,” someone calls. The voice is a little girl’s—nine years old, maybe? The freakiest part is that it sounds like it’s coming from under the bridge, where nobody should be, especially not a child. The Gowanus is incredibly polluted and you should be careful to stay away from the water. “Ruby! Down here.”

  I’m already bending over the railing, searching for the girl who’s calling me; I mean, apart from the fact that she recognizes me from somewhere, she probably needs help. There’s some kind of platform made of squared-off logs sticking out under the walkway, I can see it now, with a ladder leading down to it. I can make out a mass of darkness that might be a person, but it’s way too big to be a child.

  “Ruby!” the dark shape calls. “Ruby, come down to me! Please!”

  Shivers dart through me and my heart lurches. “No!”

  “Ruby Bohnacker,” the figure calls, wheedling now, “please come.” And then it bursts into peals of childish laughter.

  And it steps out to where a beam of light projects from a building on shore, showing itself to me.

  It’s a man, probably in his late fifties, gray and thick-bodied and bearded. He’s still laughing hysterically in his fourth-grade voice—though now I can hear how forced it is, an awful piercing falsetto.

  “See,” he says once he catches his breath—if I should even call this person he, because the high, sassy tone and the fluttering hands and the giggling are all so baby-girlish, even prissy, that it’s repulsive to see. My back is prickling. “See, it’s too hard with a stranger! They won’t come. It’s easier for me because I can look so innocent sometimes, but I still have to try and try, over and over and over.…”

  Innocent? The guy looks halfway between an old hippie and a serial killer. I should run, I know it—but on the other hand if he moves for that ladder I’ll see right away, and I’ll have a decent head start. “Who are you?”

  The man shrugs. “You can call me Mabel, if you’d like to. I don’t mind if you do or you don’t.”

  I can’t get used to that birdlike voice warbling out of that oversized, hairy face, with its watery blue eyes turned up to look at me. “Mabel,” I say; it’s definitely a name for the voice, not for the hulking body. “Mabel. How do you know about me?”

  “From Dashiell,” Mabel says, like that was an idiotic question. “He told me. He showed me. He said it was nice being with me, because it was almost like having his little sister back again.”

  That does it, I’m shivering and the prickling on my back and neck needles me like ice. “How—” I start. “I mean, when did you meet Dashiell?” I can barely choke the words out. “Was it recently?”

  Mabel shrugs again, but now she’s smiling. Because it’s unavoidable now: whatever this person looks like, it’s a she. It’s a horrible smile, the smile of a sadistic child crushing a puppy’s foot.

  “Do you want to know what I did?” she asks. She waves both hands up and down her thick man’s body. “I blew a big hole through him. With a gun. He was the one who put the gun there, but he was still so surprised that his eyes popped out! And then they rolled away.”

  My legs are wavering under me, but as far as I can see the man is fine. There’s no blood on his clothes or anything, so probably what Mabel is telling me is just some kind of eerie make-believe.

  “Do you mean—are you saying you shot the man you’re inside right now?”

  A gray tabby cat comes stalking along the bridge’s railing and Mabel glances at it nervously; it’s still fifteen feet away, but heading in our direction in a weirdly determined manner. Then another cat follows, a puffy, swaying marmalade; I’ve never seen cats on this bridge before. Another, just behind: a slim tuxedo.

  “I don’t care to speak to you any longer,” Mabel mutters, not looking at me. “You should go away.”

  “Mabel, I need to understand what you’ve been telling me! When you met Dashiell—”

  “Be quiet! And anyway I’m not the only one who knows about you!”

  The gray cat leading the procession rubs against my elbow. Then it pounces, a smoky blur plunging straight for Mabel’s big bearded face.

  She, or he, screams. And leaps into the canal, splashing through water so toxic that I’ve been warned all my life to never even touch it.

  The gray cat lands heavily on the wooden platform, back bristling, and bursts into a long yowl. The others—and there are more of them now, a lot more, like they’ve whispered in from nowhere—thump down after him, twisting together in a knot of fur inches from the water. All of them are screaming and spitting after Mabel, now swimming fast for a barge near the shore. Except for a single, curious glance from the fat orange one, none of the cats seem much interested in me.

  But that doesn’t stop me from running, charging frantically off the bridge and up the street, my stomach and throat full of something that feels like bubbling lead and my heart banging
at my ribs. I know I just saw something very important, but I can’t guess what it means.

  Should I have known? Just because impossible things are true in this world, that doesn’t mean all of them are miracles. And it doesn’t mean they won’t try to hurt me.

  NEVER-EVER

  I’m alone, in this vague, green-spangled space vibrating with the steps of people I can’t see. Adrenaline hits the air like a shock wave; I don’t know who’s out there or what they want, but I know they’re coming after me. I want to run, but for a long moment—too long—it’s like I can’t remember how to control my own legs, or where they are under me. I can feel Dashiell’s anxiety raining down from somewhere far away, saying, Move, Never, move, Never, move! The shiver of those steps is closing in on three sides of me, now; they’ve almost got me surrounded.

  Then my feet solidify out of the dream-mush and instantly explode into motion. What I see is so jumbled, though, all flashing golden tubes and red-rimmed pits. I’m weaving from side to side, trying to guess which slab of darkness is a way through and which is just a wall. The people behind me are running too, and the pulses from their steps surge up my legs and drive my fear higher and tighter in my chest. I crash into some kind of blockage I can’t even see, roll off sideways, and purely by luck slide into a green-lit gap that wasn’t there an instant before.

  I’m not going to make it, though. This is their territory, they must know every bend in the place, and they can just herd me into a dead end. Dash, I can’t get out of here. Dash, please help. I’m thinking it but I know it’s useless. He’s not about to risk himself for me; I’m on my own.

  My foot hits something like greased space and I go into a swooping slide, teeter, and catch myself at an angle on some kind of tank. The footsteps are pounding so close that I can’t stop myself from gawking back at the people chasing me.