“My faeries? What about yours?”
“They’re here. Tonight, they’re dark. Just hovering dots of darkness. Do you see them?”
“No. Where are they exactly?”
Annie became silent, staring ominously at the wall behind my bed. Then she pointed at the wall. “Over there. They’re kind of dancing. You don’t see them?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“See, I’m thinking maybe faeries only ever show themselves to specific people, the ones they choose to contact. So, my faeries contact me; yours contact you; but we can’t see each other’s faeries unless they decide to reveal themselves to both of us. But maybe, maybe, our faeries would all communicate with each other if they were in the same room with the two of us. What do you think? C’mon, summon your faeries.”
Oh God, I seriously felt like I was in way too deep. However, I realized I did seem to have a talent for lying, so I just kind of expanded upon that by adding a huge dose of dramatic acting.
I rummaged around in a cardboard box stuffed into my closet after our move and pulled out a Ouija Board box. “Well, we could try this.”
Annie looked at me with widened eyes. “A Ouija Board? Isn’t that to summon dead people?”
“I don’t know. I’m guessing it’s for calling up anything from the magical or spiritual realm, you know from another dimension. It’s worth a shot, I think.”
Annie looked doubtful. “Well, OK.”
We spread out the board on my bed and held the heart-shaped plastic piece with our fingertips. Annie’s fingers trembled and shook the plastic piece a bit, but it did manage to spell out the words: I am here. I am here. Be aware.
Annie jumped at the words Be aware, until she realized they didn’t spell Beware.
We looked around, focusing intently on everyday items, trying to increase our awareness. I noticed a pink glass vase on my dresser, how it was illuminated by the lamplight behind it. I noticed a golden pool of light spilt upon my dresser, traces of light splashed across the floor.
Suddenly, a strong gust of wind came out of nowhere.
The papers on which I had drawn my Leotard Girl fluttered on the desk, like birds about to take flight. As I started moving toward them to keep them from going the way of my papers across the front yard the night we moved into this godforsaken house, faeries suddenly popped out from behind a stack of books. It was so weird—the faeries were of two types, the ones I had imagined and the ones Annie had described; but mine had been a fabrication, a total lie. Where had they come from?
Annie’s faeries were brilliant specks of light and black spots of darkness, while mine looked like tiny humans with glittery wings.
I have to admit the human faeries, my kind of creatures, were a lot more troublesome than Annie’s. Annie’s zipped and zoomed around the room and provided quite a show; but mine threw my graphic novel sketches on the ground, then looked at me impishly with large innocent eyes. When I tried to grab them around the waist (I thought about grabbing them by the wings, but I was afraid of ripping them, they looked so fragile) they tore up the pages and spit on the scraps.
I was furious. On one scrap, Leotard Girl now had spit in her eye. And her eye had been torn from her head. Ugh. Created through the combined powers of robots and Martian magic, only to be trashed by faeries.
I glared at the flying creatures. Just as I realized how much I wanted to pull their tiny wings out of their backs, they disappeared. Pop! Disappeared into thin air. Just like that. Gone. Without any apology or explanation.
I looked at Annie. “OK, what the hell was that?”
Annie shrugged. “Faeries, I guess. Do you think it was the Ouija Board?”
Before I had time to answer, a wavering shape of fog floated out from behind the pink-and-gray checkered curtains hanging across my bay windows. I filled in the vague outline with the features of the boy with emerald eyes, as it seemed to have his basic dimensions. In that instant, I felt a cool breeze pass through me, leaving such intense longing in its wake, I felt I would go mad.
Then the room filled with a whisper saying, “Don’t despair. Repair all that is damaged. You hold the power within.”
Two seconds later, the fog disappeared, the scraps of Leotard Girl flew up into the air, came back together again and landed on my desk exactly where they had started out, as though nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened.
This time Annie turned to me. “Did you see that?”
“Pieces of graphic novel?” I asked.
“Uh-huh,” Annie answered.
“Yeah, I saw it. Did you see the fog? And hear that voice?”
Annie replied, “Yup. And ... yup.”
“Okeydoke, then. What do you think we should do now?”
“Call it a night?”
I laughed. “Yeah, that might just be the best idea. How are you going to get home? Call your limo driver?”
“Nah, I’m gonna walk.”
“In the dark? You gonna be OK?”
“Probably. I like to walk at night. I do it a lot.”
I said goodbye to Annie at the front door and watched her disappear into darkness.
I checked on my mom. She was mumbling in her sleep, struggling with her own darkness and demons.
Back upstairs in my room, I felt elated. I didn’t feel the least bit like cutting. Instead of the usual cloud of depression that took over my soul at the end of the day, I felt a sense of curiosity about what life might bring my way.
I sat down on my bed. I placed both of my hands on the plastic Ouija Board planchette, to see if I could get it to move without another person helping me.
The planchette started sliding around the board quite easily, landing on one letter after another. But, in the end, it spelled out nothing more than: Go to sleep. More later.
Damn. Probably the smart-ass faeries.
I folded up the Ouija Board and put it away. Then I opened my night table drawer, pulled out the white bowl and the shiny knife. I sketched bamboo branches on my arm with the tip of the knife, then cut into one branch and watched the bloodred liquid slide down the inner side of the bowl.
I never did handle frustration well. And I felt extremely frustrated not to have answers about the events that had occurred that night.
After I washed the bowl and knife, I returned them safely to their hiding place and went to bed.
I go to sleep when I say it’s time to go to sleep. Not when some stupid Ouija Board tells me to.
CHAPTER 5
The next day at school, I received something rather awesome. So awesome, in fact, that for one split second I was insanely happy that we had moved to this school district.
It happened in Creative Writing class. Mr. Hoffman made an announcement that everyone in his class was eligible to work for the school newspaper. I thought about it all through class. Right before the bell rang, Mr. Hoffman asked for volunteers. I raised my hand.
To everyone with our hands in the air, all four of us, Mr. Hoffman handed out laptop computers. We each got our own! I mean, holy crap, I never thought I’d be given a laptop by my school. Money doesn’t grow on trees and all that. Now I had two laptops and this one was a lot nicer than the one I owned.
Mr. Hoffman told us, “You can use these laptops however you want. You will all be treated as independent, responsible journalists. Use these computers to do research and to write and submit your newspaper articles. Submit them by email. I expect to see articles written with maturity and excellence on topics of benefit to your high school peers.”
Then he handed out a Parent Permission Form that basically covered the school’s asses for any kind of trouble teenagers might get themselves into while surfing the Internet. Basically, there would be no parental controls on our laptops, so that we could go wherever our virtual research took us.
Mr. Hoffman added, “Also, use these laptops to expand upon your creative writing skills. Start a blog. Self-publish a book. You will need to run these projects by me, of course, since
you represent our school as our journalists; but, trust me, I’m pretty liberal and open-minded about these types of projects. Creativity requires loose boundaries.”
Mr. Hoffman kind of exemplified his philosophy: top shirt button undone, tie loosened, suit pants and jacket wrinkled, gray hair wild and crazy, blue eyes twinkling with intelligence.
Oh my God, I had a shiny new laptop!
I don’t remember much about the rest of that day except running into Annie and finding out that she had also signed up to write for the school newspaper and had also received a laptop.
Life was good.
My mom had stayed home and been so out of it that morning, I had told her that I’d take the school bus home. On the long ride past a few blocks of expensive homes and many more dilapidated houses, I thought about the laptop cradled in my arms and what type of article I might write. Maybe something on Irish faeries, to legitimize my fascination with them in the eyes of my Creative Writing class. I planned to begin surfing the Internet as soon as I got home.
When we reached my stop, I jumped down from the bus, ran up to the front door of my house, unlocked it and flung it open. I looked around. My mom was sitting at the kitchen table, her hair a complete rat’s nest, dark circles under her bloodshot eyes. She was smoking a cigarette that dangled loosely from trembling fingertips. Dressed in a pink flannel nightgown with pictures of the cutest blue-eyed kittens all over it—strange and a bit disconcerting, considering her current state—she looked up as I entered the room.
I decided to hand her my Parent Permission Form while she was awake and conscious. I explained quickly, “Hey, Mom, I get to be a journalist for our high school newspaper and have a brand new laptop—much newer than the one I own!—if you sign this permission form.”
I set down my regular backpack and my computer backpack and wrestled the permission form out of the front compartment of the computer one. I slapped it down in front of my mother. “Here, can you sign it?”
She squinted at it. “Oh, I don’t know, Shade. How much is this gonna cost me?”
“Nothing. Not one single penny. My new school is kinda awesome. They provide the computers free.”
“Oh, Shade, Shade, Shade. You’re so young. There’s gotta be a catch.” Taking a puff on her cigarette, she returned to scrutinizing the form. I could tell she didn’t understand the legalese.
I played along, showing respect for her concerns. “Well, there is one catch...”
“I knew it.”
“I have to write articles for our school newspaper. I have to do research. My Creative Writing teacher also wants us to do extra creative writing projects. It’s going to be a lot of work.”
My mother studied me for a bit, trying to take in what I had just said. “Ah ha. I see. Well, there ya go. The catch. Are they expecting you to do all this work for free?”
“Yeah, they are. But I really want to do it. I’ll learn a lot. And I get a free laptop to use ... if you sign the permission form.”
I handed my mom a pen. She put down her cigarette, balancing it on the edge of an ashtray, and picked up the pen.
She signed the form. I snatched up the paper, hugged my mom and ran upstairs.
I opened the laptop, but couldn’t sign in. I tried all kinds of ways, but finally gave up. I figured I’d check with Mr. Hoffman the next day. Maybe I needed a special password.
I finished up my homework, turned off my bedroom lights, had a pretty lame pizza dinner with my mom, and then went outside to look at the stars and investigate our backyard as far as the porch lights carried.
A stream rushed along, splashing and gurgling around rocks, creating a natural boundary between our house and the neighborhood behind us. I lay down by the stream and gazed upward. The moon illuminated the darkness, a planet shined brightly and stars had popped out upon the night sky.
Daydreaming about having my byline on an actual newspaper article, I noticed that the light in my attic room was on. At first, I thought only about how pretty the golden light looked at the top of our house. Then I realized that I had turned the lights off. Furious that my mother must have gone into my room, I picked myself up, brushed off wet leaves and grass, totally got my stomach into a knot and stormed back into the house.
My mom was doing the dishes, or trying to. The sink was filled with suds, but the dishes kept slipping out of her hands.
I glared at her. “Were you up in my room?”
My mother whirled around. “No. I’ve been cleaning up here.”
I made an exasperated sound, which I’m sure my mother interpreted as teenage moodiness, and stomped up the stairs.
I tried turning the lights off, but they wouldn’t go off. I yelled downstairs, “Mom, my lights won’t turn off! Can you please talk to the landlord about this? I think the wiring’s faulty up here.”
I heard a dish plop into the soapy water downstairs. “Sure, sure, honey. I can do that.”
Yeah, when Hell freezes over.
I looked around my room. Something strange was going on. Most of my lights had dimmed. My room looked kind of dark. Except for the antique lamp topped with pink glass that sat on my dresser—it was positively glowing. A pool of pink light formed an illuminated circle on the dresser and a handle on the top drawer glinted.
I pulled open the drawer. Nothing unusual there. Just the underwear I had thrown into it, all jumbled up. I sorted through the silk and cotton pieces and discovered a compartment at the back of the drawer that required a key. I realized that it could be for jewelry and tried to open it. It was locked ... of course.
I thought about where I might hide a key if that drawer had originally been mine.
As I entertained various ideas, the pink light dimmed. Then the lamp on my desk—an old lamp with pink flowers painted on a frosted glass shade—lit up brilliantly and light spilled onto the handle of the bottom desk drawer. I took everything out of that drawer—papers, crayons, a stapler, a few packs of gum. Nothing unusual.
I decided to take out the drawer. Turning it upside down, I found a key taped to the outside bottom.
My heart skipped a few beats. This and a free laptop had surpassed my excitement quota for the day.
I tried the key in the lock of the compartment in my dresser.
Click. It opened.
Twinkling in the scraps of light from the pink lamp, deep in the recesses of my underwear drawer, in the secret compartment I had found, was the most beautiful necklace I had ever seen: an enormous blue gemstone suspended from a delicate silver chain.
I clutched the necklace in my hand. There appeared to be letters or symbols etched in black into the silver setting surrounding the blue stone. I peered at the engraving, but couldn’t decipher it.
I placed the necklace around my neck.
The world immediately shifted. Everything in my room looked old. The color of the walls changed to pale green. My canopy bed was gone, so was the couch. The furniture was simple, plain: a small wooden bed with a patchwork quilt and flat pillow, a simple wooden desk and chair.
Then the shape of Brandon Yates, the foggy figure with bright green eyes, appeared. I studied him more closely this time. He seemed to be the boy in the dream I had experienced my first night here. He had the same basic shape; his hair was about the same length. I couldn’t tell, though, if he had freckles. By his side stood the three-year-old boy I had seen falling down the stairs in my nightmare that same first night.
Brandon put his arm around the young boy. “This is my brother, Neil.”
I had no idea what to say. “How do you do, Neil?”
Neil screamed and disappeared, popped into oblivion within a wisp of smoke. As he did so, Brandon’s misty shape filled in with color. Yup, he was definitely the boy in my dream: bright green eyes, freckles, light brown hair.
Brandon spoke next, “So, how do you like the necklace?”
I had forgotten about it. Wrapping my fingers around the gemstone and looking down at it, I answered, “It’s beautiful. Do
you know what it is? Who it belonged to?”
“It was my grandmother’s. See this attic room the way it is now?”
“Yeah, it’s so different.”
“That’s how it looked when I lived here, when it was my room. The necklace has certain powers; it’s kind of like an amulet. I always have a sense of where it is, who’s wearing it. It’s lain dormant for years, just tucked away in that top drawer of your dresser. When you put it on, you can reach me. Just whisper my name, Brandon, if you need me.”
“OK.” I have to admit, this all kind of freaked me out. “Now, wait a minute. Are you watching me when I change my clothes and all?”
Shade Page 4