Shade

by Marilyn Peake

  Then, in the real world, Mrs. Watts gets really, really angry. I decide to play around with puns about her name. A thousand-watt lightbulb pops into existence above her head. Laser beams shoot out of her eyes and pierce the forehead of Jane Smith.

  It’s a total accident. The kids all run screaming from the classroom. Mrs. Watts is shocked. She runs over to Jane, holds her in her arms, shouts for the school nurse, looks up toward Heaven and asks what has she done?

  Several cartoon panels later, Jane wakes up in a school infirmary bed. She has a small hole in her head through which a laser beam shoots out and shatters a glass of water. A speech bubble above Jane’s head reads, “I wanted that glass of water, very badly. Now, what have I done?”

  The next day at school, I decided to show the developing graphic novel story to Kailee. She liked it enough to show it to everyone running the school newspaper. They asked if I’d like to publish it as an ongoing feature in the school paper. I felt very nervous about doing this, but agreed. New chapter in my own life as well the life of Jane Smith, it seemed.

  Inundated by art assignments, I kept my promise to visit the local haunted house with Annie on Halloween night.

  Together, we went shopping for costumes at a local thrift store. I had to use a thrift store because I couldn’t afford anything else, but going there was Annie’s idea, God knows why with her family’s money. I was very thankful she suggested it and didn’t ask questions.

  We rifled through bins of masks and hats. We both hated the popular girl costumes displayed throughout the store, little more than an excuse to dress up like a sexy bimbo on Halloween night, not much to do with being imaginative.

  Annie talked me into dressing up like Leotard Girl, although I hadn’t actually gotten to the part of the graphic novel where her entire superhero outfit was described yet. I hadn’t even conceptualized her entire look yet. Annie helped me make choices: red leotards, since I already knew those would be red, and a forehead flashlight to symbolize the laser beam blasted into Jane Smith’s head, the first of her many superpowers. We found a blonde wig that pretty much matched the length and style of Leotard Girl’s hair. We picked out a cute red plaid skirt that would show off the leotards. I knew I had a heavy red sweater and short black boots at home that would work well with the skirt, so that saved me some money.

  Annie picked out the most awesome witch’s costume. It came with a wide-brimmed black hat studded with fake green gems. At the counter while we were checking out, Annie found plastic fingernails painted with spiderwebs and bought those, too.

  On Halloween night, I sat down to dinner to eat pizza with my mom. About halfway through dinner, she announced that she’d be going out to a party.

  “Oh, no, Mom. I’m not staying home and giving out candy. I’m not doing it! I’m the teenager here and I have the chance to go out with friends.”

  My mother just stared at me. She picked up a glass of water and took a sip. Then she simply said, “OK. Fine with me. I’ll just put a bowl of candy outside our front door with a sign for the kids to help themselves. Problem solved.”

  No fuss, no muss. Wow. I gobbled down my pizza and ran upstairs to turn myself into Leotard Girl ... even cooler, to pretend I had the normal name of Jane Smith. Twist of fate: I become normal on Halloween. One could only hope.

  At the last minute, after zipping up my ankle-high black boots and getting ready to pull a black jacket over my sweater because it was so incredibly cold outside, I thought of the blue amulet and decided to throw that on over the turtleneck of my sweater.

  I unlocked it from its protective compartment in my dresser and carefully placed it around my neck. It looked fantastic. The gem was so large, I figured everyone would just think it a gaudy Halloween trinket.

  I bounced down the stairs, ran past my mom on my way out of the house and waved goodbye before she had the chance to change her mind about how we were giving out candy that year.

  I met up with Annie a couple of blocks away from my house. She wanted to meet up on a particular corner along the route to the haunted house in order to save us some time. She also suggested we do a little bit of trick-or-treating along the way. I was totally into that. I brought along a ruby-red pillow case I had found in the walk-in closet of my bedroom.

  Annie was late. I waited about twenty minutes before she showed up, enough time to give me the creeps.

  I hadn’t realized it before, but there were two abandoned houses on the block where I was standing. They were huge houses, Victorian style like my own. I imagined them in their heyday. They were probably quite gorgeous back then. The colors of peeling paint suggested one house had been lavender with pale green trim, the other house sky blue with gray and turquoise trim. Both had multiple turrets and multiple chimneys and porches that wrapped completely around them. They were in terrible disrepair. A number of windows were cracked; a couple of panes had been blown out. The porches were sagging, had rotted boards that were missing in places. Paint was peeling everywhere. The roofs had missing tiles.

  I tried to imagine what the inside of the buildings were like when two creepy-looking men exited one of them. They were arguing with each other and pushing a girl in front of them. She was about twelve or thirteen years old. I didn’t like the way they were talking to her. They were yelling at her and she was crying.

  I tried to explain the scene to myself. Perhaps they were her dad and her uncle. They had found her playing inside the run-down building; they were concerned for her safety.

  They were being awfully rough with her, though. I felt uncomfortable watching them. Something didn’t feel right.

  I looked away. I wasn’t proud of myself, but I wasn’t sure what to do. Thankfully, Annie came into view just at that moment. I left my spot on the corner and ran to meet up with her.

  As we walked past the abandoned houses, the two men were pulling away from the curb in a beat-up van, the girl wedged between them in the front seat. She was crying.

  While I was telling Annie about what I had seen, my blue amulet started to glow.

  Annie pointed at it. “Holy crap, that’s cool. When did you get that?”

  Stunned by the glowing, I shoved it under my sweater and just mumbled, “It was a gift. I don’t know how to turn it off, though.”

  Annie laughed.

  We stopped at a bunch of houses along the way to the haunted house. We got a bunch of candy which was awesome and totally took my mind off the crying girl.

  When we arrived at the haunted house, I was impressed. It was at least as good as the haunted house I had visited with Mary Jane, maybe better. This one had actors moving around like zombies in the front yard. They were totally convincing. For a few seconds, I felt like I had wandered into the zombie apocalypse.

  An actor with fleshy-looking stuff on her neck was bitten there by a zombie who ripped it away and chewed on it as though it were real flesh, while fake blood poured down the neck of the actor playing the human victim. Next thing you knew, the victim was zombified, stumbling around, biting other actors.

  I heard Annie say, “Ewwww! This is fantastic!”

  It truly was fantastic. We got in line and let ourselves be swept up into the crowd entering the building.

  Inside was even creepier.

  We walked down a musty hallway lit only by flickering bulbs. It was completely silent except for the shuffling footfalls of visitors and screams from farther on. We giggled nervously as we waited to discover the reason for those bloodcurdling shrieks.

  At the end of the hallway, we had to pass through a divided curtain. As I parted the cloth, I saw only darkness. I stepped forward onto something squishy. Instinctually lifting my foot up and screaming, I slammed my foot back down and squealed even louder as a bright light snapped on to reveal a lifelike corpse hanging from a noose.

  Hugging Annie without even thinking about what I was doing, I then moved forward toward the corpse. Annie started chanting, “It’s not real. It’s not real. I’m sure it’s just a m
annequin.”

  A brutish group of burly guys pushed past us, cackling, “It sure looks real, though, don’t it?”

  Jerks.

  We stood still until they disappeared. We let the house swallow them up.

  Inching our way forward once again, I stared at the corpse as we reached it. Even up close, it looked real. Scraps of light glinted from its bloodshot eyes.

  I tried to calm myself.

  A hand reached out and grabbed my shoulder. “You’re next, my little girly.”

  I shrieked at the top of my lungs and went running down another hallway.

  Bats flapped overhead. A few swooped down, touching our hair. They sounded and felt completely real.

  Suddenly, the blue stone of my necklace glowed through my sweater with a pulsing beat, as though it were my heart. It grew warm. When it felt too hot against my skin, I pulled it out and looked at it. The following words appeared, etched across the stone in black letters: “This haunted house is nothing. What about the crying girl?”

  My hands shook. My fingers trembled and dropped the amulet against my sweater. It stopped glowing.

  The remainder of my time in the haunted house felt especially ominous. Did someone in the house know about the crying girl? Had they been watching me, following me? How were they transmitting the message onto my necklace?

  In the last room, the group of burly guys pushed us around. They were rough. One particularly nasty guy tried to grope Annie, but she kicked him in the groin with her knee.

  We threw open the back door and escaped.

  Annie laughed.

  I looked at her as though she’d gone mad. “Why are you laughing?” I suddenly felt furious with her.

  “Because we’re out. We made it. We triumphed. I kicked a guy in the groin and beat him at his game.”

  I tried to talk some sense into her. “First of all, Annie, it was just a Halloween haunted house. A really good one, that’s for sure; but it’s all fake, all theatrics. Those guys at the end, though. Their behavior was unacceptable.”

  “They gave us a real fright, though, didn’t they?”

  “Annie, whether they were part of the show or not, neither one of us deserved that. That was horrible.”

  Annie stared at me belligerently. “Yeah, and I stuck up for myself. I fought back. That was epic.” She waited for me to congratulate her or something. When I didn’t, she added, “Well, no matter what, it’s over. Wanna go over to your house and try the Ouija Board?”

  “Sure. We can do that. My mom’s not home, though, so the doorbell might keep ringing with a lot of trick-or-treaters.”

  “Who’s giving out candy now? No one?”

  “Yeah. My mom left a bowl of candy out front of our house, but I’m guessing that’s all gone now.”

  “Ha! Yeah, it was probably gone a while ago.”

  Back at my house, we waited for a group of kids to stop ringing the doorbell, then sauntered past them as they walked down the driveway. I hoped we looked like trick-or-treaters to them.

  The youngest one, dressed like a football player, pointed back at the house and warned us, “Don’t bother going to that house. A crabby old lady lives there, and she won’t open the door. There’s a sign out front to take candy out of the bowl, but the stupid bowl’s empty.”

  For whatever reason, that really bothered me. My mom was not a crabby old lady. And I hated our house having a reputation like that. So unfair. Everywhere we lived, we carried a stigma. Not fair.

  I pretended I was Leotard Girl. Switching on the flashlight attached to my forehead, I aimed it at the little kid’s eyes.

  A girl about my age pulled him toward her and shouted at me, “Hey! What’s wrong with you?”

  It wasn’t my finest moment.

  Even Annie seemed a bit leery of me after they left. “Wow, what’s up with you? That’s not cool. He was just a little kid.”

  “Yeah, well, he called my mom crabby.”

  “Seriously? That’s your problem?”

  That broke the ice. We started giggling hysterically. In between fits of laughter, I managed to blurt out the words, “Well, she’s always stoned. How could she be crabby?”

  Eventually, I inserted a key into the front door lock, just in time to avoid a whole new batch of kids running up our front lawn in search of candy. Zombies, all of them, I thought to myself. Inside, Annie and I flicked off all the downstairs lights and raced upstairs.

  We took out the Ouija Board and asked it lots of questions. Honest to God, the planchette spelled out: Happy Halloween! and Candy Corn! and Kids love candy! And that was it.

  What the heck? Even the Ouija Board doled out disappointment. How could it side with the kids? It was my Ouija Board. Well, I didn’t care if kids love candy. Teenagers love for their moms to give out candy, too; but that wasn’t in the cards for me, was it?

  Annie decided to go home after about half an hour of the Ouija Board’s nonsense, and I can’t say I blamed her.

  I sat pouting on my bed when the amulet started glowing again.

  I hung the necklace around a poster of my bed and fell asleep, soothed by the rhythmic blinking of its blue light.

  CHAPTER 8

  The next day at school was one of the worst days of my life, and my life wasn’t exactly a collection of good days.

  As I sat in home room, trying to doze a few more minutes before the day officially started, someone knocked on the classroom door. The substitute teacher, a super nerdy guy with no control over the class, answered the door, accepted a note, read it and looked over the class. I guess he was trying to remember who we were from roll call.

  He failed.

  Looking over at the wrong side of the classroom, studying a smart girl with thick red glasses, he announced: “Galactic Shade Griffin...”

  Laughter. Giggles. Apparently, weird name plus substitute teacher plus (quite possibly) mischief-making hangover from Halloween equals resurrection of things that were hilarious to students on first day of school. Math problem introduced and solved.

  I raised my hand, glowering at life in general. “Here.”

  “Principal Lafferty would like to see you.”

  Class chorus: “Ooooooh...”

  Substitute teacher: “Class! I will not allow that! You know better than to be rude to your fellow classmates.”

  Challenge accepted by class: “Ooooooh...”

  Why were some people so predictable?

  My heart started to race. I felt thankful that I had thought to remove my necklace from the bed poster and wear it today. I had also put on a new pair of red tights which, as weird as it sounds, boosted my self-confidence and made me think of myself a tiny bit like a superhero. Leotard Girl. I decided I’d buy more leotards, mostly red, but in other colors as well. If I wore leotards and the amulet, I could have the superhero ability to create ... self-confidence. Lame. Other people had it naturally. Well, my self-confidence would be unbreakable; it would immunize me against mockery and people laughing at me.

  Just then, the amulet started glowing. I quickly stuffed it down my sweater. I felt extremely thankful that I had worn a blue-and-red striped sweater and the amulet landed within a blue stripe. No one could see the pulsing beat of the gemstone.

  I tossed my backpack over my back, accepted a pass from the sub and walked out into the hallway. It was mostly empty.

  I took my time. I stopped in the girls’ bathroom, applied cherry-flavored lip gloss, brushed my hair. I stayed there as long as I could, then ventured back out into the quiet corridor.

  When I rounded the corner to the Principal’s Office, my heart skipped several beats. I must have stopped breathing, too, because my head felt incredibly dizzy.

  Two police officers stood outside the office, chatting to people on the other end of walkie-talkies. As I approached, the officer with a moustache and thickly muscled arms, the kind you only get from hours of weight-lifting, glanced down at a piece of paper in his hand and then walked directly toward me. “Galacti
c Shade Griffin...?”

  Wow, if anyone had ever pronounced my name with the opposite of hilarity and giggling, he was the man. He had a seriousness of purpose about him, the depth of which I don’t think I’d ever seen before my entire life.

  I knew I was in deep trouble. For what, I had no idea. My mind raced.

  It had to be for shining my superhero light in the eyes of that little kid. I was sure of it. Even rebellious Annie had been shocked by the meanness of it. I had probably blinded that little boy. Maybe he had stumbled into the street unable to see and gotten himself hit by a car.