Shade

by Marilyn Peake

  Gabriella Underwood had grace and style. She answered, as though honored to be interviewed, “I’m not sure, exactly. I think I was born a psychic or came into it at a very young age. I didn’t know what it was, though, or had any sense of its power, until puberty.” She laughed. “Isn’t that the way for all of us, though? Innate forces move within us and make their grand entrance at puberty. Then it’s up to us to make sense of them and become the people we were meant to be.”

  At the mere mention of the word puberty, I blushed a million shades of color, I’m sure, running the entire spectrum from pink to crimson red. I looked over at the flames roaring in the fireplace. I didn’t look up to see if George and Kailee had also reacted with embarrassment and shame. Yeah, seriously, me as an old soul? I couldn’t even hear the word puberty without thinking about sex and blushing in shame.

  Gabriella continued as though nothing were amiss. “At three years old, I had a frightening dream that my grandfather had died. The next day, my grandfather passed away. When I was four years old, I fell into a daydream and imagined that my mother had taken ill. The following week, my mother found out that she was pregnant. It was a rough pregnancy and in the last few months of it, she was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. It haunted me as a child that maybe I had caused the death of my grandfather and the illness of my mother that could have affected the birth of my baby sister. But I always tucked the fear in the back of my brain and told myself it was all just a coincidence.” She paused. Took a sip of hot chocolate. “Oh my, that’s good chocolate. A friend in Europe sent it to me.” Another sip. “But then, when I was around thirteen years of age, I started ‘seeing’ all kinds of things before they happened. Also, details about things after they happened, details that no one else knew about. I saw a vague mark on my best friend’s forehead that no one else could see. It was kind of like a black smudge, kind of like the ash that Catholics get on their heads before Lent. No one else could see it. Seven months later, Sophie was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.” Gabriella stopped speaking for a moment and looked away, lost to memory. She returned her gaze to ours and smiled weakly. “It took me years to recognize that what I had was a gift. But a gift without a voice. As long as I was frightened by it and refused to give it voice, I could help no one. If I could find my voice, however, I might be able to inform people of things I could see that would help them.”

  Kailee asked the next question, “When did you come out?” She blushed. “I mean, when did you come out as a psychic?”

  Gabriella beamed. “Coming out is a great way to phrase that! I got teased so much as a kid just for being different and for having the strange name of Gabriella Underwood, you have to believe I was scared to death to tell people I could tell the future. When I finally did, it was an act of coming out about who I really was.”

  I had found a kindred spirit, weird name and all. Although I have to admit, compared to Galactic Shade Griffin, I thought of Gabriella Underwood as a completely normal name—not as American-flag-and-apple-pie as Mary Jane Smith, mind you, but not anywhere near as freakish as the odd name foisted upon me.

  Gabriella continued, “Years later, when I was eighteen years old and coming into full possession of my powers, something happened that finally convinced me I had to stop hiding what I had.” Gabriella stood up. She added a few more logs to the fireplace. She stirred the ashes.

  When she sat back down, she hunched forward in her seat, poised to confide a great secret in us. “When I was eighteen years old and a senior in high school, a close friend of mine was being molested by a coach. She was a very talented athlete. Her gymnastics coach was the guy molesting her. I saw things. I knew things. But only in my mind. I didn’t think I should say anything to her about what I could see. I thought she’d get mad at me. Then, one day, she killed herself.” A deep silence hung over the room for what seemed an eternity. A single tear flowed down Gabriella’s face; reflected firelight danced within it. “After months of counseling, I vowed I would never again hide my talent if I could help others by using it openly.”

  Inspired by the chemical reaction of strong emotion within the room, I decided to speak up. “Gabriella, we need your help.”

  She looked at me with an ancient understanding flickering within her eyes. “Yes, the universe has found a way to bring you to me. What is it, my dear?”

  I confided in her the events surrounding the disappearances of Annie, Misty and Ursula.

  Gabriella set up a small table in front of her and placed the crystal ball on it. As she waved her hand over the orb, it came to life. It filled with light and swirling fog. George, Kailee and I, we all leaned forward, trying to get a glimpse of whatever was happening inside it.

  Gabriella asked me to sit next to her. She grasped my right hand in hers and continued looking into the glass ball. It was now filled with what looked like darkening smoke. Finally, she said, “I see many things here. I don’t have a good feeling about this. I see babies, teenaged girls, chains, a dirty hospital room and surgical equipment. I see several people crying and I believe that has something to do with the teenaged girls.”

  I asked timidly, my voice cracking in the middle of the question, “What do the teenaged girls look like?”

  Gabriella answered, “There are too many for me to describe them all.”

  I sat in silence for a moment, then had an idea. “Is there a teenaged girl with red stars in her eyes?”

  Gabriella looked up at me with a questioning expression.

  I explained, “Annie, one of the girls who’s gone missing—and my best friend, actually—used to wear contacts that had red stars in them. Not always, but a lot of the time.” Gabriella looked into the crystal ball as I continued explaining, “The stars were very obvious. It made it look like she had red stars in her eyes.”

  Gabriella looked up. “I see a teenaged girl with stars in her eyes. They’re not red, though. The right eye has a pink star in it. The left eye has a gold star. She’s wearing a dress made out of cookies and holding a pitcher of milk. Does that mean anything to you? I have to tell you, I have a bad feeling about this image, though. It’s like the milk is poisoned or something.”

  Kailee stood up and looked into the crystal ball. She said, “I don’t see anything but smoke in there.” She had an accusing look in her eye.

  Gabriella responded, “That’s to be expected. Either you don’t have the gift of seeing—not many people do—or this particular crystal ball isn’t your personal psychic Rorschach.”

  Kailee asked, “What do you mean?”

  “A Rorschach test uses inkblot designs, right? A person looks at them, describes what they see and, by so doing, reveals certain things about their personality. In my case, the crystal ball allows me to project my visions upon smoke. It helps me to see what my gift already gives me the ability to see. The visions sometimes just pop into my head, but the crystal ball allows me to see many more visions. It accelerates the process somehow.”

  I looked down at the crystal orb, noticed flames from the fireplace reflected on the right half of the sphere. I volunteered in a voice so quiet I could barely hear myself speak, “The pink and gold stars, the cookies, the pitcher of milk ... Annie was so goth, but her room was decorated in pink and gold. I was shocked when I saw it. Annie said her mother had insisted on cheerful colors. Annie’s family is wealthy. At her house, you can order milk and cookies. A butler brought a tray of cookies and a pitcher of milk that we had ordered up to Annie’s room for us. The milk was fine, though. I don’t know why your vision would say it’s poisoned.”

  Gabriella squeezed my hand with warmth and strength. “My visions aren’t always literal. Many times, they’re symbolic. Especially at the beginning of a case, before I have much information to go on.”

  Despite my usual stranglehold on emotions, I started to cry. I felt so frustrated. In a blubbering voice, my nose and eyes running with fluid, I asked, “So, what do we do?”

  Gabriella answered, “Bring me
something that belongs to each of the three missing girls, something intimate to them, like clothing they wore or a pen they used for homework, anything they frequently touched. I’m often able to see the beginning of a trail that way, like a bloodhound uses their sense of smell to locate a trail.”

  After we thanked Gabriella for her time, we stepped outside. It was nighttime. The lights on the sign in her front yard added color to an especially dark night. We had no idea so much time had passed.

  We decided that the next day we would once again use our role as newspaper journalists to seek out information. This time, the situation would be a lot more sensitive. We would go to the homes of the three missing girls in order to obtain personal items to bring back to Gabriella. We would tell their parents that we were doing a story about them for our high school newspaper in order to keep their case in the minds of students who might otherwise miss clues about them, and ask to go into their bedroom to get a better feel for who they were.

  We hoped that wouldn’t sound too weird or perverse to the grieving parents.

  CHAPTER 18

  The next afternoon, we started at Annie Green’s home. George borrowed his family’s old pickup truck complete with rust spots, so we were quite conspicuous as we drove up to the Green house.

  As we approached the part of the driveway in front of the front door, we noticed something that hadn’t been there before: armed police officers.

  Kailee let out a deep breath. “Jeeesuuus. They bought police officers. My God. The top 1%.”

  George said sharply, “Shhhh!” He rolled down his window to speak to the officer who had stomped over in heavy boots to investigate. “Hello, officer. How are you today?”

  The officer’s mouth remained a straight line. No smile. Sunglasses covered his eyes. He looked into the truck, took in details about all of us, then asked George, “So, what business do you have here?”

  George answered, “We’re close friends of Annie ... Anne Marie ... Green.” He pointed a thumb in my direction without ever turning his gaze away from the window. “Shade here is her best friend. We’ve been beside ourselves, worrying about where Annie might be. Shade is a complete mess. We’re also reporters for our high school newspaper and in charge of a school forum. We actually have a topic on the forum where students can post any information or clues they encounter regarding Annie. The posts there have started to dwindle. We had a sudden idea to go to Annie’s home to talk to her parents and maybe search her room for details about her interests and then write an article about it, to bring Annie’s disappearance to the attention of students again.”

  The police officer stared at George a moment or two. Then he asked one word: “Names?”

  We each gave our own name.

  The officer instructed: “Stay right here.”

  As he went inside the house, the other officer placed a hand on his gun. He kept a close watch on us.

  I thought I would pee my pants. My head got all swimmy. I had to remind myself to breathe.

  A few minutes later, the front door to Annie’s house opened. The police officer with the straight line of a mouth and the sunglass-covered eyes that made him look like a giant fly stepped out. A butler filled the space behind him.

  The officer stepped over to our car. He said to George, “OK. Mrs. Green says she knows Shade.” Waving a couple of fingers in the direction of a line of cars, he told us in clipped speech: “Park over there. Then I’ll escort you inside.”

  He did as promised: escorted us inside. Then watched over us as we stood around nervously in the front hallway.

  Finally, Mrs. Green came to greet us. I hardly recognized her. Her face had been lit with smiles, her hands had been full of life, baking cookies, when I first met her. Now, her face appeared tightened with strain, wrinkle lines running down her cheeks and curving around her mouth. Her hair was wild and streaked with gray. Her hands kneaded each other. And her eyes were the most troubling of all: bloodshot and a frightening kind of dead. She was wearing a cotton bathrobe and slippers with bare feet.

  I explained why we were there. I asked if we could go up to Annie’s room. Mrs. Green waved her hand toward the stairs. She said, “Sure. Sure. Everything’s pretty much the way she left it.”

  Kailee thanked her and said, “We’d also like to interview you, if we could, after we look at Annie’s room. Would that be OK?”

  Mrs. Green ran a shaking hand through her nest of hair. “Oh. Sure. Sure. Not sure I have much to say, though.”

  The police officer followed us. He had taken off his sunglasses. His eyes were blue like Arctic daggers made of ice. He stood outside Annie’s room while we searched through it. Thank God, he let us shut the door.

  Once the door clicked closed, Kailee put her finger up to her lips and mouthed, “Shhhh...”

  George and I shook our heads in agreement. We knew what Kailee meant: don’t say anything out loud we didn’t want ol’ blue eyes to hear. We talked only about innocuous things. We texted each other everything else.

  First, we inspected her desk. Everything on top appeared to be exactly the same as last time I saw it. Inside the drawers, we found notebooks filled with short stories and poetry.

  I looked at George and Kailee as I gathered up the notebooks.

  George texted us: Now what?

  Kailee texted back: idea! b brave. tell mrs. green: notebooks = part of creative writing project 4 school newspaper, we need them to complete project? tell her we’ll return them. tell her annie worked so hard on project, we’d hate 4 all her work 2 go 2 waste.

  George (in text): Yes.

  Me (in text): OK.

  We then searched the rest of Annie’s room. We didn’t find much. We did find five gruesome Japanese graphic novels, however.

  I texted: We should take these with us. I stared at a page where bright red blood poured from a hole in a man’s stomach. He had been pierced completely through by a monster’s serrated tail now covered in gore. I added: Ummm ... Where did Annie get these? Maybe from a bad place? Maybe she disappeared there? Violent images here.

  Kailee shrugged. Then texted: OK, take them with us.

  George shook his head yes, then tucked the graphic novels inside his jacket.

  In Annie’s bathroom, I found soaps, perfume, nothing out of the ordinary. I grabbed her hairbrush as an intimate item to show Gabriella and stuck it in my pocket. It still had some of Annie’s hair in it.

  Kailee texted us: OMG. Found suicide notes.

  Tears poured down my face. Text: Take them.

  George’s text: Yes. Take them.

  We went downstairs, escorted by the police officer. I’m sure we looked completely devastated. But I figured that would be natural after looking through a missing friend’s room. A lot weirder and suspicious to be happy.

  Mrs. Green told us that she didn’t think she could make it through a long interview. We said we completely understood, then proceeded to ask her a few pretty lame questions. Our minds were on the suicide notes and on not blurting out to a grieving mother that we had found those notes. Finally, we gave the explanation we had invented for why we needed the pile of notebooks in Annie’s room. Mrs. Green said, “Oh, yes, that would be lovely if Annie’s work could be included in your school newspaper project. I would love to have a copy when it’s published. Annie was always so creative...” Mrs. Green’s eyes took on a faraway look. She began to cry. Then suddenly, to our complete amazement, she pulled herself together and instructed a butler to help us carry everything out to our truck.

  OMG. Suicide notes. That’s all we could think, as we headed over to Misty Perkins’s house.

  CHAPTER 19

  As we drove away from Annie’s house, Kailee said, “I hope this is OK with both of you ... I don’t want to look at the suicide notes until after we interview Misty’s and Ursula’s parents. I won’t be able to keep my shit together if we read those notes. I only read a few sentences and I’m a complete mess.”

  George and I agreed. My hands w
ere trembling just from thinking about what might be in those notes.

  I wasn’t looking forward to going to Misty’s house. I expected her parents to be rich and super-conservative, athletes or something. I expected her mom to answer the door in a tennis outfit, tennis racquet in hand, all flush from a game she had just finished playing in her backyard or at a nearby country club. I expected her dad would be sitting in the living room, poring over stock portfolios or something. Or he’d have a tennis racquet in his hand, too.

  When we arrived at Misty’s house, I had to check her house number twice, then made George drive to the corner to check the street sign to see if we had the right street. We did. We went back to Misty’s house. It made mine seem downright luxurious. My house was large. It was Victorian style. It had turrets. It had a large backyard that extended back as far as a babbling stream.

  Misty’s house was basically a shack. A small box-shaped house with white paint peeling so badly, it was curling off every shingle. The front door had once been light green; but it was filthy, covered with so many smudges and dirty fingerprints, you could barely see the green. The front lawn was tiny and mostly mud, with patches of grass and weeds.