Shadow

by Mere Joyce

  Copyright © 2018 Mere Joyce

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Joyce, Mere, 1988-, author

  Shadow / Mere Joyce.

  (Orca currents)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-1644-2 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1645-9 (PDF).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1646-6 (EPUB)

  I. Title. II. Series: Orca currents

  PS8619.O975S53 2018 jC813'.6 C2017-904499-0

  C2017-904500-8

  First published in the United States, 2018

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017949693

  Summary: In this high-interest novel for middle readers, blind filmmaker Preston Craft investigates the case of the missing movie reel.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Edited by Tanya Trafford

  Cover photography by iStock.com

  Author photo by Byron Cleversey

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  21 20 19 18 • 4 3 2 1

  Orca Book Publishers is proud of the hard work our authors do and of the important stories they create. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it or did not check it out from a library provider, then the author has not received royalties for this book. The ebook you are reading is licensed for single use only and may not be copied, printed, resold or given away. If you are interested in using this book in a classroom setting, we have digital subscriptions that feature multi user, simultaneous access to our books that are easy for your students to read. For more information, please contact digital@orcabook.com.

  To Mom and Dad, for finally giving in and letting me buy that horror movie.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  An Excerpt from Winter Road

  An Excerpt from Cheat

  Chapter One

  Chapter One

  There is no greater place on earth than the cinema. I don’t mean the big chain movie theaters with fancy seats and overpriced food. I mean the old cinemas. The kind that smell like butter and stale popcorn. The kind with threadbare seats. The kind with sticky floors. The kind with velvety panels barely clinging to the walls.

  Vi holds my hand as we walk through the lobby of my favorite cinema, The Chestnut.

  “Tell me about the posters,” I say as she guides me past the ticket booth and into the cinema’s lobby. She doesn’t have to guide me. I know this place almost as well as I know my own living room. But I always let Vi hold my hand. Her skin is soft and warm.

  “Same posters as last week, Preston,” she laughs. “Dracula Versus the Zombies, Sweet Tooth: The Untold Love Story of the World’s Two Greatest Chocolatiers and Secret Agent Granny.”

  “You’re making those up.” I nudge her, and she lets out a chuckle.

  “You’ll never know,” she teases.

  Vivien Henry always teases me. If it were someone else, maybe I would be bothered by it. But Vi is one of the few people who knew me before I was blind. We met when we were babies. Our mothers are friends, and we’ve grown up together. Besides, I can barely remember a time before I got glaucoma and lost my vision. So it doesn’t bother me when Vi makes up fake movie titles and tries to pass them off as real films. I think it’s actually pretty awesome. Vi’s a serious girl usually. I’m lucky to be one of the few people she jokes around with.

  “Come on,” she says now, leading me past the concession stands. “Mrs. Colander’s waiting for us up in the booth.”

  Mrs. Colander is the teacher in charge of our school’s film club. She’s the one who helped us organize the amateur film festival The Chestnut will be hosting two nights from now.

  “Are the others here yet?” I ask.

  “Janelle’s babysitting, so she can’t come,” Vi says as we head into the theater. When we start up the stairs leading to the projection booth, she is moving so fast my arm is completely outstretched in front of me.

  “One stair at a time, Vi,” I remind her. She stops and waits for me to catch up before she continues forward again.

  “Sorry,” she says. She gives my hand a squeeze, and my whole arm tingles. “So Janelle’s not coming. And Nico’s never been on time for anything in his life.”

  I smile. She’s right about Nico. He is always stumbling into class well after the bell rings.

  I can hear the sound of nails clacking on a keyboard when we enter the projection booth.

  The typing stops. “Hello, Mr. Craft.”

  “Hey, Mrs. Colander,” I say, feeling my way over to a seat against the back wall of the small room.

  Vi stands beside me. Her foot bumps against mine, but I don’t think she notices.

  “My mom hooked the laptop up to the projection system before she left this afternoon,” she says to me. “Mrs. Colander just tested it. When we hit Play on the laptop, the movies appear on the big screen.”

  Vi’s parents bought The Chestnut before she was born. They divorced when Vi was eight, but they still run the theater together. Vi and I grew up in this cinema. It’s the best spot for the film festival. I still can’t believe Vi’s mom gave us permission to use it on Friday night.

  “Okay, so I think everything’s ready to go for Friday,” Mrs. Colander says. She begins typing again, her long fingernails loud against the keyboard. “I’m just finishing up my report for Principal Saunders. I’ll email it to myself, and then I’ll be ready to go. Are you sure you don’t need anything else from me?”

  “No, we’ve got it covered, Mrs. Colander,” Vi says in the sweet voice she always uses with authority figures.

  “All right, well, I’ll leave you to it,” Mrs. Colander says. She finishes with the computer. Then her chair scrapes against the floor as she stands up.

  “Thanks again for letting us help out,” Vi says.

  “Not a problem.” I can hear the smile in Mrs. Colander’s voice. “Thank your parents again for letting us use the theater. It’s a great venue for our film festival.”

  “I will. Need me to see you out?”

  “No, I’m good. Good night, you two. Have fun screening the films.”

  “Definitely,” I say, waving a hand in the air even though Mrs. Colander’s already walking down the stairs. Her footsteps fade as she reaches the first floor and then trails through the lobby. Suddenly it’s just Vi and me.

  Tonight we’re going to watch all the films that will be played on Friday. We need to make sure there are no sound issues or problems with the files. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the perfect way to spend a Wednesday night. I love watching movies. It doesn’t matter if I can’t really see them. I don’t have to. There’s a lot to a movie besides the actual picture. There’s music. There’s dialogue. There’s
witty humor, tense sound effects and well-placed shrieks. Besides, I’m not totally blind. I mean, I guess technically I am. But I can still detect light. I know when there’s an absence of light too. And I can make out shadows. So I know when movies are shot in the day or the night. I can even tell if a scene’s been shot on a busy road with headlights shining off traveling cars.

  I watch movies in my own way. I love watching movies in my own way.

  And I love watching movies with Vi.

  “Should we go down and start screening?” she asks. She’s closer than I realized. Her shampoo smells like candy apples. I breathe it in. I nod.

  “Yeah, let’s get started.”

  Vi helps me back down the steps to the main theater. I sit in the back row while she returns to the booth to dim the lights and start the videos Mrs. Colander uploaded onto one of the school’s laptops. There are five films in the festival this year. Each film runs around fifteen minutes. Which means for the next hour and fifteen minutes, I get to sit in a dark theater next to Vi.

  It’s not like Vi’s my girlfriend or anything. But on a night like this, I think maybe she could be. If the movie’s music is just right. If the dialogue is swoony and romantic. If a jump scare catches her off guard and sends her curling into my side for comfort.

  The cinema can do it all. It can turn ordinary friends into something much more.

  And right now, me and Vi have an entire cinema to ourselves.

  A door in the lobby rattles. I jump, glad I’m not holding a bag of popcorn.

  “Hey, somebody let me in!”

  I almost groan out loud. I forgot about Nico.

  So much for the perfect night.

  Chapter Two

  I make my way back to the lobby to let Nico in. I’ve memorized the route. Even if I hadn’t, I’ve got my white cane to help me navigate.

  When I get to the lobby doors, Nico is still slamming his fists against the glass.

  “The zombies are coming, man! Hurry up!” he yells. “My life depends on it.”

  I grin, twisting the lock on the door. Nico rushes in like he really is being chased by zombies. He slams the door shut and falls against it, panting.

  “Too close for comfort, man,” he says through exaggerated breaths. “Next time I might not make it.”

  “If you were ever on time for anything in your life, maybe you wouldn’t have to worry about being locked outside with the zombies,” I tell him.

  “What can I say? I’m a busy guy. There’s just not enough of me to go around.”

  “Yeah, that must be it,” I mutter.

  Much as I would love some time alone with Vi, Nico’s in the film club too, so I can’t tell him to leave. We walk back into the theater together. Vi has come down from the projection booth. She’s dimmed the houselights halfway. I can just make out the dark blur of her body as she approaches us.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” Nico says, leaning into her. Nico calls every girl “sweetheart,” as if he is some kind of smooth-talking action hero like James Bond.

  “The movies are starting,” Vi says, pushing him away. She takes my arm. Her hand slides down from my elbow to my wrist. I clutch her fingers as soon as they’re close enough to reach.

  “We watching the good ones first? If not, I’m raiding the concession stand,” Nico says.

  “They’re all good,” Vi responds. I imagine her giving him a sassy look, even if I’m not entirely sure what that would look like. I can’t picture expressions very well. I can’t picture faces very well. Mostly I try not to. I focus on sounds and feelings. I don’t dwell on trying to understand or remember sight.

  Nico groans. “Preston, give me the truth.”

  I laugh, sitting down in the back row again. Vi sits next to me.

  “The best two are first,” I say. Vi clicks her tongue in disapproval. She thinks it’s our job as moderators of the film festival to be neutral. But I plan on being a film critic someday. If I want to review movies for a living, I need to have an opinion.

  “All right, I’ll stick around until the garbage starts,” Nico says, sliding in on the other side of Vi.

  “You two are horrible,” Vi mumbles, but I can tell she’s smiling when she says it. Probably because she knows it’s true. Out of the five movies entered into the film festival, three are fairly awful. I wouldn’t say so to the directors or the starring cast. But they are. One’s a comedy called Touchdown Planet Earth. It’s about football players on a quest to save Earth from an alien attack. It’s supposed to be funny in a cheesy way, but it just falls flat. Another one’s a drama about two teens and their forbidden love, called Under Damaged Skies. It’s over the top, and not in a good way. And the third stinker is an artistic film with no dialogue and no music. It’s called Sea Glass, and Vi told me it’s mostly a girl sitting on the beach in a winter parka. She didn’t say much else about it, which means she thought it was terrible.

  Two of the films, though, are decent. One’s another comedy, done by Bradley Wilk and a few of his friends. Bradley’s a bit of numskull, but his movie, The English Exam, is impressive. The sound quality is good, the music is great, and the jokes are amusing. The only problem is, Bradley wants to win the festival so bad he’s been slamming the other entries for weeks now. He’s been particularly horrible to the film he knows is his direct competition.

  Finding Home, by Abbi Templeton.

  Abbi’s an eighth-grader at our school. She loves movies as much as I do. She made Finding Home with her little sister and her cousin Constance. It’s about a girl who discovers her grandmother’s journal in an attic and then ends up going on a journey around the world. It’s great. Abbi plays the girl and narrates the story as well. She talks about the different countries she visits and what she learns in each one. The music for each country reflects where she is, and Vi says the sets are done well too. My favorite scene is one where Abbi walks through a strange town at night. She talks about being scared of the dark until she finds a flower growing on the side of the road.

  “If flowers still grow at night, then I can still grow too,” she says. I smile every time I hear that line. Abbi’s got a beautiful voice. It twinkles. Whenever I hear her talk, I think of stars.

  Abbi’s a fantastic filmmaker. And she also happens to have Down syndrome.

  I heard Bradley say Abbi will get top prize because people feel sorry for her. But she doesn’t need their sympathy. Abbi’s film is good. People should vote for it because it is worth voting for.

  I relax beside Vi as the first movie starts to play. It’s The English Exam, and even though I’ve heard all the jokes before, I still find myself laughing in all the right places. It’s a good movie too. I’d probably like it more if its creator wasn’t such a jerk.

  “I could get used to having a private theater,” Nico says halfway through the movie. “If the festival is a success, maybe we’ll get more chances to take over The Chestnut.”

  “The festival will be a success,” I say. I’m surprised Nico would even suggest otherwise. The run-up to Friday’s event has been perfect so far. Tonight’s test screening is the final piece. We’ve sold tickets and even managed to interest the local press. It’s going to be an excellent night. And it’s definitely going to be successful.

  Bradley’s film plays through without a hitch. We sit back and wait for Abbi’s movie to begin.

  Chapter Three

  “I’ll bet you anything Abbi’s film is going to win the festival,” Vi whispers to me, as if there’s a whole room full of people here and not just the three of us. I don’t mind. I lean in closer.

  “I’m not making that bet. I’ll lose.” I smile. Vi laughs. Her breath is warm against my skin. It smells like red licorice.

  “What are you two whispering about?” Nico asks, butting into our conversation.

  Vi sits back in her seat. “We were discussing what has the greater likelihood of happening first—the invention of time travel, or you being early for something,” she says. Zing!

 
“Oh, time travel for sure,” Nico replies. He has no clue we’re teasing him.

  “Well, you never know,” I chime in. “Both could happen at the same time. You could invent time travel and use it to make yourself early.”

  “Very true,” Nico says. “Except, if I invented time travel, I think I’d rather spend my time doing something more fun than arriving early.”

  “Not if you wanted to make a point,” Vi says, sighing. Her foot fidgets next to mine. I reach over and place my hand on her arm.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  “Yeah, it’s just that the movie should have started by now.”

  I was so preoccupied by our conversation, I didn’t realize Finding Home hasn’t started playing. There’s no sound from the speakers. No light or movement on the screen before us.

  “I think I’d better check what’s going on,” says Vi.

  “The laptop has probably fallen asleep or something,” offers Nico.

  “I’d better go,” Vi says again, and she gets up so quickly she steps on my toe. “Oh, sorry, Preston!”

  “It’s fine,” I say, but Vi’s already heading to the aisle. I can hear her boots thumping up the stairs to the projection booth.

  “Well, I’m going to go get some snacks. Want anything?” Nico’s voice comes from above me. He must be standing. He’s tall and skinny, despite the fact he eats at every chance he gets.

  “Sure, some popcorn would be good,” I mumble. Usually I love getting popcorn here. The salty, buttery kernels are crucial to a good cinema-going experience. But right now I’m not thinking about warm butter slicking my fingers as I pop handful after handful into my mouth. I’m thinking about Vi. I’m wondering why she seems so upset about the movie failing to play. Maybe she’s worried the same thing will happen on Friday at the festival. But it won’t matter even if it does. On Friday, Vi and I will be stationed up in the booth. We’ll be there in case something goes wrong. So why is she so worried?

  It’s quiet all by myself. I hate the quiet. I like the noise of the crowds and the booming speakers. I don’t like feeling I’m all alone here. Two is perfect company. But one is too dark and lonely.