Shadow Eyes

by Dusty Crabtree

  As Mr. Delaney strolled through the door to start class, I sighed and slouched in my seat, pouting like a little kid who was just told she couldn’t go to the petting zoo because she had allergies.

  Chapter 18

  IT HAD COME DOWN TO THIS. Shuffling to my third hour, the last time I would see Patrick before his party that night, I was going to have to make a decision. Each time, either Lexi, Nicole, Josh or Patrick had brought up the issue, I had skirted around it and avoided answering any of them directly. Now it was Friday and I had yet to make up my mind.

  I kept re-examining the positive and negative consequences of such a decision. On the negative side, Kyra was so much against me going we ended up arguing nearly every time it was brought up, which, honestly, was starting to annoy me. It was as if she thought I was this vulnerable kid who was going to be put in some horrible danger just by going to a party. She cared about me and meant well, but her over-protectiveness was smothering. Regardless of all that drama, I still wasn’t sure if I’d be able to handle the mass of shadows lurking in Patrick’s house.

  On the positive side, all of my friends including Patrick (except Kyra, obviously) would be there and were begging me to go. Nicole said she wanted me to go because she missed me. A chance at restoring our friendship was practically enough to persuade me. Lexi said she wanted me to go so she wouldn’t be lonely or the only one not drinking. Josh never really said why he wanted me to go, but just jumped on board whenever Nicole talked about it in Science. From what Lexi had told me on Monday, though, I think I knew why. I wasn’t so sure that was a positive.

  Patrick’s incessant desire to have me there and the possibility of spending an entire evening with him was a definite positive. However, his motives for inviting me were quite ambiguous. There were times when he would act cold and distant like a kid whose parents were forcing him to invite someone he didn’t care for. Other times he would insist and plead as if his life depended on it. Still other times he would ask me so flirtatiously and seductively that I found his offer extremely hard to resist.

  As I entered our computer class and saw Patrick reclining in his chair with his hands behind his neck, looking sexier than ever, I was beginning to wonder why I had put up such a fight in the first place.

  “Hey! How’s my date today?” Patrick beamed at me from his chair as he swiveled around to face me.

  I smirked, doing my best to bluff and hide the flutter in my chest. “You know I haven’t exactly said yes yet.”

  “No. Not exactly. But I know you’ll cave eventually.” He grinned. “It’s only a matter of time.”

  “And, as it so happens, the time is up.”

  What I had intended as a simple joke Patrick seemed to take as a harsh reality. He panicked. “But…you will come, right? I mean, I’ve really been trying here. Your friends even want you to go. Don’t you want to?”

  As panicked and nervous as he sounded, trying to get me to go, his eyes held a different kind of fear…as though he were worried I might actually say yes.

  I paused, not entirely certain how I wanted to respond. As he waited expectantly with apprehension clouding his eyes, a black, sinister figure from the other side of the room began to float gingerly toward us.

  Patrick stared at me searchingly, unaware of the dark shadow approaching him from behind, but I hesitated with bated breath, not wanting to speak until it had passed by. With the intention, I’m sure, of repeating his previous question, Patrick opened his mouth but immediately snapped it shut, squinted his eyes, and shuddered as the shadow brushed his back slightly with the fringes of its murky, fluttering darkness before it drifted on by and finally disappeared.

  Immediately after the shadow withdrew, Patrick shook his head with resolve and took a deep breath. He lifted his head and looked me straight in the eyes. Pushing his chair toward me, he leaned over until our faces were only a foot apart, his deep green eyes magnetically pulling me in even closer and making me forget all about what had just happened.

  He parted his lips in an enticing grin and glanced at my mouth as if he wanted to kiss me right there in class. In my trance I probably would have let him, but I soon recognized in dismay it was just a tease.

  “Look,” he whispered, “we both know there’s something between us. There’s no use fighting it anymore.” His face was now less than a foot from mine, and he slowly lifted his hand to brush my bangs away from my eyes and behind my ear, letting the tips of his fingers linger on the nape of my neck and run softly down my shoulder and arm. I tried to suppress the evidence of how much this simple action affected me but shivered in delight in spite of myself. “I’ve already told everyone they could come to my house tonight, so I have to be there. But I would love it if you came to keep me company. You’re the only one I really care about being there. Besides…it’ll be fun.” He winked at me suggestively.

  Honestly, the way he flirted with me sometimes, easily wrapping me around his little finger, I would swear he had some shadow right beside him, feeding him devious ideas. But he didn’t…in fact, he never did (if you didn’t count the occasional stray floating near him)…which made me suddenly realize, if I stayed right by his side the whole night, there was a good chance I wouldn’t have to deal with any shadows. At least directly. It was worth thinking about, but I didn’t want to say anything without committing to it first. Better to keep him hanging anyway.

  “We’ll see. But don’t hold your breath.”

  I winked at him and he twisted back to his computer with a nervous, flustered tension as if he were going to burst if I didn’t answer him right away. I must admit, it was kind of gratifying to have the power in the relationship for a change. I smiled to myself as I grabbed my mouse and clicked open my assignment.

  I was weak. That was my only pitiful excuse. I had weighed the options over and over, making and remaking several positive and negative lists and trying to ignore that there were far more negatives every time. But it all boiled down to two things: I missed Nicole and I couldn’t resist Patrick. I would only admit the first to my friends, though. Well…most of them.

  “So what did Kyra say about you going to the party tonight?” Nicole asked hesitantly. She glanced over at me from the driver’s seat and then returned her gaze to the snow-covered street she was turning on to get to Patrick’s house. It was actually a pretty short drive from my house to his.

  I tried to ignore Nicole’s faint shadow hanging behind her as I peeked at Lexi huddling in her coat in the back seat. Her head sank in guilt as my eyes met hers. Neither of us had been proud of leaving out our friend. “Well…we kind of didn’t tell her.” I looked down and stared at my hands ashamedly.

  Nicole appeared shocked and amused at my answer but completely guilt-free. She didn’t know Kyra as well as we did or how great a person she was. That simply not telling her about our plans was a horrible thing for us to have done.

  “Did she ask you what you were doing tonight?” Nicole pried, curious for details.

  I sighed. “Yes. She called me and texted me a few times earlier. I just didn’t respond.”

  “She knows we’ve been talking about going to Patrick’s party all week,” Lexi reminded me. “She’s totally going to know what we’re up to. You know that, right?”

  I sighed again even more deeply. “Yeah. I know.”

  “Okay, can we not talk about that anymore? You guys are seriously starting to make me depressed,” Nicole said as she shifted in her seat, straining her neck backward with a look of consternation that had nothing to do with Kyra. We had stopped quite a few houses down from Patrick’s since the party had started an hour ago and was apparently the hippest place to be that night, and she was getting ready to attempt the one thing that had made her fail her first driver’s ed test: parallel parking.

  After slamming the shifter into reverse to back up and then lurching forward over and over like a jolting carnival ride, nearly hitting the car behind her twice, Nicole eventually smacked the curb with her right rea
r tire, rolled the tire onto the sidewalk, and dumped the car back onto the street. She immediately shoved it into park and turned off the keys in a huff. By then Lexi and I were howling hysterically.

  “I haven’t had a ride that intense since the roller coaster at last year’s fair,” I said, laughing as I unbuckled my seatbelt.

  “Shut up.” Nicole hit my leg, but grinned as she grabbed her purse. “Now, let’s just go in and have some fun, okay?”

  As we climbed the stairs to his porch, through the whistle of the winter wind, I could hear muffled alternative rock music I didn’t recognize and indistinct bits of conversations pouring through an open window, which was obviously an escape for smoke. No lights were on in the second story, but the windows on the main floor were lit up with dim colored party lights. The ones up front were green and a few on the side were red with the added bright flickering of a television screen. Nicole knocked loudly and rang the doorbell, and I shivered as the cold wind tore at me and through my thin clothes.

  I began to get excited and anxious as we waited, not an entirely good feeling, but not an entirely bad feeling either. It reminded me of the way I had felt the first day of my freshman year at high school. I was excited because it was all new and I had fantasized about meeting new friends and boys. But I was also nervous because the idea of so many new people, many of whom wore shadows as naturally as clothes, was scary. I braced myself, preparing for the worst.

  The door swung open, and a flood of hazy light and rock music mingled with chatter and laughter rushed over us on the porch with our teeth chattering. The person in the doorway was Patrick. My excitement immediately overcame my anxiety. His dirty blond hair still had that messy model look, and he wore dark wash jeans and a soft, thin, black sweater that hugged his sculpted torso (practically the same look I was sporting, by coincidence, minus the muscles). The green party lights shining from the front room behind him illuminated his silhouette, almost making his seductive eyes glow. Still, he was different somehow. I couldn’t quite place what that difference was. He seemed more in his element. More himself.

  I never had told him I was coming for sure, so when he saw I was with Nicole and Lexi, his face lit up in such an ecstatic, genuine smile that at that moment I was certain he honestly liked me. However, his smile suddenly melted into a horrified frown as if he were remembering something dreadful. The terror only lasted a few seconds, and he reverted back to his happy expression, now seeming more like a mask than a window to his true emotions. I wasn’t sure Nicole or Lexi had even noticed.

  “I’m so glad you all came!” he exclaimed as he gazed only at me with turmoil behind his smiling eyes until he remembered we were all standing on his porch. “Come in! Come in! I’m sorry. It’s cold outside.” He ushered us into his house and shut the door as he offered to take our coats and hang them on the coat rack by the door. Seeing it was overflowing with a few coats already lying haphazardly on the floor, he thought for a moment, grabbed a few coats on the rack, threw them on the ground, and replaced them with ours.

  We stared at him in surprise with open mouths, covering them and giggling softly as we searched the place to see if anyone noticed. “I can’t believe you just did that,” I said.

  He shrugged and puffed out his chest smugly. “It’s my house and my party…I can do what I want.” He smiled widely and laughed as he took us into the living room which was dimly lit with red lights bulbs that had replaced the normal ones. Tyler, Josh, and about ten others were lounging on the sofas, watching a horror movie with plastic cups in their hands. I didn’t have to ask what was in them.

  As Patrick’s back was turned to me momentarily, I let my eyes wander around and take in my surroundings. It was as bad as I had suspected. People were scattered everywhere in both the green-lit front room and the red-lit living room, many I didn’t recognize, and practically all of them held the same plastic cups. It was obvious most were already quite drunk or were at least intending to end up that way.

  They all looked as if they were having a good time, but the vision I was forced to see didn’t fit the fun, happy expressions on their faces. All I could focus on was the disturbing and overwhelming fog of heavy shadows that filled every room, including the living room with Josh and Tyler. It was a sea of black with the shades, strengths, and sizes of the shadows as varied as waves in a turbulent ocean. Some were more defined and distinct than others, a few silhouettes even sitting or hovering casually beside or behind people. Others were so monstrous and stormy I could hardly distinguish anything but an ominous cloud.

  As I came closer, a few of the more discernible figures whirled around to glare at me but then smirked tauntingly and returned to their marks. I dropped my eyes to the floor feeling cold, scared, and dangerously out of place. Imperceptibly, I began to back up without checking behind me. I was already on edge and anxious, feeling as fragile as a porcelain doll. When someone touched my back, I literally jumped a foot in the air.

  I spun around and exhaled nervously in relief. It was just Patrick. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t see you there.”

  Gripping the backs of my arms, he pulled me toward him to whisper softly in my ear over the noise. “Next time, just don’t take your eyes off me.” He kissed my ear lightly and then backed away just enough to gaze into my eyes.

  Strangely, even though his gesture and comment were meant to be flirtatious and sensual, all I could think about was how being near him somehow made me feel safe and comfortable in such a horrible place. He was my refuge away from the threatening shadows. Without thinking I lunged forward and smashed the side of my face against his chest as I wrapped my arms around him in a tight embrace.

  “Well, hi there!” He chuckled softly and then wrapped his arms around me and stroked my hair as though he knew I needed comforting and was more than happy to oblige.

  Somewhere during our sentimental hug, though, his attitude shifted. I don’t know why or what happened to cause the change, but all of a sudden he pulled away awkwardly. He looked drained from the party but also on edge and anxious as if he were bothered by something.

  “Let me show you around…You’ve never seen my house before, have you?” His tone was impossible to decode, almost resembling a nervous museum tour guide getting ready to start his first day on the job.

  “Um, sure. That sounds fun,” I lied. The truth was, I really wanted to go some place isolated and away from all the people and their leeches. However, I wanted even more to stay with Patrick, even if that meant navigating through hell.

  “Oh. What about Nicole and Lexi?” I glanced back to the couch were Tyler and Josh had been reclining and found both Nicole and Lexi already seated next to them watching the movie.

  Josh, Tyler, and Nicole didn’t appear to notice Patrick and I were still there, they were so engrossed in the movie.

  But Lexi heard my question and peered up at me with a reassuring smile. “Don’t you worry about us; we’ll be fine. Go ahead. Go on your tour.”

  As Patrick turned to lead me away, I caught Lexi’s insinuating wink and rolled my eyes.

  I could tell from outside that his house was enormous, but it wasn’t until we mazed through several different rooms, all filled with people and their shadows, that it became clear just how truly expansive it was.

  The large foyer we had entered from the front door functioned as a second living area completely furnished with a stereo system pumping rock music from two tall speakers. The actual living room where I had left my friends was twice the size of ours with furniture and decorations that were tasteful and expensive. The horror movie flickered grotesque images on a sixty-five-inch flat-screen TV as dramatic music and terrified screams gushed through the surround-sound speakers. As we walked back through from the foyer, I wondered how Lexi was stomaching it and then noticed she had her head down playing games on her phone.

  Just behind the living room was the dining room. A handful of people sat around the giant table covered in plates, bowls, jars, packages and bags of ever
y party food imaginable that didn’t actually require cooking. We also peeked in a fully-furnished study and passed by the main-floor bathroom, which I was unable to see but knew what it was due to the short line trailing from its closed door.

  We eventually reached the end of the hall on the back side of the house and entered a long rectangular game room that astounded me. It was every child and teenager’s dream. On the left end, old arcade games such as Pac-Man and Street Fighter lined the walls, all of which had two or three people surrounding them. There was also still enough room on the left side for both a pool table and a ping pong table. The latter, of course, was being used for beer pong.

  On the right end were two couches, a few game chairs, and a fifty-inch flat-screen TV hooked up to all the major game systems. Currently, there were about eight guys hanging out at this end, only two of them holding controllers, playing some war game. The rest were apparently waiting their turn, commenting and giving unsolicited advice as they waited. Naturally, Sam was among them.

  As I stood in the center of the massive game room, overwhelmed by his entire house and trying to take it all in, I remembered what he had mentioned a few weeks ago about living with just his dad who had lost his job. I became confused. “So, I thought you said you only lived with your dad.”

  He laughed. “I do only live with my dad.”

  “But you have a gigantic house and I haven’t even seen the upstairs yet!”

  His face darkened at my comment. Apparently something I said had agitated him, but he attempted to hide it in his reply. “Upstairs is just bedrooms, and my dad makes a lot of money.”

  “But didn’t you say your dad lost his job before you came here?”

  He sighed in frustration, and I felt like an idiot. Here I was interrogating him about the very thing he blew up over the last time I pried into his life.