by Edie Claire
WRAITH
Copyright © 2011 by Edie Claire
Digital edition for Kindle published in 2011 by the author.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Dedication
For Grace, and dancers everywhere.
Chapter 1
I squinted into the sun with one eye to see sun-bronzed legs and a dripping wet pair of board shorts. The guy attached to them dropped down onto the sand next to my beach mat and stretched out beside me. Given that I had never seen him before and didn't have a clue who he was, you might think I would be intrigued enough to open both my eyes. But I only needed a peek from the one to know that he was dead.
I closed the eye with a sigh and settled back into the sun. He looked about my own age, too. I hadn’t even seen any other high schoolers yet, much less met one, and I’d been scoping out the beach ever since we arrived. If I didn’t meet anyone during spring break, I’d be stuck trying to make friends over the summer, which—as any other military brat could tell you—totally sucks. My mom, dad, and I were set to move to Oahu in June, and if I didn’t make progress during this house-hunting trip, I’d be a loner from then till September.
Hawaii. The irony was too cruel, really. I had wanted to move here since forever. All my life, every time a transfer came up, this was what my fingers had been crossed for. Any time except now, it would have been perfect. Back then I had gotten hauled off to Biloxi, Mississippi. San Antonio, Texas. Bangor, Maine. Only in March of my junior year, when I was happily entrenched in Cheyenne, Wyoming, when I had only one more year of high school left, and when I had the most awesome friends in the entire world to spend it with… only then had my dad gotten the order.
But I was determined to make the best of it. The sun was warm, the palm trees were swaying in the brisk ocean wind, and somewhere in the distance roosters were crowing. (The last was a surprise. Who knew there were wild chickens in Hawaii?) I would meet some of the locals—just as soon as my parents found a house and we figured out what high school I’d be going to. In the meantime, I would settle for one friendly, helpful teen, whether we ended up at the same school or not. The guy lying next to me would have been a great find, if he hadn’t drowned a decade ago. Or suffocated in a sand pit. Or whatever.
A thought struck. He couldn’t have died that long ago, not with those board shorts. They were the same style all the other surfers on the North Shore were wearing right now.
I opened both eyes, propped up on an elbow, and studied him. He appeared to be resting after a long, exhausting surf session. He lay flat on the sand next to me, elbows out, his hands locked behind him to cradle a head of sea-soaked, dark blond curls. He was lean, built like an athlete. His face…
I turned my eyes away. What was the point in torturing myself? He didn’t go to high school here, or anywhere. Even if he did, no guy who looked like he did would give a girl like me a second look, much less show me around the island and introduce me to his friends.
I was able to look elsewhere for exactly four seconds. Then I went back to staring. The guy was young—seventeen or eighteen. Nineteen, tops. He was also downright gorgeous, with the face of an angel and a body that looked like it had stepped out of an ad for some seriously cool jeans.
I leaned closer, trying to see what color his eyes were, but he had them closed against the sun. I wondered if the light had been just as bright—and shining from the same direction—the day that he had been here.
How long ago was that? It must have been recently; maybe even this past winter, when the surf was at its highest. The North Shore’s winter waves—monstrous swells that often topped twenty feet high—could be lethal, even for the professionals. And he seemed so… present. His body was near solid enough to have fooled me. Unlike the older shadows, the transparency wasn’t visible everywhere—it merely floated through him, like ripples. If I hadn’t seen the blue sole of one of my discarded flip-flops quite clearly through his left thigh as he lay down, I might not even have suspected.
I watched him doze a moment more, then sighed and lay back down on my mat. "The cute ones are always dead," I muttered.
The feeling came over me like a cold prickle. The feeling that I was being watched. I didn’t hear him move. I didn’t feel him stirring. I wouldn’t anyway, because the shadows can never move anything, except whatever equally nonexistent things they happen to be carrying with them. But still, when I opened my eyes to find him leaning over me, staring intently into my face, I was surprised. I was more than surprised. I was totally freaked.
"What did you say?" he asked.
I sucked in a breath and held it. His voice was a beautiful baritone—smooth and deep, even if it did crack just a little at the beginning. He looked at me with a bizarre intensity, as if the words were the most important he had ever said. His eyes, for the record, were amazing—green mixed with a light chestnut brown. At that moment, I would have given anything to believe he was talking to me.
He wasn’t, of course. He had no idea I was even there. None of the shadows ever did. They appeared, disappeared, and reappeared on their own time and for their own reasons, reenacting moments of their lives which often seemed totally random to me, but which I had always assumed must have some significance to them. Otherwise, what was the point?
"Were you talking to me?" he asked again. His voice had dropped to a whisper, his features tense as he waited, breathlessly, for an answer.
I released my own pent-up breath slowly, then twisted my head, looking carefully to the right and left. Whatever shadow he was talking to had to be here somewhere. Why couldn’t I see that one? Could I be lying on top of her?
I rolled over to the far edge of the mat and sat up. There was no one in the space I had left. Not even the faintest hint of a shape. That was odd.
When my gaze went back to him, my heart froze in mid beat. He was still looking at me. Not at me, where I was then, but at me, where I was now. His eyes had followed me.
I jerked my body quickly to one side, then looked back.
Nobody.
He cocked his head at me quizzically for a moment. Then his face erupted into a smile. "You don’t think I can see you," he announced, as if explaining to himself. "But I can. And you can see me, too. I knew it!" He leaned closer. "Say something to me. Anything. Please?"
My heart was no longer frozen. It had melted at the first sight of his smile, and was now beating so violently I was sure I’d bust a rib.
"You can hear me?" I said stupidly, blinking at him like a deer in headlights. As much as I wanted it to be true, I hadn’t come to live so comfortably with the shadows without understanding the rules. I could see and hear them, but they were oblivious to me. They weren’t real, and they weren’t my concern. If I hadn’t accepted that at an early age, I would never have slept at night. If I accepted this now, I might never sleep again.
"Don’t be afraid of me," he said apologetically. His soft whisper sent an odd, prickly feeling up my spine, and my shoulders shuddered. "I’m nothing to be afraid of," he continued, "I swear."
The guy looked almost hurt. Words failed me. I sputtered and stuttered like an idiot. "I’m not afraid of you, exactly. I mean, it’s not that…"
Another smile lit up his face. He had straight white teeth, perhaps just a trace of dimples. "You have no idea how good it is to be having a real conversation," he said cheerfully. "I don’t know how it’s possible, and I don�
��t care. Just don’t run away from me. Please?"
Was he a mind reader, too? Or had I actually sprung up, my feet poised to flee?
I looked down.
Yep. I had.
I took in a deep breath. I let it out. In. Out. There was no reason to freak. If a guy who looked like this one was talking to me in real life, then yes—I would be allowed to freak. If some other shadow had come alive, say one that weighed three hundred pounds and was swinging at me with a spiked club, then flipping out would be a perfectly reasonable reaction. But this guy was no threat to me. He couldn’t hurt me. He was just another shadow.
Chill, girl.
"I’m not going to run away," I said, proud that my voice had steadied. With as much casual grace as I could muster, I sat back down on the mat beside him. "You just startled me, that’s all. The shadows don’t usually… interact. What makes you different? Do you know?"
His brow furrowed. He shook his head, slowly. "I know absolutely nothing. Except this beach, those waves, and a whole lot of people who have no idea I’m even here." He grinned at me again. "Except you."
The shudder returned. I reminded myself, forcefully, that he was not alive.
"You say you see others like me?" he questioned, settling himself to face me, his torso propped up on one perfectly muscled arm. His outstretched fingers sank through the uneven surface of the sand without stirring it. Down the beach, a female surfer carried a short board toward the water, and as she passed behind him I could still see her in the occasional transparent ripple, first through his shoulder, then his chest. To say this was a distraction to conversation would be an understatement. "How do you know the difference?" he asked.
I gave my head a little shake to regroup. "You’re not solid," I explained, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. I didn’t talk about the shadows. Ever. To anyone. I hadn’t mentioned one thing about them since I was five years old. "You’re transparent, at least sometimes. Most of the shadows I see aren’t nearly as solid as you are. They’re more like wisps—some are barely there at all."
"But they don’t talk to you?" he asked. "Do they know that you can see them?"
I allowed myself a deeper look in his eyes. My answers clearly meant a lot to him. He was even more confused than I was.
"They’re not…" I searched for the right word. The last thing I wanted to do, given his unenviable situation, was hurt his feelings. "Present. They’re not here, with me, on this particular day. I’m just seeing things that have happened in the past."
He was silent a moment. "Shadows," he repeated.
"That’s right," I answered softly.
He turned to look toward the ocean, then rubbed his face in his hands. "I’ve never seen anything like that. I only see a bunch of normal, living people. And then there’s me."
He didn’t speak again, for a long time. I sat in silence beside him, listening to the crashing of the giant waves on the nearby shore, feeling the vibrations of their pounding on the sand. A sudden gust of wind kicked up, lifting my unruly locks of dark brown, curly hair and whipping them awkwardly around my face.
His own curls didn’t stir.
He lifted a hand, tentatively, and attempted to restrain a particularly vicious tangle of curls from pummeling my left eye. I watched, my breath held, as his hand passed harmlessly, ineffectively, right through them.
His expression flashed, ever so briefly, of a biting pain. Then, just as quickly, a poor imitation of his smile returned.
"I guess it’s for sure then," he said, his tone unnaturally chipper.
"I really am dead."
Chapter 2
"There you are! I thought you said you wanted to go to Foodland with me this afternoon."
My mother’s familiar, pleasant, perfectly ordinary voice knocked me out of the moment like a wrecking ball. I sprang to my feet and faced her. "What? Oh, right. Is it time already? Sorry—I wasn’t paying attention."
I leaned down to roll up my beach mat, convinced, for one steadying second, that my conversation with the surfer had been nothing but a fantastical dream, inspired by a combination of hot sun, crashing waves, and jet lag.
My illusions along those lines were shattered when I saw his foot, which had been standing on the far corner of my mat, lift graciously out of the way. Never mind that it was both an empty gesture and a beat too late, as the mat began to slip through his foot the instant I pulled on it.
I raised my eyes hesitantly. He was watching my mother, his expression curious. She, of course, couldn’t see him.
"Do you need to go back to the house first?" she asked. "Or can we go from here? The car’s in the beach lot."
I glanced down at my perfectly decent cami and shorts—I never wore a swimsuit if I could help it—and told her I was ready.
"Are you okay?" she asked suddenly, studying me. "You look a little… frazzled."
"I’m fine," I answered too quickly, unable to meet her gaze. I was a rotten liar. Always had been. It didn’t usually cause me a problem, because I didn’t usually lie. Only about the shadows… and that was necessary for her own good. "I’m just out of sorts. I think I must have fallen asleep or something."
"You were sitting up when I got here," she said skeptically, shoving a lock of identically curly, dark brown hair from her own eyes. We looked a lot alike, my mother and I, except that—aside from being nearly forty years older—she always kept her hair short and the waistband of her jeans high. The last part, I was working on. What was harder to deal with was the fact that she was so blasted perceptive.
I cast another surreptitious glance at the surfer. He smiled back at me. My heart pounded.
"Can we stop at that roadside market up by Turtle Bay, too?" I babbled, employing the tried-and-true tactic of diversion. My mother was a highly intelligent woman, but she was easily distracted, particularly when food was involved. "I want to get some fresh mango. And pineapple too. I bet it’s cheaper there."
With my best effort at casualness, I turned away from the beach—and the shadow—and headed toward the parking lot. I tried not to look back. What had I been thinking, talking to one of them like that? Ignoring the shadows was ingrained behavior; it was something I had to do. Ever since that horrible time in my childhood, the darkest in my parents’ lives, when they honestly believed what multiple psychiatrists told them—that their otherwise happy, healthy little girl was desperately, hopelessly, mentally ill. I was the one who had saved them from that horror. It was easy enough, once I realized that all I had to do was lie.
But I couldn’t help looking back.
He wasn’t smiling anymore. He was standing on the beach right where I had left him, gazing after my mother and me with an expression I can only describe as melancholy. Yes, melancholy. Like something out of poem. In an instant, the sadness in his eyes seemed to leap the distance between us and stab at my gut like a knife.
My mother wasn’t paying attention. She walked on ahead, stretched out her arm and pushed the remote button on her car keys. I knew I should keep on walking myself, but that wasn’t possible. Dead or not, real or not, I couldn’t just walk off and leave him there, forever, looking like that.
On my next step I twisted around a little. Then I stretched back an arm and waved goodbye.
***
I unloaded the groceries into the fridge, keeping one eye on the small sliver of beach I could just see out the picture windows in the great room of our condo. I tried to pretend I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I was no better at lying to myself than anyone else. The surfer shadow was all I could think about.
It had to stop.
I could not let myself go back there, to that horrible place where a terrified five-year-old had been forced to decide whether the rest of the world was crazy—or she was. Against all odds, I had found a way out of that hell, and I was not going back. Not for anything. I had succeeded in ignoring the shadows for over a decade now, and I was doing just fine with that plan, thank you very much.
I fini
shed putting away the groceries, grabbed a plastic baggie full of fresh, chilled mango, and headed out onto the deck. My mother had set off to collect my dad from the base and wouldn’t be back for a couple hours. Hickham Air Force Base was at Pearl Harbor—a long haul from the North Shore, perhaps, to a local. But to a family from Wyoming, it was a donut run. Already I was struck by the small scale of everything in Oahu. From our rental on Sunset Beach, we could reach all the North Shore had to offer in a matter of minutes. I only wished I had access to a bike, as we had only the one borrowed car among the three of us.
I settled into a patio chair, popped a juicy slice of mango into my mouth, and prided myself on the fact that I had just gone a whole sixty seconds without thinking about the shadow. There was hope. Never mind that I had been sure, on three occasions, that I had seen him skulking around the Foodland. But that was ridiculous. The shadows never changed location; they were always rooted to particular spots, even if the location was no longer as they might have remembered. I once saw a farmer plowing away a good ten feet up in the air over the parking lot of a shopping plaza that had been dug out of a hillside. The shadows didn’t give a hoot what was going on in the present.
And I didn’t give a hoot about them.
My cell phone buzzed in my pocket, and I dug it out with a grin. I hadn’t been at all sure I could get coverage on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but technology is a wonderful thing. It was a text, from Kylee.
Howz the beach? Met any hot guys yet? TEXT ME! Luv u!
My cheeks grew hot; I was thinking about him again. Gritting my teeth with annoyance, I texted back quickly.
No hot guys yet, but the waves are awesome! Miss u!!!
I sent off the reply with a flourish. I was not lying. Whatever I had seen on the beach, it was not a guy.