Shadow Girl

by Patricia Morrison

  Copyright © 2013 by Patricia Morrison

  Published in Canada by Tundra Books, a division of Random House of Canada Limited,

  One Toronto Street, Suite 300, Toronto, Ontario M5C 2V6

  Published in the United States by Tundra Books of Northern New York,

  P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012938138

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Morrison, Patricia (Patricia Margaret)

  Shadow girl / by Patricia Morrison.

  eISBN: 978-1-77049-368-1

  I. Title.

  PS8626.O763S53 2013 jC813′.6 C2011-906501-0

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  Edited by Sue Tate and Kelly Jones

  www.tundrabooks.com

  v3.1

  For my children, Gen and Adam

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Part One: 1963 Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Two: Zombieland Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part Three: Point Zero Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to acknowledge my readers: Mary Budd, Sheila Cameron, Ashley Frederick, Maria Pucek, and Meera Shah. Thank you to Dalia al-Kury for your belief in Jules from the start, Cynthia Flood and Claire Robson for your wise counsel on literary matters, Sue Tate at Tundra for helping me find my way, Jolanta Kosewska for friendship above and beyond, Sadao Katagiri for your constant caring and support, and my sons – Adam Katagiri, my inspiration, and Gen Katagiri, whose guidance, help, and love carried me every step of the way.

  PART ONE 1963

  CHAPTER

  1

  The sun shone through the window.

  December 11. Another million years before Christmas.

  Jules leaned over the edge of the bed in order to see outside.

  Her bedroom window faced the backyard. The enormous tree she and her friend Patsy often climbed stood just a few feet away. She could almost touch it. The long arms of the branches were still.

  A pure winter day. There’s something good in that.

  During the night, ice had built up on the window. It seemed to form a different pattern every time. Sunlight hit patches of the old lino floor, bringing some warmth to the freezing room.

  Jules had put her long stockings in the exact spot where she’d have to put her feet down. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, sat up, and put them on.

  She’d slept in her school clothes again – and that wasn’t good. She had only one uniform and often got into trouble at school when it looked rumpled and dirty. It was bad enough that the uniform was getting too small. She went into the bathroom to wash her face.

  White as a ghost, she was.

  Jules’s eyes were big and hazel-colored, like her father’s. They were the only part of her face that was really different, she figured, because her nose and mouth were normal. Boys in her class were starting to talk about stuff like that.

  Ugh.

  Jules already knew she was different from other kids, but not in any way you could tell from speaking to her. She just felt different – maybe because she lived differently. Most of her classmates and friends had a home that felt like one, even if they were as poor as Jules and her father.

  Maybe he doesn’t care about things like that.

  It was hard to know how her father felt about anything a lot of the time, though. The nights he came home drunk, Jules would quickly make herself a sandwich for dinner and get to her room as soon as she could. Her dad would yell at her if she got in his way, even though she did everything so that he wouldn’t be bothered by her. He’d talk to himself, get some beer from the fridge, and watch TV until he fell asleep.

  Once in her room, Jules would turn on the old lamp that was on the floor near her bed and make a small fort with her blankets, propping them up with pieces of wood she had found in the park nearby. She’d made forts ever since she was little. It didn’t matter that she was eleven now and not a little kid anymore. Her blanket fort was her own special place to be. When she was inside it, she could disappear inside her dreams.

  Jules wet a facecloth and tried to straighten out the worst wrinkles in her uniform. When she was done, she went downstairs. Her father was under an old blanket, sleeping in his chair. The TV was still on.

  She knew it wouldn’t be good to wake him up, so she went about her normal routine, pulling the box of Corn Flakes from the cupboard and getting milk from the fridge. She opened the milk carton and took a sniff.

  Ew. Can’t drink this.

  She filled a bowl with cereal and sat down. It was hard to eat dry.

  Even though she’d slept for a long, long time, she was tired. It’d be tough trudging through the snow today, getting to school. The whole world outside the kitchen window looked frozen.

  She put the bread and margarine on the counter to make a sandwich and then looked in the fridge.

  Don’t tell me it’s lousy Cheez Whiz again!

  She took the jar from the fridge and opened it. It didn’t smell good, either. And the spread – what was left of it – had dried and was turning brown in some spots. She scooped out what she could and tried to put blobs of it on the bread without making holes. She wished that on days when she brought rotten lunches to school, she could eat them by herself in the school yard so nobody could make fun of her.

  Hopefully her dad would have some money tonight when he came home. She needed to get some groceries at the variety store.

  Gotta hurry. Gotta see if Patsy’s left for school yet.

  Jules went to check on her father once more. He was snoring loudly. He probably wouldn’t get to work today, and she knew what that meant on payday.

  She got her coat, scarf, tuque, and mitts, put on her boots, and left the house quietly.

  Swinging by Patsy’s house on Martin Grove Road, she was glad Patsy was still there. They walked to their school, Our Lady of Peace, and all they talked about was Christmas.

  “What’d you ask for, Jules?”

  Jules almost answered righ
t away, but caught herself. “My dad likes to surprise me.”

  “But what do you want?”

  More than anything, Jules wanted a doll she’d seen in Zellers at the Six Points Plaza. She didn’t know whether or not to tell Patsy about it because there wasn’t much chance she’d get it.

  But Patsy was her good friend, and Jules knew that Patsy didn’t get many gifts for Christmas, her birthday, or ever. Jules was glad her father didn’t hate Mr. and Mrs. O’Connor like he did some of the other families in the neighborhood, the ones who weren’t friendly to him. He said they acted like snobs because they were living in a “good” area – even though they ate Kraft Dinner every night.

  “I want a doll I saw at the plaza,” Jules said. “Do you want to walk over there after school? I can show you.”

  “Wish I could, but it’s my turn to look after Marcus.”

  Patsy’s brother was disabled, and she and her older sister, Rosey, took turns taking care of him after school until their mom and dad got home from work.

  “Maybe on the weekend?”

  “Sure.”

  Patsy didn’t say Jules was too old for a doll because Patsy still played with dolls herself. And Jules didn’t act like a baby. Far from it. She was more grown-up than a lot of kids. Took care of herself. Even took care of her dad sometimes. Most kids couldn’t do that.

  Patsy loved horses and kept asking her parents for one of her own. And if she couldn’t have a horse, she wanted riding lessons.

  Jules knew that Patsy’s family couldn’t afford to pay for any kind of lesson, let alone buy a horse. She could’ve said, “That’ll never happen in a million years,” but didn’t. They never made fun of each other’s dreams.

  But Dad can afford to buy a doll. I can pretend the doll’s a child, my own little girl to care for, who cares for me back. And when I play with her, I can do what I always do: pretend the world’s warm and sunny, not cold and dark. Pretend she needs me, like family.

  “We’re at Mervyn Avenue,” Patsy said, interrupting her thoughts. “Gotta turn here.”

  It was faster for them to walk down Patsy’s street and turn where it met Wedgewood School, but they almost never did because the Protestant kids would throw snowballs at them. The uniform was a dead giveaway. The kids at Wedgewood sometimes put stones inside the snowballs, or made them as icy as they could, so it really hurt if you got hit. But the Catholic kids did the same and were just as mean.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Jules rushed out of school when the bell sounded. The sky was cloudy, and snow was sure to fall. The Six Points Plaza wasn’t on the way home, but it was one of the best places to be at Christmastime. There wasn’t any other shopping center near her part of Etobicoke – except maybe the Cloverdale Mall, but people had to drive or take a bus to get there.

  Part of the big parking lot in front of the plaza had been set up to sell Christmas trees. Jules loved to walk among the trees and imagine she was in a forest. They smelled wonderful. A huge wooden Santa with his sleigh and reindeer was perched on the plaza’s flat roof. And in every store window, Christmas lights twinkled, showing off red, green, gold, and silver decorations.

  Magical.

  Jules walked quickly to Zellers and went inside. She could’ve stood at the entrance all afternoon, just looking at everything. But mean store clerks would nag her, asking, “Can I help you with something,” when they knew damn well she couldn’t buy anything.

  First she looked at the decorations, then she went over to the candy counter and imagined which box of chocolate she’d buy, which candy canes, which candies. She was hungry, though, so she couldn’t stay there for very long.

  The next stop was the toy department. It didn’t matter if it was supposed to be a boy’s toy or a girl’s, Jules loved them all and played with whatever she could.

  She’d met two nice people who always worked in that department. A teenager, Frances, was usually there on Fridays and Saturdays or when the store was extra-busy. She was sixteen and went to Etobicoke Collegiate. She never acted stuck-up or mean.

  Mrs. Adamson worked there all the time. She was about as old as most of the moms Jules knew. People might have said she was ordinary-looking because she didn’t wear makeup or lipstick, like a lot of moms, or do anything with her dark shiny hair. But Jules didn’t think her face was ordinary at all. Maybe it was because of her amazing smiles. They zapped you, making you feel good inside, forcing you to smile back.

  Or maybe it was because of her big dark eyes, which seemed to see everything – not just the kids who wandered everywhere, touching and threatening to break the toys. She seemed to be able to tell what people were feeling the same way that other people noticed what you were wearing. More than once, she’d looked at Jules’s face and said or done something to turn Jules’s bad mood around.

  Mrs. Adamson always gave Jules a person-to-person hello as Jules came in, and whenever the store wasn’t busy, they’d talk. She figured out that Jules went to Our Lady of Peace, the only Catholic school around, from Jules’s uniform. Mrs. Adamson’s twin boys went there, too.

  Jules told her she was in Grade 7, a grade ahead of some other kids her age, because she’d skipped a grade a couple of years before. It didn’t mean she was smart, though. Her dad had said the principal was pushing many of the parents to let their kids jump a grade because too many students enrolled at the school the same time Jules did.

  Jules had also told her she lived alone with her dad, not too far from the plaza. Mrs. Adamson didn’t ask about her mom – probably because Jules never talked about her. She must have thought she was dead or something. Gone, anyway.

  Mrs. Adamson didn’t seem to mind that Jules never bought anything, and Jules was happy about that because this was the best place, the happiest place to be at Christmas.

  Back when they lived closer to downtown, Jules and her father had once gone to see the Eaton’s Santa Claus Parade, and when it was over, they’d spent time looking at the “glorioso” window displays at Simpson’s and Eaton’s. They topped it all off with hotdogs and Orange Crush at the snack bar in Eaton’s Annex. That was a never-to-be-forgotten day.

  But Jules could feel the Christmas spirit at the plaza, and that’s all that mattered. She stayed in Zellers as long as possible, playing lightly with as many toys as she could. The doll she wanted so badly was out of its box. Its beautiful red velvet dress was trimmed with lace. The doll’s dark brown hair was long, with gorgeous curls. Jules loved to touch it and pull the long strands through her fingers. Gently, she took the doll down from the shelf.

  Mrs. Adamson was watching her.

  Jules looked back as if to ask her if it was okay to hold the doll, and Mrs. Adamson smiled, nodding yes.

  Oh, how lovely, how perfect it is!

  When Jules finally put the doll back on the shelf, she realized it was getting late. She’d have to get home.

  On the way out of the toy department, Mrs. Adamson waved to her. “Bye. See you soon!”

  And Jules felt happy.

  She put her tuque and mitts back on, took a deep breath, and headed out into the growing darkness.

  In front of the shops, it felt Christmassy – but things changed as soon as she left the plaza. Too many cars roared along the wide street she had to walk along, splattering mud and slush everywhere. Store owners often had going-out-of-business signs in their windows because people didn’t want to shop there.

  Jules always walked home on the side of the street that had the most houses. They were set back from the road as if they, too, wanted to get away from the traffic and car fumes.

  It was five o’clock when she got home. Her dad was out. Maybe he’s gone to work after all. He’d made a mess in the kitchen. She set her schoolbag down, cleaned off the kitchen table, and started to wash the dishes in the sink. She was hungry, hungry, hungry – hungrier than her dad most of the time. He never thought about food, and Jules always had to remind him they were running out.

  S
he was almost afraid to open the fridge.

  Okay. What do we have? The rotten milk I forgot to dump out. A jar of pickles. Shriveled-up celery with brown spots. Yucky Cheez Whiz. Ketchup. Now there’s a meal!

  She opened the cupboard and took down the last two cans of soup. Tomato. She poured both into a pot, added water, and heated it up on the stove. She used a mug to scoop the soup into a big bowl and added torn pieces of bread to thicken it. As carefully as she could, she carried the bowl to the living room and turned on the TV.

  Please, let there be a Christmas program!

  No luck. She turned the TV off and finished eating. After she washed the dishes, she pulled out her recorder. In class they were learning how to play Christmas songs for the school concert. Jules loved her recorder and never got tired of practicing. She had to play when her father wasn’t around, though, because the sound of it got on his nerves. Music usually comforted her, but tonight she couldn’t remember the notes to some of the songs and kept making mistakes.

  It had been a hard-to-get-through day, for reasons she couldn’t explain to herself. Even though she’d been happy in the department store, she felt more lonely and sad now than she had in a long time. If she let herself think about everything – without imagining she was a princess, trapped, alone in a castle, or an all-powerful superhero saving the world – she might start to cry and never stop.

  If her dad wasn’t home by now, he wouldn’t be home at all – or at least not early enough to spend time with her. Jules went to her room, turned on the old lamp, and made her blanket fort. Her stomach was full, and she’d be warm. That would help lift her mind away.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Jules leaned out of bed to look out the window at the morning sky. It was cloudy. Everything was gray and dull.

  She didn’t want to get out from under the blankets, but she also didn’t want to miss school. Sometimes she’d forget to set her alarm, and rather than show up late, she’d just skip the whole day. Her dad almost never woke her up for school – he was either hungover, sleeping most of the day, or had already gone to work.