Lexi rolls her dark eyes at me. “Didn’t you miss all this?”
I sigh. “Feels like I’m on display at the zoo, where they’re going to take turns rattling my cage.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice someone coming up beside our table. But this idiot isn’t here for me.
It’s Max. Lexi’s ex, who won’t stay ex’ed.
“Hey, Lexi. You’re looking delicious.”
A quick sketch of him: Messy black hair. Smoky gray eyes. Killer long lashes. Looks like he was raised by wolves. He plays in his own crappy little garage band. And he’s a total slut. He cheated on Lexi every chance he got.
“What do you want?” she says.
“Just to talk, or text. You never answer me anymore.”
“That’s because it’s over.”
She keeps her eyes down, like she’s checking out her nail polish. Lexi can’t look at Max. The breakup is fresh and raw. Hurts too much.
“Come on,” he says. “We don’t have to be enemies. We can still do the video stuff, right?”
Lexi makes these short films she posts online, and she got Max to do the music on a couple of them. In exchange, she shot a video for his band last year and made them look like they were for real.
“We can’t do anything,” she says.
He runs his fingers through his hair, messing it some more, and tries his best wolf smile. “How about with that new film you were working on? I already made up a little mood music for it.” She’s shaking her head, but that’s not stopping him. “Don’t say no till you hear it.”
“I don’t want to hear it. Don’t want to hear you.”
I know how tough this is for her, so I jump in.
“Why don’t you just go.” I wave him off.
He glares at me. We had a mutual hate thing going from the start. I knew he was bad for her—toxic. And he thinks I’m the reason she broke up with him.
“Heard you were dead.” His gray eyes go cold.
“I was. It didn’t stick.”
“Try harder next time.”
Then he exits.
“What a scumbag,” I say to Lexi. “But you were great. Strong. You didn’t give in.”
It was rough helping her break her addiction to Max, because he really knew how to play her. Whenever she tried to pull away he understood just what to say, and she kept falling for him. But no more.
“School’s like a recurring nightmare,” she says. “Where all your mistakes come back to haunt you.”
I nod, thinking about that last thing he said.
“What did that mean, anyway—‘Try harder next time’?”
She shrugs. “He was being an ass.”
“Yeah, but is that what everybody’s saying? That I tried to kill myself? I mean, they’re all supposed to think it was just an unintentional clumsy freak thing that happened. That’s the official story.”
“I know. But suicide by nail gun makes a juicier story. They’re going with that instead.”
So that’s what’s behind all the staring and whispers. Makes me want to scream, It’s not my fault! I didn’t do this to myself! It’s not me.
Putting my half-eaten apple down, I notice the shadow of my hand on the tabletop. Matching my movements. Following my lead.
For now.
Once a week I have to go see Dr. Iris, psychiatrist.
I tried to argue my way out of this, saying I was just accident-prone and clumsy, not depressed, screwy or suicidal. But Dad wasn’t buying it. He’s a natural lie detector. And my explanation for how I got this nail in my head sounded suspicious even to me.
“You need a professional you can talk to,” he said. “To help you work things out.”
The problem with my “things” is that they’re impossible. I’d come close to telling Dad the truth before, but I always pulled back. He only believes in what he can see with his own eyes, what he can lay his hands on. No way he could wrap his mind around what’s been happening to me. And after all the crap I’ve put Mom through, I didn’t want to add having a mentally disturbed daughter to her worries.
If I spilled my secret they’d lock me up. And I don’t blame them—if I wasn’t me, I wouldn’t believe me.
So I lie.
“Getting back to normal?” Dr. Iris asks me now.
“I guess.” Whatever that is.
She has mousy brown hair pulled back and tied up. Pale skin. Thick-framed glasses. Dressed all in gray, a light sweater over a blouse, knee-length skirt and tights.
“How have you been sleeping?”
“I fall asleep okay. It’s just staying there—you know, in bed, in the house—that’s hard.”
“How often do you sleepwalk?”
“Maybe three times a week. But they’ve got this alarm system set up to keep track of me. So I can’t really escape.”
I can’t help fidgeting when I’m here, nervously playing with my hair, finding endless tangles.
“How do these disturbances make you feel?”
“I don’t know. Helpless, I guess. Out of control.”
I try not to relax, scared to let down my guard. I’ve got too much to hide. Her office is designed to calm you and open you up—from the warm pastel colors to the slightly dimmed lighting, the soft comfy chairs and even the way she sits there with her legs tucked under like we’re friends chatting.
“And when you’re awake, you’re in control?” she asks.
“Yeah. Of course.”
Except when my shadow takes over—if only I could say.
“And you’re back in school?”
I nod. “First day.”
“How was it?”
I shrug, finding a new snarl in my hair. “Same old crap, but worse.”
She raises her eyebrows, waiting for more.
“Everybody’s spreading lies about me.”
“What kind of lies?”
I hesitate. There’s one subject I avoid here, even though it’s always hanging in the air between us, like a bad smell. But there’s no way out now.
“They’re saying it was a suicide attempt.”
I watch her closely to see if she’s thinking the same thing, but she’s giving nothing away.
“What’s it like, hearing that?”
“Pisses me off. Like they think they know me. Like they know anything.” I squirm around on the chair, sneaking a peek at my watch. I’ve still got a lot of time to kill here. “People are always shooting off their mouths about me.”
“Because of your previous incidents?”
“Yeah. You know how it is—small town with small minds. And big mouths.”
“What do they say?”
“That I’ve got some kind of death wish. That I’m crazy.”
I shake my head, looking away from the doctor to the rain-washed windows.
But I’m not crazy. How can I be so sure? After all that’s happened to me?
Because there was one time that my shadow turned on me when I wasn’t alone.
I had a witness.
Lexi.
The summer we were thirteen, me and Lexi took a shortcut to her place on the outer limits of Edgewood. Quickest way there is to follow the train tracks that run past town.
Summer is a real shock to the system around here. After months of endless downpours and gray skies, the sun breaks through like a miracle. We stumble out into the light, as if waking up from the longest dream.
So on this hot June afternoon, I was walking on the tracks, using one of the steel rails like a balance beam, with my arms held out to keep me steady. There was a warm breeze, carrying the smell of everything green.
Lexi was up ahead, searching by the side of the tracks for flattened pennies. Kids line them up on the rails for the trains to crush. They’re supposed to be good luck after. But when the steel wheels hit them, the coins go flying, so you never find them all.
“Got one,” she called out, the copper flashing in the sun as she held it up. “An American penny. Lincoln’s head is all weird now. He looks
like an alien.”
“Find me one. I could use some luck.”
I was scaring up crickets as I went, stepping over a few sunning themselves on the rails, sending them hopping into the weeds.
My focus was on my feet when Lexi shouted.
“Train!”
The tracks made a sharp turn up ahead into the trees, so the train was still out of sight.
A humming drone filled my ears, as if the crickets were starting a riot. Then I felt a vibration shoot through me that I thought was rising up from the rail underfoot.
I went to step off the tracks. But my feet stayed stuck. Looking down, I couldn’t see what was holding them. But they wouldn’t budge. It was like they were magnetized to the rail.
With the sun behind me, my shadow stretched ahead across the wooden planks. Just as my confusion started to edge into panic, I felt that familiar haziness.
The vibration got stronger, making me tremble all over as if something was squirming over my flesh. My shadow was taking over. This time it didn’t need to make me do anything but stand still. And wait.
No! I screamed inside. I won’t let you! Not again!
I wanted to reach down and pull my feet free, but my arms were paralyzed at my sides. Useless. I saw my shadow shift. The silhouette of my head seemed to turn around to face me.
As the deadening calm swept over me, I heard Lexi calling my name. Her voice was like a lifeline, keeping me from going under.
The train broke from the trees, speeding straight for me. Lexi was yelling.
“Move, Jane! Get off!”
But my feet were welded in place.
“Jane!”
I leaned to my left, straining to fall over, out of the train’s path. Muscle pulling against muscle. It felt like they might tear before giving way.
I was tilting. But too slowly! The train was heartbeats away.
“Jane!”
The roar of the engine was closing in. I was screaming in my head—
Let! Me! Go!
Something snapped in me. A blinding flare spiked through my brain.
And I fell.
Seemed like slow motion. In that moment I caught sight of my shadow still lying on the tracks. Not moving with me.
Then I hit the ground hard, the breath knocked out of me. The train whipped by with a blast of wind and the screech of its whistle.
I lay gasping as it blurred past within arm’s reach. It went on forever, car after car. Lexi was out of sight on the other side.
The end of the train zipped by with a gust of hot, dusty air, making me cough.
Then Lexi was there, leaning over me.
“You okay, Jane? What happened? You get stuck?”
But I wasn’t looking at her. My eyes were focused on the tracks beside me. Because something was moving.
My shadow slid over the steel rail, black as liquid tar.
Frozen in place, too shocked to even try to get away, I watched as it got closer and closer. One of its hands stretched out to me. And I felt my own hand tremble as if it wanted to reach for it.
“What—?” Lexi was saying. “What is that?”
When those dark fingers touched mine, it was like my shadow slipped right into me. As if I was a sponge soaking it up. It sent an electric rush through my body, squeezing my heart tight for a few seconds, before fading so I could breathe again.
“Jane! You okay? Say something.”
I had to force some air into my lungs before I could speak. “Did you … see it?”
“What was that?”
“My … shadow.”
She frowned down at me. “What do you mean? I don’t—”
“You saw … what it did?”
She was shaking her head. “I don’t know what I just saw. It’s like some weird trick of the light. Maybe the clouds blocking—”
“No clouds.” We looked up at the clear blue sky.
And we sat there by the tracks for a long time while the sun melted away the freeze inside me.
Time to catch my breath. And tell Lexi my secret.
* * *
Following my close call with the train, me and Lexi searched everywhere, online and off, to see if anything like this had ever happened to anybody else. I found out I was alone in my strangeness. A million times I asked myself, Why me?
For a while I wondered if it had something to do with how I was born. Maybe it took the doctors too long to get my heart beating back then and I got damaged somehow. Not in my brain or body, but deeper—some kind of soul damage. Crazy, I know. But I wondered.
If Lexi hadn’t been there to keep me from falling totally under my shadow’s spell, I wouldn’t have been able to pull away like I did.
Anyway, after that my killer shadow seemed to give up. Years went by with no more drama. The shade I cast didn’t make a move without me. So my fears faded, and I even started to think maybe I had just dreamed it up. That me and Lexi shared a little hallucination back there by the tracks.
Some kids have imaginary friends, maybe I had an imaginary assassin.
I was wrong.
After school I stick around for the premiere of Lexi’s latest cinematic masterpiece. Her film club meets in the theater arts room. She likes putting her short flicks online, but sometimes she says it’s good to have a live audience, even when they’re brutal and criticize her stuff.
I take a seat at the back. The lights are dim, and the show has already started. But it’s not Lexi’s turn yet.
On the big-screen TV up front there’s a close-up of a pair of ballet shoes. The camera pulls back so we see a crying girl looking down at them. I recognize the girl from my English lit class. She pulls out a can of lighter fluid and soaks the shoes, strikes a match and drops it on them. The camera zooms in as they burst into flames, and stays with the shot for a long moment before the whole thing fades to black.
Mr. Steiner, the drama teacher, gets up.
“Good stuff, Valerie. Nice use of montage, and smooth editing. Any comments?” He opens it up to the group.
I spot Lexi on the far side and give her a little wave. She mouths to me, I’m next.
“Why did she burn the shoes?” some guy asks.
Valerie tells him, “Because she was never going to be good enough.”
Other comments range from critical—“What a drama queen”—to confused—“What does ‘montage’ mean again?”
Then Mr. Steiner cues up the next flick.
A LEXI CRANE FILM flashes on the screen.
Followed by the title: THE END OF THE ROAD. White letters fading away into a black background.
Then a pair of eyes fills the screen. Frog eyes, green flecked with yellow, vertical slits for pupils. They blink, and the camera pulls back so you see the whole frog and the wet pavement under him. His throat pulsates as he croaks. As the camera zooms out even farther, you find he’s not alone. There’s a crowd of frogs on the rainy asphalt.
The view cuts to black again and the caption:
EVERY SPRING THEY COME.
A wide shot shows a stretch of road that’s alive with the hopping mob of amphibians. There’s a chorus of croaking now.
TO CROSS OVER.
A car roars past, speeding through them. Squashing some.
TO FIND THEIR MATING GROUNDS.
A low-level shot gives the frog’s point of view. The forest is on the far side, with the wetlands hidden there. But standing between them and their destination is the blur of giant wheels passing by.
SOME MAKE IT.
The lucky ones move off the pavement and gravel shoulder toward the safety of the trees.
OTHERS DON’T.
The broken and flattened seem to outnumber the living. But they keep coming, wave after wave of them.
SOME FIND A NEW BEGINNING.
The view cuts to a swampy pond filled with frogs hooking up. Then a close-up of little black tadpoles swimming through green algae.
OTHERS FIND THE END OF THE ROAD.
The camera pick
s out one victim lying belly-up on the asphalt, eyes shut, legs limp. The croaking quiets down to silence. The image freezes for a long moment before going to black.
Mr. Steiner gets up again.
“Beautifully strange, as always, Lexi. Morbidly moving. Nice choice of camera angles. Great sound quality. Okay, discussion. What are your thoughts?”
Lexi said this is where they all tear her flicks apart.
“What did that mean?”
“I don’t get it.”
“There’s nothing to get.”
“It’s froggy porn.”
“That was so gross.”
“Why does she always have to do dead stuff?”
Lexi stares straight ahead at the blank screen, a hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. For her, these critics are just indie-film wannabes who have never had an original idea in their lives. But she keeps coming because Steiner is good with the technical stuff.
A new voice breaks in. “It’s brilliant.”
Searching for who said that, I see Max slouched in a chair on the far side of the room.
“Brilliant how?” asks Valerie.
He shrugs. “There were lots of metaphors and stuff. About life and death. Makes you think.”
Lexi doesn’t look back, but I can tell she recognizes his voice by how she’s got her eyes squeezed shut.
“More like makes you puke,” Valerie says.
Mr. Steiner holds up his hands. “Try to keep it constructive.”
After some tech talk about storyboarding and sound editing, the group breaks up.
I go over to Lexi before Max can move in. I give him the evil eye.
“Great stuff,” I tell her. “Loved those low-angle shots from the frog’s point of view.”
I helped out months ago when she was shooting it, holding the umbrella over her and watching for cars.
“Is he still there?” she asks.
“Just leaving.”
I watch him go. He chats up Valerie on the way out. Max is giving up for now, because he’s got no shot at getting Lexi alone to try to play her.
“Okay, he’s gone.”
She lets out her breath. Lexi’s got a weak spot when it comes to slick and shallow users like Max. He’s kind of a drug to her. She feels this chemical attraction that blinds her to his sleaziness. She says she’s over him, but it’s hard to kick your own chemistry.
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