Shadows

by Amy Meredith

  Eve paused in front of the Madewell boutique. ‘The denim bar! I missed this place,’ she said. ‘Every pair of my favourite jeans comes from here.’

  ‘The consultants understand your butt better than you do yourself,’ Jess agreed.

  ‘I want to get a pair with custom embroidery. I’m thinking of—’ Eve paused, suddenly becoming aware of little prickles dancing up the back of her neck – the kind of prickles she always got when somebody was watching her. She could almost feel the staring eyes on her back. Could it be Luke? Her bad, bad, too-romantic brain just went there.

  Luke equals player, Eve reminded herself. You do not want to crush on Luke. You don’t want to, and you aren’t going to. Don’t even bother to look.

  But she couldn’t help herself. She had to know.

  Eve glanced over her shoulder. No Luke. But somebody else was staring at her.

  A guy she’d never seen before. He stood across the street, leaning against the wrought-iron fence that enclosed the park, one foot crossed over the other. And he was just … staring. When he realized she’d caught him, he looked away. But then looked back, and a slow, sexy half-smile spread across his face. Just for Eve. Like the two of them shared a secret.

  The fairy lights in the elm trees clicked on. Like magic. Like something out of a movie. A non-horror movie.

  Eve dragged her gaze away from him, every nerve-ending in her body tingling. That had to be the other new boy. Mal. But Megan had been wrong. He wasn’t cute.

  Mal was smouldering.

  Chapter Two

  Eve adjusted the dragonfly clip holding back her curly hair. The sapphire Swarovski crystals on the wings almost exactly matched her eyes.

  ‘You’re going to be late, Eve! And I don’t have time to drive you. I have an eight-thirty,’ her mother called. An eight-thirty as in an eight-thirty surgery. Her mom was a cardiac surgeon.

  ‘OK, OK, I’m leaving!’ Eve grabbed her fringed Hobo bag and turned away from the mirror. Continuing her klutzy streak, which had really only developed in the last year or two – her mom said it was probably because she was growing and her body was still getting used to its new dimensions – she tripped over the mound of clothes behind her. There was another mound on the bed and more clothes draped over her desk chair. She had tried on just about every outfit combo that was mathematically possible. And texted pics of most of them to Jess for a second opinion. The first day of school was always a fashion show, and Eve suspected the first day of high school would be even more so.

  She grabbed a pen and scribbled a note to Donna, the housekeeper, saying she would put everything away herself. She stuck the note to the corkboard on her door and hurried down the grand curved stairway to the foyer.

  She made a quick stop at the kitchen for a wild berry smoothie, then walked the two blocks to the corner where she met Jess. For a moment Jess took in Eve’s outfit in silence.

  ‘I know, I know, we decided I should wear the skinny jeans and the flowy top,’ Eve said, knowing Jess was curious as to why she had deviated from the first-day clothing strategy they’d devised together. ‘I changed my mind at the last second.’

  ‘Mm-hmm,’ Jess said, falling into step with Eve as they headed towards school. ‘And was there any particular reason you decided on the T-shirt of Lu-u-u-urve?’ Jess dragged out the word ‘love’ so long that she had to take a big breath in the middle.

  ‘I liked how it went with the Peasant Skirt of Effortless Chic,’ Eve replied. Which was true. The skirt she’d bought yesterday, squeaking under the AmEx limit, was the perfect colour to complement the tee. But it was also true – and Jess knew it – that Eve always wore her funky tee with the gramophones on it when she wanted to look especially good for a guy. The T-shirt just fitted. It got attention without looking like it was trying to get attention. Which was why it had been christened the T-shirt of Love.

  ‘Ri-i-i-i-ight,’ Jess answered, drawing out the word almost as long as she had ‘love’.

  Why did Jess have to know her so well? ‘Fine. I thought I’d start high-school life with a little love mojo,’ Eve admitted.

  ‘I knew it!’ Jess exclaimed. ‘Who’s the mojo for? Has to be one of the new boys, obviously, but which one?’ She tapped her lips with two fingers and frowned, her patented silly I’m thinking look.

  ‘Well, not the player,’ Eve said. ‘I don’t need any of that.’

  ‘Oh, but he touched your hair,’ Jess reminded her.

  ‘He practically made the rounds in Ola’s, putting his fingers all over girls’ heads,’ Eve said.

  ‘It’s settled then,’ Jess said. ‘I get Luke, since you don’t want him. And that means you get Mal.’

  Eve laughed. ‘Don’t they get a say in that? And I think we’ll have some competition from, you know, every other girl in school.’

  ‘Not a problem. If the guys were seniors or something, maybe. But they’re freshmen, just like us. And I’m a cheerleader, remember? Or at least I’m sure I will be once we have try-outs.’ Jess had been a cheerleader all three years of middle school. ‘And more than that, I’m a blonde cheerleader. And I’m peppy. I’m a completely lovable package.’

  ‘Plus – you’re so modest,’ Eve added.

  ‘I know.’ Jess slipped her arm through Eve’s. ‘And you. Those curls. Those eyes. That creamy skin. You look like you stepped out of some pre-Raphaelite painting. Except your hair is dark, which is even better.’ Jess had gone to Europe over winter break last year, and her parents had put every conceivable museum on the itinerary.

  Eve and Jess stopped in front of the high school. Both of them gazed at it in silence for a moment. ‘Remember when we used to play “high-school girls” back when we were about five?’ asked Eve.

  ‘My high-school-girl name was Roberta. I thought that was the coolest name back then. Somebody must have been putting something in my chocolate milk,’ Jess answered.

  ‘Well, we’re finally here,’ Eve said.

  ‘Let’s go conquer.’ And they walked across the quad and through the big front doors. Then Jess made a left and Eve went right. Their lockers weren’t together because they had different homerooms. Eve stowed her iPhone – cellphones weren’t allowed in class – and attached a magnetic mirror to the inside of the locker door. That was essential for hair and make-up checks. Then she pulled her schedule out of her purse and verified the location of her homeroom. She found it with no problem, and – bonus! – without knocking anything over, or tripping, or displaying any other klutzy behaviour. So far, so good.

  She was only the second person there. Even the teacher wasn’t in the room yet; Ms Reiber was probably off directing traffic in one of the hallways. The person who’d beaten her there? Mal.

  Thank you, T of Lu-u-u-urve, Eve thought as Mal gave her that we’ve got a secret half-smile she’d seen on Main Street. She smiled back. A small maybe I will, maybe I won’t kind of smile. She hoped it made her look as mysterious as Mal. And besides, she hadn’t been able to come up with just the right casual comment. Usually she was good at that. But he was so new-boy. She was used to having years of history with every guy in Deepdene’s small school. She wasn’t entirely sure how to talk to somebody brand new. And the way Mal looked at her – it was kind of intense, even in the few seconds his gaze had lasted. She felt as if he’d sucked the words right out of her.

  Should she sit next to him? Across the room? Eve decided on something in between, taking a desk that was two rows over from Mal, and a little further forward. As soon as her butt hit the chair, she wondered if she’d made a mistake. She could feel him looking at her, the way she had on Main Street. At least, she thought she could feel it. She glanced over her shoulder and caught him in the middle of looking away.

  ‘So, um, you’re new, right?’ Eve asked. Yes, she’d come up with something that brilliant all by herself in less than a minute. She was going to have to do some remedial reading in Cosmo about how to talk to boys. Asap.

  ‘Right,’ Mal said. That�
��s all. Just ‘right’.

  ‘I’m Eve,’ she told him. ‘Eve Evergold.’

  ‘Mal,’ said the big talker.

  ‘Mal, as in Malcolm?’ Eve asked, to keep the conversation going.

  Mal just raised one dark eyebrow, as if he were shrugging.

  ‘OK, not Malcolm,’ Eve said.

  Mal raised both eyebrows.

  ‘If you won’t say, it must be something embarrassing,’ Eve guessed.

  ‘Oh, really? I never heard that theory before,’ Mal said, with just a hint of snarkasm – Eve and Jess’s word for snark mixed with sarcasm.

  At least that had gotten more than a word out of him. Eve thought for a moment. What other names started with ‘Mal’ anyway? Or ended with it? Sometimes names were shortened that way too.

  ‘I’m always jealous of people with nicknames,’ Eve said. ‘Having a one-syllable name will do that to you. I don’t have any options. Jess, my best friend, calls me Evie sometimes, but that’s it.’

  ‘Who said it was a nickname?’ Mal asked. He didn’t smile-smile. But his voice was smiling. And his dark chocolate eyes. He should definitely talk more. His voice matched him somehow. It was low and husky. Sexy. Yeah, that was the word for it.

  ‘It’s obviously a nickname.’ Eve still couldn’t think of what it was a nickname for, though. ‘I’ll find out eventually.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ he answered, but the right side of his mouth tilted up in that sexy half-smile again. Eve was already starting to love that smile. Before she could find a way to make him do it again, Ben Flood and Alexander Neemy came in. Loudly. Followed by five others and the teacher.

  The people kept on coming, distracting her from Mal, and the bell rang a few minutes later. Ms Reiber gave a first-day-of-school speech that was exactly like the one Eve had heard on the first day of every year of middle school. Boring. She’d hoped that in high school they wouldn’t find it necessary to talk about the importance of good attendance and how to evacuate in case of a fire – which presumably you knew by the time you were this old. Finally Ms Reiber started calling out names. She’d decided to seat the class alphabetically. Alphabetically, like they did in kindergarten. Eve rolled her eyes. You should get to sit where you wanted in homeroom at least. It wasn’t even a real class.

  Except – thank you again, T of Love – Eve ended up in the desk behind Mal. Close enough to get a whiff of the musky wood-smoke scent of him. Close enough to reach out and touch the line on the back of his neck where his short black hair ended. If she wanted to, which she didn’t, because that would be weird.

  Instead she leaned as close to him as she could. ‘I will find out,’ she promised.

  After her first class, history, Eve swung by her locker to drop off the textbook the teacher had handed out. It was too heavy to lug around all day. And she wanted to check her lip gloss. Sometimes she nibbled on her lower lip when she was thinking, and she was sure she’d consumed the lip gloss she’d put on before school.

  Yep. She had. Eve shook her head at her reflection, then pulled out a tube of Cotton Candy Lip Glaze.

  ‘Hey, Eve. Cool that we got assigned to do the history paper together, huh?’ Luke asked just as she started to apply the glaze.

  Eve jumped in surprise – she hadn’t even heard him coming. She peered round the open locker door at him. They must have a different definition of ‘cool’ in Santa Cruz, California. She’d found out that was where Luke was from once they’d been paired up in history. She’d also found out his opinion of her favourite bag. He’d bugged her until she’d told him how much it had cost, then he’d declared it obscene to pay that kind of money just for something to carry your junk around in. He’d probably been kidding – the way he’d been kidding when he called her spoiled. Kidding in that way that is only half teasing and half what you really think. She and Jess needed to come up with a word for that.

  ‘I guess. Though I’m not sure you really want a -partner with such deeply offensive accessory choices,’ Eve said.

  Luke gave a snort of laughter. ‘I’m sure you have many fine qualities to compensate for your love of shopping. And you’re cute too. So that helps.’

  ‘Gee. Thanks. I feel so much better now,’ Eve drawled. At least working with him on the report would give her a chance to show him that she had some brains under all her long curly hair. And that she did occasionally use those brains to think about things that couldn’t be bought with a credit card. She wasn’t as shallow as he seemed to think. She wasn’t shallow at all. A love of purses did not a shallow person make.

  Did it?

  ‘So what do you have next?’ Luke asked. Across the hall, Katy Emory was looking at Eve like she was the luckiest girl in the world to be talking to Luke. Would it matter to Katy if she knew Luke was probably the biggest flirt in the entire school?

  Eve returned to her lip-gloss application. ‘Biology. Ms Whittier,’ she said, not bothering to look at Luke.

  ‘Cool. Me too. Can I borrow that?’ He reached around her and plucked her lip glaze out of her fingers. She still held the wand. He held out his hand for it.

  ‘What? No,’ Eve said.

  ‘Come on, it’s my first day. I want to make a good impression. And clearly biology can’t be understood without lipstick,’ Luke joked.

  ‘Funny.’ Eve grabbed the lip glaze back. ‘This stuff is really good for you.’

  Luke raised his eyebrows. They disappeared under his floppy blond hair. He didn’t have expressive dark brows like Mal.

  ‘It has green tea antioxidants,’ Eve continued. ‘And macadamia extract and aloe vera for healing.’

  ‘Oh. That’s different then,’ Luke said. ‘Carry on.’

  He stood there and watched while she finished reapplying the lip gloss. What was he waiting for?

  When she shut her locker and started down the hall to class, Luke fell into step beside her. ‘That stuff smells like vanilla,’ he commented. ‘Does it taste like vanilla too?’

  Eve shot him a hard glance. Flirting again. Like he does with everyone, she reminded herself. No crushing on the player. She felt like ripping off the T-shirt of Love, just to be on the safe side. But stripping down to her bra, with its lace and pearls, in front of him might give him the wrong impression.

  ‘Tell me when your birthday is and I’ll buy you a tube,’ Eve answered. ‘Then you’ll know.’

  Eve stood in the quad at the end of the day, waiting for Jess so they could walk home together. A single leaf, yellow with deep, dark red around the tips, drifted down from one of the maples. That was just wrong. It was too early for the autumn leaf change to have started. Eve hated fall: just when the leaves had taken on these incredible, blazing colours, they died. It depressed her. Winter was different. Snow and icicles gave the bare trees a sparkling, shimmering new life.

  Without knowing exactly why, Eve picked up the sad, lonely little leaf and put it in her pocket just as Jess hurried over. ‘Let’s stop off at Megan’s. She wasn’t at school. I want to make sure she’s OK,’ Jess told Eve. ‘Come with?’

  ‘Sure,’ Eve answered. ‘Have you talked to her since we’ve been back?’

  ‘We texted Saturday night,’ Jess said. ‘I told her we’d seen The Luke in The Flesh. She was still really tired, but she didn’t say anything about maybe having to skip school.’

  ‘She’d have to have been really tired to miss the first day,’ Eve commented. ‘That’s serious.’

  ‘Well, she’s a sophomore. Maybe it’s not such a big deal once you’re used to high school,’ Jess said.

  Eve made a face, and Jess laughed. The first day of school was always a big deal, and they both knew it.

  ‘Maybe she has mono,’ Eve suggested.

  ‘The kissing disease? It’s possible,’ Jess agreed. ‘Megan does a lot of kissing.’

  Eve giggled. Megan was a lively redhead, and that made her popular with boys. Well, that and her wild side. Megan was all about fun, fun, fun.

  How much fun, fun, fun did she a
nd Luke have before some other guy caught Megan’s attention? Eve wondered. Wait. Why was she even thinking about Luke?

  ‘Jess, am I shallow?’ Eve burst out.

  ‘What? Where did that come from?’ Jess asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I was just thinking. I do really like to shop. And I like make-up. And purses. I enjoy my purses. And I spend a ton of time thinking about my hair …’

  ‘What you’re saying is that you’re a girl,’ Jess replied as they turned onto Medway Lane, the street where Jess’s family and Megan’s both lived.

  ‘But, no. Think about it,’ Eve insisted. ‘What do I do that has any substance? I mean, you have cheerleading, which is actually a true sport. And you take flute lessons—’

  ‘Which I suck at,’ Jess interrupted.

  ‘You helped renovate slums in India,’ Eve said.

  ‘I told you, that was total luxury vacation volunteering. My parents just wanted to feel good about themselves while staying in five-star hotels,’ Jess said. She led the way up the long stone walkway to Megan’s Mediterranean-style house, then knocked on the door.

  ‘I don’t even do luxury volunteering,’ Eve said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe I am shallow.’

  But Jess wasn’t listening. ‘I bet Megan is waiting to pounce on us and ask us a million questions,’ she said. ‘Can you imagine missing the first day?’

  But no one answered. Jess knocked again, louder.

  Eve heard the sound of soft, shuffling footsteps inside the house. Like someone walking through a big pile of dry, dead leaves, Eve thought, touching the pocket where she’d put the first fall leaf. After a few moments the Christies’ front door swung open. Eve bit her bottom lip to keep back a little exclamation of shock.

  Megan looked wrecked. There were dark circles under her eyes, her usually curly red hair hung limp and clearly hadn’t been washed for several days, and Eve thought she was pale, although it was hard to tell with the layer of tan Megan had acquired over the summer. Eve’s cousin Ted had had mono last year, but he hadn’t looked anywhere near as bad as Megan did. There had to be something else wrong with her. Something … not good. Very not good.