I Become Shadow (2 page)

I took a shower and found them sitting on the backyard porch talking. They looked up at me as I walked toward them.

“Hey,” I said nonchalantly.

“Hey, honey,” my dad said. He motioned for me to sit in a chair by them, but I stood instead. I never chose to hang out with them so they knew something was up. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, I decided to just go for it.

“So, there’s a party tonight,” I started smoothly but then began to ramble, “and Beth and I were thinking about going and you know I would never do anything stupid and we’re only fourteen so there won’t be any liquor there just
soda, not that I drink anyway, plus, you’re always telling me to expand my horizons and meet new people which this party would be and it’s me getting out of the house to hang out with more people my age which I know you guys want me to do more often.” I took a deep breath when I finished, realizing I had probably just rattled off the longest run-on sentence of my life.

My parents sat in silence, either thinking about it or maybe just trying to process all that had just spewed out of my mouth. I had prepared up to six different responses for what I predicted they would say.

My dad looked at my mom, then turned to me and said, “Have fun.”

Wha-wha-what?

“Be home by ten,” my mother added with a smile. She took a sip of her tea and leaned back to relax.

Confused, I wandered back inside. I wasn’t sure what had just happened. Wasn’t there supposed to be some kind of push back, or an argument or something? That was just too easy. And then I realized it. They
knew
. They knew I was lame, that I didn’t drink, and that nothing would happen to me. How sad was that?

I went upstairs to text Beth the good news and that I’d head over to her house after I got dressed. I never knew what to wear to these things so I just put on a pair of shorts, a tank top, and my ratty old USC hoodie. I slipped on my flip-flops, hopped on my bike, and fifteen minutes later I was at Beth’s door.

She met me outside and yelled, “Bye, Mom.” Her parents were the coolest people in the world. They had invented
some restaurant software that a theme park chain had bought a while back, which meant they pretty much got to sit around and do whatever they wanted all day. Also, they could go to said theme parks for free, forever. So jealous.

I was glad to see that Beth was wearing similar garb. Sometimes I would be overly dressed or extremely under-dressed in anticipation of hanging out with “everyone.” At least I’d fit in dress-wise tonight.

NOW, CONTRARY TO POPULAR
belief, high school parties are not three hundred people strong with loud rap music. If you’re looking to get busted, that’s the recipe. No, most parties are more just glorified hangout sessions of twenty to thirty people. I only sound so knowledgeable because last year, when I went to my first “party,” I was sorely disappointed it wasn’t like in the movies.

Beth immediately ran over to some kids sitting by the small koi pond. Then I was alone. I’d been expecting this, but the sudden reality didn’t make it easier. Beth became a whole different person around “everyone.” She spoke like an idiot, cared about garbage TV shows, and was basically the annoying popular girl we had hated when we were younger. I never told her this because I was sure she knew and wasn’t proud of it. Why rub it in, right?

I scanned the yard. Across from the pond there was a fire pit.
There
. My eyes zeroed in on Trey, who was surrounded by girls and even a few guys, playing the guitar. Did I also mention he was an amazing musician? He finished his song to raucous clapping. I almost clapped myself but resisted. He laughed off the over-enthusiasm
with a wave, and then gently put the guitar down. He was standing and stretching when his eyes found me. He gave me a nod and a smile.

I did what any other sensible girl in my position would do. I turned beet red, wondered if I smiled or just gaped, and then sprint-walked toward Beth. I pretended to be hanging with her group while I snuck peeks at Trey, walking over to the coolers to fish for a drink. Bad idea to choose this spot. I had to get away from their stupid conversation before I grabbed my bike and ran home. But by this time there was no one by the fire pit anymore.

The wood had burned down to coals by now, so I headed over and tossed on a few logs. The flames climbed in a shower of sparks, and within a few minutes the fire was roaring again.

Fires are relaxing. I don’t care who you are. It’s primal: the warmth and the act of watching the flames. It transcends “everyone.” It didn’t take long for me to lose myself in it, forgetting where I was for a bit. Then there was the sound of someone sitting down on the other side. I glanced up. It was Trey. He was smiling as he sat there drinking a beer.

“How’re you doing?” he asked me.

I’d spoken to him before in classes, so if you were hoping for a speechless moment, sorry to disappoint. But damn, those eyes. Big and blue. What my mom called Bette Davis eyes, only on a dude.

“Okay,” I answered, trying to be cool.

“How was your summer?” he asked genuinely.

“Fun. Slept a lot. You?”

“I wakeboarded all summer. It was amazing. Only one more week left though,” he said, sighing.

“One more week,” I echoed like an idiot, and hated myself for it.

Behind me I could hear loud talking. Strangely, I heard my name a couple times, too. I turned around to see what was going on.

Loudly and over animatedly, Beth said, “Oh, she drinks! Watch.” She made eye contact with me, smiled, and said, “Think fast.”

I saw her arm do a tossing motion, which usually meant something was being thrown at me. But Beth knew I had the reflexes of a no-armed blind person so she knew better than to do that. Didn’t she? I only had enough time to realize she’d tossed a beer can at me before it slammed square into my nose.

The pain was instantaneous. I gasped and stumbled backward, then pulled my hands away from my nose and looked down at my hands. Blood. A lot of it. At this point in my life, I was normally okay with the sight of my own blood. I was clumsy and accidents happen, but this was more than I’d seen in a long time. I got light-headed and stumbled, but a thick bush seemed to rear up and catch me, holding me up in some strange levitated state. My vision went fuzzy.

I was vaguely conscious of Beth, suddenly at my side. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” There was laughter coming from all over. And I guess it could have been funny if you weren’t the one who’d been hit. But it
had
been me, so I rolled out of the bush, away from everyone.

When I stood up I was facing Trey again. Through watery eyes I saw that he was laughing too, but when he saw I was bleeding he made a sickened face and turned away. Embarrassed and covered in blood, I pushed Beth away and ran out of the backyard.

I ran out to the street, sat down on the curb, pinched my nose, and put my head back. I’d seen it in a movie once. Not long after, someone put a hand towel on my nose and held it there. An arm wrapped around me in a tight squeeze.

“You okay?” Beth asked.

“No,” I growled, muffled through the towel. I reached up and took her hand and the towel away. “How bad is it?”

She looked at me and said, “Bloody, but,” and she looked closer, “doesn’t look broken. So that’s good, right?”

I made a sarcastic cheer with my arms.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. Her eyes were wide. She not only sounded sincere, she sounded frightened.

“It’s okay,” I said. She desperately wanted her other friends to like me and vice versa. It was important to her. I loved that. I offered, “Maybe if I ran track or something, that would help.” A few of her friends were runners.

“Huh?” Beth said.

“You know, so your other friends don’t see me as total loser. I’d do it if you think that would help with merging the groups?”

“Can you run?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.

“No. Well, I ran from a dog once and I felt really fast while I was doing it.”

“Oh, right, the big dog incident of third grade. I totally forgot about that. But wasn’t the dog really, really old?” she said with a smile.

He’d also been mostly blind too, but I wasn’t going to remind her of that since the running feat was already dangerously unimpressive. We sat in silence for a few seconds before I tossed out, “Cheerleader?”

All she had to do was look at me, and I laughed. We both did. But then it hurt. After a minute of solid, semi-painful giggling, I took the towel off my face again. The bleeding had basically stopped, but I knew it was still all over my face and clothes. “Do I look badass?”

“Totally,” she said as she helped me up. “Come on. Let’s get you home and cleaned up.”

After the beer can incident, I stayed inside the house for the last week of summer, icing the bruising away. I told my parents the truth about what happened. Why lie? Beth had actually been looking out for me. They just nodded, and Mom gave me a bag of frozen peas. Man, my parents were weird but kind of mellow and cool, too. I turned down the rare parent-paid-for clothes shopping, telling my mom I had everything I needed. Okay,
that
was a lie, but one I could live with to avoid running into anyone I knew while I still looked like a plastic surgery casualty.

By the first day of school most of the bruising was gone, and concealer basically hid the rest. You could see it if you really looked, but you really had to know it was there to even notice.

While I walked to school, it didn’t surprise me to see everyone else was wearing spanking new first-day outfits. It’s what you do. Not me. I wore some old friends, an old
pair of jeans and a faded T-shirt. Classic, comfy, neutral. I wanted to draw as little attention to myself as possible, and this outfit could only help me do that. That was my goal for the foreseeable future. Be invisible until something embarrassing happened to someone else and they’d forgotten all about the beer to the face.

Yes, I was hoping something embarrassing would happen to someone else. I’m not above admitting that, like you’re any better.

The one-mile walk was uneventful and thankfully sweat-free thanks to the cool morning. The walk home in the end of summer heat would be a different story.

Once inside, I avoided the main hallways to find my locker. I’d had some orchestra concerts here during middle school, so the place wasn’t a total maze to me. Honors US History first. The history wing was on the second floor, and the only possible route was the big staircase in the middle of the school. The problem was: there was a massive open space in front of the stairs that served as the main hangout area. If you were “everyone,” you were there. If you were loosely associated with “everyone,” you were trying to be there. If you were anyone else, you weren’t welcome. From the outskirts, I spotted Trey and his friends, standing right in front of the bottom step, making it impossible for me to get by unnoticed.

I did get a good snigger in though. Yeah, Trey was saying hey to some older football players and looked the part, but his freshman entourage looked out of place and—could it be—uncomfortable? I was never a big fish in middle school, so being a little one again in high school wasn’t
going to be much of a change for me. But I could see how irked they all were, back at the bottom.

“Yo, Ham-bone,” I heard a deep voice call out to my right. One of the largest men I’d ever seen was waving to some people in the main hallway. There was no way he was a student. He looked thirty at least.

Quick as you like, I followed him. He was easily four times wider than me and kept me shielded from view. I
was
a little fish—exactly like one of those little fish you see hanging out below a shark in nature videos, for protection. My human mountain got me to the stairs safely, where I skirted up unnoticed.

I took my seat in the second row right in the middle of the class. You’re probably thinking:
Wait. A nerd like you belongs in the front row, right?
Normally, you’d be spot-on, but rumor had it that the history teacher, Mr. Floyd, spit when he talked. He also apparently had a third nipple, but that was beside the point—the spit was the issue. Beth, through her connections with “everyone,” had told me that the front row of his class was nicknamed “the splash zone,” like at SeaWorld. I had a thing about drool. I wasn’t germaphobic, but drool rubbed me wrong. Beth knew it. If I saw spit fly out of his mouth I’d probably gag. If any of his spittle ever actually landed on me, I’d vomit. So I fought my nerd instincts and took my seat in row two.

Class slowly filled in around me. I got a few head nods and a “hey” from a girl I had geography with in eighth grade. When the class was all but full, Trey, of course, came in. (Oh yeah, he was wicked smart too.) The only seat left was right in front of me, in the middle of the splash zone.

He pretended to look around, but there wasn’t a choice really. I pretended to be reading an inspirational poster on the wall to avoid eye contact. He dropped his bag and sat down in front of me just as the two-minute warning bell rang.

There was light chatter between friends all around. I just kept quiet and stared at the empty teacher’s chair in the front of the room. A twist of Trey’s shoulders gave me just the slightest heads-up he was turning around. I focused once again on the inspirational poster on the wall, really pretending to be into it.

Leadership. Yes, a bald eagle sure does look like leadership. So majestic
.

“Hey,” came the quietest, sweetest voice I’d ever heard. All the anger I held toward him vanished. “Hey,” he repeated.

I turned to look at him, pretending I hadn’t heard him, you know, because I was so into the poster. I doubt he bought it.

“Oh, when did you sit down?” I tried to say coolly. So aloof I am.

“You have fun at the party?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah. Until … you know.” I followed it up with, “You?”

“Awesome. Had a blast.”

“Cool,” I said. Man my voice sounded so high-pitched and annoying in my head. I hated the sound of my voice.