The Shadow (4 page)

That’s when the doorknob creaked. I could see the silhouette of Ms. Peterson’s gold, wire-rimmed glasses through the window. My heart jumped into my throat and I ducked underneath the desk.

“Keys, keys,” she muttered. “Where are my keys?”

I curled up underneath the desk and prayed that she couldn’t hear my heart beating, which sounded, at least from where I was sitting, like Godzilla stomping through the streets of Tokyo.

Ms. Peterson puttered around some more, checking on the bookshelves and moving stacks of manila folders around the desk, searching everywhere but underneath the desk itself. Every muscle in my body was knotted. I had to keep my breath shallow so it wouldn’t make a sound, and after a minute of sitting stiffly under that hot desk with my heart racing and my breath as quiet as possible, the room started to spin and my brain went all hot. Do you know when you’re about to pass out and it feels like someone has stuffed your head with corn kernels and then microwaved it? I felt like that.

After a minute I heard Ms. Peterson reach into her purse and pull out a clanging lump of keys. “Oh!” she laughed to herself. “Hilary Peterson, you idiot!” She shuffled out the door, muttering to herself, and shut it behind her, leaving me alone in the darkened office.

After sitting in Ms. Peterson’s swivel chair a moment and taking a few deep breaths, I emerged from her office. The fluorescent hall lights felt like lasers in my eyes, which had grown accustomed to the dark. I blocked my face with my arms, like a vampire.

“Brooke?” came a voice.

I squinted some more and managed to see who was calling. The two brunettes who had saved me a seat in chorus were standing together across the hallway with packs on their backs and textbooks in their arms, fidgeting nervously.

I waved and walked over to them, batting my eyelids wildly. “Hi guys,” I said, smiling my friendliest smile, which at that point must have looked manic.

“We feel really bad about before,” the taller one said.

“We just didn’t know what to say to you,” the shorter one said.

“We didn’t know if we should, like, ask you all about it—” said Tall.

“Or just let you talk about it on your own time,” said Short.

I had just come so frighteningly close to falling into Ms. Peterson’s sinister clutches that I didn’t really feel like having a friendly chat with strangers, but they were looking at me with such sad doe eyes that I felt obliged to go on.

“It’s okay,” I said. “This whole situation is bizarre.”

And they didn’t know the half of it.

“Come to the diner tonight,” said Tall.

“Cheese fries!” said Short.

I couldn’t help my first reaction, which was to vigorously shake my head no. Even though I couldn’t remember any of the details of my life before I woke up in Brooke’s body, I could feel in my heart that I was an introvert. I seemed to have chatted people up well enough throughout the day, but it had taken a lot out of me, and all I wanted was to sit in my room by myself and read.

“I’m too tired,” I said. “I just kinda want to stay home tonight.”

“No!” they both shouted simultaneously.

“You have to come,” said Tall.

“Osman has been so worried about you,” said Short.

I furrowed my brow, as I had no idea who Osman was, but I didn’t really care to find out. “I  . . . ” I trailed off, looking into the sad eyes of these eager girls who clearly loved me and wanted to make my life better. This only made me sadder.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Will traipsing past us on the hallway. “Go!” he said. “Maybe you’ll learn something useful!”

And so I nodded.

“Yay!” Tall shouted, wrapping her arms around me. “We’ll pick you up at seven.”

Chapter Five

Thursday, 7:00 PM

M
y two best friends, whose names I had yet to deduce, pulled into my driveway at seven and blasted the horn. They both stuck their heads out the window like happy Labrador retrievers and screamed, “Diner Brigade!”

The Diner was paneled in tin on the outside and was divided into two sections on the inside—a bottom area that looked like the inside of an RV, with maroon leather seats and fake wood paneling on the walls, and a raised area that looked like the inside of a party bus, with neon purple strip lights and a disco ball. Tall and Small led me to a booth in the less festive RV area with a Formica table top and a long tear in the maroon seat cushion that had been fixed (sort of) with gray duct tape.

“The Ravine missed you,” Tall said, referring to the tape. I smiled in spite of myself at how these girls had grown a bizarre little community on top of this particular booth, like one of those crystal rock gardens.

I sat down atop The Ravine and Tall and Small settled into the seat across from me.

“So,” said Tall. “Since you’ve been gone, Houseman has been acting like a literal psychopath. Right, Allison?” She turned to the short one, who nodded.

Houseman. Houseman. Where had I seen that name on my class schedule?

Allison hit Tall in the arm and scowled. “Which was nothing compared to the pain of worrying about you! Right, Alex?”

Alex, the tall one, winced. “Of course! We cried the whole time! But we also have been rehearsing like crazy people for this concert. It’s not even for adults. He just really wants to get the elementary school kids excited about being in chorus when they get to high school.”

Chorus. Mr. Houseman was the chorus teacher in the red bowtie. And there was a concert. When was the concert? And how could I ask without seeming like I’d forgotten everything about myself?

“The concert is soon, right?” I asked innocently.

“It’s, umm, tomorrow afternoon,” said Allison. “Remember?”

Did this mean I had a good voice?

“Nora has been doing all your solos in rehearsal,” said Allison. “She’s taking it so seriously and warming up before rehearsal like she’s Idina Menzel.”

Allison was looking right at me. I craned my neck around to see if perhaps she could have been talking to someone else, but there was nothing behind me but wood-paneled wall. She was talking to me.
I
had solos?

I had to find Paul soon, or Brooke’s singing career was about to take a turn for the worst, but Alex and Allison seemed to be ignoring the subject of my still-missing younger brother.

Just then, a handsome waiter with jet-black hair and dark, middle-eastern-looking features jaunted over to the table, sat down next to me, and threw his arms around me. “Broooooke!” he crooned. “We missed you, Babbling Brooke!”

“She’s back, Oscar!” Alex squealed. “Our Babbling Brooke is back!”

“Thank goodness,” he said. He looked very dapper in his white shirt and black vest, though his cologne smelled like a Jersey Shore cabana on a Saturday night. “Now I have all my girls back. Al-Squared and the Babbling Brooke. Just in time for my birthday.”

Alex and Allison—Al-Squared—threw their hands into the air. “Oscar!” Alex cried. “We had no idea! How old are you?”

“A man never reveals his age,” he chuckled. “Unless he is twenty-nine. I am twenty-nine.”

“We have to sing for you!” Allison squealed. “Brooke, you start!”

My throat suddenly felt like it was filled with felt and feathers and dust. “I don’t think so. You guys go.”

Allison scowled. “Not like you to miss a solo.”

Alex and Allison began slowly. In harmony. “Happy birthday to you  . . . ” They sounded like
Glee
cast members. If I’d beat these two out for solos, then I figured I probably didn’t sound like a complete donkey, so I opened my mouth and let out a note or two.

“Happy birthday to you  . . . ” My voice was like honey. It was like chocolate, lavender, donuts, a spring day, a bell, and a chorus of angels. “Happy birthday dear Oscar!”
I really let it rip. It was like discovering that you had an extra leg and could run twice as fast as you thought you could. I was soaring. “Happy birthday to you!”

I landed on a high note that didn’t quite gel harmonically with the notes that Alex and Allison were singing, but the tone was so crystalline, so pure, so magical, that I wanted to savor it for as long as I could, so I kept piping out the note long after Alex and Allison had fallen off. Maybe I
will
sing in the concert tomorrow, I thought.

When I opened my eyes, most people in the Diner were staring at me.

“Well!” said Alex. “Looks like someone’s excited for Oscar’s birthday!”

Oscar pulled a pad and pen from his vest pocket. “Okay. You serenaded me. Now what can I do for my girls?”

Alex and Allison chimed in unison: “Cheese fries.”

I hadn’t looked at the menu. “The usual?” I ventured.

“Give me two minutes,” Oscar said, easing himself out of the booth. Then he bent down again and looked me right in the eye. “Brooke. Thank God you are okay.”

I nodded, smiling wide.

These people loved Brooke so much that I almost felt like part of the love could be for me, too.

Ten minutes later, Oscar returned with a pile of cheese fries the size of a Thanksgiving turkey for Alex and Allison, and shrimp cocktail and a banana split for me.

That’s my usual? Shrimp cocktail and a banana split?
It was clear that Brooke was a belter, a bon vivant, a larger-than-life enchantress. I hoped I was living up to the task.

“Thank you, Oscar!” I intoned in my most enchanting voice.

That’s when I noticed a boy who made my flesh crawl.

He was staring at me from over in the party bus section of the diner, where he was sitting at a table by himself hunched over a bowl of soup, bringing tiny spoonfuls of the stuff to his mouth ever so slowly and licking them like a cat. Who eats soup by themselves? I thought.

To say nothing of his appearance. He had stringy black hair down to his earlobes that parted directly in the center, and a tattoo of a black tear beneath his left eye. He wore a see-through mesh black shirt and floppy pants so covered in safety pins that you could barely see what color they were beneath, although if I had to guess, I’d say they were probably black too. He was so skinny and sinewy that it seemed like soup was probably the only thing he ever ate.

I glared at him and he turned his attention to his bowl of soup, but when I glanced back a second later, his gaze had returned to me.

“Guys,” I whispered, nudging Alex and Allison. “Who is that guy? The one that’s staring at me?”

Alex and Allison subtly craned their necks toward the disco section and spotted the greasy, skinny soup-slurper.

“Ew, weird,” said Alex.

“Ew, he’s a freshman,” said Allison. “His name is Leo. Leo K-something. He was in elementary school with my brother, before my brother went to Catholic School. Once Leo went up to my brother and was like, ‘I’m the devil, but I cut off my horns cause they itched.’ How creepy is that? My brother never went near him again  . . . ”

Allison trailed off and looked at me nervously. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I guess I shouldn’t be talking about brothers right now.”

I sighed heavily and looked my friends straight in the eye. “I need to find Paul.”

“We know, honey,” Alex said, placing her hand over mine.

“No, you don’t understand,” I said, trying to make them feel, for a moment, just how frantic I was. “I
need
to find Paul.”

Alex and Allison sat as far back as they could on their side of the booth and glanced nervously at one another. I sighed. There was no way to tell anyone around me how desperate I was without explaining my circumstances, and there was no way to explain my circumstances without sounding like I’d gone crazy.

“Honey,” said Alex. “Maybe you really should sit the concert out tomorrow. You’re acting a little  . . . weird.”

I glanced over at Leo again and saw that he had collected his check and was heading over to the counter to pay, staring at me the entire time. It wasn’t the way you’d stare at someone who you had a crush on—it was an angry stare.

As much as I was enjoying the company of Alex and Allison, who were the first people all day to make me feel like I wasn’t actually an alien, I figured it was about time for me to leave. Leo’s stare had given me the same twisting feeling in the pit of my stomach that Ms. Peterson had when she’d known about me jumping out of the van.

Naturally, I thought it best to follow him home.

I looked at my watch and feigned shock. “Oh, no! My Dad is gonna kill me! I said I’d be home my ten!”

“But you hardly touched your food!” Allison protested.

“Gotta go!” I shouted. “I love you guys!” I fished a twenty from my pocket, threw it on the table, and scooted away.

“Let us drive you home!” Alex shouted.

“I’ll walk!” I yelled back.

I scooted out of the parking lot and kept my eye on Leo as I walked. I stayed a block behind and walked as silently as I could; so silently that I could hear the swishing of his ridiculously baggy, safety-pin-covered pants as he ambled along the sidewalk.

The streetlights were plentiful along the main drag where the Diner sat, and I followed Leo past a bakery (closed), a florist (closed), a tailor (closed), and a gym (closed), until he turned off the main drag onto Ivy Road, which had no streetlamps.

I then remembered that I didn’t know my house number. I remembered the street—Addams—but I had never actually seen the number. Which hardly mattered, as I had no idea where Addams Street could be in this winding suburban thicket.

There was less late-night badminton and dog-walking than there had been the night I jumped out of the van. It was chillier as well, and a little breeze rustled through the darkened hedges and dogwoods and holly bushes. Leo pressed on without looking back, and I followed a block behind.

He stopped for a moment and reached deep into one of the cavernous cargo pockets in his pants to remove a pack of cigarettes. As he lit one up, I heard footsteps, which was odd, because both of us had stopped.

Leo started walking again, and so did I—and then a third pair of footfalls continued behind me. I stopped, and Leo kept walking, this time turning onto Dyer Street.