The Shadow Society

by Marie Rutkoski

  Astonishment flashed across Conn’s face, then a kind of hesitancy crept in, one that reminded me of someone who has broken something and has no idea what to do with the pieces. “Darcy … I didn’t mean to make you cry.” He lifted a hand. He stretched it out slowly, as if I might bite him. He touched my sleeve. “I’m sorry. Truly.”

  I swiped at my wet eyes. I felt a surge of frustration—resentment, even—that just a few words from him had stripped me bare. I didn’t even really know Conn, yet still he made my most intense emotions simmer to the surface.

  “People are wrong,” I began again. “I’m sixteen, and I’ve lived in nine foster homes. Plus two years in a group home when the DCFS couldn’t place me.”

  “Why so many?”

  “There was always a reason. An excuse the foster parents gave for not keeping me. I got kicked out of my first home for poking a wire hanger into an electrical outlet. My foster mom caught me, shrieked, and called the DCFS to come cart me away, because I was clearly suicidal and no one had told her that I was a child with ‘special needs.’”

  “Were you? Suicidal?”

  “I was five.”

  “Still.”

  “No, I wasn’t trying to off myself. I was curious. Little kids spend half their waking hours being warned not to do things. Don’t run with scissors. Don’t lick a flagpole in winter. Don’t stick anything into electrical outlets. Those three little holes looked so mysterious. I had to know if they were as dangerous as everyone said.”

  “What happened?” A smile curled the corner of Conn’s mouth, indicating he’d already guessed the answer—which wasn’t exactly hard, given that I was standing right there in front of him, and not buried in an early grave with the tombstone Here lies Darcy Jones, electrocuted orphan.

  “Nothing happened,” I said. “Just a jolt. My foster mom freaked out over nothing.”

  “It does seem like an insufficient reason to send you back to the DCFS.”

  “It was a better reason than others. My second set of foster parents canceled my stay with them because I brought a bat inside the house.”

  It seemed like every word I spoke surprised Conn more. “Why did you do that?”

  “It was dying. I found it on the ground outside, struggling to lift its wings. I just wanted to give it some water, but my foster parents thought that what I really wanted was to give their kids rabies. They declared me a danger to their children.”

  He paused. “It sounds to me more like there’s something wrong with your ex–foster parents.”

  “All nine sets? No. They were nice people. Maybe a little hysterical where bats and electrical outlets were concerned, but, with one exception, they tried to be nice to me.”

  His gaze sharpened. “One exception?”

  I wished I hadn’t said that. But now Conn was standing in front of me, feet planted on the tracks in a way that made clear he wasn’t going to let the matter lie. “One foster father,” I said. “When I was twelve.”

  “What did he do?”

  I shrugged. “What does it matter?”

  Conn’s eyes were hard. “Tell me.”

  “He didn’t do anything. I punched him in the face first. Broke his jaw in three places.”

  “Right. Of course he didn’t.” The tension drained from Conn’s body. “Of course you did.”

  Believe me, I was glad, too, that that story had a happy ending. But it got even harder for the DCFS to place me once I had ‘Violent’ and ‘Behavior Disorder’ stamped on my record. Hence the two years spent in the Ingleside Home for Girls.

  I probably should have thought a little more carefully about why a twelve-year-old girl had been able to put a grown man in the hospital, but that would have meant mulling over the whole incident, and it’s hard to think too much about things that hurt. So I didn’t.

  Still, a needle of unease slid into me. For a moment I sensed the suspicion that must have touched every single one of my ex–foster parents.

  “Have you ever read Sherlock Holmes?” I asked Conn.

  “Yes … although I’m having some difficulty figuring out what he has to do with the topic at hand.”

  “He once said that, when solving a mystery, you have to consider all the possibilities and eliminate them one by one. Whatever’s left, no matter how strange it seems, must be your answer. What makes more sense? That all eighteen adults vetted and interviewed and trained by the DCFS to be foster parents were awful people, or that there is something wrong with me? Something deep inside. Something they didn’t notice right away, but eventually couldn’t live with.”

  Conn didn’t reply.

  “So maybe I am cursed,” I said. “It’s the most straightforward answer.”

  He turned away. The sun had lowered on the horizon, pouring amber light over his skin, turning it the color of honey. In a wild, dizzying flash, I wondered if he tasted like that, too.

  Softly, he said, “I’m beginning to think that nothing is straightforward.”

  9

  It’s rare when you see your life is changing. Usually it simply changes and you’re left blinking at the aftermath, wondering how you got there. I knew, though, that Conn’s arrival had already changed me. For years I had ignored my own mystery. Now ignoring it was a luxury I couldn’t afford, because even though I knew I had never seen Conn before the first day of class, he did remind me of something, like my drawings reminded me of something. With every day, I seemed to get closer to it. Strange things were happening.

  One night, after I’d kicked the espresso junkies out of the café and cleaned up the wet swizzle sticks and torn sugar packets, my eyes snapped up and stared out the glass door even before my heart had a chance to constrict with fear. I couldn’t see anything. The café was bright, and it was black outside. But I was certain that a face had been peering in at me.

  I turned off the café lights and looked out into the parking lot. No one was there.

  I was losing my mind. First I thought I saw my fingers disappear, and now this? I shook my head. There was no reason to do anything different from what I always did, which was walk home along a well-lit road. Lakebrook was safe.

  I locked up. The empty parking lot was shadowy, and a fallen leaf scratched across the concrete. I curled the keys between my fingers so that they stuck out past my knuckles like short knives.

  A young man curved around the corner of the café. He had a bulky body. Dark hair. A forgettable face—forgettable, except for the leer that split his mouth. “Hi,” he said. “Can you help me?”

  “Don’t think so.” My fear was instant, jagged. I turned back toward the door.

  He squeezed between it and me. “Yes, you can,” he said, and grabbed me.

  I punched him in the stomach with my fist full of keys. He doubled up, groaning. I shoved myself back, ready to sprint away, but his hand lashed out and seized my wrist. “You’re still here!” He laughed breathlessly. “Playful little thing.”

  Anger threaded through my panic, and I swung my free arm back to strike. That only made him smile more brightly.

  “Hey!” someone shouted. It was Conn, striding across the parking lot.

  My fear melted. I teetered on my feet, and it took me a second to realize it was because my attacker had let me go. “Why not now?” he said to Conn.

  “Back off,” Conn told him. He stood next to me, shoulder to shoulder. “Back away.”

  “Why should I?” the guy snapped. “You’re so slow.”

  “You heard what I said. Get out of here.”

  He shot a surly look between the two of us. “Yes, sir,” he snarled at Conn, and stalked off into the darkness.

  I let out a shuddering breath. “What a psycho.”

  “Yeah.” Conn frowned into the distance, even though the other man had already disappeared.

  “What was he talking about, ‘Why not now?’ Did you understand that?”

  “No.” Conn seemed rattled, even more than me. “Let’s get out of here.”

 
“Why did he call you slow?”

  “I don’t know. I guess … I guess he meant that, if it came to a fight between him and me, he didn’t think much of me.”

  I looked at Conn. “That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

  He gave me the ghost of a smile. “Well, then: a psycho. As you said.”

  “When I hit him, he laughed. He said, ‘You’re still here.’ Like I’d be anywhere else. And, actually … what are you doing here?”

  He ran a hand through his short hair. “I came for some coffee.” He looked at the dark café. “Too late, it seems.”

  I shook my head. “In the nick of time is more like it.”

  “To tell the truth … I came to see you.”

  “Oh,” I murmured. “Thanks. For helping me.”

  “Don’t.” The word was curt. Then, in an even voice, he said, “There’s no reason to thank me. I didn’t do anything. Anyway, it looked like you were holding your own.”

  Now that the adrenaline was draining away, I realized that I had pulled that punch to the gut. I could have hit a lot harder. I don’t know what worried me more—the fact that I could have done more damage, or that I hadn’t.

  “He didn’t hurt you, did he?” Conn said. “You’re okay?”

  “Yeah. Just wobbly on the inside.”

  At that, his edginess faded. “Of course you are. Let me give you a ride home.”

  We walked to the far corner of the parking lot, to his motorcycle. He got on first, started the engine, and backed it up with his feet, balancing the loud machine. He nodded, and I climbed on, reaching for the bars behind the seat, a little lower than my hips.

  “You trust me, don’t you,” Conn said, and I couldn’t tell whether that was a statement or a question.

  “Sure,” I said, startled. “You just did this impressive knight in shining armor thing. And we—we’re … friends, right?”

  “Yes.” His voice was husky. He reached back for my hand and drew it around his waist. “Ready?”

  I felt the hard, warm plane of his abdomen against my arm. “Um.”

  He drove.

  I didn’t sink against him. I didn’t press my cheek against his leathered back. I held my breath and wished the ride would last.

  When he pulled up in front of Marsha’s, I said, “I suppose you came by the café to talk about the project.”

  “Yes, but…” He unzipped his jacket, rummaged inside an inner pocket, and pulled out a scrap of paper and a pencil. He gave me his phone number. “It doesn’t have to be about the project. If you need a ride someplace, or want to talk…” He smiled. “Call me.”

  10

  “Do you think about your parents?” Conn asked me late one night on the phone. There was a hesitant note in his voice.

  It was thundering outside, and I could hear Marsha snoring through the walls. I lay on my waterbed, thinking about how to answer him.

  It had been more than a week since the incident at the café, and Conn kept asking me questions. On the phone, in the few moments before or after English class. It was a thrill to hear Conn’s voice lift at the end of a sentence, and a comfort to answer him, because even though a question might be a hanger waiting to be jabbed into an electrical outlet, it can also be an outstretched arm, ready to curl around you and tug you close.

  “No, I don’t,” I told him. My ears hummed with the sound of rain, a car hissing down the street, and Conn’s listening silence. “I don’t remember my parents. The DCFS was never able to track them down. Anyway, they’re dead.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I was left outside in the middle of winter without a coat. Either my parents are dead or they should be.”

  That kind of killed the conversation. Now Conn’s silence on the other end of the phone was stony, as if I’d said something unforgivable.

  “It’s late,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

  It was pretty obvious he was going to hang up on me. I felt a flare of resentment. “Who are you to judge? They’re my parents, not yours. You don’t know what it’s like.”

  I turned off my cell phone. On the other side of the bedroom wall, Marsha’s snores stuttered, stalled, then kicked into gear again.

  I wasn’t sorry for what I’d said. Lily once told me that her earliest memory was the sound of bells, because her mother had sewn little silver jingle bells onto her dresses. That filled me with a huge longing, though Lily, when she saw my face, added that she had been about three years old then, and it was probably the last time her mom had any idea about what made her happy.

  “She doesn’t understand me,” Lily said. “I wish she’d leave me alone.”

  I thought it might be nice to be misunderstood by a mother. Because if you snap at her and she’s still there in the morning to pour you coffee and say she hates your green hair, that’s something special. It’s forever.

  I listened to Marsha’s snores, remembering how I’d huddled with cold outside the fire station as a five-year-old child. And even though Conn made my heart race as I lay in the dark, and even though I knew I had crossed some line with him by wishing my parents were dead, I could never take back what I’d said.

  I closed my eyes, and my mind nuzzled its way into sleep. I had one last conscious thought, and it was sharp.

  Tomorrow, he will avoid me.

  11

  I was wrong.

  Conn was leaning against his motorcycle, parked by the last street corner I always passed on the way to school. A gust of wind blew through the trees, showering red and gold leaves. He walked up, close enough that I could see the hollow of his throat. He plucked a maple leaf from my hair and twirled it between his thumb and forefinger. It was a red, delicate, pointed star.

  I had been angry with him the night before. Really angry. I only fully realized that now, as a knot in my chest disintegrated.

  “I have a gift for you.” Conn let the leaf fall. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out something. His hand opened, and resting on his palm was a gleaming metal object the size of a plum. It was round, silvery, and looped by a brass ring. “It’s a planet,” he said. “For the sculpture. I thought of it because J. Alfred wonders what it would be like to squeeze ‘the universe into a ball / To roll it toward some overwhelming question.’”

  “‘To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,”’” I quoted the next lines. “‘“Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all.”’”

  “Do you like it?” He tipped the planet into my open fingers.

  I traced the cool, smooth, silver surface. “It’s beautiful. How did you make it?”

  He grinned. “I’m good with my hands.”

  Those words left me a little breathless.

  “I stayed up late last night making it,” he said.

  “I thought I had offended you.”

  “Of course you didn’t.” He looked straight at me with an innocence so convincing it had to be fake.

  “Conn, I may be socially dysfunctional, but I can tell when I’ve upset someone.”

  “All right,” he said slowly. “Maybe you did. It seems like you hate your parents without knowing anything about them. Mine are important to me, so I couldn’t ever agree with your perspective. But I can’t fault how you feel when I don’t know much about you. And”—he paused—“I upset you, too.”

  I was used to people disagreeing with the way I saw the world. That’s why my DCFS file was brick-thick and I would never be voted Prom Queen or Most Likely to Do Anything. I considered the idea that Conn could disagree with what I had said but would still try to understand how I felt. This seemed as rare and lovely as the planet I cradled in the palm of my hand.

  “Let’s ditch school,” he said.

  “Ditch?” I glanced at my watch. If we began walking now, I wouldn’t be late for first period. “I don’t know, Conn. I like Art.”

  “I thought you were supposed to be working on Whatever You Want. Maybe you want to spend the day with me.”

 
; I looked at him. Why did he have to speak so seductively, when he couldn’t mean it? Carefully, I said, “I don’t want to miss English. I also like English.”

  “Ah, but you hate Pre-Calculus.”

  He had a point. “What about lunch? My friends will be looking for me.”

  “Your friends monopolize you.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is. They’re like a fortress with a sign that says TOUCH DARCY JONES AND WE WILL DESTROY YOU. I find it surprisingly … touching, actually. I admire loyalty.”

  “Destroy,” I scoffed. “They would never hurt anybody.”

  “There are different ways of hurting people. Raphael would go the most obvious route, of course. He would fight with fists. James—no, you call him Jims, don’t you?—has a gift for psychological warfare. As for Lily, she is perhaps the most dangerous of the three, because she’s the decision maker, and the others will follow her lead. You couldn’t have chosen a better army.”

  I stared. I had never thought about them in this way. “That’s not why they’re my friends.”

  “Maybe not. But they can do without you for one afternoon.”

  I shook my head and began striding toward the school. “My foster mom would have a litter of kittens if I ditched.”

  He stepped in front of me. “Your foster mother need never know.” He pulled two pink slips of paper out of his back pocket. “These are dated and signed excuse slips from the nurse’s office. You can go to Art, then meet me by Door 6. We’ll slip out for a very leisurely lunch, return in time for English, and as far as anyone official is concerned, we were in the nurse’s office for second to sixth periods.”

  “Exactly how are we supposed to get back into the school? The doors are locked from the outside, except the main entrance, and I hope you don’t think we’ll be able to make the security guard believe that the nurse’s office is located off-campus.” The Ingleside Home girls had taught me how to jimmy open locks, but it had been a long time since I’d practiced.

  “Door 6 is unlocked, inside and out,” said Conn. “I’ve checked. It’s left that way for the maintenance workers. Come on, Darcy.” His voice grew alluring. “Please.”