The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  Mike: S2BU (Sucks To Be You)

  Justin: RUFKM? (Are You Fucking Kidding Me) SFT2M! (Stop Fucking Talking To Me)

  Mike: ILT? (It’s Like That)

  Justin: ILT!

  Mike: Whatever J Hope U get well soon. U don’t want to miss out on the video shoot next week because UR ass hurts.

  The group of skate punks we hung out with had planned a skate video shoot for the following week.

  Justin: mlm (digital middle finger)

  Mike: BIOIYA! (Break It Off In Your Ass)

  Our friendship was officially cancelled for the season. And I guess it was serious, Justin missed two weeks of school after his playcenter adventure.

  As friends we had been somewhat competitive, especially when it came to filming skate videos. We had constantly tried to outdo each other, to prove who was better. As enemies, the friendly rivalry morphed into a bitter war.

  Friends make the worst enemies. They have all that personal, inside knowledge to hurt you with.

  * * * *

  Chapter 5

  Thursday, September 23rd

  Justin took his vendetta against me to the extreme, and our friend Anita Gomez ended up in the middle. Anita was a permanent fixture at the skatepark. She hung out with us all summer long. Once upon a time, we three had been inseparable; hitting the skatepark daily, catching the latest movies, and swimming in the Columbia Basin irrigation canals. Well, me and Justin did most of the swimming. Anita was too self-conscious of her plump body, and refused to wear a swimsuit. She mostly laid in the sun working on her already golden tan.

  The glory days of our threesome were over, and Anita paid the price for her continued association with me in spite of my feud with Justin.

  Like had become the norm, I spotted Justin together with Tommy in the cafeteria. And it always set me off.

  I turned to Anita sitting beside me. “I hate preps! They’re such douche bags! Posers! It’s all about how much money they have and how many toys they own! They’re nothing but consumers defined by what they own. Brad Pitt said it best in Fight Club, “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need … It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.” They’re all fools chasing after the latest, greatest shit because the TV says they need stuff to validate their existence. We should all start over at zero, reprogram society, relearn what it means to be human and stop running this endless rat race!”

  Anita was well acquainted with my rants. I had been going off like this for the last two weeks. I’m sure she saw through my speech. I mean look at me. Look at how very little I have. You think that might influence my perspective on consumerism a little? I would love to have some stuff, move back into a decent house. We used to have a house. Not a trailer, a house. But that was a couple years ago, in a different lifetime. When my Dad had a job, and I had a real life.

  I doubt my little pedestal speech of altruisms fooled Anita. She looked sidelong at me to see if I was truly angry or just flapping my jaw to pass time.

  I don’t think she wanted to make an enemy of Justin, but his actions left her no choice. As though summoned by my rant, Justin gravitated towards us, making entry with his usual flare of asininities. Justin and company – Tommy and several wrestlers – walked past flashing the loser sign, an L shape of index finger and thumb at right angles, held to their foreheads like a perverse military salute. Justin tried to pull off a tough-guy hard stare with his beady, light blue eyes glaring at us. He wasn’t very good at the bully routine. Too short. And his shaggy, greasy blond hair didn’t help. Justin couldn’t muster the bluster to scare anyone.

  Justin called out, “Looosers!” to punctuate his hand-forehead gesture.

  Anita lashed back, “Were you hoping to intimidate me with that? You’re not tough Justin. You look constipated. Still got a piece of that fence stuck up in there? I think you need an enema. You’re full of shit.”

  Justin should know better than to go head to head with Anita. He’d been burned repeatedly by her tongue lashings. He wasn’t quite sharp enough to keep up with her, but foolish enough to try.

  “Shut it, fat ass!” He paused for a moment, obviously trying to come up with something better, “There’s still some food in the kitchen. If you hurry they might feel sorry for you and give you seconds.”

  Anita wasn’t daunted by talk of her plus size body. She’ll be the first to admit she’s a BBW (Big Beautiful Woman). She slipped into her ghetto rat persona like a set of comfortable boxing gloves, “You can’t handle all this!” She ran her hands up her thick body in mock seduction and licked her finger to touch her ample behind with a hiss-sizzling-hot sound effect. “Yo three inch ding-a-ling ain’t doin’ a thang for me!”

  That was a more personal jab than anyone else would know. She’d seen what little Justin had to offer when he tried making out with her last summer. He’d been stupid enough to whip it out. She actually laughed at him. He’d made her swear to never tell anyone, and she didn’t, except for me. Anita tells me everything.

  But that was before he decided to make her a public target for ridicule. Friends always make the worst enemies.

  Justin blanched at Anita’s words, and went even paler when she wiggled her pinky finger in illustration of his shortcomings. The badass with hard eyes and sneering lips was reduced to mumbling, “bitch” under his breath as he sulked off.

  Anita wasn’t about to let him off the hook. She tagged him in the back as he tried to slink away, “Das right! Unh hunh. Das right. I toot it and boot it, and I made it feel stupid!” She was always quoting lyrics from her music. By then Justin had slithered to the cafeteria exit, his buddies snickering at him instead of her. Picking a fight with Anita Gomez was considered hazardous to your health. The girl needed a surgeon general’s warning on her T-shirt.

  “You’re wicked. But he deserved it.” I shook my head, smiling all the way.

  “Fuck him and his grapple-grope gang. He’s not even a wrestler, just a wannabe.”

  Her strong exterior shell couldn’t hide how upset he had made her. I knew her too well. Her big brown eyes glistened with unshed tears. She’d once been good friends with Justin despite his occasional stupidity. It hurt to be treated that way by someone she once thought of as a friend.

  Then Rachelle Werner, the one and only, walked into the cafeteria. The rest of my world ceased to exist in Rachelle’s presence.

  And who was Rachelle? Simply the most beautiful blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned cheerleader I had ever known – the only cheerleader who knew my name. We were once neighbors, way back when, in a time when I had a real life, a real father, and a real lakefront house on Northshore drive. Rachelle represented the best of everything that had once been good in my life, back in junior high. That was before my father’s lay off from Genie Industries, before the foreclosure, before the drinking.

  Like so many Americans today, my Dad had been duped by low interest rates, high appraisal values, and fast talking mortgage brokers with lax loan qualifications. Richard refinanced our lakefront home at the height of the real estate market and took out every penny of equity. By the end of the following year, with his unemployment and other issues, the house was lost in foreclosure, its value barely half what he’d borrowed.

  Financial institutions in Moses Lake treated Richard like a leper. Their lending guidelines only allowed credit for those who can prove they don’t really need it.

  When the bank evicted us from the only home I had ever known, my relationship with Rachelle evaporated and my father’s drinking habit ramped up to full-blown alcoholism. With the move to Garden Grove, I transferred from Frontier Junior High to Chief Moses Junior High, cutting me off from Rachelle. In a few weeks we stopped calling each other. The last time we spoke she made it clear she wanted to hang with other guys at her school, and that was that. Rachelle hung with a bunch of other guys. By the time I saw her in high school two years later, she was hangin’ with Tommy Schr
oeder. Our lives were now worlds apart, separated by time, circumstance, and the unbridgeable chasm of money.

  None of this ever changed how I felt about her, but the fact remained, she’d been hangin’ with Tommy for over six months, and had no interest in me whatsoever. They were a perfect match – popularity, money, both bright shining stars in their field of sports. Rachelle captained the cheerleading squad, and Tommy was one of the top wrestlers on the team. I never had the time or inclination to join sports, let alone attend the events. Between work and skating, I didn’t have time for much else.

  I couldn’t help but stare at Rachelle, until I noticed her staring back. That was odd. Though I could hardly take my eyes off her, she never really looked at me. She chatted with Justin, Tommy and gang, and kept glancing back at me and Anita.

  “Wonderful. This is turning into a real mess. I never should’ve posted that stupid video.”

  Anita’s eyes missed nothing. She saw what I saw, and shook her head. “Yeah, but he’s the idiot. You’re just the guy with the camera.”

  I had a flash recollection of my vision from the other night, Rachelle in a gossamer blue dress with a wicked scowl. As I stared, the vision overlapped and Rachelle’s face began to morph into a look of distaste. It wasn’t … vicious, but it was eerily similar to that vision. Gave me the chills, a tentacle of creepiness grew in my belly. Rachelle kept her eyes locked on me as she marched straight for us, Tommy Schroeder right behind her.

  “Shit.”

  This was weird. Usually Rachelle acted as if I didn’t exist. I had been a non-entity to her for two years. Then I recognized the Rachelle-on-a-mission look. She had a bone to pick, and that bone had Justin’s name all over it.

  She laid into me with a scathing tone, “I can’t believe you posted that video! It’s soooo disgusting!” Rachelle had this cute way of dragging out the word ‘so’ into two syllables. It was cute right up until she made me feel like vermin that should be exterminated. I had conveniently forgotten how nasty Rachelle could be. I chose to focus on her beauty, as I had always done when she flew into one of her fits. Her anger accentuated her devastating beauty. I loved that spark of fire in her ice blue eyes. Felt like the air had been sucked out of my lungs. As Tommy stood behind her gloating at me, I could barely speak. My mind drew a complete blank.

  Good thing I had Anita for back up. Pretty little miss priss blondes were a sure ticket to piss her off. She cracked her verbal whip. “He’s not the one who was behaving like a complete ass at McDonalds in front of families and children on a playground! He’s not the fucktard who pulled his pants down to show the world what a dickless moron looks like!” She jabbed her finger out towards the cafeteria exit in the direction Justin had gone. “Go ask Justin. He’s the star of the video!” I didn’t care to think about the implications of Anita’s stinging defense, but I was sure glad for it.

  Asshole Tommy was laughing. Either at us or with Anita, hard to tell. He had one of those nasty laughs, where you always know someone is the butt of a joke.

  Rachelle grunted and stomped, her arms up in the air as if it was inconceivable anyone would speak to her like that. She retorted full of indignation, “That. Does. Not. Justify. Posting that horrible video all over the internet!” She enunciated the first part of her words slowly and clearly, but ended up in the screech zone with her deadly finger of righteous accusation pointed at me.

  Anita didn’t miss a beat, “Shhhit! That’s nothing! When YouTube approves the posting it’ll go viral! He’ll probably have several thousand views in a week!” I was on the verge of shushing Anita, but the fabulous beauty of Rachelle’s fit distracted me.

  “Oh. My. God! Are you friggin’ serious?”

  “Un hunh suga. On my mama!” Anita bobbed her head from side to side like Beyoncé slamming it home about feminism.

  Tommy cackled, definitely laughing at Anita. Fucker.

  Rachelle snorted in disgust and did an about face, but still managed to snipe over-her-shoulder while walking away. Tricky, but she had years of practice to perfect it. “I don’t know why I even bother speaking to you!”

  Anita raised her voice, ensuring everyone heard. “Hey Rach!” (This was once my pet name for Rachelle--it grabbed her attention) Rachelle halted in her tracks and turned back around to face Anita with the look. It was the I-hate-every-bone-in-your-body look, the very same one from my vision. Surprisingly, the intimate pet name still held a small measure of power. A button screaming to be pushed.

  Anita let fly with her middle finger held up proudly. “Sit and spin, Rach. If you don’t know how I’m sure Justin can show you, he’s pretty good at it.”

  Laughter erupted all across the cafeteria.

  That did it. Rachelle was so furious she couldn’t even speak. Tommy’s laughter died. A dirty look formed on his face. He didn’t appreciate his girlfriend being laughed at.

  Rachelle turned, snagged Tommy’s arm, and marched out of the cafeteria. Tommy’s wicked glare over his shoulder said it all. This shit was not over.

  All my ambitions of dating Rachelle blew out the cafeteria door as she exited the building. I was in shock. I could scarce believe what had happened. I looked to Anita cockeyed. Sometimes I wondered if she’d had a sex change. She acted more like a guy than most guys – a guy shoved into the body of a chubby teenage girl.

  Anita held my gaze, the flush in her cheeks barely noticeable under her permanently tanned skin. It was difficult to catch a Mexican blushing, but I could see it, I knew her that well.

  After a moment of staring at each other, she broke the awkward silence, “What?” It was spoken like an accusation.

  I shook my head, put my arm around the most loyal friend in the world, and looked into her big brown glistening eyes. “Remind me to never, ever, piss you off. I’d like to retain all my limbs. Okay?”

  She blushed even further and put her head down on my shoulder. “Okay.”

  I picked up her chin to catch her eyes. “I mean it. You can be a real bear when you want to. I prefer not to get eaten alive. Alright?”

  Her eyes seemed different somehow. And I could almost taste the flavor of the bubblegum on her lips. Nose to nose, heart beating fast with all the drama, a new kind of anxiety began to take hold.

  What was going on with Anita? Why did I feel like this? Why were her lips so … shiny? Why was she looking at me like that?

  “I’ll fight your battles anytime, Mike. But you really need to stay the hell away from Rachelle. She’s no good for you.”

  What the hell? “Since when have I ever been near her? She doesn’t even talk to me. Well, except for bitching about butt-hurt Justin.”

  “Just stay away from her.” Almost sounded like an order. Or a threat.

  I can’t pretend to understand girls. Girls are a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma wearing skin-tight clothes with glossy lips and wavy hair and loads of makeup. And then there’s those big brown eyes that look at you with some unspoken expectation.

  “Fine.” The bell rang for class, and I was off the hook. But I saw the disappointment flit across her eyes as I said the words, “Later.”

  What the hell did she want from me?

  * * * *

  Chapter 6

  Thursday, September 23rd, 7:55 p.m.

  Since I didn’t have work today, I spent the afternoon hanging at the skatepark with Anita and some of the usual suspects. Those awkward moments between us seemed forgotten. I practiced kickflips, boardslides, and whatever. I was thinking about the coming video shoot, but my mind kept circling back around to the Twilight-Zone-night-from-hell with the Hoodie girl. She had marked me. Her blood had stained my soul, and I couldn’t get her out of my mind.

  And then I found my car with a flat tire in the skatepark parking lot.

  “Fuck.” One tire. Totally flat. A little half-inch gash in the sidewall. “It’s been slashed. Son of a bitch!”

  I asked everybody at the park, and of course, no one had seen who did it. “There’s
another forty bucks I don’t have.”

  I changed the tire over to my donut spare and took off. Had to have been Tommy or Justin. Who the hell else would do it?

  Never shoulda posted that stupid video.

  On the way home I stopped by Wal-Mart to grab some more survival food. Wonderful, dirt-cheap, macaroni and cheese. I had become accustomed to the generic brands. It’s an acquired taste.

  As I stepped out of my car into the chill September night, a cool draft slipped up the right side of my right skate shoe. The toe cap had torn loose and was splitting away from the sole. Time for another tube of Shoe Goo. I leaned down to inspect the torn shoe. That was the side I always dragged across the skateboard as it popped in the air. It was the first part of my skate shoes to go.

  I never outgrew skate shoes. I shredded them to pieces.

  The only thing that helped was layer after layer of Shoe Goo. It’s not pretty, but it added a few more weeks of life. At fifty bucks a whack, I could scarce afford new shoes.

  And still I kept thinking about that girl. Who the hell was she? Where did she disappear to? Why did she leave all that money? Was she okay? Did she get to a hospital? I had been reading the Grant County Herald newspaper daily, looking for any reports of a hit and run, anything that might indicate I hadn’t imagined the whole thing. It seemed so surreal, dream-like, as if it never happened.

  Coincidentally, the money came in handy. Dad hadn’t paid the electric bill for two months. It totaled $298 dollars. The cash she left was exactly what I needed, at the right time. Talk about serendipity.

  Now I had to scrounge up money for a new tire.

  I hadn’t told a soul about that night, not even Anita. It was so unbelievable, inexplicable. I couldn’t find the courage to talk about it with anyone, didn’t really have anyone I felt comfortable talking to. What would I say? How could I explain my ridiculous decision to bring the girl into my bedroom and handle her injuries all by myself? Then there was the other concern, the unreported hit and run. I’d rather avoid that mess.