Y in the Shadows

by Karen Rivers

  Why is she thinking about this now?

  She should be thinking about Tony. Is he going to call her? Does this mean that they are together or is it casual?

  Why doesn’t she feel something other than just queasy and even maybe a bit victorious?

  She’ll go inside, she decides. The wind is blowing her hair everywhere and making a mess. She’ll deep condition and maybe meditate. She’ll figure it out. She’ll call Aurelia. Aurelia will say the right thing. Actually, Aurelia probably won’t say anything useful but talking to her is sort of like reading trashy books or watching romantic comedies. It’s light. Distracting. Takes her mind off things.

  Maybe she should call Yale. Not to talk, that was a stupid idea. Just to tell her she has the necklace. See if Yale says anything about Tony.

  No.

  She opens the door to the sound of a symphony being played at full volume. Angene and Chelsea are all decked out in crazy scuba outfits, frolicking with some kind of stuffed fish. A guy she’s never seen before with wild red hair and a beard is snapping pictures.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” he says. His eyes drift up and down her in a way that makes her shudder. Makes her want to go put on more layers of clothes. A turtleneck. He all but wolf-whistles. Tongue hanging out. Disgusting.

  She nearly gags. He has visible dandruff flakes on his shoulder.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Hi.” Cuts him dead with her best, I’m-fantastic-and-you’re-a-gross-pig look.

  “Your sister’s ... wow. Pretty,” she hears him say as she goes up the stairs.

  “Yeah,” says Chelsea (or is it Angene?). “But she’s a little bitch.”

  Michael sticks her head into Sully’s room. He’s sitting in the middle of his floor, lining up Hot Wheels in a circle around him. He only has red cars. No other colour is okay. She gave him a green one once and he threw it out the window. In his eyes, she’d read that she had let him down. They conveyed something close to betrayal. Or maybe she imagined that.

  “Hey gorgeous,” she says softly, repeating the photographer’s words, only she means it. Sully doesn’t turn around, but carefully straightens one of the cars. He doesn’t look up, but his shoulders tilt in her direction.

  “Guess what?” she says. “I kissed Tony Nelson. For real. He kissed me. What do you think?”

  His shoulders lift. Maybe they do. Maybe he’s just moving to see the cars in the beam of his flashlight that he always has by his side.

  “I didn’t much like it,” she whispers. “I thought it was gross.”

  Still no reaction. She feels like crying.

  “It was awful,” she goes on. “I hated it. But I like him. What’s wrong with me? What is it?”

  Nothing. A Hot Wheels car shoots out of his hand and bangs into the leg of a chair. She bends over and rolls it back over to him.

  “See you later, doll,” she says. Because really, that’s what he’s like. A doll. A doll that sometimes freaks out, but most of the time just placid. Just there. “Thanks for listening.”

  Michael wishes ... well, she wishes he were a normal big brother. With cool friends that she could hang with. Wishes she could have a conversation with him, that he’d answer. Wishes that it were different. And yet she’d never wish him away. By wishing he were different, she’s sort of wishing he (as he is now) didn’t exist, and that makes her feel terrible. She loves Sully so much. But still, an older brother who could interact and laugh and all those things? Well. She’s just sad for him, that he can’t do these things. But, then again, maybe he doesn’t want to. Maybe he’s happy, just not in the same way as her sisters. Not in such a loud, show-offy way. There’s nothing to say that being quietly happy is worse or better than being as obnoxious about it as they are.

  Her head is starting to ache.

  While she’s on the topic of wishes, she also wishes she had a home with a regular living room, not a large white box more often than not being used as a studio by her sisters and their freak friends. Boxes line the hall all the way to her room; Mum and Dad must have a big order shipping out. Her skin ripples with gooseflesh when she thinks about what might be in the boxes. Like creepy animal coffins.

  She’ll do her nails, too. Hair, nails, meditate. Then maybe homework. She has to ice her knee, which she twisted this morning at practice doing a totally simple walkover, a move she’s been able to do since she was three. Clumsy. She can tell it’s maybe almost beginning to swell. A twinge when she steps hard on that leg. A tingle.

  Then, after all that, she’ll take a bath. Then maybe she’ll have figured out all this stuff about Tony. Already the kiss is starting to seem like something she made up in her head, not like something that actually happened. Not like something real.

  Which is good, because then maybe she’ll be able to think of it differently. That’s probably the best. To start talking about it. She’ll call Sam and tell her about it. She’ll tell her it was incredible. She’ll tell Sam she felt it in the soles of her feet. She’ll call Aurelia and say the same. And Madison. And then, probably, after all that, that will be the truth.

  Then it will be okay. He can still be The One. Because she so badly wants it to be Tony with his gentle eyes and his sheepishness and his ... well, his lack of fierceness. His lack of manliness. That may sound weird, and she’d never say it out loud, but it’s true.

  She goes down to the kitchen for a glass of water. Her sisters are intertwined on the floor. Gross. Even if she wanted to talk to one of them about it, it wouldn’t fly. They’re both basically sluts as far as she can tell. A different boyfriend every month. They buy condoms at Costco. They are so easy in their own skins, so free to show everyone everything they have. They aren’t like her at all. They would never ever in a million years understand.

  As she watches, Angene reaches out and tickles Chelsea, like they are toddlers and not adult women. They are trying not to laugh or trying to laugh, it’s hard to tell which. The camera shutter is snapping. Snapping. Snapping. The flaky skinned photographer smiling with his crooked yellow teeth showing, looking not unlike a feral animal himself. Snap, snap, snap.

  “Stop!” she wants to scream. But she doesn’t know why. The sound of the camera is hurting her ears.

  Well.

  What are her sisters trying to prove? Why are they so happy, anyway?

  They should get real jobs. Madison’s older sisters work at Sephora, and she gets great deals on makeup. Aurelia’s sister is a hairstylist, so Aurelia gets highlights for free. And what does Michael get from her sisters? Total waves of humiliation, that’s what. Free embarrassment. A cringe-a-day. A discount on reasons-to-hide-your-face-in-public.

  Why do they have to be so weird? Don’t they know it makes it hard for her to be so perfect? So perfectly normal?

  Don’t they know how hard she works at being okay?

  Don’t they care?

  ****

  Yale

  Chapter 7

  The more I do it, the easier it is. Not just physically, but that’s true, too. I can make myself vanish now just by thinking it into happening. Concentrating. I can’t explain how, if I think about how it stops working. If I turn off my conscious thoughts, it’s like I can actually control everything, every cell in my body, every part of me.

  Mostly, I do it in my room. Alone. In front of the mirror, like I’m practising smiling for my school pictures except obviously not like that at all. After hours of practice, hundreds of times, I can fade from left to right, right to left. Top to bottom. I can make only my hand disappear.

  It’s so intense. I can’t even fully describe it. It’s unbelievable. And, I have to admit, uncomfortable.

  Still, I feel like I’ve won something. More than that. That it means something huge. That it means that I’m something special after all. Something really special.

  Is this what I’ve wanted all this time?

  The more I do it, the more it seems normal.

  The more it seems fun.

  Surreal, sure. Slightly painful
. But fun.

  Then, out of the blue, I suddenly know that she can do it, too, the other Yale. I know it in some fundamental way, like I know what colour a flower is even when I smell it with my eyes closed. I just know.

  Last night I dreamed about her, about my sister. I dreamed that she was alive, so I think that means that she is. I couldn’t see her though. It was like she was there, but she wasn’t. I’m going to ask Mum. Today. I am.

  I’m just working up the strength. It’s funny, when I think about saying something, I can hear my voice frogging up. My muscles feel like rubber bands. But what am I so afraid of? What’s the worst that she can say?

  Well.

  The worst would be that she, that Yale, was dead. That would be the worst. So when I rehearse the conversation in my head, I give Mum that line. “She’s dead.” I’ve imagined her saying it so many times that I think it wouldn’t hurt me now. Not as much as if I were unprepared.

  I take a deep breath of dust-laden air and hold it until I sneeze. The sun shining in through the mirror glances off my eyes sharply. I disappear one more time, for good measure and force myself to go downstairs. If I don’t ask now, then when?

  And why shouldn’t I?

  Mum is at the kitchen table drinking a tall glass of chocolate milk through a straw and an apple that she’s cutting individual slices from with a sharp paring knife. She concentrates on it so fully that she doesn’t look up when I enter the room. I fling the fridge open so the door bangs into the table, which is positioned too close in the small room.

  “Careful,” she says automatically.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  I stare into the fridge. Milk, juice, eggs, cheese, a wilted head of lettuce. I’m not hungry, anyway. The light inside blinks and goes out. It’s a sign, probably, but of what?

  Of a dead light bulb, that’s what. Nothing more.

  “I need you to tell me what happened to Yale,” I say all at once, just as the clock in the living room starts to chime. I think I say the words too fast, that she can’t understand me. She doesn’t look up, but carves another perfect slice off the apple, raises it to her chapped lips, chews. Swallows.

  I clear my throat and think about saying it again.

  “I ...” I start.

  “Who told you about Yale?” she says. “I knew it would come up eventually.”

  “You did,” I say. “I mean, it was in your blog.”

  “You read my blog?” she says. She squints at me. Takes off her glasses and rubs them on her shirt, smearing fingerprints around before replacing them on her face. “Huh.”

  “Huh,” I echo.

  “Well,” she says.

  “Well,” I say. My head is spinning a bit and I feel like I might fall over, so I lean on the counter. An edge of Arborite has come loose and I stick my finger underneath it. Feel the sharp border with my nail. I close my eyes.

  “Yale,” says my mum.

  “That’s me,” I said. “But also, her.”

  “I know,” she says. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

  “Sorry,” I say, not meaning it.

  “She’s not well,” she says. “She’s just not well. She’s ... well. She’s got a lot of ... She’s ...”

  “She’s alive,” I say, flatly.

  “Yes,” she says. “She is being taken care of.”

  “By who?” I say. The skin behind my nail starts to bleed from the pressure. I pull my hand away.

  “Oh,” she says vaguely. “She’s ...”

  The front door slams open. With surprising speed, my mum’s face whips around to mine. “We can talk about it another time,” she says. “About her.”

  “Oh,” I say. And before I can come up with more of a reply, my mum is gone. The paring knife sitting on the table. For a second, I almost think she disappeared, she used my trick. My thing. But then I hear her footsteps in the hall, going down the stairs.

  Dad walks by, says, “Hey,” before following her. I hear their voices rise and fall. I could go down there, I think. I could listen to what they are saying. But I can’t. I feel glued into place. She’s got a lot of what?

  At least, she’s alive.

  At least I know that now for sure.

  I think.

  I reopen the fridge and grab the old wilting lettuce, slice it into chunks and gnaw on one like a rabbit. Sure, I know it’s weird, but I like to eat lettuce this way. This one is a little past its prime. Not so juicy. But still good.

  I feel like a rabbit.

  I chew and swallow. Chew and swallow.

  She’s alive. Now what?

  I go upstairs and crawl under the covers, fully dressed. Finish the lettuce. Close my eyes and try to think.

  The compulsion to spy is so strong. I know I’m going to do it again. What I can’t decide is exactly how wrong it is. If no one knows, am I hurting them? Really hurting them? And if they aren’t hurt, is it still wrong? Well, it’s obviously wrong, but relative to what? It’s definitely morally wrong, I know that from the squeamish feeling it gives me. But is it, like, criminal?

  I’d hate it if someone did it to me. But ...

  I’m curious, although that isn’t a strong enough word. It’s like I have to know now more than ever what goes on in other people’s lives because it seems like I suddenly have a way to fulfill all that curiosity. It’s like something bigger than me bubbling up in me. I can’t help thinking, I could just go look. Maybe I’d figure something out, like why I can’t fit in. Maybe I’d figure out what everyone else does that makes them so normal and me so... not.

  If you think about it, this is incredible. It’s sort of like an all-access pass. Apart for the small complication that, when I fade, I don’t vanish altogether. It could be risky. But then, again, I did it in a gym full of people and no one saw me leave.

  It’s like they can’t see me, even though I know they could if they looked hard enough. They won’t see. As if I’m protected by their fear of what they don’t understand. Their inability to comprehend it makes them blind.

  I sit up and push the covers back and watch my arm vanish. Goosebumps appear and then are gone, camouflaged by my lumpy bedspread. I don’t exist. All around me, the colours deepen, like I’ve turned up a saturate button. Too bright. I get up noisily but also soundlessly. As in, I know that I’m the only one who can hear it. I jump up and down. Hard, on the floor.

  Nothing.

  I’m going to try something. If not here, where’s a better place? Hiding in my own home. It’s like a test. I make my way slowly down the hall toward the kitchen, where Dad is making peanut butter toast. Pretty much his staple diet. He spreads the peanut butter on so carefully, from corner to corner. I move closer. And then closer still. How close can I get? I am right behind him. I am almost touching him, my arm brushing the fabric of his sleeve. The peanut smell is so strong, I can practically taste it, my mouth feels sticky. Glued shut. He doesn’t look up from his meal, looking at it so closely it is like he is inspecting it for lice. I reach out and touch the knife that he was using and it, too, vanishes. He doesn’t see.

  He doesn’t notice.

  My heart is pumping hard. It’s almost too powerful and too dumb to be using that power to just look at people, especially to look at my dad, inhaling the toast without chewing. If I were someone better, maybe I’d know what else to do with this crazy gift. But I’m not.

  I’m just me.

  I go back to my room. I’m nervous for some reason. I know I’m not going to be able to stop, I think. I think that’s what scares me, my own drive to do this thing that I know is wrong no matter how I shape it and reshape it in my head. I sit down. I feel restless but also like I can’t take the next step. I fade in and out from my head to my feet and back. I feel like I have a terrible fever. I wish the hot and cold didn’t happen. I have to stop myself from doing it just randomly. It’s like when you have a sore in your mouth and you can’t stop touching it with your tongue, even though you know you shouldn’t. I can’t stop.
r />   It seems like such a short distance between being me, normal old me, and being this other person, this person who wants to watch other people, this voyeur. This creep. It’s too easy. It’s too ... appalling. I find this so depressing that I pull the covers back up and turn out the light. It’s too bright, though it’s only late afternoon. The sun is pouring in through the window like a cheerful kid, pestering me. Stopping me from sleeping or hiding. Dust particles dance in the rays of light.

  I love the weight of the blankets; it makes me feel like everything’s going to be okay. I force myself to think about something else and what pops into my mind is gymnastics practice this morning. It went okay, generally. Nothing thrilling. Nothing happened. The gym smelled, as always, of rubber-soled shoes, chalk and sweat. We did some drills and stretches. I concentrated on perfecting my dismount from the beam. I bruised my shin, but that’s nothing new; I’m always bruised and battered.

  I’m getting used to the weird new way my eyes seem to work. I’m getting used to my new body. I’m getting... well, better. Being able to see more, being more aware makes me more accurate. Makes me really, really good.

  Not that anyone has noticed.

  We talked about the next meet. I tried to block out any mention of the last meet, because obviously everyone was thinking about my stupid period. To be honest, I felt really sick. Dizzy. I was waiting for Aurelia to make a crack. Waiting for Madison to snicker. Waiting for Sam to roll her eyes. I had to concentrate on not disappearing, because when you’re in a group of five people, they’ll definitely notice when you suddenly evaporate.

  I got through it. Basically, we just decided that Coach would make all the decisions about who did what routine. We weren’t specific. There was only one moment when Aurelia suggested that we wear our red bodysuits that made me die a little inside. I counted slowly in my head. Concentrated on my own pulse. Steady, steady.