13 on Halloween (Shadow Series #1)

by Laura A. H. Elliott

  “Are you ok honey?” Mom says.

  “Fine, Mom. I’m fine.” But I’m the furthest thing from it. Everything’s changed. The world I knew isn’t the world I know. A part of me doesn’t want Dad and Brian going up in the attic. I don’t want them getting projected because of me. They don’t know what’s up there and I can’t tell them about it.

  Lullaby by The Cure plays again. It brings a smile to my face and takes my mind off of Dad and Brian and Adrianne and becoming a teenager and what I’m going to do about all of it. And I turn to see who pushed play. Hayden smiles back at me and gives a little wave, “Happy Birthday, Roxie,” he says on the way out the front door. I wave back and stroke my left hand, the hand he held.

  The only ones left in the house are me and Mom and her eyebrow tweezers, and slivers of glass sticking out of my foot. It doesn’t hurt bad, but it bleeds worse. And I want to know more than ever why the peacocks need me. I want to hold Hayden’s hand again.

  My heart pounds to Dad and Brian’s thud-like footsteps coming back down the staircase in the garage. They open the kitchen door with smiles on their faces. Dad must have steered clear of Brian’s stash. Dad says, “Everything’s spic-and-span up there. How’d you cut yourself Roxanne?”

  “Would you believe me if I told you I had no idea,” I say. Which isn’t totally a lie. I didn’t know how Adrianne shattered the bottle. I can’t tell him what happened because we all swore silence and the white blob upstairs didn’t munch Dad and Brian when they went into the attic to check things out, probably because I kept my mouth shut. And I don’t want the white blob eating my family. So I keep my silence. It’s never been so hard to keep a secret before tonight. I mean, on one hand it’s a super-cool secret and it’s kinda cool to have a super-cool secret as long as nobody’s hurt by me keeping it. Well, nobody got hurt but me.

  “Hon?” My mom looks at my dad with a nod that says everything that needs to be said between them. She hasn’t called Dad that in a long time. He smiles, heads for the refrigerator, and pulls out the cake. Mom sticks the candles into the chocolate frosting. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Mom always puts an extra candle on for good luck. And this year, more than ever I am happy about that. Every other year it always kind of bugged me. I think the only time a person really has a clue about luck is when they’re a teenager, because life is very different when you become one. I’m officially thirteen. I don’t even recognize myself anymore.

  Mom and Dad and Brian sing Happy Birthday to me and for the first time in my life I close my eyes and know what I want most of all. I know you’re not supposed to tell anybody what you wish for because of jinxes or bad luck [note to self: research the world’s unluckiest animal] but I’m going to tell you what I wish––to become a peacock, even if they do creepy things like AP and make me promise never to tell what happened in my attic.

  Chapter 6

  Mitch is out late with Lola. Every time I think about how wrong it is that they’re kissing-slash-hooking-up I want to hurl. Seriously. What’s Lola thinking? Although it is kind of hard for a little sister to gauge her brother’s Hot Factor. I want to hurl again because I’m thinking about my brother’s Hot Factor.

  Boyfriends and girlfriends always have the same Hot Factor. Peacocks go out with peacocks they don’t go out with dodos, heck they won’t even be friends with dodos. Which is why I had my birthday party in the first place.

  When Ally and I were little, we would always get to order pizza at her mom and dad’s house and we’d rate the pizza delivery guy. Mrs. Bellisaros would ask us, “So, what would you girls give him?” And usually he was a five, like almost noticeable. But one time, we got a nine. And it was incredible. I think we talked about him all year. The Nine. Not many peacocks deliver pizzas, but every once in a while one does.

  After Hayden left, Dad splashes Micurochrome all over the cuts on the bottom of my foot and I see stars. Yeowee. But there’s no other remedy for a scrape in our house. It’s Micurochrome and only Micurochrome. Mom bandages me up. She explains again why Dad uses the orange stuff that makes me see stars. Again, for the gazillionth time. “It’s because he grew up in the tropics. It’s because people die of cuts there.” I roll my eyes.

  “I’m just glad everyone is ok,” Dad says. “It’s a big responsibility to have so many kids in the house and no adult supervision. I’m surprised at you, Roxanne. I think you need to go to your room and think about what you’ve done.”

  I arch my back and look at the kitchen carpet. I hate when he’s right. But I’m right too.

  “You won’t be allowed to go to any parties for the rest of the year. You’ll have to learn this lesson the hard way.” Dad says with a smallish hug.

  “Calendar year? Or school year?” I ask, staring into his eyes.

  Dad just shakes his head and walks out of the kitchen.

  Mom says, “It’ll blow over soon. Dad’s just protective.”

  It’s going to be a very long school year.

  I lay in my bed with my eyes wide open, thinking about what I’ve done. I just can’t sit still in my bed after what happened. After I know but can’t tell anyone that I AP’d for the first time. That I left my attic and traveled to a beautiful island. That I can’t tell Mom or Dad or Mitch or Brian about it because I care about them and want to keep them safe. And most of all, I can’t sleep before I know what the Doppel-thing is. So, as soon as I can, when all is so quiet the only thing I hear is myself swallowing all the time, I sneak out of my room.

  I sit at Mitch’s freaking computer ready to type Doppelganger. But I don’t have to. He already has a page open about them on his browser. And here’s my research:

  In fiction, folklore, and popular culture, a doppelganger is a tangible double of a living person that typically represents evil. The word doppelganger has come to refer to any double or look-alike of a person.

  The word also describes the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection. Doppelgangers are often perceived as a sinister form of bilocation and generally regarded as harbingers of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelganger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelganger is an omen of death.

  Bad luck. Whoa. So when Adrianne calls her sister one, it’s not flattering at all. Not that doppelganger sounds flattering. It’s a lot like when my brothers call me Codamouchy Head, only worse, creepier. It makes me wonder why a peacock like Adrianne would even know about doppelgangers unless they have something to do with the whole AP thing.

  I keep googling this whole doppelganger being-in-two-places-at-once thing, and I find some Nordic creature called a vardøger: A ghostly double who precedes a living person and is seen performing their actions in advance. I google some more and find in Ancient Egyptian mythology, a ka: A tangible spirit double having the same memories and feeling as the original person. In one Egyptian myth, The Greek Princess, an Egyptian view of the Trojan War, a ka of Helen was used to mislead Paris of Troy, helping to stop the war.

  And when it feels like my eyeballs are about to bleed, I discover doppelgangers aren’t anything new at all. Even Lincoln saw one. And you can’t find a bigger peacock than the most important President of all time. Maybe I’m partial, living in The Land of Lincoln, but still, Abe rocks. I think I’ll freaking explode if I see one. How scary. How can Adrianne kid about one of these horrible things. I can’t peel my eyes away from Mitch’s computer screen and the history of doppelgangers.

  I go to Mitch’s door and listen, just in case what happens every night isn’t what’s going on this Thursday night. But, all’s well. Brian snores down in the basement. Mom and Dad’s bedroom door is closed. I shut Mitch’s door all the way, sit back down at his computer and read more from the screen:

  A dream or illusion had haunted Lincoln at times through the winter. On the evening of his election he
had thrown himself on one of the haircloth sofas at home, just after the first telegrams of November 7 had told him he was elected President, and looking into a bureau mirror across the room he saw himself full length, but with two faces. It bothered him; he got up; the illusion vanished; but when he lay down again there in the glass again were two faces, one paler than the other. He got up again, mixed in the election excitement, forgot about it; but it came back, and haunted him. He told his wife about it; she worried too. A few days later he tried it once more and the illusion of the two faces again registered to his eyes. But that was the last; the ghost since then wouldn't come back, he told his wife, who said it was a sign he would be elected to a second term, and the death pallor of one face meant he wouldn't live through his second term.

  Doppelgangers kill peacocks. O.M.G.

  Creepy. So I pray really hard that I’ll never, ever see a doppelganger ever in my whole life. And, as I sink down into my arms anchored on Mitch’s desk in front of the computer screen, I’m eye-to-boob with my chest.

  I fall asleep to a weird TV commercial in my head: Go back to the mystery island now! Not only do you get an amazing wardrobe, beautiful skin, but boobs, yes I said boobs, in a matter of hours! Dreams of boobs and beaches and bras take me over and the next thing I know I’m in my bed. Mom wakes me up and tells me that I slept way late. And what’s weirder still? She tells me Mitch carried me to bed last night. Blech. Only princes are supposed to do that with princesses. And when I get out of bed I’m all paranoid that I won’t have any way to go to school because there’s no way I’m going without a bra.

  It’s one thing to dream about having boobs and another thing to actually have them. It’s weird to have these two things sticking out in front of me, untamed. I mean it’s not like they’re huge or anything, but they are very clearly, there.

  I try to wash the icky, Mitch-carried-me-to-my-room feeling off, but when I step out of the shower I’m still creeped out. And that’s when I get jealous of the puma hanging on my wall. She doesn’t have to worry about things like boobs and periods. I still hadn’t had mine, but I knew it was coming. And I want it so bad but Ally says she wishes she were me because it’s the worst thing on the planet. Life in the wild is scary, but at least it makes sense. There’s an order to things. The law of the jungle. So far, life as a teenager seemed scarier than the wild.

  “Mom, can I talk to you?”

  “What is it sweetie? You’re WAY late for school. And I’m late for work. And...you’re not even dressed? What? Are you sick?”

  “No I’m not sick.” Unless you call getting-instant-boobs-and-having-no-way-to-go-to-school-because-you-don’t-have-a-bra sick.

  Mom sweeps my hair out of my eyes and feels my forehead anyway. “What is it sweetie? You don’t feel hot at all.”

  “I’m not hot.” I don’t know how to say what I am exactly. Confused about astral projections and peacocks and doppelgangers and by what Lola sees in Mitch and why every peacock came to my birthday party and why I have to learn lessons the hard way.

  But sometimes, the most amazing thing about amazing things that happen to people isn’t the amazing thing itself, it’s that the world is much the same after that amazing thing, when you think the amazing thing will so amazingly transform you. That’s what happened to me.

  So that day at school, after mom makes me wear one of my tank tops like a ridiculous bra until we can go to Macy’s after school and get some, it’s like everyday. Only it’s not like everyday. It’s the day that I’m supposed to be a peacock too. I mean I know their secret. Only I’m a period late for school, and when I walk down the hall to my locker Ally looks at me weird every time we pass one of the peacocks. Because it’s like we’re peacock-repellant. They don’t even look at us. After third period I see Hayden at his locker and I stop and say, “Hi.”

  He doesn’t even look at me. Yeah.

  I tap him on the shoulder and he just nods at one of his friends and leaves me standing by his locker all alone. And my left hand tingles and the faded blue zero still ghosted on my palm mocks me. I’m invisible to peacocks. Did they all take a vote and decide last night didn’t happen? I want to scream. I want to climb to the top of the roof of Oakdale Middle School and scream. Hayden doesn’t even look at me. All day.

  I run to the girl’s bathroom and lock myself in a stall. Cursing my stupid new boobs and my ridiculous tank-top bra that just makes me look like a third grader. I don’t even care that the late bell rings. I don’t want to come out. And the rest of the day is worse.

  Have you ever felt invisible at school? When the people you most want to notice you don’t?

  Like when you, I don’t know, walk into the cafeteria and you want to sit next to some people and when you do they all get up to leave. Check. Or like when you are out walking around the softball field because you want to banish yourself from the other kids, and you begin to think that you are invisible too. Check. Like you have some sort of dodo plague and no one wants to catch it from you. Check and double check. Yep. That was my day.

  And to make it even worse. It was my day to give my informative speech in speech class and guess who sits in the front row. Not looking at me. You guessed, Miss Hearty-Loopy.

  I ask my speech teacher, Mr. Post, if I can go to the nurse. He says yes and I hide out there most of the period but when I have no fever I have to walk down the long hall back to class. And I swear I take baby steps, the kind that I calculate will take until the end of class to get there. But, guess what? Walk fail. I get to class just in time to give my speech. Topic? The unluckiest animals in the wild kingdom. Yeah. That.

  I get this feeling I’ve never gotten before. I’m clearly visible, but I want to disappear. It’s as ironic as my speech itself. I grab my note cards and take a deep breath knowing I haven’t prepared at all. I have one card per animal––Bee, Seahorse, Scorpion, Penguin, Rat, Cockroach and Blobfish. And it’s the Blobfish I feel like most of all. Just google it and you’ll know what I mean.

  And my horrible speech and the Blobfish-feeling in the pit of my stomach makes me want to go home and sit in my bed and never come out of the covers and not care about anything, even coconut M&Ms.

  Did you know they make M&Ms with coconut now? Really. I think some things should never change because when you go through really amazing things and then those same things go horribly wrong and you want, no need, to lick your wounds and you are at the grocery store and you just grab a bag of M&Ms it should just be the M&Ms you want. Not a bag of M&Ms with freaking coconut in them. I mean it’s like even M&Ms grew up.

  Coconut makes me think of the island and the island makes me think of my party and my party makes me think I’m a peacock and that makes me laugh because today none of them, not even Hayden, even said hi to me at school. And that hurts.

  At least it’s a Friday and I can lick my wounds all weekend, losing myself in episodes of South Park and chocolate.

  After about two pounds of M&Ms my sensible side analyzes the day and makes rationalizations about everything. Of course they can’t be all buddy-buddy with me because then people would start asking questions and apparently if anyone ever uttered a word about what actually went on in the attic, one of us would die or something so I sort of got––part of me did anyway––why they couldn’t acknowledge my existence but this other part––the mean, angry part––really doesn’t, and never will.

  And now’s the part where I have to tell you about the creepy abandoned house on our street. I guess every neighborhood has their creepy house. The one that all the little kids think is haunted. And you should listen to them. Really listen to them. Anyway, just so you know, Ally and I walk the long way every day so we won’t have to walk passed it on our walk to and from school. We know.

  Well, anyway, you can imagine what it’s like for me when I finally agree, late on Saturday afternoon, to get out of bed and out of my pajamas and meet Ally in her backyard to jump on her trampoline. Because that always cheers me up. I don’t even wa
nt to talk about how bad a day I had on Friday. Ally knows. Hayden ignored me. And I was so ridiculously desperate to see him, after we had held hands. So freaking delusional that he and I could be friends, more than friends, all because he knew that putting on The Cure’s Lullaby when things went bad at my birthday party would totally cheer me up. That’s when I knew we were cosmically connected. I am an idiot.

  This is what I’m thinking about on my walk, the short way, to Ally’s when I walk right in front of the spooky, abandoned house that, well, isn’t abandoned anymore because guess-who is sitting on the tailgate of her dad’s Range Rover all upset? You guessed it––Adrianne.

  The girl who totally ruined my life and ignored me all day yesterday. It makes my tummy hurt just to look at her. A U-haul truck pulls up into her driveway. Adrianne raises her head and spots me.

  “Roxie!”

  I keep walking. Freaking idiot. What did she think I was going to do, pretend like she exists? And then it hits me in the pit of my stomach. What if. Is she? No, she can’t be. She can’t be moving into the house down the street from me. Into the creepy house. The haunted house. But where else would a girl live who could shatter bottles with her gaze. Maybe she’s a doppelganger.