“He got it. Just in case.”
I freeze.
“Look. He fell in love with a shadow. The tattoo is a heart with Lola’s name inside. The real Lola, my sister is what I left behind, in the shadow world of Planet Popular,” Adrianne says.
I swallow hard.
“It’s on his shoulder,” Adrianne points to her upper arm and I shudder. “And you’ll need this,” she holds out a piece of broken glass. “It’s from your birthday present, the bottle,” she says with a sort of smile. And the cool part of Adrianne shines through. Past all her peacock-ishness. I take the piece of glass out of her hand and have a million questions I can’t ask because I have to save my brother. So I only ask her one thing.
“Why me?”
“Because the circle always gets bigger and you were next.”
“Who said I was next?”
“Where do you think you got the idea for the birthday party from? It was your turn. Everybody gets a chance.”
“A chance at what?”
“For a dream to come true. Go on, Roxie. Mitch needs you. Now. The glass should release him from the in-between. That’s what Lola’s shadow told me. But, I’m not sure what will come back. The real Mitch is in love with Lola’s shadow.”
“What do you mean Mitch needs Roxie to save him?” Ally asks Adrianne.
I run.
Mitch knew. He knew what Hayden warned me about. That I might never come back. And that he might not come back either. He fell in love with a shadow. A doppelganger. And maybe he was OK if he didn’t come back. I can’t help but feel my brother is missing, or worse, because of me. At least I know why he cares all of a sudden when he never did before.
My head throbs with little pin pains again with the beat of my heart. I’m tired and confused and angry all at the same time.
I run and slither through the locked turn style at the Big Cat exhibit and make my way to the puma cage. Mitch lays right at the front, inside of the cage. He lets me pet him and turns on his side. I part his fur. And there, on his shoulder is the tattoo.
“Hey you,” a guard calls out.
“It’s that girl,” the other one says, pointing his flashlight at me. They wind their way up the sidewalks that lead up to the puma cage.
I reach into my pocket for the piece of broken glass Adrianne gave me and hold it out in front of me. And it burns with the same white light that bounced me between worlds. My breath catches in my throat.
The guards freeze. I’m not sure if it’s because they’re afraid––like paralyzed by fear––or if they really are frozen but I don’t care. I have to figure out how to turn my brother back into a human. I grab the keys off of the belt of one of the paralyzed guards and give each key a turn until I find the one that opens Mitch’s cage.
When I push the heavy iron door just a crack, Mitch jumps out and he scratches me. But I know he doesn’t mean it. And I feel a sort of burning inside of my stomach. I look down at my hands, my arms. My paws. Black, furry paws. And the burning spreads over my body. It creeps down my spine and as it does I can’t stand up straight anymore. I’m on all fours. Looking into Mitch’s puma eyes. I see me, a real puma, reflected there.
We’re both pumas. On the run. And we race through the trees and hear each others’ thoughts.
How did you know I was in-between? it says.
Which Mitch are you? I ask.
It doesn’t answer.
Are you the real Mitch? I ask again.
It doesn’t answer again.
Are you the shadow?
Thanks for saving me from the in-between, it says.
What is the in-between?
I didn’t have enough energy to turn myself back. I could have been stuck there forever, it says.
Because you’re just a shadow, aren’t you? I say.
I’ll miss my real brother, even though he mostly sucked while I knew him. I don’t want to live with a shadow.
And we, me and the shadow of the brother I once barely knew now hidden inside the skin of a puma, run through the cover of the forest all the way back home, and we get hung up at the traffic on York Road. We time our crossing between some cars and cause a massive pile up on the country road. Slinking up Windsor Drive, we duck in bushes then run all-out for home, in a way that feels desperate but also like play. If we were in the Puma Olympics, I would have won the gold. And we crawl up the tree outside our house and into the attic, through the always-open window. We circle together and sit, staring into each other’s golden eyes in the same spot where all the peacocks and I sat when we first AP’d. A small slice of moonlight finds the attic floor and when it passes over our fur, a warmth returns to my paws. And the warmth spreads and cools a bit like a million butterflies flapping their wings over my body on a hot summer day. And I feel my jaw stop clenching and my arms go limp.
We are human again. I sit across from my brother’s slumped over self. It’s hard to move my arms and my legs. But when I finally get to my feet, I run and hide behind mom’s old clothes. I’m totally naked.
“Why did you do it?” I ask, not sure if I’m talking to a shadow. I grab the first dress I see.
“Do what?” he says shaking his head.
“Mitch, I remember. You said I wouldn’t but I do.” I throw a towel at him over the clothes rack.
He catches the towel and says, “Remember what?” Unslumping himself, moving slow. “What are we doing up here?” He rubs his jaw like he’s just bitten down on something hard and it hurts.
“I saved you.”
He’s the one that doesn’t remember. Anything. Only, I want to tell Mitch that I remember everything. But, how do you tell your brother that he told you he was going to die? I saved him. It’s over. But I get this weird feeling that it’s not.
I learn a lot about peacocks in my thirteenth year, besides the fact that I don’t want to be one. I learn that for over four thousand years peacocks graced Indian temples, because of their snake-eating ability.
And Ally and Adrianne and Hayden and I all survive middle school with all its crazy peer pressure and weird rules and uptight teachers. We enter high school the next year as friends, the real kind. The kind that don’t ignore or reject you so they can offer you up in order to climb the peacock ladder.
As it turns out, none of us are peacocks. Not in high school. We all sort of blend into the high school zoo. Adrianne becomes even more of a hamster, she loves making new friends and spends freshman year scurrying from one club and Save The World event to the other. I revise the meaning of hamsters to include busily pursuing things that accomplish a lot. Ally ends up a mustang, so fast she becomes an All-Illinois Cross Country Record Holder. Hayden becomes an owl. Hayden is super-wise but also really, really hot and our Class President. I revise my meaning of owls to include super-hot class presidents.
It doesn’t take four years for Hayden to ask me out. Which makes me really happy. On our first date, Hayden brings some ice cream over to my house and a scary movie called Cat People, which combines my two favorite things––Bowie and Pumas––and I love the movie even though it’s creepy since it hits a little close to home.
And I have these weird dreams about Mitch and I. Mitch doesn’t turn back into a human like I do. And in the dream I feel the fur on my skin and my 410 muscles tense and relax as I run through the forests of Oakdale on my way home. And I get a sinking feeling in my stomach when I imagine pumas living behind bars with all those muscles made for movement.
Here’s the sad part. Lola and Mitch never go out again. Lola trades up right afterward for some Ivy League guy. And life seems so unfair that summer between middle school and high school. By the time high school starts, Mitch has gone away to college and I barely know him. He turns into a stranger in lots of ways. I’m just happy Mitch is alive, even if I’m not totally sure if he’s a shadow.
I learned I’m not a peacock on Planet Popular. I’m not a dodo either. I’ll always be a puma. Even in high school. Fierce, fast and on the lookout.
Always on the lookout. Because I have just one more thing I have to do. There’s something else pumas are good at, keeping secrets. And it’s my secret. I was never any good at secrets, but I get good at them my freshman year. We all have more secrets to keep for each other as we grow up.
I’ll tell you one of mine. The message in the bottle, the treasure map with the weird coded words, came back with me the night I saved Mitch. It was next to me on the floor in the attic when I became human again. I took it as a sign. I hid the map with the weird words in the top drawer of my nightstand. And I wait. I wait for when the time is right. And on my fourteenth birthday, when the moon is full, I have my second birthday party ever. Me and thirteen of my best friends sit in a circle in the attic and swear we will never tell another soul what happens next.
Shadow Slayer, Book 2 The Shadow Series
Shadows will do anything to become human.
You see their influence everyday. You say things you don’t mean or do things that aren’t like you, things you can’t explain. You look different. Friends you’ve known forever suddenly never call.
Planet Popular was just a part of The Shadow World, where all our altar egos live. Shadows want nothing more than to become human with the power of free will. There’s a war brewing between the world of shadows and the world of humans. When shadows invade Roxie’s high school, she discovers she is The Shadow Slayer, the one human who can save the world from the shadow onslaught. Roxie not only fights for her life but the lives of her family and friends. Oh yeah, there’s an evil English teacher, an enchanted play, a sword of Sandonian steel, a Homecoming of Horrors, and seven magic words too.
You thought zombies were bad.
CHAPTER ONE
It’s the kind of day that’s hot at dawn. Don’t sweat, don’t sweat, don’t sweat, I tell myself under my breath. It’s the first day of high school. It’s the first day we have to ride a bus to school. It’s the first day for a lot of things.
“6:45? Really?” Ally says, taking her place beside me at our bus stop in the weeds of the empty field at the end of our street.
“Hey Ally,” I say, fussing with my hair. Tingles shoot out of the spots where my hair gathers in two white sparkly ponytail holders. Nothing says so-not-ready-for-high-school like ponytails. The tingles morph into chills as they travel down my back. Ally and I have our first-day-of-school clothes on. She’s in a new skirt because she thinks jeans make her look fat. I’m wearing my new True Religion jeans. Aunt Suzy bought them for me. Mom wanted to return them because she thinks wearing jeans that cost more than a week of groceries isn’t appropriate. But Oakdale High School is full of kids who spend a lot more money on groceries than we do.
“So it’s just us, I guess,” Ally says.
I look down our deserted street one more time, for what seems like the millionth time.
“When did you see her for the last time?” Ally asks.
I shake my head and get this icky feeling in the pit of my stomach. I never liked Adrianne to begin with, you know that. But, in a weird way, I miss her. Especially after the way she sucked up to me all summer. And I won’t lie to you, it felt good having someone like Adrianne suck up to me. Having someone like Adrianne think I have magic powers, which I don’t. I know I don’t. So, don’t think I do or anything. People with magic powers don’t wear ponytails on their first day of high school. I sigh and kick my new black-and-white converse in the dirt.
“It’s so weird,” Ally says, putting her weight on one foot and then the other and then the other. This habit will be the thing that drives me crazy every morning at the bus stop.
Adrianne’s whole family moved out of town in the middle of the night last Wednesday. “It’s the first day of high school and all you want to talk about is Adrianne?” I quasi-yell, because I’m mad Adrianne disappeared without telling any of us where she was going, especially after she was the one who gave me the present that changed my entire life at my first-ever birthday party last year.
“I just want to know what...happened to her.” Ally’s voice turns into a whisper when we both spot a girl walking down our street, headed for our bus stop. We stop talking. I squint, pouring over every detail of the girl’s silhouette in the way-too sunny morning. At first I think it could be Adrianne. But as the girl walks down the street, closer and closer to Ally and me, this girl is shorter and her hair is different than Adrianne’s, way different. It’s red. She’s super-tan too, which try as Adrianne did, she never could tan. As soon as Mystery Girl walks past my mailbox I can’t take my eyes off her wild hair, like Einstein wild, and she hasn’t done anything to tame it.
“Who is that?” Ally says.
“No idea.” I’m not really in the mood for meeting anyone new so early in the morning, since meeting people is all I’ll be doing today at high school.
The low roar of a bus-sized engine wakes me from my new-girl-induced haze. Epically waking me up like some kind of gigantic alarm going off on my growing-up alarm clock. High school will begin the second I step onto that bus. But, I guess it really started last week when we had to go buy our books. Buying books felt even more epic than the bus coming down the street.
I’d just been swimming. My hair was still wet, pulled back in a ponytail, and the smell of ice cream and suntan lotion was in the air even in the high school cafeteria where all our books were laid out by class. Life still felt like summer until my mom said I’ll have to do extra chores to help pay for all my books. Right after Mom laid the bombshell on me, Hayden’s hand brushed against mine while we were in line. He’d been away for a whole month with his parents at Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. His permanently sunny hair sparkled even brighter than usual and he stood almost a full head higher than me now.
He said, “Roxie, is that you?”
I was freaking out at how he didn’t recognize me. But the smile on his face told me this was a good not-recognizing me, not a bad not-recognizing me.
“Wow, you look so, so...” he said, poking around the books in front of us. My stomach tied in nervous knots with me dying to know what his next word would be.
“I like your dress,” Haden said.
“Thanks.” I think the skin on my face went three shades darker than the reddest rose in Dad’s garden.
“Um, wanna hang out before school starts?” he said.
“Sure,” I said, smiling probably the most ridiculously happy smile I’d ever smiled.
“I’ll pick you up at your house and we can ride our bikes to the pool,” he said.
After that, every time my cell rang I jumped, thinking it would be him. And I kept my extra special swimsuit ready for when he did call. And he did call. The next day. We rode to the pool together. It was the best afternoon of my real life. We played categories in the diving well and had cheeseburgers at the snack shack and we got caught in a downpour on the way home and all of it was so like boyfriend-girlfriend. Except we didn’t kiss or hug or anything. But it felt like we were going to maybe two or three times. I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
The school bus drives right by Ally and me and takes a turn around the cul-de-sac by Mrs. Tekla’s house. The smelly bus squeaks to a stop right in front of us, between us and the new girl walking down our street. The bus doors open. Sitting at the top of the stairs is an odd woman rocking major makeup, all bundled in a parka. I rush to the top of the stairs because I want to get a good look at the new girl. But I get sidetracked because of the driver’s perfume, Emeraude. The scent makes me stop cold. It’s Grandma’s perfume. And it’s weird to think that a young cold-blooded woman bus driver who kicks-butt at applying mascara and eyeliner would wear the same scent as Grandma.
“Maybe the new girl knows what happened to Adrianne,” Ally says, slamming right into my backpack, pushing me into the Grandma-scented bus driver.
“What happened to who?” The new girl says like she doesn’t look like Einstein and has lived in our neighborhood longer than we have. She smiles, slithers past our over-gawky selves and si
ts in the very front seat. Who does that? Who sits in the front? On purpose. I mean, really.
Ally and I walk to the very last seat in back and sit down.
“Weird,” Ally says.
“Very weird,” I whisper back.
I’m not proud of the silent treatment we give the new girl. It isn’t very nice. I can’t explain it. It just sort of happened. Turns out we’re the very first bus stop on the route to Oakdale High School, which is in the super-rich part of town. When we get to Hayden’s bus stop I giggle. He missed the bus on his first day. I look extra-long out the window.
There are four junior highs that feed into the high school. I’m not kidding, that’s how my mom explained it to me. She said feeds. And I’m not going to lie to you, after my first day at Oakdale High School I thought it would literally eat me alive.
13 on Halloween (Shadow Series #1) Page 17
