Shade and the Skinwalkers

by Marilyn Peake

  She said, “Oh, yeah. They said they were important evidence. They didn’t want me to go out to the cave with them ’cause they said it could get dangerous. There could be a shoot-out, right? So, I drew them a map of where we found the bags and they made me give them my address and phone number, in case they need to get in touch with me.” Kai stopped and looked at me with eyes so sad and huge, she reminded me of an anime character. She said, “Shade, I don’t want them to get in touch with me! I don’t want the police coming into our trailer park and showing up at my house. Everyone’s going to think my mom’s boyfriend is in trouble again!”

  I wished I had thought to question her about the again part. How many times had he been in trouble with the police, and for what exactly? Was he violent? I lived only a few yards away from him. But I didn’t think to ask any of that. My mind was racing because I didn’t want the police coming over to my own house, questioning neighbors like they do sometimes, because I didn’t want them talking to my mom. I didn’t want my mom involved in this in any way whatsoever, and I didn’t want the police finding out about the record she had in the place we’d just left. I guess Kai and I both had family skeletons we’d prefer to keep under lock and key.

  I just wanted to start a new life with a clean slate for my final year of high school. Was that too much to ask?

  I said, “Don’t worry about it. Everything will be OK.” Maybe it would be OK. I certainly hoped so.

  The next day at school, a couple of police officers were hanging around inside the principal’s office. I saw them through the glass wall and zipped by there lickety-split. I put my head down so they couldn’t see my face, and hoped I didn’t look suspicious.

  At that exact moment, someone came up behind me and grabbed me by the arm. My nerves on edge, I instinctively jerked my arm away and let out a kind of shriek. Right there. In the hallway. It turned out it was Kai. Everyone turned around and looked at me. Way to fly under the radar, Shade! You’re such a dork! I tried to cover up how nervous I was. My hands shaking so badly I was afraid I’d drop my books, I just laughed and said, “You scared me, Kai! What are you doing at school? Aren’t you homeschooled?”

  Everyone turned back to whatever they’d been doing before I promised them a potential train wreck to watch. Sorry to disappoint, guys!

  Kai spoke real low, like she was sharing a secret. “I’m getting an award. A freaking award, Shade!” She cupped a hand around the side of her mouth to keep her words from anyone but me and added, “I never get awards, Shade. Never. That’s not me. I’m allowed to take certain classes here if I want. I took PE last year ’cause my mom decided I was getting ‘fat and lazy’.” Kai rolled her eyes. “She’d heard the PE teacher was strict. I’m still registered here. The police decided they’d give me my award at the school, to make me a role model for other kids. I’m pretty sure they originally just assumed I went here, and then got stuck on the idea of using me as their role model.”

  As if I couldn’t guess, I asked, “What’s the award for?”

  She said, “You know!” and raised her eyebrows at me. She added, “I gotta go; but you’ll be at Morning Assembly, right?”

  I answered, “Of course!” Actually, if truth be told, I had to be at Morning Assembly. It was something my new school did. Every. Single. Freaking. Morning. It was supposed to create school spirit. The cheerleaders jumped up and down. They shouted stuff at us like: Who’s a superstar? Who’s out of this world? Who? Who? Who? It’s you! It’s me! It’s us! We’re so far ... (Clap! Clap! Clap! Boy, could those cheerleaders clap fast and loud. The bleary-eyed kids in the stands clapped a lot slower and a lot softer. Except for the sports guys. They had a lot of enthusiasm even at that crazy hour of the morning. Maybe ’cause they wanted to encourage the cheerleaders to keep on jumping.) ... out of this world, we’re blastin’ off into outer space! Again with the Roswell UFO references. Ah, life in a small town.

  That day, Morning Assembly finally had something different to offer. Something worth showing up for.

  After the cheerleaders did their thing, Principal Marquez walked to a podium in the middle of the gymnasium and fiddled with the microphone until everyone could hear him. There were a few false starts. No one could hear him. Then the microphone shrieked to the point where everyone covered their ears. The audio visual specialist who was also the librarian because this school could barely afford a librarian, never mind an audio visual specialist, ran across the gym floor, fiddled with the microphone and gestured for Principal Marquez to try it. He tried it again and, mercifully, it worked.

  He gave a long speech about what it means to be a hero. A bunch of kids fell asleep. One kid fell off a bottom bleacher when her head slipped off the hand she was using to prop her head up while she napped. A group of kids giggled at that.

  But then Principal Marquez started talking about people who had gone missing from town over the past couple of years. It was an alarmingly long list. He described the gruesome discovery we’d made in the cave, attributing the entire discovery to Kai, just as we’d agreed she should report the incident.

  The kids all sat up in their seats. Everyone who was asleep had been nudged awake by the person next to them.

  Principal Marquez asked Kai and the police officers to come up to the podium. There, the police officers praised Kai for her bravery in going to the police and reporting what she had discovered. They said they’d found a wallet with identifying information in the cave and arrested the guy when he showed up an hour later.

  One of the police officers handed Kai a Certificate of Bravery and a shiny silver Honorary Police Officer badge. Kai smiled from ear to ear. It transformed her. I’d never seen her smile like that. I noticed that she had dressed up special: a black skirt with a pink ruffled blouse, black tights with pink flowers on them, pink bows at the end of her braids, and black patent leather mary janes. It wasn’t great fashion like the popular kids wore, but it showed the ceremony meant a lot to her. I felt happy she was getting the recognition. I also hoped she wouldn’t get beat up on the way home. A shiny new police officer badge and shiny patent leather shoes didn’t bode well.

  After the ceremony, I noticed a middle-aged lady walk over to Kai, put her arm around her and walk her out of the school.

  Was that her mom!? She wasn’t at all what I had expected. She was fit and trim and carried herself with an incredible air of self-confidence. She wore a gray suit with high heels and dangling turquoise earrings. She had dark skin and Navajo features like Kai’s. Her hair was black, but at the very top she had a red arrowhead shape dyed into it. Somehow, I had always pictured her mom as an old, fat lady wearing faded moo-moos and worn-out slippers.

  Later, during the last half hour of my last class which was Music, I counted down the minutes ... over and over again. It felt like Father Time was playing a trick on the world by continuously setting back all the clock hands. I kept looking away; but whenever I glanced back, the clock hands hadn’t kept up with my perception of how much time had passed. I pictured Father Time about ten feet tall, wearing a long, flowing beard and a long, flowing cape and cackling with glee as he pushed back the hands. No doubt, our Music teacher would have hired him as the perfect Assistant.

  I lip-synched all the songs that day because I was so distracted, I couldn’t trust myself to remember where we were in each song. I didn’t want the whole class turning around to look at me when I sang the wrong words.

  When I finally hopped off the bus, I took off running to find Kai.

  I found her sitting on the front step of her trailer, holding a black cat with a red arrow-shaped mark on its head.

  As I approached, Kai put the cat down and shooed it away.

  I stopped in my tracks and watched. That cat did not look right. It didn’t move entirely like a cat, although I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why I had that impression, and I swear it winked at Kai as it walked away.

  I gathered my wits. I walked over to Kai and said, “That cat...”

 
She interrupted me. “So, what did you think of the award ceremony today?” She flashed me a huge smile.

  Distracted by the red arrow mark on the cat that so closely matched the hairstyle of the woman I saw with Kai that morning, I wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic as I should have been. I said, “Great! Really great!” in a voice without inflection, although I didn’t mean for it to come out that way. I asked, “Was that your mom this morning?”

  Kai looked confused. “My mom? This morning? What did she do now?”

  I felt annoyed. I said, “The lady walking you out of the award ceremony...”

  Kai laughed. “Noooo ... That was not my mom. My mom doesn’t look anything like that. And, besides, she never steps foot inside that school when she doesn’t have to. She hates public school, says it brainwashes everyone into thinking the same way.”

  I waited. She didn’t add anything else.

  I asked the obvious question: “So, who was she then?”

  Kai stared off into the distance. She said, “My aunt. She’s like a second mom to me, a kind of guardian. She helps me out when I need an adult in my life.”

  I just said, “Oh.” After a few seconds, I ventured to say, “That cat you were holding ... It had the same color hair and the same arrowhead design on top as your aunt.”

  Kai said, “Arrowhead design?”

  I said, “Yeah.” I pointed to the top of my head. “Hair dyed bright red on top of their heads in the shape of an arrow.”

  Kai shrugged her shoulders. “Huh. I didn’t notice.”

  She was a terrible liar.

  I said, “You didn’t notice that shape in your aunt’s hair?”

  She said, “Not really. I know she had it dyed red on top. The shape depends on how she parts her hair. This morning, I was too wrapped up in getting my award to notice how my aunt had her hair parted.”

  Just as I was about to congratulate her again on the award, Kai’s real mom came to the door.

  She wasn’t what I had expected either. No moo-moo or slippers, that’s for sure. She had a bunch of small tattoos on her face, mostly butterflies flitting across her cheeks and nose. Her arms were covered with larger ones: roses along her left arm, snakes and wolves along her right. She had hoop earrings lined up on the outside of her ears and a small silver bar through her nose. Her hair was long and black, except along the temples where it had been shaved, and swept up into a single braid. She was thin and younger than I had expected—although she was still old, at least thirty, I think. I’m not good at guessing grown-ups’ ages. She had Navajo features, just like Kai and her aunt, although her face looked different with all the tattoos. She had a raven over each eyebrow that took flight every time she raised them. I found that a bit disorienting.

  She said, “Kai, it’s time to come in. Did Aunt Doli bring you home?”

  Kai said, “Yeah, she just left.”

  Then her mom noticed me. “Oh, hi. I’m Kai’s mom. Are you one of her friends?”

  Kai looked mortified. She had started heading toward the door of her trailer, but stopped where she was, looking from her mom to me.

  I just said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Kai’s mom looked annoyed. “Now, don’t you ever call me ma’am. I ain’t no Southern belle. I’m Kai’s mom. I’m not married, so I ain’t no Mrs. either. You just call me Mósí Yázhí ... or Yázhí, if you want. Mósí Yázhí means Kitten; Yázhí means Little One. If you want, you can just call me Kitten. A lot of people have trouble pronouncing my Navajo name. I’m the youngest of five girls, so, yeah, I’ll always be the Kitten. You wanna come in?”

  Kai interrupted. She spoke really fast. “Shade has homework, Mom. The school gives lots of homework. Every day, the teachers give lots of homework.”

  Kai’s mom—Kitten? Seriously? How would I ever call someone’s mom Kitten!?—shrugged. She said, “That’s too bad, all that homework. Kind of cramps your style as a kid, doesn’t it?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I thought: Not really. I don’t actually have that much of a style.

  Kai waved at me so fast, her hand could have been a hummingbird. She said, “Bye, Shade! See you tomorrow! Good luck with your homework!”

  Her mom moved backwards out of the way as Kai rushed past her and slammed the front door.

  CHAPTER 5

  I didn’t see Kai or anyone else in her family for a week. It’s like they were all laying low. I didn’t even hear her mom’s boyfriend yelling or hear them fighting or anything. Everything was super quiet at their house. I saw the lights flick on and off at night, so I assumed they were home.

  I missed Kai. It was always lonely moving to a new town and so far she was my only friend in this new place.

  I worked on Leotard Girl. I did my homework.

  One day, I was standing in the lunch line at school, figuring out what I could get with the change my mom had left for me on the kitchen counter.

  I had a dollar and a half: four quarters, three dimes, three nickels and five pennies. Boy, the cashier was gonna love me. Full lunches cost $2.25. Of course, if my mom had bothered to apply for the free lunch program, which I’m sure we would have qualified for, I might have been able to get a decent meal. But, no, instead, I had to piece together enough odds and ends to keep my stomach from eating itself and to provide enough energy for me to get through the day. I sighed. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich it was with ... ummm ... I looked at the choices and grabbed a carton of milk and a bag of potato chips.

  From behind me, I heard someone say, “You wanna sit at our table?”

  I ignored it, figuring they were talking to someone else.

  There was a tap on my arm. When I turned around, there was a girl who looked like a fashion model from the sixties: flowered skirt down to the tops of her ankle boots, a lilac T-shirt made out of stretchy ribbed material, and a sparkly green dragonfly necklace. Her hair was a mousy brown collection of curls tumbling down past her shoulders.

  She said, “Hi. I recognize you from Newspaper Club. You’re new here, right?”

  I said, “Yeah, I am.” I couldn’t think of what else to say. If I had more self-confidence or was the chatty type or didn’t have so much I desperately wanted to hide about my life in our old town, I could have said a million things. But that wasn’t the case, so I just kept it simple.

  She, however, was the chatty type, which let me off the hook for the rest of the conversation.

  She said, “Would you like to sit with us? A bunch of us from the Newspaper Club always sit together.”

  Tongue-tied, I stuck with my plan to keep it simple: “Sure.”

  She said, “I’ve been here forever. In this town, I mean. I’ve been in this school since freshman year. I’ve been in the school system since second grade. My parents lived in a commune till then and I went to school there. Commune-schooled instead of homeschooled, right?” She laughed. I should have smiled, but I didn’t get the pun until it was too late. “Well, it wasn’t a school, really, if you ask me. Us kids were all ‘self-guided.’ Can you imagine kids that age deciding what they’ll learn based on their interests? One of my best friends was obsessed with planets and stars and how stuff worked ... you know, Science. But not me. I liked recess, so I got lots and lots of recess, and then the teachers made me draw pictures of recess and tell them a story about it.” She had lively green eyes that she opened real wide when making certain points.

  I waited for her to pause, in case she meant for me to comment, but instead we reached the lunch lady and she turned to speak to her. “Hi, Mrs. Garcia. How are you?”

  The short Latino woman wearing a hairnet and holding a ladle gave her a big smile. She said, “Good. Good, Starshine. What can I get for you today?”

  My stomach rumbled. I had to fight back the drool. Starshine pointed at the stew, the mashed potatoes and the apple pie, saying, “This ... and that ... and a slice of that pie right over there.”

  Would it be wrong to say, “Look over there!” and swipe the pie off her tray? />
  After we paid for everything and were walking to the table, I said, “So, your name is Starshine?”

  She said, “Uh-huh,” like it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.

  She introduced me to everyone at the table. There were three kids with strange names like mine: Violet Skye, Moonjava, and Wolf Song. Violet was dressed in white—white skirt, a sleeveless white blouse and white boots—with a mood-sensing heart tied around her neck with black leather string. It kept changing colors as she moved. Moonjava was a guy with heavy stubble, a dimple in his chin, and deeply serious green eyes. Wolf was a short, fidgety guy whose eyes darted about when he was deep in discussion, as though he was reading thoughts streaming across his mind too quickly for his mouth to keep up.

  There were two other kids with normal-sounding names: Jane and Luke. You didn’t get much more normal than that. Well, at least with their names. Jane had the tattoo of a dragon covering the left side of her face that looked at you and kind of snarled while belching fire out the side of its mouth. I hoped she didn’t pay too much for that. Luke was completely dressed in black and looked way too gaunt and serious, like he didn’t have enough skin on his face to crack a smile.

  I ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and listened. The group was talking about writing an article for the school paper on some kind of festival coming up that weekend.

  Starshine turned to me. She said, “You wanna go with us, Shade?”

  I asked where.

  She said, “There’s a UFO Festival just outside of town. A bunch of us go to it every year and write an article about it. It’s fun.”

  I said, “Sure. I’d love to go.”

  At that exact moment, the cat leapt out of the bag and changed my life forever. I went from starting fresh in a new school to starting like rotten egg salad on a sunny day.

  Wolf Song looked up from his cell phone. Since when are cell phones allowed in school!? He said, “Wow, Shade, you’re a hero!”