Before we could get to the door, a short man wearing a green sweater and glasses—a fatherish sort of man—bounded out of the door and threw his arms around me and kissed my head over and over, like a very tender woodpecker. “Thank God you’re back, honey bunny,” he said. Tears were dripping from his swollen red eyelids. Whoever this man was, he obviously loved me very much, but I was ashamed to say that I had no idea who he was.
If you’ve ever had amnesia, you’ll know that this is the strangest and loneliest part: people will hug you close and thank God that you’re alright and tell you that they love you, and you feel nothing for them in return, because they are strangers. You aren’t glad to see them, because there’s nothing to be glad about. You are simply lost.
“Where’s your little brother?” Father-Man asked frantically. “Is Paul with you? Did he get away too?”
My mouth hung open. Apparently my escape hadn’t been successful after all, as I’d left my sibling with the masked kidnappers. In my haste to figure out who I was and why I was in the back of a van, I hadn’t thought to check the back seat for little brothers.
Female Officer interjected. “Paul is still missing,” she said to Father-Man, then she turned to me. “What do you remember about the abduction?”
I laughed a little bit, a curt little “Ha!” which made Father-Man frown. I’d been abducted? I had a father? A brother named Paul?
I thought it best to tell the truth, so I said, trembling, “I don’t remember anything about the abduction. All I know is that I woke up in the back of a van, and two guys with ski masks were driving, and I jumped out of the van, and here I am. And I’m very disoriented.”
Female Officer put a hand on my back, which managed to feel gentle and menacing at the same time. “You don’t have to protect anyone, sweetie,” she said. “We need you to tell us everything you remember. Isn’t there anything?”
I felt my voice trip over a lump that had risen in my throat. I was frustrated and bewildered, and the strange Father-Man standing in front of me and patting my arm was of no comfort whatsoever. “I don’t know!” I cried. “I don’t understand anything that’s going on!”
I wiped away the tears from beneath my eyes with my sleeve. “Wait!” I said. When I closed my eyes to remember, I saw the back of the van as if it were a photograph. The way the carpet was stained and smelled like popcorn. The drooping rubber frame running around the windows. The rusted edges of the metallic door handle. Within this memory, I saw a piece of paper across from me in the back of the van. It was a torn receipt, and I couldn’t make out any of the numbers, or the address. All that was visible was the logo: B&B Scrapyard and Auto Parts.
I told them what I had seen. They weren’t impressed.
“Yeah, sure, B&B,” said Male Officer, irritated. “A quarter of the cars in town are serviced there. You have to tell us what really happened, doll.”
I’m not sure what it was about the officers. Maybe it was that Female Officer smelled like an ashtray, or that Male Officer had called me “doll,” but I decided then that I’d spent enough time with the police for one evening.
“I can’t talk anymore!” I said.
Father-Man stepped between me and the officers and held my head to his chest. His green sweater was pilly and smelled comfortingly like soap and fresh bread. “You heard her!” he said. “She’s done talking for tonight. Go up to your room, honey bunny. I’ll be there in a minute. I just need to talk to the officers about how they’re going to find Paul.”
And with that I
gracefully exited the front porch and dragged my tired and unfamiliar body upstairs.
I stumbled into Paul’s room first. I knew it was Paul’s room because it smelled like a boy and had model dinosaurs in it. I moved to the next room, which smelled like cucumber-melon body spray and was painted the color of a melon as well. There was a clean sage-colored comforter on the bed and an Anne Geddes poster on the wall, the one with the babies in pea-pods. Whoever I was, I had a thing for green.
I looked at a row of framed pictures sitting on top of a white lowboy dresser. There was one of an average-looking blond girl standing in front of Stonehenge with her arm around a dusty-haired younger-brother type, presumably Paul. In another, the average-looking blond girl was dressed to the nines, standing in front of a fancy restaurant next to Father-Man. In another, the average-looking blond girl was hugging a beautiful, curvy Mother-type with long blond hair.
But why wasn’t the Mother-type downstairs on the front porch with Father-Man? Divorce? Death? Loss, in either case. There was a definite air of loss in the house, a graying and empty stillness. This much was clear to me, the average-looking blond girl.
I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, hoping that if I could suck up some air from this house, I might suck up some memories of it as well.
I opened my eyes again. Nothing. I still felt like an alien, like I was alone in the middle of a cold lake, bobbing up and down, shivering and waiting for the sun to rise.
I took a clean sweater from the lowboy and pulled it on over my T-shirt, then looked in the makeup mirror on the lowboy.
Hold on . . .
The face in the mirror was of a girl with a sharp nose, jet-black hair, and dark, curious eyes. I looked from the pictures of the average-looking blond girl to the mirror and back again, and wondered if I’d gotten it wrong. Who was this girl with the black hair? Where were
her
pictures?
“Ahem,” came a cough from over by the bed. I spun around and saw a boy who looked about seventeen clearing his throat. “Oh! Hello. I’m sorry to be rude, but I’ve been standing here for a few minutes, waiting for you to turn around. That’s why I coughed.”
Though he wasn’t very tall, he was too old to be Paul, which meant he was officially a stranger in my room. I screamed and threw the makeup mirror at him.
But the mirror didn’t stop when it hit him in the chest. It just sailed right on through to the wall, where it splintered and crashed to the floor.
Chapter Two
Wednesday, 11:34 PM
W
hen you see a mirror sail through a person, you wonder first if you’re crazy, and second if you are talking to a ghost.
“Well, I suppose I deserve that,” the boy said, “as I’ve barged into your room. It must be disconcerting. I’m here to help you. Please don’t throw anything else through me. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s quite startling.”
I backed away from him with my hands stretched out in front of me, praying that he would just disappear. Not only was he frightening, he was also mildly irritating. He had an aristocratic nose with flared nostrils, and a head of short, curly hair like a Roman emperor that was somewhere between blond, red, and brown. His eyes were small but intense—there was a magnetic quality about them that made me wonder whether he had x-ray vision and could see what color bra I was wearing.
Then there was the matter of his voice, which was quiet but powerful. Every word seemed carefully culled and preened and meticulously placed, like a wedding table centerpiece.
“My name is Wilhelm,” he said. He kept his hands in the pockets of his pressed khaki pants. “But feel free to call me Will.” He kept his head pointed to the floor when he spoke, but he tilted his eyes up just far enough to bore into mine like little dental drills.
I still wanted him to go away.
“Alright,
Will
,” I said, frustrated by all the conflicting elements that had been hurled my way since I gasped myself awake in the back of the van. “Why can’t I remember anything?”
“Is that your only question?” he said in, smiling like a little curly haired devil.
“No!” I shouted. “I have a lot more questions!”
Will wiped the smile off his face and cleared his throat. “Fair enough. Forgive my flippancy. I didn’t mean to be glib.”
“Well, you are being glib! So stop!” I shouted, even though I wasn’t entirely sure what “glib” meant. If it meant handsome and dismissive, then yes, he was being glib.
“Your name is Schanby Face,” he said, in the direction of the carpet.
I must have heard incorrectly, which wouldn’t have been hard, because he was practically whispering. “My name is
what
?” I snapped.
“Abby Grace,” he said, clearing his throat. “Forgive me. I have a tendency to mumble.”
“Fine,” I said. “My name is Abby Grace. That doesn’t ring a bell. Why don’t I remember my name? And who’s the blond girl in the pictures?”
“That blond girl is you,” said Will.
“Then why do I have black hair and a different face when I look in the mirror?” I cried, pulling at my hair.
“Well, that’s also you.”
It felt like he was playing a game with me. I took one last glance at the pictures, and the girl in the mirror, and the thought of this Ken doll having the answer but refusing to tell me was becoming more and more infuriating. Then he grinned, and I lost it. I walked right up to Will and I slapped him in the ear… or, I would have, if my hand hadn’t sailed right through his head.
“Ah!” he winced, holding his ear as though I’d harmed him.
“You are the single most frustrating person I have ever met,” I said. “Please explain to me what is happening, without using word games and riddles!”
Will lifted his head so that I could see his whole face. It wasn’t a face you’d find on a movie star, but there was something irritatingly attractive about it. Did he have a great jawline? Maybe that was it.
“Alright. I’ll stop being so cryptic, I promise. Some people like it. Clearly, you are not among those people.”
I nodded.
“You are a Shadow, Abby. You are here for a purpose. ‘That blond girl’—whose name happens to be
Brooke,
by the way—is Borrowing you, Abby. You have been sent into Brooke’s body because she has a desperate problem, and you are here to solve it.”
“So, who is the girl in the mirror?” I asked.
“That’s you, Abby Grace. Or, at least, you used to be Abby Grace.”
For the first time that day, everything stopped. His words hung in the air with a chilling finality.
Used to be Abby Grace
? I had spent the last hour trying to answer who I was, only to find that I’d been asking the wrong question. It wasn’t who I was . . . it was who had I become. Or what.
A Shadow?
I felt like the room was spinning, so I backed against the wall to keep from falling.
“Am I dead? Is that what it means to be a Shadow? Is that why I can’t remember anything?”
Will didn’t say anything. He glanced with frustration at the ground. I could see words bubbling up through his gut but getting caught in his throat. He pursed his lips to keep them in. He looked at me with distress in his eyes, and I could tell this wasn’t easy for him, either.
“I’m sorry, Abby. I can’t tell you anything about what happened to you before tonight.”
Apology or no, this was just unacceptable. “Just tell me if I’m dead!” I pleaded.
Will hung his head. “I’m not privy to that kind of information. I’m just here to help you fix whatever you are sent to fix when somebody Borrows you.”
I felt dizzy and weak, and my knees—or whoever’s knees these were—immediately gave out. I collapsed onto the comforter and smelled Brooke’s cucumber-melon body spray. She needed my help to fix something—what, I didn’t know—and for some reason I’d been lent to her as a tool.
“I don’t want to be a Shadow. I just want to go back to where I came from,” I said. “Did I do something awful? Is that why I’m here? Is this some sort of hell?”
“Don’t worry about what happened before,” said Will. “You need to concentrate on doing the job you were sent to do. Because if things continue the way they’re headed for Brooke, you’ll be trapped in her life. Forever.”
I folded my arms across my chest in defeat.
“I’m not being dramatic, Abby,” he said. “I’m just giving you the facts. You’ve got a job to do.”
Will checked his watch and sighed.
“What?” I said. “Do you have some other recently deceased person to go confuse?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve missed the first few minutes of
Law and Order: Special Victim’s Unit
. Do you enjoy that show? I am addicted to it. We could watch it, if you’ve got nothing better to do.”
“Go find another house, Will,” I said, getting under the comforter and pulling it over my head.
Then the room went silent. I pulled the covers from my head, and Will was gone.
There was a knock at the door. “Brooke? Can I come in?” The Father-Man sounded so gentle, so concerned, so nerdy. I almost wanted to invite him in, because I could have used a little kindness, but I didn’t really want someone else’s father. I wanted my own. I couldn’t remember him, but I’m assuming I had one, because I could almost latch onto the feeling of having, at one time, belonged in the world, and belonged to a family.
“I’m asleep,” I said, and I could almost hear the disappointment in Brooke’s father’s footsteps as he paced away.
I’m not ashamed to say that I fell asleep crying into the pillow.
Chapter Three
Thursday, 6:15 AM
A
t 6:15 in the morning, there was a knock at my door.
Apparently, Brooke’s dad—my dad?—was not the sort of father that allowed a day off for mental recuperation after a person has been kidnapped. Not that I wanted to spend the day cooped up in this saccharine green nightmare of a bedroom finding reasons not to speak to him, so I took a shower.
This seems like a simple enough task. It wasn’t.
Think back to the last time you showered in someone else’s house with no instructions. Think of all the vital pieces of information you’ve got to collect before you shower. Where are the clean towels? Which bar of soap is mine? Most importantly, how do I twist these various knobs to arrive at a water temperature that neither scalds nor freezes?
My new house was large, immaculate, and fairly modern. As such, the shower in the upstairs bathroom was tiled in gray marble on the walls and gray slate on the floors, with a sliding door of gleaming, streak-free glass. The silver handle that controlled the water temperature looked like alien technology from ten thousand years in the future. There were no labels—you simply had to intuit which direction was cold and which was hot. Not only did you have to pick a longitude, but there was latitude to consider as well, and each coordinate produced a different combination of temperature and water pressure, a whole hemisphere of options. I burned myself with a stream stronger than a fire hose. I shivered under a measly trickle of water colder than a Siberian creek. When I emerged my skin was red with burns in some places and frostbitten in others. It wasn’t a relaxing shower, to say the least.