The Shadow (7 page)

The smoke alarm went off, but Leo must have waved a towel in front of it, because it stopped just as soon as it began. “Oh man!” he yelled. “Burned the cookies.”

Who eats chocolate chip cookies when they’re torturing someone?

Leo emerged from the kitchen with a plate of blackened, shriveled chocolate chip cookies and reentered the basement, shutting the door behind him.

I needed a way to get Leo out of the basement so that I could sneak in and rescue Paul—if Paul was even in there. I ran into the kitchen and spotted the smoke detector mounted high on one of the walls, which was covered with wallpaper that depicted teddy bears dancing in a parade. I wanted to rip the wallpaper down, but at that moment there were more important things to do.

I opened the oven and a puff of black smoke billowed out. Sure enough, the smoke alarm began to whine again. I scooted back into the living room and hid behind the same chair as Leo emerged from the basement once more and jogged to the kitchen. “I’m gonna kill this fire alarm!” he shouted.

That was my cue.

I tiptoed past a posse of GI Joe’s and over a half-finished game of Cranium to the basement steps. I expected to find Ms. Peterson cutting Paul open in a dungeon, or a torture chamber, or one of those terrible basements you see in kidnapping movies with a filthy, bare mattress in one corner and a bucket in another.

Instead, there were two boys playing an Xbox game on a giant flat-screen TV. The floor of the basement was covered in the same unfortunate orange linoleum as the kitchen, but other than that, nothing seemed foul at all. The sun’s afternoon glow peered in through a small curtained window facing the bay. It looked out over a backyard overgrown with purple wildflowers. Not exactly the dungeon I was picturing.

I turned my attention to the two boys who were staring, enraptured, at the video game on the big screen while they fidgeted in their purple bean bag chairs. One boy was hulking and muscular and looked about Leo’s age, and the other I recognized from the picture in my room. It was the same dusty-haired, younger brother type that Brooke put her arm around in front of Stonehenge.

Paul laughed and tossed his controller casually to the floor. “I,” he said calmly, “am a master.” There were no bruises on his face, no chains linking him to the floor. He was free to go at any time. In fact, he seemed perfectly ecstatic to be in that basement. “Leo!” he called. “Turn that freaking fire alarm off, man!”

I did it. I found Paul.

Only  . . . Paul was playing video games. So now what?

I crept back up the stairs silently, wondering what was going on, when the smoke alarm stopped blaring—which meant that Leo was on his way back down. I bolted for the front door, but he had already entered the living room. “Hey!” he cried, and he hurtled after me.

The next few minutes were something of a blur. I couldn’t hear anything over the rushing of breath in and out of my mouth, and the incessant pulsing of blood through my temples.

I ran through the scrapyard, the long grasses whipping my shins, with Leo sprinting after me. I tripped over a tire and skinned my palms on some gravel, nearly slicing my face open on a loose fender, but I got up just in time to elude Leo, who had tripped over the excessive fabric at the bottom of his flared pants.

I climbed the eight-foot fence, faster this time, paying little attention to the sharp nips of wire at the top.

I would have felt relieved as I hopped to the ground on the other side of the fence, except that I wasn’t alone. A man in a baseball cap and denim jacket was waiting there for me, as if he knew I was coming. It was the man who had been following me the night before. He had his hands in his pockets and his head bowed, the shadow from his brim obscuring his face.

Leo unlocked the door to the fence and came through and stood behind me.

I was sandwiched in between Leo and the man who was following me. Maybe they were in cahoots the whole time. Maybe they kidnapped Paul in order to get to me.

The man in the denim jacket reached into this breast pocket, and I darted to the right. “Wait, doll,” he said gruffly, catching me by the shoulder and holding on tight.

Doll?

The man flashed a gold police badge. But I didn’t have to see the badge to recognize the voice of the male officer from the other night, the one who drove me back to my father’s porch and called me Doll. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you. Didn’t want anything bad to happen to you, too,” he said.

Leo stood frozen, not knowing what to do.

I cleared my throat. “I found Paul.”

Chapter Ten

Friday, 6:24 PM

“T
hank you, Sir,” said Dad, as he escorted Male Officer in the denim jacket to the porch.

“Actually, you should thank Brooke,” Male Officer said. “She’s the one who found him. She’s not a bad little detective.” He tipped his baseball cap in my direction and walked off toward the street, leaving Paul and me alone on the couch.

Paul was
short and compact with sweet little arms, full lips, and big blue eyes, which he refused to cast in my direction. Clearly, he had a lot of feelings about having been found, but gratitude was not among them.

Dad shut the front door behind him and sat in his cozy chair at the other end of the living room, which gave him all the power. Paul and I were like penitent subjects begging a monarch for mercy.

Dad furrowed his brow and pressed his hands to his lips, as if searching for the right words. “I’m very disturbed, Paul. Arranging for your burnout friends to kidnap you? I  . . . I’m so angry! I thought you were dead! And then to drag Brooke into it by kidnapping her, too  . . . It’s horrible, what you did!”

“I wouldn’t have done it if you ever talked to me anymore,” Paul muttered under his breath. His skinny arms were folded across his chest and his lips were pressed together in a pout as he stared at his shoes.

“What?” Dad asked. “Speak up.”

“I said, I wouldn’t have done it if you ever talked to me anymore!” he shouted. The bottom rims of his eyelids were puffy and red.

“I talk to you plenty,” Dad said.

“No, you don’t! Not since Mom died. First you just disappeared. You were always in your room, and you were always sad. But now, forget about it! Now you’re always out! Or on the phone! I’d rather have you depressed at home than running around ignoring us!”

“He’s not ignoring us,” I said. “He’s in love.”

Both Dad and Paul stared at me in shock.

“Ms. Peterson,” I said. “Right?”

Dad blinked. “I  . . . ” he stammered, his face turning red.

It was obvious to me, now. That’s why Ms. Peterson had called the house the night before—to check up on my father, not to threaten or scare me. It was also how she had known about the van; my father must have told her.

He cleared his throat. “I didn’t want you kids to learn about it like this. I wanted to wait until things were more official, but  . . . yes. I have been seeing Hilary. It’s been wonderful. We’re in love.”

“How can you be in love with Ms. Peterson?” gasped Paul.

“She’s a good woman, son. Both of you will really like her once you get to know her away from school. As a person.” He paused, inhaling deeply as if to steady himself. “We’re getting married next summer.”

“You can’t!” shrieked Paul.

“And why not?” hollered Dad.

“Because she’s NOT MOM, that’s why!”

Just then, the front door squeaked open, and Ms. Peterson took a tentative step inside. “Paul?” she said. “I heard you were back, I just wanted to make sure you were safe—”

But before Ms. Peterson could finish, Paul had bolted from the couch and pushed past his new stepmother-to-be, nearly knocking her over, and ran to the front lawn, where he curled up behind a tree.

I followed him and sat down on the porch, bewildered. A moment later I felt Will sitting beside me. “Congratulations,” he said. “You found Paul.”

I scowled at him. “Well, then why am I still here? When do I get to leave?”

“You get to leave when the mission is complete,” he said.

“But I rescued him! He’s safe!”

“He was safe the whole time,” Will said. “Clearly, it wasn’t about rescuing him.”

I began to panic. Had I misinterpreted my entire purpose in inhabiting Brooke’s body? Did it have nothing to do with finding Paul at all?

“Well, what was it about, then, Omniscient One?” I yelled.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Will said matter-of-factly. “I’d tell you if I knew, but the purpose of the missions are for the Shadow to determine. That’s part of the job.”

“You are literally useless,” I spat. “Go away, please,” I continued, even though I found his presence oddly comforting.

When I turned back, he was gone, and I wracked my brain for answers. I had been sent here to fix Brooke’s life. What part of Brooke’s life was broken, exactly? She had friends who loved her, a killer alto belt, and a family with, well, problems.

That’s it, I thought. I’m supposed to fix this family.

“Simple,” I said aloud, rolling my eyes.

I stood and sauntered over to the tree where Paul had planted himself, and I sat down next to him. “I guess you’re not thrilled with this whole Ms. Peterson thing,” I said.

He just scowled. “She’s not mom.”

Then he looked at me with lifeless, sunken eyes, the kind you have when your heart has been so shocked by tragedy that you no longer hold a good opinion of the world, or of life itself. “Why did mom have to die?” he asked.

I wrapped my arms around him. He put his sandy head in my lap and clung to each of my knees.

Just then, my own sadness smacked me in the face like a wave, sadness I’d been trying to avoid until now. Abby Grace, the person I was, was dead. Abby Grace would know no more barbecues on the Fourth of July, no more kissing under a blanket, no more staring out at a lake or reveling in a fall breeze and no more Grace family dinners. Whoever my family was, they were probably crying for me at that moment, not knowing that I was still conscious, still trying to find my way back to them.

But I probably never would. I was doomed to drift forever from unfamiliar family to unfamiliar family, homeless in the universe. It was no life at all.

I looked down to find Paul still clinging to me like a kitten. He may have thought he was clinging to his big sister, but really he was clinging to me, Abby Grace.

Maybe, I thought, he needs me instead of Brooke. Maybe Brooke wouldn’t have said the right thing. Maybe I was sent here because, for some reason, I know how he feels.

I bent down and whispered into Paul’s ear. “There’s just no good reason, Paul. There’s never a good reason for anyone to die.”

He was crying now, silently, but hard. His chest was reverberating with sobs that he kept locked in his throat.

“There is a good reason, though, to keep on living, if you have the chance,” I said. “That’s what Dad is trying to do. He’s not trying to replace Mom, or forget about her. He just wants to keep on living. I’m sure for a while he just wanted to give up, but if Ms. Peterson gives him a reason to get out of bed in the morning, I think that’s a good thing.”

Paul let out one sob, one monumental sob that was half-cry, half-sigh, and curled up tighter against me. I reached down and ran my fingers through his hair, making soothing little shushing noises until he had stopped shaking.

“I missed you so much, Brooke. I even had Leo tape your concert just so I could see you,” Paul whimpered. “You
really
messed up the lyrics to the song.”

I giggled as I felt a little blush of relief. Pride, even. Through all the distance and the unfamiliarity, I made a connection with this stranger. I comforted him in his darkest hour, and he in mine. And if that isn’t living, I don’t know what is.

Abby Grace, Shadow.

If I couldn’t get back to my own family, then I could make new ones. Temporary little families that I could love as my own.

Dad padded nervously through the grass and crouched down near us. “Kids?” he said. “I  . . . ”

Sniffling and red-faced, Paul emerged from my lap and threw his arms around Dad. “I’m sorry I kidnapped myself.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Hilary,” he said. “I was scared you’d think I was trying to replace your mom. But we all know that’s not possible.”

“I know, Dad,” said Paul. “I guess I just want you to keep living. And be happy.”

“Thank you, Paul,” said Dad. “I’m trying.”

Dad put a hand on my cheek, and I smiled, sensing somehow that my mission might be over and I’d be leaving soon. But for the first time since I arrived at that house, I wanted to stay.

Ms. Peterson waved nervously from the porch, then blew a kiss at Paul and me. Paul and I blew one right back.

I can’t remember anything after that, because everything began to glow, slowly at first, and then it became so bright that I couldn’t see a thing.

Where was I going? To a room full of dead people, Shadows, like me? Back to my old life? Somewhere new?

Or, now that I’d served my purpose, was I simply going to vanish, like a whisper, like smoke?

Author’s Biography

K
elly Green
spent her childhood loving ghost stories and s’mores. The ghost stories stuck.
The Shadow
is the first book in her new series,
Borrowing Abby Grace
.

Follow Kelly:
www.twitter.com/BorrowingAbby

www.BorrowingAbbyGrace.com

Borrowing Abby Grace

Episode 2:
Girl Steals Guy

Available Now!