Spoiler
2nd part of my novel. Read the first chapter or live without the knowledge of what the heck is going on.
The day passed with no signs of Shadow. I was disappointed at lunch when I sat at our usual table and he never appeared. Meeting up with Randy before Geometry, he said that he hadn’t seen Shadow in PE or World Studies. He’d just plain disappeared…and not in a typical shy Shadow sort of way, either. The bell rang, and just as everybody settled in their seats Shadow burst through the door, panting like a dog on a twenty-mile run. His face burned red with the humiliation of an invisible man who’d just been exposed as, for once in his life, all eyes were on him.
“Cody Littlecreek, isn’t it?” Mr. Kyles said in a disapproving tone. “You’re tardy. Take your seat over there.” He pointed to the only vacant desk, the one next to me. I smiled as he took his seat; the smile was only half-returned.
After that, class droned on. Mr. Kyles’s words on theorems and postulates went in one ear and out the other, and the final bell couldn’t have rang soon enough. Randy practically leapt out of his seat, dodging people, jumping desks, and bolting for the door before Kyles could yell “Hold it young man!” in his direction. A frenzy of people followed after him, and I caught Shadow before he could try to weave his way into the throng of students. He was probably strong enough to shake me off and keep going, but he was Shadow, and I knew he knew that would be disappointing me. He couldn’t let anyone down - loyalty was what made him who he was. “What is it, Scout?” he asked wearily. He hadn’t sounded so tired at six-thirty in the morning, and now that I thought about it he was more of a mess than he’d been too.
His hair was rustled and a little coarse with sweat, his t-shirt streaked with faint mud splotches that were still crusting dry, and after a few more seconds of examination I pulled a twig from his hair.
“You look terrible,” I said.
His eyebrows furrowed confusedly. “You called me over to fix my hair and tell me I look bad?”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, you know, you’ve had better days.”
For a second, with his hands in the pockets of his faded old jeans and his crooked smile on his face, I saw my old friend beyond the new stranger. Yet the instant passed quickly, and in a heartbeat that look went over his face again. I think there was almost pleading in my voice when I said: “Please just tell me.”
Hesitating, he said, “There’s nothing to tell.”
“Yes, there is,” I argued. “You know you can’t lie to me.”
“Look…I don’t think we should be around each other anymore. I don’t think I should be around you or Randy.” There was a twisted look on his otherwise stony face, as if this was painful for him. But his eyes were honest enough.
It took me a while to swallow it, and even longer to believe it. Finally I managed to say, “Why? If you aren’t with us you won’t have anybody!”
Exactly, was the words his eyes seemed to translate. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Goodbye.”
Both of us realized suddenly that we were still standing in the doorway, one foot in the room, the other in the hall. Shadow shouldered the door off of his back awkwardly, and in a blink he’d disappeared within a sea of people.
“God, I wanna kill that boy,” I growled, but my voice tightened to what was almost a crying squeak by the time I hit that. How could he leave us? We were the Three Musketeers, the three amigos, the…the….three little pigs. Okay, I was too upset to come up with any good comparisons. I couldn’t remember a time without him and Randy by my side; with him gone, practically every memory of my past may have just as well been torn out of my mental scrapbook; without him or Randy to remember them with, they’d be bitter memories. I almost closed the door, when -
“You dropped something,” Mr. Kyles pointed out as he looked up from his desk. If he’d been eavesdropping he showed no signs of it or of using any of what he’d heard against me. I looked down, and sure enough, caught in the hinges of the door was a folded white sheet of paper. I didn’t think it was mine, but I picked it up anyway. On it was Shadow’s name - not Cody Pierce Littlecreek, as everyone else knew him, but as Shadow, the name reserved for those who knew him better than he knew himself. Other than me and Randy, I wasn’t sure there was anybody. Maybe it was snooping. On the other hand, my little demon coaxed me, maybe it‘ll tell you something. Or maybe the angel told me that. Heck, who knew anymore? My angels and demons seemed to become more and more intermingled.
“Thanks, Mr. Kyles,” I said, and with that I closed the door behind me. The halls had filled and cleared at the speed of light, and now I was virtually alone as I walked out the front exit, heading five blocks down to Apple Avenue where my little white house was perched on a trimmed green lawn. Opening the door, I found myself with the kitchen to the right and the living room to the left, and wisely made a beeline for the refrigerator. My mom could cook a shoe and make it taste delicious, and she always made something for me to eat before she went off to work. Today a note was taped to the fridge that said Scout - lemon bars, eat or die! She was probably serious, but I never really tested the theory because she never had to tell me twice. All the same, the letter with Shadow’s name on it was practically burning a hole through my pocket. After grabbing a lemon bar and a cup of milk, I pulled out a stool and stared at the paper. Just stared at it. As if there was a taboo on the thing, it felt wrong to hold it. It wasn’t mine. But of course I'd open it…
I unfolded it, slowly but unwavering, pledging to myself that it was for the moral quest of helping Shadow. As I read, I think my jaw dropped so far it groaned on its hinges.
What the hell was going on?