Secondhand Shadow

CHAPTER 1-2

It was not an easy life. But this was worse.

If I could stay away from her for a few days, a week at most, the bond would die unborn. Would it hurt less this time? If not, I doubted I’d survive it. Not an unpleasant thought at the moment.

What would happen to my orphans then?

I shivered in the warm grass, my fingers leaving furrows in the dirt. Without me to hold them together, it was a matter of time before one of them lost their hard-won self-control. Pain and blood then, to be sure, and oblivion on its heels. The Formyndari would see to that. They might not even wait for someone to slip.

I had to at least warn them. They deserved to know what was happening. After all, if it could happen to me, it could happen to anyone. I had to talk to Westley.

But not yet. I could stay here a while longer, in a place that was empty and clean, and try to accept that, one way or another, the life I’d spent thirteen years piecing together had just been obliterated.

NAOMI

Carmen came through the door in a rainstorm of jangling keys, clattering shoes, and the thunk of a bucket-sized purse to the floor. The couch, facing away from the door, hid me despite the Wonder Tummy; I stayed silent and still, staring at the shards of pea-green carpet peeking between piles of clothes and books. At Carmen’s gangbanger posters scowling, leering, flipping me the bird. At my dark, lumpy, fish-eyed reflection in the blind eye of the TV set. Carmen clomped past me into the bedroom and began skinning out of her Mr. Snow’s Ice Cream uniform. Much as I liked my roommate, which sometimes wasn’t much but was usually a fair bit, I did not want to talk to her right now. I was too preoccupied with the question of whether I had lost my mind. People do not, cannot, and certainly should not evaporate from stalled elevators. The question of how he had gotten out took a distinct backseat to: Was he ever there to begin with? No one else saw him, after all. I wasn’t quite ready to write off the conversation with Dr. DiNovi as a hallucination—though it would explain the term paper extension. If I could assume that conversation was real, then Damon, too, was real. But that didn’t mean he had gotten on the elevator with me. In fact, the more I thought about that, the less likely it seemed. Why would a man with an intense (if inexplicable) allergy to my presence, who had in fact already departed the premises, return to board an elevator with me?

I hate you too much to ever hurt you. I shivered.

I’d made it all up. It was the only explanation. And when the situation got more intense than my subconscious had bargained for, it banished him as easily as it had called him forth.

I’ve gone crazy.

The university had counselors, I knew, available to students at no extra charge. I had considered seeing one before, once or twice, when the whole thing—the baby, the divorce, school, work, my parents, homelessness—had crushed the air from my lungs and left me sobbing for breath. But I was afraid—of being judged, or tattled on, or exposed, I don’t know. But I was doubly frightened now. A counselor would listen to this with wide eyes, visions of straitjackets dancing in his head. I could be locked up, or worse, dragged home to my parents.

Maybe I should be. I shivered again.

“Gyaah!”

I jumped, nearly falling off the couch, and scrambled into a sitting position to face Carmen, now in jeans and a red halter top, standing in the bedroom doorway with her chest heaving.

“Don’t do that!” She leaned against the doorframe with a hand to her chest. “Have you been here the whole time?”

“Sorry. I, um, fell asleep.”

Carmen shook herself and stuck a pair of sunglasses in her hair. “Whatcha doing here, anyway? I thought you had the evening shift on Wednesdays.”

I shifted my weight where a disgruntled spring in the couch was jabbing. “Yeah, uh… I got stuck in the Tomb for over three hours. By the time I could call, Jana said don’t bother coming in, they had it handled.”

Carmen grimaced. “That’s not a good sign, girl.”

“She had that Oscar-the-Grouch voice going,” I agreed. “But it’s not my fault.” I rubbed the Wonder Tummy irritably.

“You ought to know better than to ride that elevator,” Carmen said, plopping into the green-upholstered chair next to the couch. “Hey, don’t worry about it. If you get fired, I’ll just take your rent out in housework.” She dug the remote out of the chair cushions and flicked on the television.

I swallowed. Her words might sound like a joke to someone who didn’t know her, but Carmen was a pragmatist. If her landlord found out she had an unauthorized roommate, she could get evicted. If I didn’t pull my weight financially, there was no reason to keep me around. I was already pretty much her personal house-elf, but I doubted that would be worth shouldering the rent and the risk.

Of course, it would be a non-issue all too soon. Four months ago, when she found me sobbing in a stairwell, Carmen had let me know that once Wonder Tummy converted to Squalling Brat, I was out of the apartment. Four months ago, I had thought that I’d have my feet under me by then. Instead, I was still crawling on my hands and knees across broken glass.

Speaking of the Brat within the Tummy—he was playing hop-scotch on my insides again. I lurched off the couch and staggered into the bathroom.

“Hi-yo, Silver! Catch that bladder bandit!” Carmen laughed over the bovine tones of Homer Simpson. “I want you to know, Red, you have taught me a great thing. I am more convinced than ever that safe s*x is the only way to go.” She hardly had to raise her voice for me to hear her through the parchment walls, which was just lovely when one of us had a stomach bug, let me tell you.

My cellphone, still in my book bag by the couch, started singing “The Baby Elephant Walk.” I hoped Carmen would let it go to voicemail.

“You have reached the cellular unit of the bestest babe with the biggest belly and the baddest bladder,” Carmen said in her best chirpy secretary voice. “Well, greetings, Sole Source of Emotional Support. She got stuck in an elevator today. Uh-huh.” Her voice rose to an unnecessary shout. “Naomi, it’s your brother!”

“Be out in a minute,” I called back. Some things can’t be hurried, but then again I didn’t like Carmen talking to my family any more than necessary. She was far too free with my life details. What if it had been my mother calling when she answered with all the big-belly stuff? Mom and Dad were in the dark about Wonder Tummy, and I wanted them to stay that way.

Not, of course, that Mom was likely to call. Why start now?

I waddled free of our glove-sized bathroom and tugged the phone from Carmen’s hand just as the words “like a pimple about to pop” were leaving her mouth.

“Hi, butthead,” I chirped.

“Hi, pustule,” he said. “Trapped in an elevator, huh? Sounds scary.”

“More like boring,” I lied. “But at least it saved me from a night pimping DVDs while my thighs and ankles slowly merged.” Carmen cackled at something a bug-eyed clown said on the TV, and I began maneuvering the Wonder Tummy out the front door.

The sun had gone down an hour before, but a streetlamp between the building and the road cast a romantic glow over Easton Apartments, a maze of sand-colored stucco walls, green door after green door with gleaming metal numbers. An illegal dog barked upstairs, possibly at the cluster of laughing youths piling out of a car in the lot, possibly at the stutter of drums from marching band practice at the soccer field. This close to campus, it qualified as a quiet evening.

Not a cool one, though. Even an hour after sundown, the humidity was like a slap in the face. Or at least a warm, moist hug in the face, possibly from a great-aunt with poor dental hygiene. I gagged and started squirming out of my sweater. It had been cool enough this morning to layer. Welcome to the South.

“—to warn you that your phone may not work much longer,” Jonathan was saying as I managed to peel pilly, gray fabric off one shoulder. “Mom caught on that Dad was still paying for it. They’re battling it out, but Dad hasn’t exactly been on a winning streak.”

“Has he ever?” I rubbed my forehead. I couldn’t come close to paying for the phone myself, and Carmen had no landline in her apartment; we each depended solely on our cells. I tried to stomp out a flare of resentment against my mother. She couldn’t know what a financial sinkhole Wonder Tummy was turning out to be. Maternity clothes, doctor’s visits, prenatal vitamins… Much as I didn’t want this baby, he was a captive audience for the time being, and I had a responsibility to take care of him.

I swear Jonathan hears my thoughts sometimes. “Listen, Nims, I really don’t mean to nag you,” he said, voice low, “but have you made up your mind what you’re going to do with the baby?”

I finished wriggling out of the sweater, and eased myself into one of the plastic chairs on the apartment “patio”—read: coffin-sized plot of cement. The chairs belonged to the goth couple next door, who were nice people despite the scary piercings. They probably wouldn’t mind that a small barge docked in their chair a while.

“Naomi?”

“Well, you know, I talked to that adoption agency lady.”

“Yes,” he said patiently. “That was two weeks ago.”

I realized belatedly that the plastic chairs were supposed to be blue. It was a thick layer of pollen that had given them that greenish tinge. So much for wearing these jeans tomorrow. “Well, I, I looked through those folders she gave me, the parent profile thingies.”

“And?”

“And none of them have jumped out at me. I’ve read all the articles, you know. There’s supposed to be a couple that just feels right. And there isn’t. Besides, I don’t feel right giving it up without telling Tyler. I don’t even think it’s legal.”

“So tell him.” Jonathan did a good job acting like he hadn’t been trying to get me to do just that for going on seven months.

“I can’t. I can’t see him. I can’t talk to him. Not yet.”

“When, then? When the kid graduates high school? You are running out of time, sis.”

“I’ve got two months.” I rubbed the tummy, as if making sure it was still there. Two months seemed incomprehensible. I was barely getting through individual days.

Which reminded me, I had a twelve-page paper to spew forth.

“Listen, kid, before I go,” how’s that for subtle? “tell me what’s going on at your end.”

Jonathan sighed but obediently started spilling the juiciest gossip of a small-town high school. The head cheerleader had broken a leg when her teammates dropped her, possibly on purpose. The principal’s wife got arrested for driving under the influence, and parents were foaming at the mouth, including Mom. Rumor had it that the valedictorian and his stepsister were getting a little closer than family. And people were still whispering that Jonathan earned his football MVP solely because he was dating the team captain’s sister. “—which they would never say if they could see how those two catfight. If anything, I won despite Jenna,” Jonathan muttered.

“Anyone who, like, went to a game would know you earned it fair and square,” I said staunchly.