The Shadow by Kelly Green

Author:Kelly Green [Green, Kelly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction
ISBN: 9781937704018
Publisher: Backlit Fiction, LLC
Published: 2011-10-20T16:00:00+00:00

Ten minutes later, Oscar returned with a pile of cheese fries the size of a Thanksgiving turkey for Alex and Allison, and shrimp cocktail and a banana split for me.

That’s my usual? Shrimp cocktail and a banana split? It was clear that Brooke was a belter, a bon vivant, a larger-than-life enchantress. I hoped I was living up to the task.

“Thank you, Oscar!” I intoned in my most enchanting voice.

That’s when I noticed a boy who made my flesh crawl.

He was staring at me from over in the party bus section of the diner, where he was sitting at a table by himself hunched over a bowl of soup, bringing tiny spoonfuls of the stuff to his mouth ever so slowly and licking them like a cat. Who eats soup by themselves? I thought.

To say nothing of his appearance. He had stringy black hair down to his earlobes that parted directly in the center, and a tattoo of a black tear beneath his left eye. He wore a see-through mesh black shirt and floppy pants so covered in safety pins that you could barely see what color they were beneath, although if I had to guess, I’d say they were probably black too. He was so skinny and sinewy that it seemed like soup was probably the only thing he ever ate.

I glared at him and he turned his attention to his bowl of soup, but when I glanced back a second later, his gaze had returned to me.

“Guys,” I whispered, nudging Alex and Allison. “Who is that guy? The one that’s staring at me?”

Alex and Allison subtly craned their necks toward the disco section and spotted the greasy, skinny soup-slurper.

“Ew, weird,” said Alex.

“Ew, he’s a freshman,” said Allison. “His name is Leo. Leo K-something. He was in elementary school with my brother, before my brother went to Catholic School. Once Leo went up to my brother and was like, ‘I’m the devil, but I cut off my horns cause they itched.’ How creepy is that? My brother never went near him again . . . ”

Allison trailed off and looked at me nervously. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “I guess I shouldn’t be talking about brothers right now.”

I sighed heavily and looked my friends straight in the eye. “I need to find Paul.”

“We know, honey,” Alex said, placing her hand over mine.

“No, you don’t understand,” I said, trying to make them feel, for a moment, just how frantic I was. “I need to find Paul.”

Alex and Allison sat as far back as they could on their side of the booth and glanced nervously at one another. I sighed. There was no way to tell anyone around me how desperate I was without explaining my circumstances, and there was no way to explain my circumstances without sounding like I’d gone crazy.

“Honey,” said Alex. “Maybe you really should sit the concert out tomorrow. You’re acting a little . . . weird.”

I glanced over at Leo again and saw that he had collected his check and was heading over to the counter to pay, staring at me the entire time.

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