Beyond (5 page)

I leaned to my left, straining to fall over, out of the train’s path. Muscle pulling against muscle. It felt like they might tear before giving way.

I was tilting. But too slowly! The train was heartbeats away.

“Jane!”

The roar of the engine was closing in. I was screaming in my head—

Let! Me! Go!

Something snapped in me. A blinding flare spiked through my brain.

And I fell.

Seemed like slow motion. In that moment I caught sight of my shadow still lying on the tracks. Not moving with me.

Then I hit the ground hard, the breath knocked out of me. The train whipped by with a blast of wind and the screech of its whistle.

I lay gasping as it blurred past within arm’s reach. It went on forever, car after car. Lexi was out of sight on the other side.

The end of the train zipped by with a gust of hot, dusty air, making me cough.

Then Lexi was there, leaning over me.

“You okay, Jane? What happened? You get stuck?”

But I wasn’t looking at her. My eyes were focused on the tracks beside me. Because something was moving.

My shadow slid over the steel rail, black as liquid tar.

Frozen in place, too shocked to even try to get away, I watched as it got closer and closer. One of its hands stretched out to me. And I felt my own hand tremble as if it wanted to reach for it.

“What—?” Lexi was saying. “What is that?”

When those dark fingers touched mine, it was like my shadow slipped right into me. As if I was a sponge soaking it up. It sent an electric rush through my body, squeezing my heart tight for a few seconds, before fading so I could breathe again.

“Jane! You okay? Say something.”

I had to force some air into my lungs before I could speak. “Did you … see it?”

“What was that?”

“My … shadow.”

She frowned down at me. “What do you mean? I don’t—”

“You saw … what it did?”

She was shaking her head. “I don’t know what I just saw. It’s like some weird trick of the light. Maybe the clouds blocking—”

“No clouds.” We looked up at the clear blue sky.

And we sat there by the tracks for a long time while the sun melted away the freeze inside me.

Time to catch my breath. And tell Lexi my secret.

*  *  *

Following my close call with the train, me and Lexi searched everywhere, online and off, to see if anything like this had ever happened to anybody else. I found out I was alone in my strangeness. A million times I asked myself, Why me?

For a while I wondered if it had something to do with how I was born. Maybe it took the doctors too long to get my heart beating back then and I got damaged somehow. Not in my brain or body, but deeper—some kind of soul damage. Crazy, I know. But I wondered.

If Lexi hadn’t been there to keep me from falling totally under my shadow’s spell, I wouldn’t have been able to pull away like I did.

Anyway, after that my killer shadow seemed to give up. Years went by with no more drama. The shade I cast didn’t make a move without me. So my fears faded, and I even started to think maybe I had just dreamed it up. That me and Lexi shared a little hallucination back there by the tracks.

Some kids have imaginary friends, maybe I had an imaginary assassin.

I was wrong.

After school I stick around for the premiere of Lexi’s latest cinematic masterpiece. Her film club meets in the theater arts room. She likes putting her short flicks online, but sometimes she says it’s good to have a live audience, even when they’re brutal and criticize her stuff.

I take a seat at the back. The lights are dim, and the show has already started. But it’s not Lexi’s turn yet.

On the big-screen TV up front there’s a close-up of a pair of ballet shoes. The camera pulls back so we see a crying girl looking down at them. I recognize the girl from my English lit class. She pulls out a can of lighter fluid and soaks the shoes, strikes a match and drops it on them. The camera zooms in as they burst into flames, and stays with the shot for a long moment before the whole thing fades to black.

Mr. Steiner, the drama teacher, gets up.

“Good stuff, Valerie. Nice use of montage, and smooth editing. Any comments?” He opens it up to the group.

I spot Lexi on the far side and give her a little wave. She mouths to me, I’m next.

“Why did she burn the shoes?” some guy asks.

Valerie tells him, “Because she was never going to be good enough.”

Other comments range from critical—“What a drama queen”—to confused—“What does ‘montage’ mean again?”

Then Mr. Steiner cues up the next flick.

A LEXI CRANE FILM
flashes on the screen.

Followed by the title:
THE END OF THE ROAD
. White letters fading away into a black background.

Then a pair of eyes fills the screen. Frog eyes, green flecked with yellow, vertical slits for pupils. They blink, and the camera pulls back so you see the whole frog and the wet pavement under him. His throat pulsates as he croaks. As the camera zooms out even farther, you find he’s not alone. There’s a crowd of frogs on the rainy asphalt.

The view cuts to black again and the caption:

EVERY SPRING THEY COME
.

A wide shot shows a stretch of road that’s alive with the hopping mob of amphibians. There’s a chorus of croaking now.

TO CROSS OVER
.

A car roars past, speeding through them. Squashing some.

TO FIND THEIR MATING GROUNDS
.

A low-level shot gives the frog’s point of view. The forest is on the far side, with the wetlands hidden there. But standing between them and their destination is the blur of giant wheels passing by.

SOME MAKE IT
.

The lucky ones move off the pavement and gravel shoulder toward the safety of the trees.

OTHERS DON’T
.

The broken and flattened seem to outnumber the living. But they keep coming, wave after wave of them.

SOME FIND A NEW BEGINNING
.

The view cuts to a swampy pond filled with frogs hooking up. Then a close-up of little black tadpoles swimming through green algae.

OTHERS FIND THE END OF THE ROAD
.

The camera picks out one victim lying belly-up on the asphalt, eyes shut, legs limp. The croaking quiets down to silence. The image freezes for a long moment before going to black.

Mr. Steiner gets up again.

“Beautifully strange, as always, Lexi. Morbidly moving. Nice choice of camera angles. Great sound quality. Okay, discussion. What are your thoughts?”

Lexi said this is where they all tear her flicks apart.

“What did that mean?”

“I don’t get it.”

“There’s nothing to get.”

“It’s froggy porn.”

“That was so gross.”

“Why does she always have to do dead stuff?”

Lexi stares straight ahead at the blank screen, a hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. For her, these critics are just indie-film wannabes who have never had an original idea in their lives. But she keeps coming because Steiner is good with the technical stuff.

A new voice breaks in. “It’s brilliant.”

Searching for who said that, I see Max slouched in a chair on the far side of the room.

“Brilliant how?” asks Valerie.

He shrugs. “There were lots of metaphors and stuff. About life and death. Makes you think.”

Lexi doesn’t look back, but I can tell she recognizes his voice by how she’s got her eyes squeezed shut.

“More like makes you puke,” Valerie says.

Mr. Steiner holds up his hands. “Try to keep it constructive.”

After some tech talk about storyboarding and sound editing, the group breaks up.

I go over to Lexi before Max can move in. I give him the evil eye.

“Great stuff,” I tell her. “Loved those low-angle shots from the frog’s point of view.”

I helped out months ago when she was shooting it, holding the umbrella over her and watching for cars.

“Is he still there?” she asks.

“Just leaving.”

I watch him go. He chats up Valerie on the way out. Max is giving up for now, because he’s got no shot at getting Lexi alone to try to play her.

“Okay, he’s gone.”

She lets out her breath. Lexi’s got a weak spot when it comes to slick and shallow users like Max. He’s kind of a drug to her. She feels this chemical attraction that blinds her to his sleaziness. She says she’s over him, but it’s hard to kick your own chemistry.

“So you liked it?” She packs up her stuff. “This is the first time you saw the final cut.”

“You’re a genius. A visionary. But I’m glad you left out those gory shots of the splattered and exploded bodies.”

“Yeah, I thought that might be overkill. It’s supposed to be a romance, after all.”

“What?” I shake my head. “Lexi, I know romance. You’re talking to a love junkie. How is getting squashed and smeared romantic? You ought to put a disclaimer at the end:
Lots of animals were killed making this movie
.”

“I know,” she says. “But what could be more romantic? They died for love.”

I suck the blood off my thumb before it drips on the roses.

“Careful,” Mom says.

I’m helping out at her flower shop, the Blushing Rose, filling an order for a wedding tomorrow. Right now I’m dethorning three dozen white roses for the bouquets.

“You want to talk about last night?” she asks.

“What do you mean? What about it?”

“You went walking again.”

“I did? I don’t remember anything. I guess you caught me before I got too far?”

“After two blocks. You were moving fast. Sleep-jogging.” She clips some stems, finishing up one of the centerpieces for the reception. “When I tried to guide you back, you took a swing at me.”

“What?” I strain for any memory of this and come up blank. “I didn’t actually hit you, did I?”

“No. It was a slow punch. Easy to duck.”

“Wow, sorry. It’s not me doing it. Really. I don’t know where all that’s coming from.”

She adds a few carnations to the arrangement. “I was going to shake you awake right there. But they say that’s bad for the sleeper, too much of a shock.”

It’s a real heart-stopper when that happens. Like being woken from the deepest sleep by a scream.

“I’m nothing but trouble,” I say.

“Just remember to wear your ring to bed.”

Poor Mom. I’ve been worrying her since birth. She almost died in labor, and couldn’t have any more kids after me.
You’re my one and only
, she always says.
My miracle
. I’ve never had the heart to tell her how defective her miracle is. How could I ever ask her to believe the impossible, the invisible, the insane?

I start tying the bouquets together with red ribbon.

“Ryan was asking for you,” Mom says, out of nowhere.

My heart skips a beat. I can feel her watching for my reaction, so I focus on the roses.

“When was this?” I ask, snipping ribbon.

“Today. When he was making the morning delivery.”

Ryan works at the Raincoast Greenhouse. It’s the local supplier for hothouse flowers, fruits and veggies. He’s my secret dream sex god. Tall, with wavy blond hair, blue-green eyes and a husky voice that melts my spine.

“What did he say?”

“Just hi. And he asked how you were doing. You know, when you were recovering in the hospital he brought flowers. That was really sweet.”

She wants me to share. To bare my heart and chat about guys with her.

I shrug. “I guess.”

“You can talk to me. About anything.”

“I know,” I say. But really, there’s so much I can’t tell her without sounding nuts.

Mom sighs, giving up for now.

As I snip thorns from the stems, my mind fixes on Ryan. My lord of lust. My doomed crush.

I met him last year when me and Mom drove out to the greenhouse. She brought me along to take pictures of the new floral varieties they were trying out. When she started talking rose hybrids with the owner, I wandered off.

The place felt like a jungle, the warm humidity a nice break from the frigid day outside. The air was so rich with oxygen, making everything seem more intense. The smells were dizzying; each breath I took hit me with a dozen different scents. I found the tropical flowers and was stunned by their wild explosions of color.