The Shadow (6 page)

“Nothing,” I said grumpily and I followed Will out into the hallway, where the last of the foot traffic was dying down as everyone hurried to their first class.

“What?” I asked grumpily.

“Listen,” he said. “As your Guardian, I’m going to urge you to not sing in the concert today.

“Why not?” I whined. “I have such a good voice!”

“You’re here to do a job. Just focus on the job.”

“But there have to be some perks to being a Shadow, right? Don’t I get to have any fun?”

“You can take pride in the fact that you’ve been specially selected to do this difficult work,” he said. For a teenage boy, he talked an awful lot like a professor. “Just trust me, Abby: skip the concert.”

Ms. Peterson stuck her head out the classroom door. “Brooke? You okay? Wanna come back in now?”

I stuck my tongue out at Will—just a bit—and marched back into Ms. Peterson’s class. I decided that I would absolutely be singing in the concert that afternoon, if only to let Will know that he was, as they say, “not the boss of me.”

I filed through the side aisle of the auditorium, with Alex behind me and Allison in front, past row after row of children, some clapping at the risers onstage, some resting their bored heads on their clenched hands.

Mr. Houseman was standing in the middle of the stage, wearing a black tuxedo jacket and his signature red bowtie. Once we were finished filing onto the risers, he took a deep breath, smiled, and raised both his hands with a flourish.

“One, two, three, four!” he mouthed. On “four,” there was a rush of wind as the whole chorus inhaled at the same time. Then the singing began.

Oh Danny boy, the pipes the pipes are calling,

From glen to glen, and down the mountainside  . . .

It was a lovely tune, and I caught on to the melody rather quickly. I had no idea what the words were, but who could tell?

The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling,

‘Tis you, ‘tis you, must go and I must bide  . . .

I sang as loudly as I could, swaying back and forth with the spirit of it. I closed my eyes, and I heard Brooke’s glorious voice ringing out over everyone else’s.

As the first verse ended, I continued the soaring melody, my voice ringing clear, and I noticed that mine was the
only
voice ringing. It was my solo.

I opened my eyes and raised my hands in the air, swaying back and forth.

“Oh Danny boy, the grapes are on the vines  . . . ”
I sang, completely unaware of what the words were supposed to be.

“
And Danny boy, you are a naughty boy  . . . ”
I guessed.

Mr. Houseman was glaring at me with a mixture of anger and concern.

“Oh Danny boy! You lost your little teddy bear,

Oh Danny boy, you’re eating a hamburger.”

Probably not the right words. Oh well. At least I had sounded good. I looked out into the audience, where the children were staring at me with the same concern as Mr. Houseman—that is, the ones that weren’t giggling and pointing at me. Will was right—I probably should have sat this one out.

I stared out past the back row, embarrassed, and saw someone pointing a video camera at the stage, someone far too tall to be in elementary school. Someone with greasy black hair, parted in the middle that ended at his ears.

Leo Krancik.

The beautiful melodies coming from my throat were immediately replaced with a lump. I took a breath and shivered with fear at the thought that he was filming me. Why on earth would he possibly be taping my concert? Whatever the reason, I was going to find out. I wouldn’t let him get away without an explanation.

I knelt down on the back row of the risers and hopped off the back, then ran through the auditorium, up the aisle, toward the back row of seats. When Leo saw me running, he bolted out the back door.

I followed after, and the door clattered closed behind me, interrupting the concert—although I suppose that my bounding through the auditorium in hot pursuit a moment before had been an even bigger interruption.

I felt terrible, but I had a job to do—which was Will’s point to begin with.

I sprinted through the hallway through another set of double doors. I looked left, and saw no one, then looked right, and saw someone I knew, but not the someone I was looking for.

Will.

Chapter Eight

Friday, 3:13 PM

“A
bby  . . . ” Will began. He looked down at the ground, avoiding eye contact with me. It made me nervous.

“I know, I know,” I whined. “I shouldn’t have sung in the concert. I have to focus on the mission. You don’t have to yell at me. But I know you’re dying to, so, go ahead.”

“I don’t want to yell at you,” he said gently. There was a sadness in his voice I’d never heard before.

“Then why are you waiting here for me in the hallway?” I asked.

“I’d like to help you, I really would, but—”

“What do you mean you’d like to help me? Am I in trouble?”

Will gesticulated wildly. “They aren’t my rules. I don’t think they’re fair.”

“Just tell me what’s happening,” I hissed.

“Your time is nearing an end.”

“What?!” I screamed. “I’ve only had one full day!”

“If it were up to me, you’d have as long as you needed,” he sighed. “Nevertheless, you’ve only got one more day to fix Brooke’s life, or else you’ll be trapped in her body forever.”

I tried to slap Will across the cheek, but of course my hand sailed right through him. “
Hey
,” he said, shaking his head, “don’t slap the messenger.”

“This is ridiculous!” I shouted. “None of this makes sense! Why would Miss Peterson want to kidnap two students? What does Leo have to do with it? I’m no closer to finding Paul than when I started! Whoever hired me for this job was an idiot, because clearly I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Keep doing your best,” Will said. His eyes were soft. He looked like he maybe wanted to reach out to me, to hug me, but he couldn’t.

“Just give me the answer!” I said. “You know the answer, don’t you? Just tell me where Paul is! Why are you torturing me?”

I knew the concert was going on inside the auditorium, but I didn’t care who heard me yelling. I wanted Will to know how frightened I was, and I wanted him to fix it. “I don’t want to be stuck here! Please help me!”

I was so angry at Will that it took me a second to notice that there was someone pulling me away from him, which was odd because he wasn’t really there, at least, to everyone else. “Abby, honey, stop,” said Mr. Houseman, prying me away from Will. “You’re talking to yourself again.” As I turned around to face Mr. Houseman I felt hot tears smeared across my cheeks.

Will had seen me cry. I didn’t want him to think I was weak, but he was the only person in the whole world who had any idea of the real predicament I was in, and that made him, at the moment, my best friend, even though he was about as comforting as a cactus.

I turned back to Will, but he had disappeared.

Mr. Houseman put an arm around me and led me down the hallway. “Let’s take a little trip to the guidance office.”

Mr. Houseman sat me down in a plush blue chair opposite a desk labeled “Rita Nuñez, Guidance Counselor.”

“Ms. Nuñez is at the concert,” Mr. Houseman said, his voice nearly trembling with concern. “I’m going to go get her, alright? Wait here and she’ll talk with you in a minute, alright?”

“This really isn’t necessary,” I pleaded. “I just want to get back to the concert.”

“Honey, trust me: it’s necessary,” he whispered. “Just talk to her.”

I wanted to smack him for calling me “honey” at least four times in a single morning, but I decided to stick to just smacking imaginary people like Will, so I kept my hands in my lap. “Fine,” I said, and I slumped in my chair and faced Ms. Nuñez’s empty desk as Mr. Houseman shut the door behind me.

I wanted to tear my hair out. I wanted to give up. I wanted to  . . . hack into Ms. Nuñez’s guidance files to spy on Leo.

It was wrong, but it was all I could think to do, so I scooted around behind Ms. Nuñez’s desk and plucked at a few buttons on her keyboard, and her computer screen yawned with static as it came to life.

The desktop was a picture of kittens in a basket. I opened a folder labeled, conveniently, “Student Records” and searched for “Leo K.” One file popped up, and I opened it. It was a word document with a picture of one Leo Krancik in the top left corner, looking as demonic as ever. Beneath his name ran a list of incidents dating back to 2000, when Leo was in pre-school, including the time he introduced himself to Allison’s little brother as the devil.

“Geez,” I said aloud. Leo was a white-collar criminal. He had been suspended in sixth grade for running a ring of organized lunch money theft. In eighth grade he stole the answers to standardized tests and sold them on the black market. This year he’d been suspended for breaking into the guidance office and stealing student files. (Given what I was doing, this one made me respect him a little.) He was currently being suspended for truancy. This last suspension made no sense. Why should the punishment for not coming to school be less school?

I heard a rustling outside the door and froze, expecting to be caught, but no one was there, so I pressed on.

Leo Krancik was definitely capable of a kidnapping—but to what end? Were he and Ms. Peterson in cahoots to murder my brother and steal his fortune? Did my brother have a fortune?

I went to Google Maps and typed in Leo’s address. The map scrolled over to a dead-end street that ended near a bay. At the end of the street sat Leo’s house, but it wasn’t just a house—it seemed Leo lived on the site of a business listing as well: B&B Scrapyard.

I remembered what I’d told the cops after I jumped out of the van—that the torn receipt in the back of the van was labeled “B&B Scrapyard.” The cops had dismissed it as a worthless bit of hearsay.

Amateurs.

I looked out the window of the office and saw a woman in a merlot business suit chatting as she strolled toward me. That must be Ms. Nuñez. I didn’t have time to print out the map, so I stared at it for a second on the screen, then quit the browser. While all of my old memories as Abby Grace were gone, I seemed to have a talent for making new memories. Before I could consider a lucrative career in a circus sideshow, however, I heard the click of Ms. Nuñez’s high heels.

I squeezed through the open window behind the desk, leapt into the courtyard and ran, breathless and hopeful, to the bay to find my brother.

Chapter Nine

Friday, 4:02 PM

T
he B&B Scrapyard was at the bottom of a winding hill. As I scooted down the hill I could see the afternoon sun shimmering on the calm blue waters of the bay.

At the bottom of the hill was a grass lot cordoned off by a chain-link fence at least eight feet high, with a dented metal sign that read “B&B Scrapyard.” To say that it was out of the way was an understatement. The closest house or store I’d seen was at least half a mile away, up the hill. If something went wrong, my safest bet would be to run past the scrapyard and throw myself off the cliff into the bay, which in itself didn’t seem very safe.

The entrance was bolted with a metal chain whose links were each about as big as my head. Inside the fence was a dusty lot filled with cars that looked like rusty buckets. There was no fence in the back, because the lot tapered downward toward the sea without stopping. The grass had grown so high that it was coming up through the bodies of the cars and spilling out.

In the middle of the lot was a modest house covered with shingles of dark wood.

“Alright, Brooke,” I said aloud. “Let’s see how well a chorus girl can scale a fence.”

The answer, in this case, was not very well.

I grasped at the metal with my sweaty little hands and slipped backwards. I found I had very little upper body strength. Luckily, my feet were small enough to fit comfortably into the individual spaces of the diamond lattice, and, after a few minutes of grunting, panting, and saying some very unladylike things under my breath, I was inside the B&B Scrapyard.

I kept my eyes peeled for a murderous pit bull as I approached the house, because it seemed like the sort of place that would be guarded by a murderous pit bull, but none appeared.

Instead Leo did. His face appeared in the front window, and I ducked behind a rusted tractor for a minute, the tall grass itching my face, until he passed out of sight.

Strangely, I wasn’t frightened. I had moved beyond frightened into a territory of human alertness that I could only recall seeing in spy movies. The situation I’d found myself in was so dangerous that it barely resembled real life, and so I felt more like I was playing a video game, pressing buttons to run, jump, and move my little blond body this way or that. The only difference was that I had one life, and if I didn’t fix it, I’d be stuck in the game forever.

I ran to the front door and listened for footsteps. When I didn’t hear any, I gingerly turned the knob and entered. The living room of the Krancik house was as dark as the blackened wooden shingles that covered the outside, and the floor was littered with board games, puzzles, and action figures—so many action figures that it looked like all the action figures in the world had gathered for a rally. Behind that was a dining room with windows that overlooked the bay. The light bouncing off the water was blinding, even though it was overcast, because the interior of the house was so dark. The house smelled like a pirate ship: salty and dank and moldy and filled with men. But, strangely, it also smelled like burnt chocolate chip cookies.

There were voices coming from behind a closed door, which I figured led to the basement. I could barely make out what they were saying. “Wait till I get back,” someone said. I ducked behind a lounge chair of scratchy plaid fabric and waited.

A moment later, Leo emerged from the basement door and hurried into the kitchen, which I could see a bit better from behind the chair. Orange linoleum lined the floor. The Kranciks desperately needed the assistance of an interior decorator.