Evil Returns (2 page)

But the darkness of the tower was so full of shape and texture and edge. Perhaps the shadow would stay alive even in the dark. Cruising through the room. Touching things. Touching perhaps Devnee’s own cheek in the dark.

I’ll close my eyes, thought Devnee, and calm myself down. This is not happening, and when I open my eyes, it will be an ordinary room with an ordinary shadow attached to my ordinary body.

But the experiment did not work, and she did not stay calm and serene.

The night was long.

A sort of dark path was lit across the room, leading to the shutters. She did not get out of the bed to follow the path. Her feet were bare, and the wood floor would be cold as pond ice in January. And the path—who knew where it led?

When Devnee awoke in the morning, the bedroom light was off.

At breakfast she said, “Did you come up and turn my light off, Mom?”

“No, darling.”

“Did you, Daddy?”

“Nope.”

She didn’t ask Luke. Luke slept like a brick, which reflected his brainpower and personality. Even if every light in the house were on at two in the morning, Luke would never think of turning them off. Luke did not do a lot of thinking. Devnee was not sure her brother would think of mentioning fire if the house went up in flames. Luke was a big lug who played ball, and that was the limit of his mastery of the world.

In the kitchen, among the debris of remodeling and the mess of their first breakfast, she felt safe and warm. What could go wrong in a room that smelled of pancakes and maple syrup? Last night was not worth thinking about. There was too much of today to worry over.

Devnee had had difficulty deciding what to wear. Would this be a school in which girls dressed sloppily, with torn sneakers, too-big sweatshirts, old jeans? Or would they look chic? Or preppy? Or some style she had never encountered before?

Schools should send a video before you enrolled, so you could see how the kids dressed, and not get it wrong.

But then, what did it matter if Devnee Fountain got her clothes wrong?

She might be going to a new school, but she had her same old looks.

I wish …
thought Devnee, aching to be a different person. The kind of girl who made people light up and turn to face her and call out her nickname when she walked in. A beautiful girl.

If you were beautiful, everything came with it: friends, laughter, company.

This was her chance! Her chance as the new girl to start a new life.

Oh, let it be a
better
life!

It was early; they did not have to leave for school yet.

Devnee walked outside. She did not know why. She was not an outdoor person. Certainly not in winter. Something drew her.

How cold it was in the yard. Frost during the night had whitened the grass, and water in a tilted old birdbath was frozen. The high hedge of hemlocks that encircled the mansion was more black than green, and the winter morning sky was not sunny, just, less dark.

When you wish upon a star
… Devnee sang to herself.

No wind, and no clouds. Just a faceless gray morning and a queer damp chill. She felt she should not stay outdoors too long or moss might grow on her face.

Devnee looked up at her tower and the moment her gaze landed on the circling shutters, one of them banged.

But there was no wind.

The shutter banged a second time, and the broken louvers on the shutter seemed to curve upward in a secret smile.

Devnee kicked her shoe in the dirt. She had decided on black shoes, quite new, but not new enough to look desperate. They would blend with any fashion.

But I don’t want to blend in! thought Devnee, as filled with pain as a heart attack patient. I want to be beautiful!

I wish
… she thought forlornly.

Devnee had not put on a coat. The chill wrapped around her, as if it had folds and fabric, like a winter coat. The chill warmed her. It was as if she had become some strange new animal and the blood in her veins would decide what was warm.

Cold was warm.

If cold can be warm, thought Devnee, perhaps plain can be beautiful. How I want to be beautiful!

Even her knuckles and fingers begged for beauty, turning white, clasping each other, beseeching the powers that be to turn Devnee Fountain into a beautiful girl.

The wish was not mild and passing.

It was sharp, intense. Every girl, every day, wishes for changes in her body, or her heart, or her life. But few wished so desperately as Devnee Fountain.

Devnee went back inside, into the warmth.

Her words lay on the air.

I wish …

The wish left, as her shadow had, and went on without her.

In the darkness of the hemlocks around the mansion, against the dark shingles of the house, more darkness gathered. Thicker darkness. A darkness both velvety and satiny.

The dark path caught the wish and kept it.

Something bright glittered in the branches of the hemlocks, like a row of tiny silver bells.

Or fingernails, wrinkled like old foil.

The dark path curled around the base of a tree, and waited for the rest of the wish.

B
ACK AT THE BREAKFAST
table, nobody had moved. Her mother was still pouring orange juice into the same glass.

The juice seemed to slide out of the cardboard box and into the glass forever and ever, as if her mother was just a hand holding a pitcher.

Her father was still holding a fork above his pancakes, and her brother was still lifting his napkin.

Devnee shivered.

Had she gone outside at all? What had happened to the time she had spent out there? Was it her time only, and had it not existed for the three inside the house? What was happening in this house, that time flickered differently wherever you stood, and fingernails crept out of cracks, and shadows peeled away from your body?

“I want to sleep downstairs in the guest room,” Devnee said, and the family stirred slightly, as if waking up.

“Dev,” said her mother, “no. We have all kinds of guests coming. You know that. Nobody in our family has ever lived in this part of the country before, and they’re
dying
to visit. The little guest room is the boring room, nobody wants it full-time, and we agreed that’s where we’ll stuff the guests.”

Luke said, “Wouldn’t it be weird if the guests really did die when they came to visit? And we really did stuff them?”

Devnee could not breathe.

“Luke, try to be human,” said their mother.

I wonder which of us is human, thought Devnee. I wonder if I’m human. My shadow isn’t human. But then, shadows aren’t human, she realized.

So why did my shadow make choices of its own? Exploring and wandering? It shouldn’t be doing anything I don’t do.

Devnee said, “I don’t want to start school here yet.”

“State laws,” said her mother cheerfully. “You have to start school today. I’ll drive you, since it’s your first day, and you run down and check in the office and see what the nearest bus route is for tomorrow.”

Her mother made “checking in the office” sound as easy as ordering a hamburger, but it wouldn’t be. It would be strange halls and a thousand strange faces. Doors that were not marked clearly and people who spoke too loudly or not at all, while Devnee shuffled her feet like a broken-down ballerina.

She almost wished that she and Luke were in the same school. Then she would have company on the horrible first day in a new school.

On the other hand, who would want Luke’s company for anything? It was good that he was in eighth grade and still in junior high, while she was safely in tenth grade, and far superior to her dumb brother.

They dropped off Luke first, because the junior high was closer, and Luke bounded in as if he had always gone there, and already had friends and already knew the way to the gym and where the cafeteria line began.

What if I don’t have friends here ever? thought Devnee.

What if it’s a horrible hateful mean place and I’m dressed wrong? And they laugh at me?

When they arrived at the high school, Devnee’s mother came in with her after all. Devnee, who adored her mother, was ashamed: Mrs. Fountain was quite heavy and needed a new, larger winter coat. Instead of taking the time to curl her hair, her mother had just tugged it back into a loose, messy ponytail.

As if taking Devnee to her first day in a new school in a new town didn’t matter.

Devnee swallowed the thought and tried to stay loyal.

She glanced behind her to see if her shadow had come along and it had. It seemed curiously large for Devnee, and too dark for the thin, shivering sun of January. It seemed like somebody else’s shadow.

Immediately she knew that it
was
somebody else’s. It was the shadow of the fingernails, with talons like a hawk’s. She forced herself to stare straight ahead. She was not going to collapse because the tower had switched shadows on her during the night. She had a first day of school to get through.

In the office, the secretary did not even look up at them. “New student?” she said in a tight, snappish voice. “What grade, please? What courses were you taking at your previous school, please? Do you have your health papers showing you are properly inoculated?” Now she looked up, scanning Devnee for disease-carrying properties. Devnee tried to look clean and healthy.

Her mother said, “Wonderful!” though what she could be referring to, Devnee could not imagine. “I’ll see you after school,” trilled her mother. “I’ll pick you up in the front drive, darling. Have such fun!”

The secretary was wearing little half glasses, which she tilted lower on her nose to study Mrs. Fountain’s exit, perfectly aware that having “such fun” was unlikely.

The secretary finished up doing important things, while Devnee leaned on the counter, wanting to die, and then at last the secretary gave her directions to the guidance office, where they would set up her schedule and take her to her first class. The directions were so complex Devnee felt they probably led to China, not down the hall. She was close to tears, and the chilly damp of last night had come back and was penetrating her brain, making it hard to think or move.

“Oh, all right,” said the secretary, “I’ll take you there.”

But the guidance person, a man named Fuzz (which surely could not have been the case; it was Devnee’s hearing that had gotten fuzzy because she was so nervous) was quite sweet. “We have a buddy system for newcomers,” said Fuzz affectionately. “We don’t want anybody lost in the cracks at our school!”

The expression took on a sick reality. It seemed to Devnee that the linoleum squares parted, and huge cracks opened up, black ones filled with other people’s shadows, sticky and gooey, waiting for her to step wrong.

Fuzz had a long stride, and Devnee a short one, so she was forced to gallop alongside him. Out of breath and terrified, she arrived at her first class several paces behind, as if her leash had broken. “Devnee, Devnee,” he called, like a dog owner.

Devnee tried to look at the class but it was impossible. There were too many students, all staring at her, with that settled, certain-sure look of kids who had been here forever and didn’t approve of newcomers.

She felt unbearably plain and dull. She could feel their eyes raking over her, losing interest immediately, because she was not beautiful, and not worth attention.

She was perilously close to tears.

“Devnee has just moved here!” said Fuzz. His voice wafted in and out of her consciousness. “Now we want Devnee to feel at home here, don’t we, people?”

Nobody responded.

Fuzz read Devnee’s schedule out loud, demanding that anybody with matching classes should respond and volunteer to be Devnee’s buddy.

Amazingly, there were three volunteers.

Seats were shuffled so that Devnee was sitting among her “buddies.”

Two girls and a boy.

She immediately forgot their names and hated herself for being a stupid, worthless, pitiful excuse for a human being. Probably why my shadow left, thought Devnee. Needed a better body to attach itself to.

Class ended in another quarter hour, and Devnee was not even sufficiently tuned in to figure out what subject it had been. “I’m your first buddy,” said one of the girls, touching Devnee’s arm and smiling at her. “I’ll take you on to biology lab, and then Trey will pick you up for English and lunch.”

The girl—if you could use such a boring word for this breathtaking creature—was achingly lovely.

All willowy and delicate adjectives applied to her: She was fragile, in a dark silken blouse with a long skirt swirling below. Her soft black hair was perfectly cut to fall swoopingly over her forehead and skid around her pretty ears; the back was very short, with a single wave. She seemed far older than Devnee would ever be, a sophisticated fragile creature. And yet she seemed far younger, caught in some wonderful warp of innocence and perfection, before the world touched her, before pain and loss.

“My name is Aryssa,” said the girl softly, and her voice, too, was beautiful, as if she possessed a velvet throat.

Now there really were tears in Devnee’s eyes. Tears of shame that she herself was so dull compared to this princess, and tears of joy that this princess had volunteered to be her buddy.

What a wonderful word—buddy.

There was hope in the world after all.

And then the boy—Trey—smiled at Devnee, too, waving good-bye, promising to be at the biology lab door, and then he would stand in the cafeteria line with her. He was not at all handsome, not the way Aryssa was beautiful. But he was what Luke would have yearned to be: utterly male and muscular and tall and slightly ferocious. His smile was vaguely threatening, as if she’d better stand in the cafeteria line the way he told her to stand or else.

The physical perfection of her two buddies overwhelmed her.

The girl buddy—whose name Devnee had already forgotten—talked about many things, giving Devnee tips for locker use, gym showers, and so forth. Devnee’s brain had not gone into gear and she could not get a grip. She smiled brightly and desperately. She knew she looked like a fool.