The Shadow Girl, by Misty Mount
Chapter 1
I have always known that I am invisible—even way back then, when it first started to happen. In fact, it goes back even further; in my earliest of memories and for as long as I can remember, the sense of being unnoticed was there. I think it started on a muggy day when I was six years old. I can still feel the excitement as my grandmother poked her nose through the living room drapes and announced that it was dry enough to make a trip to the neighborhood park. It had been raining for nearly a week straight, and I was glad to be free of the stuffy, dim rooms in our old home. It had become my prison that summer, a place where my older siblings would unleash their rainy-day boredom in the form of self-esteem-crushing torment.
We had watched as Grandmother pulled out the wagon from the shed and loaded it to the brim with goodies for a picnic lunch. It seemed like an eternity before we were finally following her down the cracked and uneven sidewalk. I was last in line behind my two older siblings as we passed by the familiar row of tall, skinny houses. Each home was built on a thin strip of a lot and looked identical to ours in structure and design. Grandmother had taught me that ours was the one with the black iron letters that read 3386. But I recognized it by the faded blue-gray paint and gaudy wrought iron shutters that overpowered the face of our family home.
Blossom Park was four blocks up the street, and—much to my disappointment—had never lived up to its name. There was not a bud, bloom, or flowering shrubbery anywhere to be seen. Instead, the postage-stamp-shaped piece of land was fitted between two brick buildings and flanked by a parking lot on one end and a tall chain-link fence that overlooked an alley on the other.
I was happy to be in the sun, nonetheless, even if it did happen to shine down in patchy pools of light over paint-chipped play equipment and a weed-encroached sand pit.
"Let's play house." It wasn't a suggestion so much as a command, spoken by my oldest sibling, Adonia. She had run ahead of the wagon, and her caramel-colored ponytail was swinging like a pendulum with every step. She was only three years older than me, but the gap had always felt miles apart.
"House? Again? You promised we could play hot lava." Keane sighed impatiently and adjusted the thick glasses resting on the bridge of his nose. He was just a year older than me, and sometimes I would fantasize that we could be best friends. After all, the exciting game of hot lava was something we both enjoyed much more than Adonia's boring, girly game of house. Who wanted to stir imaginary pots of stew with sticks when we could be dangling above fiery molten lava, holding on for dear life?
"We could play both," I suggested in a quiet voice, not wanting to cause an argument.
Adonia turned and sighed in an overly dramatic way as she rolled her eyes. "Well, if we can't agree, we will just have to play house first and then hot lava. There. Happy?"
I wondered if I would be paid attention to when I was older, like my sister. It was like my voice hadn't developed enough to be heard yet the way hers was, edged with authority and demanding attention. "Fine; good idea. But I refuse to be the butler this time. Find some other kid," Keane said adamantly as he jogged up to the monkey bars, which everyone knew to be The House.
Grandmother was humming as she made her way to the benches that rested in the shade of a brick building. She parked the wagon after pulling out her book of crosswords and seated herself among the handful of other parents or guardians perched watchfully.
I found my six-year-old self feeling sorry for my grandmother and the other adults who weren't playing, but were only spectators. I wondered how many years I had left before I wasn't allowed to have fun anymore.
"Zylia!"
I jumped, startled at hearing my name being shouted so loudly. I suppose it was because I wasn't spoken to very often, unless I was in trouble for something. Adonia, hands on hips, with one of her pristine Keds tapping, was glaring at me from under the dome-shaped silver bars. I wasn't sure how long I had been holding up the game, so I hurriedly scrambled over.
"It's about time! You're the baby. Time for a nap." Adonia was using the toe of her sneaker to make a rectangle outline in the sand. "This is your crib."
I obediently curled up on my side as my older two siblings set out making further plans for the game. After a while I began feeling the sand press into the skin along my arm and the side of my face. I shifted and felt small pebbles slip into my shoes and the waistband of my jean shorts.
A girl I'd never seen before had jogged up and asked if she could play. She had coffee-colored skin and looked to be around Adonia's age.
"Of course," Adonia said in a charming voice that I recognized immediately. I called it her non- family voice, the tone she used to fool strangers into thinking she was sugary sweet all the time. Fake as it may be, she managed to find and keep any number of friends while I had none, so I couldn't entirely argue with her methods.
Keane was looking longingly at a group of boys playing with a remote-control car. "I need to buy furniture for the house," he said suddenly. When I saw him wandering off, I knew he wouldn't come back to the game.
"Well, then, we should buy groceries while the baby is sleeping," the new girl said.
"Great! I'll just get my purse." Adonia looped an imaginary strap around her shoulder and turned to me. "Don't get out of your crib while we're gone." She said the last part in her family voice, so I knew she meant it.
I watched the pair of them walk off, the sound of their chummy conversation blending and fading into the other playground noises. I turned my head and looked up at the bluish-gray sky through the metal web of the playground structure. The storm clouds had gone, leaving a thin, dingy overcast. The sunlight perforated only portions of the hazy veil, and a memory popped into my head in that random way that memories do. Something about the way the light was playing down caused me to think of a flashlight shining beneath a worn blanket.
I remembered it from when Adonia and her sleepover friends had been telling spooky stories and I had crept in, uninvited. Whispers and giggles filtered out from under the blanket and into my envious ears. When had Adonia become so popular and well-liked, anyway?
There was a tickling sensation on my wrist that brought my gaze down from the sky and back to the present. I watched as a lone ant made his way over the back of my palm and up along my knuckles. I didn't make a dramatic move to flick it off of me the way my sister or mother would have done. I didn't even move at all. I just watched the little guy meandering along my fingers and wondered if he felt alone too, far away from his kind.
I could hear Grandmother calling, "Moss kids, get your lunch!" I guess she didn't want to chance stray kids grabbing at her peanut butter and apricot jam sandwiches. In my peripheral vision I could see her fishing around in the wagon, but I was uninterested in moving from my "crib" for the moment. I didn't want to lose track of the tiny black ant, which I had grown inexplicably fond of. If I moved, I might never feel this connection again.
Eventually I did move—or jolt, rather—as something rubbery bounced off my forehead, startling the wits out of me. I jerked upright just in time to see a pair of snickering boys rushing off with a big, red kickball. It was only then that I realized I had been asleep, not because of the sand pressed deeply into my skin or the string of drool wet on my cheek, but because my siblings and grandmother were nowhere to be seen.
I looked around once more, just to be sure, and prickling fear rushed over my body. "Grandmother!" I tried to call out, but my voice stuck in my throat and there was a pounding in my ears. What had happened while I was asleep? If my grandmother, Adonia, and Keane had been snatched away by kidnappers, the unworried children that were still playing at the park would at least appear alerted to the tragedy, right? So there had to be another reason they had left me behind.
There must have been an emergency! I thought. Who was in trouble? My mother? Father?
Frankie, Keane's hamster? How was it that everyone but me had found out about this emergency?
I was pounding down the sidewalk, leaving the park and its ignorant visitors, dorky bullies, and my dear little ant all far behind me. I tripped once on the jagged concrete squares and fell against a tree. Even though I snagged my arm along the trunk, it didn't slow me down.
Before long my house was in view, and I was that much closer to discovering the extent of this dreadful, life-changing tragedy. I bounded over the small, balding patch of grass and leapt over the short retaining wall and adjacent flower bed, not bothering with the four stone steps in the lawn that led up toward the covered entrance of our house.
I yanked open the iron screen door and stepped into the shade of the porch. Suddenly I was afraid to go any farther. What horrors would I witness inside?
I walked slowly along the long, skinny porch, breathing quickly. I stopped at the front door. It was open wide and I could hear voices coming from inside. My mother's chatty tone had never sounded so comforting. She was alive, at least!
I stepped into the entry hall, and the scent of frying food met my nose and made my stomach flop. I took a few steps down the hall past the stairway and peeked around the corner into the kitchen. There stood my mother, using a spoon to stir a large metal pot at the stove. She had a bright lipstick smile on her face and she was chatting happily into the phone, which was cradled between her neck and shoulder.
Grandmother was seated near her at the island counter, chopping vegetables while moving and puckering her wrinkled lips rhythmically.
Relief spread over me and faded into confusion. I backed out of the kitchen and ran up the wooden stairway to the second floor. Keane's bedroom was the first on the left, the scuffed door standing open. I looked in to find him crouched on the floor with his magnifying set.
"Keane!" I said loudly, startling him. "What?" He glanced up, annoyed.
"What happened? Was there some sort of emergency? Is Frankie all right?" I was breathless and speaking rapidly.
"Why are you being so weird?" My brother drew up one side of his face, and I wondered if Adonia had taught him that expression because she wore it so frequently. It was a mixture of bewilderment and contempt. Thankfully, it didn't last long before he turned his face dismissively back toward his magnifiers.
"There wasn't an emergency? Why did you guys leave the park?"
Keane didn't even look up as he mumbled, "Uh, because Grandmother said it was time to go; duh. Why do we always leave the park?"
It was only at that moment the realization dawned on me that I had been abandoned at the park.
They had left me there, asleep under the monkey bars with no one looking after me.
"But you left without me." I wanted to shout the words; instead, they came out very quietly through my quivering lips.
"What are you talking about? You were with us the whole time. Leave me alone already!" He jumped up and shut his bedroom door in my face.
My throat tightened and felt strained as I plodded back downstairs. Had no one even noticed I was gone? I wiped away tears before finding myself back in the kitchen.
"Oh, there you are!" my mother said brightly, looking at me for a split second. She had already ended her phone call, but her shiny blonde hair was still ruffled up where she had been clutching the receiver. "We were wondering when you'd come down. Why don't you go help your grandmother clear away the onionskins?"
I wordlessly slipped in alongside them at the island. My grandmother pointed a knobby finger and directed, "Bring that garbage bin over here; it'll be easier that way." She smiled encouragingly, as if I were being ever-so-helpful.
She really has no idea she left me, I thought, stunned, as I pulled over the grimy bin. Had I imagined the whole scene? Nothing seemed real anymore. I was suddenly aware of a stinging on the side of my arm. I looked down and saw that I was bleeding from a long scrape that stretched from mid-pinky to my elbow. It was the only evidence that I had been deserted, and the tingling pain was almost comforting.
That was over seven years ago, though—only the beginning of my descent toward being entirely undetectable. I had no idea that eventually I would fade away completely.
