Shadowshift (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

Around a sharp bend, the front of Hannah’s go-cart noses ahead of Kevin’s. She squeals with delight as her short auburn hair billows like a lion’s mane in the summer breeze, then she straightens the wheel, keeping the cart on the inside of the track. This is where she holds the advantage.

With a glance over her shoulder, she spies Kevin falling back. Soon on her tail, he jockeys for position on her left, and although he’s laughing, she suspects he doesn’t want to lose to a twelve-year-old girl. It’s a competitive spirit that seems hardwired into all men’s DNA. She respects this in Kevin, because he’s not an asshole about it.

At track midpoint, a red light signals final lap, and Hannah’s mom blurs into view. She stands behind a chain-link fence and snaps pictures with her new iPhone, a gift from Kevin. He also gave her a diamond necklace and Hannah a new bicycle, a beautiful Cannondale. Nice gestures, but she hopes he’ll stop trying so hard. The gift-giving will undoubtedly lessen as the newness of the trio’s union fades, and that’s fine with Hannah. She just hopes he’ll keep treating her mom right. She deserves it.

As she steers through the final bend, Hannah’s tires lose the inside track. Finish line fast approaching, she bears down on the accelerator, and Kevin edges close, but it’s too late for him. Half a cart-length to spare, she crosses the checkered line. Slowing, she drives into the port while pumping a victory fist above her head.

Once her cart is secured at the front of the queue, she unfastens the seat belt and slinks onto the concrete landing. She turns toward Kevin and sees that separation isn’t coming as smoothly for him.

“Wanna go again?” he asks, struggling his gut free from the steering wheel.

His weight problem isn’t lost on Hannah, who hopes he’ll get in shape for his health, but she doesn’t hold the imperfection against him. Fat or not, Kevin Logan’s one of the good guys. Maybe the last of his kind.

“Nah,” she says. “It’d break my heart if I was forced to beat you again.”

He lumbers onto the landing with a heavy grunt, then his eyebrows rise and his mouth widens in a parody of surprise. “Beat me? You think
you
beat
me
?”

She points down at the cart that carried her to victory. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“Hey, I just let you drive into the landing first. Shame on me for trying to be a gentleman.” He chuckles and puts an arm over her shoulder.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Of course I am. This old man’s no match for you. Good race, champ.”

When they walk through the gate, Hannah’s mom meets them on the other side, anxious to share the photographs she has taken. “I’m just learning to use this thing,” she says, “but I’m shocked how good the camera is. I remember when a phone was just…well, just a phone.”

The three of them huddle around the screen, enjoying captured memories from only moments earlier. Hannah wonders what it used to be like in the old days, when people had to wait a long time to see their pictures. They probably looked at them a lot more often and cherished them, which is why, she figures, old people have photo albums in their homes, and families like hers don’t have any.

Her mom says, “Ah, look at you guys. You were having so much fun out there.”

“Yes, we did,” Hannah replies. “You should go out there, Mom. Kevin paid for your armband, least you can do is use it.”

“No, not my thing. I’ve never been much for thrill rides. In fact, when I went to Cedar Point in college, my friends always gave me a hard time for not riding the roller coasters.”

“Ah, come on, Tina,” Kevin goads. “Even your Corolla goes faster than those little cars. Tell you what, I’ll race you. Maybe I’ll finally even get to win one.”

Delivering a playful punch to his arm, Hannah’s mom smiles. “So you think I can’t kick your ass? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Kevin shrugs. “Hey, there’s only one way to find out.”

This goes on for a while, but when the challenge is finally accepted, Hannah excuses herself to the game room. Although most girls her age don’t have time for childish games like skee ball and air hockey, Hannah loves the tickets they spit almost as much as the silly prizes they earn. Regardless of how tight the budget when they’d lived in Savannah, when Hannah brought home her report card, her mom always treated her to a day at the Fun Zone, a place just like this—go-carts and games and miniature golf and junk food. Her mom has always done her best to make her happy, and Hannah wants to return the favor.

Inspecting the prize counter, she digs in her pocket and fishes out two dollar bills, and it’s not long before she lands on the perfect object under glass: a bag containing three plastic rings, hideously purple, with yellow stickers that read BFF (Best Friends Forever).

She must have them. They’re the perfect symbol for how she feels.

Hannah’s also anxious to repay Kevin’s kindness, and she knows the message on the silly keepsakes will mean as much to him as they will to her mom.

But there’s a problem. The sign in front of the item reads
300 Tickets
.

Hannah frowns, gazing up at the pimple-faced boy behind the counter. “Is that price right?” She points down at the desired prize, and Pimpleboy nods. “Doesn’t seem right,” she protests. “You can get that stuffed lion for two hundred. You can’t tell me those plastic rings are worth more than a plush Simba.”

He shakes his head, then looks away. “I don’t price ’em, kid. If you want those stupid rings for your little BFFs, I’m gonna need three hundred tickets. Besides, that Simba ain’t licensed by Disney.”

“Who are those little plastic rings licensed by?” Hannah asks.

“Give me three hundred tickets and you can find out.”

“Whatever,” she says, already halfway to the token dispensers. After fighting her crumpled bills into a thin metal slot, she grabs her tokens and rushes to the wall of skee ball machines. Not knowing the ticket-to-point ratio here, she doesn’t figure two dollars will easily win three hundred tickets. She can get more money from Kevin; that’d be easy, but it wouldn’t be right. The two dollars from her pocket is money she saved, and she has to do this on her own. More than that, she wants to do it the right way.

The first game garners a score of 290—better than average—with one of her balls landing in the coveted 100 hole. But her momentary excitement fades when the machine only spits fourteen tickets into her waiting hands. The next six attempts don’t fare much better—some worse—leaving her with one token and eighty-one tickets. Barely enough for a pencil-top eraser.

So much for the right way, she thinks.

Electronic dings and blips ring out. Parents with exasperated tones herd wild children. Laughter erupts from every corner of the arcade. But that’s all lost on Hannah. In her mind, she’s elsewhere—a dark void. The only thing present with her, the skee ball machine. She stares through wood and plastic, into the belly of the ticket mechanism, a network of wires and switches.

One ticket for every twenty points isn’t fair, she thinks, then she sends the machine a message:
One for one.

Click—screep—click…

And she closes her eyes. For a moment, she feels weightless, as if detached from her body, but the sensation quickly fades.

When she opens her eyes, she’s back in the arcade, the one remaining token in her palm. She drops the coin in the slot and grabs her first ball, confident she can win. Sure, all nine balls might drop in 10, giving her the worst possible score of 90. But she’s better than that.

The first ball lands in 100, and she feels herself locked in a zone. Her luck holds out, and by game’s end, she’s looks up at a score of 450, her personal best.

Then the tickets start coming, and her smile fades. She crouches, wrapping her body around the dispenser like a shield, winding the long, seemingly endless strand into loops as tickets click, one at a time, from their slot.

She’s sure someone’s watching.

Her eyes dart.

No one’s paying attention, it appears, and yet she senses scrutiny at her back. She turns, and no one on the opposite side of the arcade looks in her direction, but that doesn’t erase the nagging fear she’s being watched, or that she’ll soon be discovered doing wrong.

Her body quakes.

She’s never used her power with so many around. What made me risk it? she asks herself. No logical answer is forthcoming.

After what seems like an entire afternoon, she moves to a short bench next to a Coke machine and counts off three hundred tickets, forcing herself not to look up, afraid that her nervous demeanor will only draw misgiving. She pushes the tickets she needs into her pocket and stands as a red-haired boy, no more than five or six, stumbles past. He looks like the kid from an old TV show her mom used to watch often, except the boy in the show always seemed happy. Opie, she remembers. That was his name. But this Opie looks depressed.

“Hey, kid,” she says.

The boy stops and looks up, but he doesn’t make eye contact with her. Maybe he can’t. Maybe he has a hard life. She feels sorry for the kid.

“Thought you might like these.” She hands him her spare tickets.

“Thanks,” he mutters. After taking Hannah’s offering, he scampers away, disappearing into the crowded den of electronic mayhem.

Her nerves calm, and her hands stop trembling. She glances around to make sure no one is casting suspicious eyes in her direction. The coast seems clear. Then she returns to the counter to claim her prize.

“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Pimpleboy says.

“Actually, it was pretty freaking hard. Just give me my prize.”

“Okay, here you go, drama queen.” The boy flings the bag of rings onto the counter. “Enjoy.”

Hannah doesn’t take the bag right away. She just stands there, staring at the boy, wondering what she can do to get back at him for his callous attitude. She can easily untie all the stuffed animals above him with her mind, laughing as they rain down, making him look foolish. Or maybe she’ll break his cash register in such a way that he gets the blame for it.

No, she warns herself.
Hell no!

She has already risked discovery once today. Besides, what will revenge accomplish? Will this douche bag miraculously transform into a nice guy? That hardly seems possible. So she snatches the prize from the counter, scowls at the boy, and then walks away.

Later that day, when she gives the gifts to her mother and Kevin, her hunch pays off. They do indeed love the offerings and promise to wear the rings every day. Hugs are shared. Tears even well in Kevin’s eyes, making Hannah afraid she’s hurt him—made him unhappy somehow—but when a grin brightens his face, she knows she did well, even if what she did comes with a high price.

Guilt.

She doesn’t sleep that night, thinking about her actions in the arcade. About the things her father did for money. Hannah hates thieves with every fiber of her being. Hates them.

And for the rest of the night, she hates herself.

CHAPTER 5

Not long after Chet’s invasion of Phillip Wise’s house, Hannah discovered her power.

It was a late August afternoon, the misery of summer’s peak fading. Cool ocean breezes wafted and palmettos swayed. Sitting in a lawn chair, Hannah’s mom wrote in a spiral notebook. And Hannah, pointing her arms in a V, kicked and glided in the YMCA swimming pool. She and her mom spent a lot of weekends here lately, which was great when the place wasn’t teeming with kids.

But there was a deeper reason they were spending less time at home. Her mom never wrote in the apartment. For whatever reason, she was keeping the whole thing secret from Hannah’s dad.

That was okay, Hannah figured. After all, Daddy had secrets, too, and she could tell his were worse, because they were hurting Mommy, whose writing was frantic—pressing the ballpoint hard into the paper, her mouth drawn in a pained scowl. The act didn’t seem to bring her much joy.

Just short of the shallow end’s edge, Hannah collided with someone crossing her path. Her face emerged from the water and she took a deep breath, and that’s when she realized the obstacle was a boy.

“I’m
sowwy
,” the boy said.

She recognized him from school—a stupid kid who frequently made loud and unfunny jokes during class, who more than once had farted proudly to disrupt Ms. Gelson’s lesson. But recognition didn’t register on his droopy face. No surprise there.

Ignoring the brat, she scanned the pool. Too crowded now. More beach towels and longue chairs, more mothers reading paperbacks, and way too many children splashing and making noise. Their high-pitched squeals set her nerves on edge, and a headache began blossoming.

“Hey,” the boy said, “you wanna
pway
?”

Hannah shook her head, then glanced in her mom’s direction. “I have to get back to my mom,” she said. “So, yeah, maybe later.”

“Okay,” the boy said, beaming.

Straightening her one-piece suit, Hannah climbed the pool steps. Without running—she didn’t want to break the rules and get yelled at by the lifeguard—she moved fast toward her destination. Without looking up, her mom kept writing, and Hannah didn’t want to disrupt her straightaway. She snatched her
SpongeBob Squarepants
beach towel and wrapped it around her body, then sat in the chair beside her mom.

After a respectful silence, Hannah said, “What are you writing about anyway?”

“Huh?” She looked up from her notebook, as if coming out of a deep sleep. “I’m sorry, what’s that, sweetie?”

“I asked, what are you writing?”

“Oh, nothing. Just trying to put my English degree to work. Might as well, considering how much student loan debt I racked up getting it.”

Hannah didn’t understand but nodded anyway. “Is it a story?”

“Yes, sweetie, Mommy’s writing a story.”

“I love stories. Can
I
read it?”

Her mom smiled, resting the pen and notebook at her side, then grabbed a towel and started drying Hannah’s head. “You’re still soaking wet, honey. When are you going to learn how to dry yourself off?”

“The sun dries me, Mommy. It feels good. So, can I read your story now?”

“Someday,” she said, “but you’re too young to read what I’m writing now.”

“Are you writing
bad
stuff?”

“No, sweetie, nothing bad. Just…not the kind of things you should be reading at your age.”

Her head finally dry to her mom’s apparent satisfaction, Hannah stood and said, “I’m thirsty.”

“The water fountain’s right over there. Go get a drink.”

Disgusting, Hannah thought. She never drank from the fountains at school and doing it here seemed worse. She thought about all the snot-nosed brats, their faces pressed to the nozzle. And, even though something cool to drink would help her headache, she would rather take her chances with dehydration than germs.

“Can I please have a Coke?”

Her mom had already returned to her notebook. Without looking up, she said, “Didn’t bring any money, Han. Besides, you shouldn’t be drinking all that sugar right now. Go use the water fountain. That’s what it’s there for.”

Hannah pressed her palms into her sides and sighed. “I thought Daddy said we didn’t need to worry about money anymore.”

Her mom dropped the notebook on her stomach and glowered, her eyes narrowing to pinpricks of anger. “Let’s get something straight, your precious daddy’s a piece of shit. Do you understand that?”

Hannah felt tears pricking her eyes, but she fought them back as she swallowed the dry lump in her throat. Again, she didn’t fully comprehend what her mom was saying; only that she was in pain.

Her mom heaved a sigh of disapproval and went back to writing, her pen flying faster, more desperately than ever, and Hannah meandered in the general direction of the dreaded water fountain.

It angered her mom when she talked about Dad; that much was clear. She promised herself she wouldn’t do it again. She didn’t want to make trouble.

Approaching the fountain, Hannah looked up. The same boy who’d collided with her earlier pressed his face into the spigot and sucked greedily.

She hated him. Hated all kids. The way they piled into the back of their family SUVs and minivans. Their stupid, carefree expressions. Did these children wake to the sounds of their parents shouting at each other? She doubted it. She also doubted they ever worried about money or wore clothes from garage sales or slept on sheets that hadn’t been washed for weeks. Why were these brats all so defiant when they clearly had it so good? Spoiled rotten. All of them.

She stopped and glared at the boy, and that’s when it happened.

Her attention, as if directed by a force beyond her control, became the water fountain. The YMCA pool area vanished, replaced by deep black nothingness. In this dark place, only she and the fountain remained, and she could see inside it. In that moment, terrified and hopeless, she lost control of her emotions and fell to her knees, aware of the unforgiving concrete upon impact, even though she couldn’t see it. She sobbed. But even in her anguish, she couldn’t look away from the rusty pipes that normally hid beneath the fountain’s gray shell.

Hot, she thought.
Burn! Burn burn burn burn…

Pipes rattled and she heard a high-pitched whine. Bowing her head, now able to look away, she squeezed her eyes shut. She felt her mom’s hand on her back a moment after she heard the boy scream. She looked up and saw others rushing to the child’s aid. His face had turned a horrible red, his lips blistered and bleeding. He wailed in evident agony.

“Oh my God,” her mom said. “What happened?” She helped Hannah up, but her attention remained on the boy. The pool had grown silent. Onlookers gasped. The boy’s screaming intensified.

“Someone call 911,” the previously listless lifeguard shouted, dropping from her perch and running toward the injured child.

Hannah felt herself lifted into her mom’s arms, then she was turned away from the unfolding spectacle.

“I’m sorry you had to see that, sweetie,” her mom whispered.

“That’s okay, Mommy.”

“And I’m sorry I said those things about your daddy. That was wrong of me.”

“That’s okay, Mommy.”

“Come on, let’s go home and get some Band-Aids on your knees, then we’ll get you a Coke, okay?”

“Okay.”

That evening, her dad still at work, Hannah sat on the edge of her bed and played Tetris on an old Game Boy (one of her many garage sale finds) while her mom took a nap in the living room. The video game was a poor diversion from the shame that plagued her. The boy’s blistered lips, his tortured wailing, flashed through her mind as she apathetically guided shapes into empty spaces on the screen. But amidst her dark reverie, a larger question loomed.

How did I do that?

No doubt lingered; she had been the cause of the boy’s injuries.

A long rectangle appeared at the top of the Nintendo’s screen, but she didn’t push buttons to move the shape. Instead, she was struck by an idea that she wasted no time testing.

The pixelated rectangle hung in limbo. And again, she found the dark place. Soon, the game snapped back into play, and the piece fell. Using her mind, she concentrated on the proper moves, and the machine responded. Closing her eyes, she felt as if her body was lifted from the bed. Then she blinked and was back in her room.

She’d long sensed she was different from other kids, but she hadn’t expected anything so amazing. With a growing desire to explore her abilities, she walked to the window and peered through the Venetian blinds. The parking lot outside her room was routinely trafficked by people and stray cats, and tonight was no different. She concentrated on a thin man getting out of his car. But she didn’t find the dark place. The man started toward his apartment, and Hannah concentrated harder on him. Still, she couldn’t find her dark place.

Then, just like before with the water fountain, her attention was forced to the man’s car, and everything else disappeared from view. Her mind’s eye tunneled through the hatchback, and her focus was pulled to the shifter on the floorboard. Although she didn’t understand the mechanics of manual transmission, instinct told her to move the stick.

With a faint pop—
how did I hear that?
—the shifter moved.

She blinked, fast returning to reality, then watched the Honda roll backward.

“What the fuck?” she heard the man shout.

But the incline wasn’t steep, and the car didn’t roll far. Just enough to scare the man, who scrambled back to the driver’s seat to right the wrong.

Objects, she realized. She controlled objects, not people…at least not directly.

Hannah plunked down on the bed and curled up. With her head hanging over the mattress’s edge, she stared at a red stain in the carpet. She recalled the night she’d knocked a glass of Kool-Aid from the nightstand, and how mad her dad had been.

“For fuck’s sake, you little piggy, how many times do I have to tell you not to eat or drink in your fucking bedroom!?”

For a moment, she considered removing the stain with her talent. Maybe she could also erase the memory of her father’s cruel words. But that didn’t seem likely, and she quickly dismissed the notion. How would she explain removing a stain her mom had spent hours scrubbing? She couldn’t. She needed to be careful.

Although only six, she was acutely aware of how much darkness existed in the world. Curiosity had led her to watch a lot of cable news during many of her mom’s long naps. The evil she found on so many of the reports defied explanation in her young mind.

Maybe, she thought, her newfound powers weren’t that strange. Perhaps everyone wielded similar magic, something they never revealed to others. While that idea helped rationalize tsunamis and hurricanes and other “Acts of God,” it only made the shivers running up and down Hannah’s spine worsen.

Or maybe it wasn’t so bad. After all, her mom and dad had secrets. Secrets seemed a way of life in the grown-up world. Now she had one, too.

A secret she planned to keep.