“Okay, Wendy, you can do this. Don’t be a scaredy-cat,” she whispered. “Be brave for once in your life.” Her shivering hand slowly turned the handle. She threw open the kitchen door to confront…silence.
The cool September breeze blew at her nightshirt, and she stepped barefoot out onto the patio. Her fenced-in yard was empty.
A large shadow flew overhead.
She spun back to the safety of her house, terror consuming her. Wendy slammed the kitchen door and threw the deadbolt, trying to control her trembling legs and runaway heart. It took a few moments before she was able to gather her strength and convince herself that she was once again imagining things.
Wendy hurried back to her room and slid under the now cold sheets. She pulled the comforter up over her head and tried to lull herself back to sleep. It was no use. She knew she’d lay awake all night again, and would probably do horribly at school tomorrow.
She was the only teenager she knew of who was still scared of shadows.
“You’re the worst, Peter,” Tink chastised. “You almost blew our cover.” She took off the specter goggles and let them dangle from her neck. “Then we’d be back to square one—having to wait for them to show up again and lead us to a morphling.”
“I had to. The shadow was at the window.” Peter ran his hands through his auburn hair. “They don’t usually act this way. Usually they just watch. It was going to go into her room.” He looked back at the two-story brick house and studied it for movement. He was worried about the girl who’d come out into the night seemingly unafraid, and then run scared at the sight of a shadow. If only she knew.
She was right to be scared. She was probably their target. He needed to get to her before something worse did.
He walked his blonde sidekick down the road to her parked scooter. He kicked a rock out of the way and watched as it skipped across the paved road and landed harmlessly in a neighbor’s empty yard.
“But you didn’t know it was going to do anything,” Tink challenged. “You didn’t have to go shooting off and throw a rock at her window.”
“They’re bad news. You know that where the shadow appears, trouble follows. Your shadow box went crazy at her house. It’s a dead zone. The shadows are gathering here, and they’ll be back.”
“We don’t know that a morphling will come, though. They’ve been unpredictable of late, and I’ve been sitting out here in the cold all night. I’m calling this a false alarm.” Tink closed the antenna on her mechanical box, turned the power off, and stowed it in her bag.
“If it’s not a dead zone, why do the shadows keep gathering?
Tink shrugged her shoulders noncommittally and flipped the cover of her crossover bag closed. “Glitch.”
“You’re saying your machine—that you built—is faulty?” He crossed his arms to look down at her. Tink was his best friend, a little hotheaded at times and extremely protective, but she was also a bona fide tech genius. There was no way she’d admit that it erred.
“Maybe.” She sniffed, as she got on her scooter and turned it on, cutting him off when he was about to press again.
“I just can’t shake the feeling—”
“Fine,” Tink interrupted. “I’ll have some of the boys put on watcher detail for both of them. But I think we should let this one go. They have a family, so for now, they’re protected. And being here is a waste of our time. We’re sent to help those that can’t protect themselves. Remember that, Peter.”
He hated that she was right. Tink didn’t look back as she drove off into the night. Peter turned, conflicted, to stare at the white house. Something big was coming—he could sense it. And there was this feeling in the pit of his stomach that told him, no matter how prepared he was, it wouldn’t be enough.
Chapter Eight
ONE WEEK LATER
“TV rots your brain,” Wendy called out as she jumped over the back of the gray microfiber sofa and ripped the DVR remote control from John’s hands.
“Too late,” he muttered, tapping his head. “It’s all mush.” Wendy held the remote way up in the air and quickly changed the channel to a teen drama with vampires. John made a gagging sound, and she grinned before clicking again. A crime investigator show. “Here!” she chimed.
John shook his head. “No way. Why do you torture yourself? This stuff gives you nightmares.” Although he was younger, John was taller and had a longer reach and could have reclaimed the remote at any time.
Wendy scrolled through the channels. She finally stopped on the cartoon channel. A rainbow of colors and happy, sappy animals danced across the screen.
“Now, here’s a show that will give you nightmares.”
John grabbed the throw pillow and shoved it into Wendy’s smirking face.
“Hey—mmmph!” She pulled the pillow down. “If you want to change the channel, that’s fine.” She got up and tossed the remote across the room to land on her mom’s overstuffed chair. “You want it. Go get it.”
“Noo!” he groaned.
Wendy grinned. She just doomed him to watch cartoons, because reaching the remote would mean getting up and walking across the room, and John was not motivated enough to do that.
John sighed and buried himself lower into the couch, getting even more comfortable. “I’m not moving,” he said firmly.
“Fine,” Wendy taunted. “Die here with the happy, sappy animals singing your funeral dirge.
Wendy walked over to the heavily draped window and threw it open. Light poured in and fell across his eyes. John hissed at her. Wendy threw her head back and laughed. “I can change it back to the vampire show.”
“DON’T you dare!”
“R.I.P. John Owens. He died from sunlight and dumb cartoons.”
“Put it on my tombstone,” he said smartly.
“Hey, do you have any plans for tomorrow. We can go to the mall?”
“Do we have too?” John mumbled. “Anything but the mall.”
“What about the movies?”
He paused for a second. “Okay, how about Death Escort 2?”
Wendy’s brow arched, but he gave her the biggest wide-eyed look of innocence. She sighed and gave in. “I guess…but don’t tell Mom.”
“Not that new horror one,” Mary called from the kitchen.
“Geez, that woman’s got ears like a bat,” John complained.
“I heard that!” Their mom came into the living room, hands on her hips. Mary’s honey-brown hair was pulled back away from her face, her lips pressed firmly together. Her friendly eyes were staring them down, making them squirm.
“Yes, and those bat-ears are dialed up to ten right now,” Wendy whispered.
John left, shooting Wendy an apologetic look. He mouthed the words “like a bat” again.
She started to giggle but held it in.
“Wendy, you’ve been through a lot, and you know our stance on scary movies.”
“But I like scary movies,” Wendy added. “And we don’t know if they really have anything to do with my nightmares.”
Her mom sighed and joined her on the couch. “That’s really not the issue, dear. Though we have talked with John about it, and we mean it when we say no. But listen. I refilled your prescription and noticed you haven’t been taking it for a while. You don’t want to relapse and have to go back to that clinic do you?”
“I don’t like the way the medicine makes me feel.” She shrugged. “When I’m on it, I see puffy clouds and rainbow kittens.”
“Well, isn’t that nice?” her mother asked.
“Yeah, kittens that shoot laser beams out of their eyes and destroy earth as we know it.”
“You do have quite the imagination.” She gave Wendy a stern gaze. “But you still need to take your meds.”
“No, I don’t.” Wendy tried to stare her down. Which was dumb. Anyone knows staring into the eyes of a predatory animal is really, really dumb.
Mary’s eyes lit up in challenge, and Wendy could see that she was enjoying this. “W
endy, you are still our daughter, and you live under our roof, which means you obey our rules. You’ve missed out on a lot in life, and we care deeply for you—you’re growing up so fast.”
“I can be childish…see?” Wendy made a goofy face and swung one of the readily available throw pillows at her mother. It brushed the side of her head, making her red curls fly up in a comical way.
“Wendy!” Her mother shrieked.
The laughter died on Wendy’s lips at her furious tone.
Mary stood and towered over her.
She was about to apologize, but her mom held up a finger to silence her. Wendy swallowed.
“That, young lady, was not nice,” she chastised, just before swinging the pillow she’d expertly tucked behind her back at Wendy’s face.
Wendy squealed as it whacked her on the side of the head.
“Next time, improve your aim,” her mom said. The onslaught became a full-fledged war.
Wendy fell from her chair and grabbed the nearest pillow. They fired the pillows back and forth.
“Hey, what’s going on?” her father yelled before entering the living room. Wendy and her mom both tossed their pillows and knocked him in the face.
They laughed at his shocked expression and waited for his response.
“Oh, I see how it is. Carry on.” He slowly backed out of the room the way he came, his hands clasped behind him as he tried to keep a straight face.
Wendy and her mom collapsed on the floor in a fit of giggles amongst all of the pillows. There were probably fifteen pillows, and they had knocked over the lamp and a few picture frames, but nothing was really damaged.
“You know you really do have way too many of these.” Wendy held up a small blue pillow with cute buttons sewn on the front.
“Oh, I know. I hate them,” her mom answered. She positioned one of the pillows under her head and gazed up at the ceiling as they settled in to talk.
“Then why don’t you get rid of a few—like this ugly one?” Wendy lifted a weird tan pillow with a cross-stitched peacock on it.
Her mom groaned and took the pillow from her. “I can’t, because your father hates throw pillows on couches. He said that one was actually the ugliest pillow he’d ever seen. We’d just gotten in an argument a few minutes before, and I decided—then and there—that I must own said pillow as a way to stick it to him.”
Wendy looked around at all of the horrid pillows in their living room, and it dawned on her. “So every pillow represents an argument between you and dad?”
“Yep,” she giggled. “The bigger the argument, the uglier the pillow I buy. When he wants to find a place on the couch, he has to pile the pillows up or move them to the floor. It’s my silent retribution…and I love every minute of it.”
Wendy snorted. “I didn’t know. It’s kind of genius.”
“Of course it is, because I’m your mother.”
“I heard that,” George crowed. They glanced up from where they lay sprawled across the floor. Her dad stood over them with a fully loaded Nerf gun. “Revenge is sweet, ladies!” he taunted.
He fired on his wife. She squealed, and the pillow fight began again. John came down the stairs to investigate. Dad pulled another Nerf gun from his back and tossed it to John. “Let’s even the odds, shall we, son?”
John grinned, pumped the Nerf gun, and took aim. Wendy looked up just in time for the foam bullet to nail her in the eye.
Chapter Nine
She applied a little more concealer under her eye and turned from the hall mirror. “How do I look?” Wendy twirled in front of John, who barely looked up from his video game. His mood had turned sullen as soon as he hit her in the eye, ending their game rather abruptly. He had tossed the Nerf gun onto the couch and stormed off to the family room to lose himself in his game. Was it guilt? Or was something else bothering him? Her parents had let him go, just nodding to one another. Her dad tousled her hair before he went into the kitchen with her mom. Wendy had changed and performed magic with makeup up in her room.
“Can’t even tell my eye is swollen,” Wendy called out and waited for a response. “Well, at least it stopped watering. But you don’t see anything, right?”
“You did a good job hiding your face, Sis,” he grumbled, before munching a chip and wiping away the leftover Dorito crumbs across the front of his shirt.
Wendy frowned at the jab her way. It didn’t matter. She knew she looked good in her blue and white cheer uniform. She grabbed her silver pom-poms, shoving them into her bag by the front door. “John, you can skip any Friday night football game but this one. It’s the biggest game of the season—against the Falcons. It’s social suicide if you don’t go. And change your shirt,” she added, pointing at his Dorito-stained tee.
John repositioned his thick black glasses on the bridge of his nose and groaned. “As soon as we take the enemy base.”
Wendy leaned down to tighten her laces on her white shoes and glanced up at him. “And how many hours does it take to do that?” He’d spend all weekend playing online with his buddies if it wasn’t for her. It was her job to get him out in the world, to connect with real, live people, not voices that spoke through his Bluetooth headphones.
“Ah…go in…Slightly, surround him…on my command. Fire now!”
“John!” Wendy spoke his name a little louder.
“Oh, yeah…um, three hours?” He looked up and ran his hand through his strawberry blond mop of hair.
He’d never make it. She marched over to John, grabbed his headphones, and spoke into the mic, looking at the screen and reading her brother’s handle.
“Sorry, boys. You’re going to have to do this without Lt. J Dog.” Wendy almost laughed out loud. “He’s got a social function to attend tonight.” She watched as the characters across the multi-section screen stopped moving.
“Hey, J Dog! Is that a girl?” a male voice came out, sounding nervous.
One voice had a distinct echo as it spoke. “I bet it’s your mom.”
John looked horrified. He snatched the headset back and spoke into it angrily. “No, Ditto, that’s not my mom. It’s my older sister.”
“Is she hot?” The same echo voice asked.
“Can she play?” a different voice interjected.
“She can be on my team.” One after another of John’s troop rallied and called out for him to get her to play. Just then, the screen went red as the opposing team ambushed them and blew them up. John gave Wendy a disgusted look and shook his head. “Now look what you’ve done. You caused anarchy among the troops, and the enemy killed us.
“Yeah, not really sorry, baby bro! You can’t miss tonight. All of your nerd friends will forgive you.”
“That’s not the point,” he grumbled, putting away his controllers. “I’m the leader. Good leaders lead their armies, not let them get distracted by girls.” He pointed at her. “They couldn’t even see you, and they got distracted.”
Wendy flashed her brother a grin. She looked in the mirror at her own strawberry blonde ponytail and straightened her blue bow. Her green eyes sparkled with mischief, and her light pink lip gloss made her look extra impish. The excitement of tonight’s game and the fact that Jeremy might ask her out made her cheeks extra flushed.
“Here, Loser, the consolation prize, since I wrecked your game.” Wendy tossed her brother the keys to her Prius. “You can drive.”
John caught the keys midair. “Fine, I’ll be sure to put a big scratch in it, Stinkenator.”
“You do and you die, Spongebob Nerdpants,” she tossed out.
Their mom walked into the room. “Both of you nerd herders better get going or you’ll be late.”
John laughed and kissed their mom on the cheek before he grabbed a jacket and headed toward Wendy’s car.
Wendy grabbed her forgotten pom-pom bag and dashed out the front door to meet him. She had the top off the Prius—it was a warm fall evening, so the wind wouldn’t bother either of them.
She climbed in, tossed
her bag into the back, and clicked her seatbelt. John gave her a slightly irritated look. He turned the radio up and drove to the football game.
“After the game, meet me by the bleachers. We’ll grab some ice cream with the girls,” she said. Wendy frowned when John didn’t immediately respond to getting ice cream with the cheer team. He should have, that was every boy’s dream.
“What’s your problem, John? You’ve been acting weird lately and only hanging out with your video game friends. I’m concerned. You need a social life outside of the living room.”
He snapped back, “You’re concerned for me? Wendy, you’re the one with the problems.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice gaining an edge.
He gave her a sideways glance before looking back at the road. His shoulders tensed. “Your night terrors have gotten worse.”
“What?”
He shrugged. “It’s fine. I can sleep through almost anything, although it’s upset Mom and Dad. They’re scared you’ll relapse, Wendy. They don’t know what to do. I overheard them talking about another trial clinic.”
Wendy was glad she wasn’t driving, because her body went weak and tears formed at the overwhelming fear. “I’m not going back to that place, John, or any other clinic. Never again.” She touched the back of her neck. All hospitals and clinics had the same effect on her. She’d go into hysterics and start hyperventilating, and—of course—to circumvent these fears, she had to go to more clinics for tests.
A stupid, vicious cycle.
She looked over at John and he nodded. “I didn’t agree with them about sending you there, and I’m glad you’re back. But you gotta know…they know. They’re just trying to do what they think is best for you.” His hands squeezed the wheel of the Prius. “Are you taking your meds to help?”
“No,” she answered, waiting for his reprimand.
“Good. I’m not sure you needed them. I think this is something you have to work out for yourself, not try and suppress.”
Her fingernails dug little nail impressions into the leather of the door handle. She was planning on going to the university next fall and escape everything. She loved her family and hated what she’d put them through. Wendy liked when everything was perfect and planned out, and now it was about to be ripped from her again.