Page 10 of Soul of Shadow
Charlie and Lou both craned their heads to look. Nestled in the grass was one lone yellow-brown leaf.
Lou slowly turned her head to look back at Abigail. “You are completely batshit,” she said. “You know that, right?”
Charlie smiled to herself. It was so familiar, this bickering between her best friends. It was a hallmark of their little group. Lou and Abigail argued, and Charlie watched.
Charlie knew she was different. She spent too much time inside her own head when she should have been gossiping with her friends, making plans for the weekend. But that had never been her. She wasn’t the sporty one, the chattiest, the one spearheading plans. That lot fell to Lou. And sometimes Abigail. They had their whole lives planned out. When Charlie thought about her own future, there was only a black hole where love and college and a job and a family should be.
She hadn’t always been a wallflower. Once upon a time, Charlie was the chatty one, the loudest in playgroup, the first one to propose a new game or break out into spontaneous song. But that was when she still had Sophie.
Charlie squeezed her eyes shut.Not now.She opened her eyes and tuned back into her friends’ conversation.
“—would never ask Dana to homecoming,” Lou was saying.“They got in that huge fight this summer, and—” She froze midstep. Charlie and Abigail realized at the same time that she had stopped, and turned to face Lou, whose eyes had ballooned out of her head.
“Who,” Lou whispered loudly, “isthat?”
Charlie followed her gaze. Lou was looking at the Ledge, the place where seniors gathered before classes to trade homework answers and hits on vape pens. Charlie squinted at the crowd, trying to determine who Lou meant. The first person she saw was Mason, at the center of his friends as usual. She knew Lou couldn’t mean him; Lou’d known Mason almost her entire life. So, who was she—
There.
Standing beside her brother, chatting amiably as if they were old friends, wearing a black T-shirt and ripped jean jacket. Tousled dark hair, eyes like a lush field in summertime.
The boy from the woods.
Charlie’s heart picked up speed.
“Good God,” Lou said. “He is…”
“Gorgeous.” Abigail nodded solemnly.
“I don’t think he’s all that special,” Charlie blurted out.
Lou and Abigail turned to stare at her.
Charlie could feel her cheeks turning pink. She realized, too late, that it was the first thing she had contributed to the discussion all morning.
Lou squinted, leaning closer to Charlie. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Yes,” Charlie said defensively. “Of course.”
“Good. Because I thought you might have been having astroke.” Lou pointed at the crowd of seniors. “The hottest guy to ever enroll at Silver Shores High is standing right in front of us, and you say he’s notall that special?”
“He’s not,” Charlie insisted.
Except that he was. Elias’s jaw was cut with a blade sharpener, his lips thick, his smile lopsided. He looked like he had walked straight out of a cologne commercial and onto the school’s front lawn.
But she couldn’t separate his looks from what she knew about him. How he carried himself as if he knew a joke that no one else did. How he showed up the same week Robbie went missing, then went wandering around the crime scene with no obvious purpose. The guy was clearly bad news.
What was going on? How did Elias ingratiate himself with her older brother so quickly? She knew Mason was outgoing, but Jesus—couldn’t he see how sketchy Elias was?
Couldn’tanyone?
Clearly not. The senior girls were practically drooling over him. And the boys were laughing, hanging on to his every word.
“Well, I think you need to have your head checked out,” Lou said. “Unless you’ve decided that you like girls instead. Which would be fine with me. Just as long as you finally start showing interest insomeone.”
Charlie tore her eyes away from Elias to look at Lou and Abigail. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Her friends exchanged a look.
