Page 7 of Soul of Shadow #1

The car door slammed behind Charlie as she stepped onto the pavement of the Silver Shores High School parking lot.

Two more doors slammed. Abigail double-checked the contents of her bag again while Lou eyed everyone around them with interest. The three of them had started carpooling their sophomore year, when Charlie turned sixteen and got her license—she was the first—and had continued the tradition ever since.

Neither Lou nor Abigail ever offered to drive, but Charlie didn’t mind.

She liked being behind the wheel. The feel of the Bronco humming beneath her, under her control.

Plus, though she would never say as much, she hated driving alone.

Mason always caught a ride to school with one of his many friends, leaving the Bronco to Charlie without a fuss for once.

She should have been relieved, but if she didn’t have someone else in the car with her—even with music blasting—there was too much quiet.

Too much space for the sadness to creep inside.

Ahead of them, Silver Shores High loomed tall and stately.

It was a stunning piece of architecture: a Georgian-era masterpiece with red brick, tall white pillars around the entrance, and a bell tower that stood far above any other building in town.

Grand staircases wound throughout the building.

The classrooms looked like paneled sitting rooms. The whole place smelled vaguely of old books.

As they crossed the parking lot, Lou and Abigail prattled on about their expectations for homecoming that year: who would take whom, how the asks would unfold, whether or not there would be drinking at the after-party.

It was junior year. They were no longer underclassmen but not yet burdened with the responsibilities that came with being a senior.

(Well, Abigail might have disagreed.) Charlie should be having, as Lou had insisted no less than thirty times in the last three days, the time of her life .

Charlie could barely pay attention to the conversation.

Still, she knew that Lou would call her out sooner rather than later, which meant it was time to tune back in.

“So, did the infinity scarf come with the pumpkin-spice latte, or was it the other way around?” Lou was asking Abigail, pointing to the offending items in question.

Abigail wrinkled her nose and tightened her grip around the Starbucks cup in her hand. “I would never drink a pumpkin-spice latte.”

“Right, I forgot,” Lou said. “You only drink plain black coffee, like a sixteen-year-old serial killer.”

“I’m not the one who is actually, definitionally obsessed with serial killers.”

Lou reached behind her head and started knotting her auburn hair into a bun. She pulled out a few strands to dangle beside her freckled face. “It’s a passion of mine.”

“Watching every documentary ever made about Ted Bundy does not qualify something as a passion . Besides.” Abigail adjusted her purple scarf as she eyed Lou’s tiny skirt. “At least I’m dressed appropriately for the weather.”

“It’s sixty-five degrees outside.” Lou rolled her eyes. “Sweet Jesus. Every year, the calendar hits September first, and you start acting like the leaves have already fallen off the trees.”

Abigail pointed over at a patch of grass behind a red Chevy pickup. “And just what do you call that ?”

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, “is that ?”

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 a stroke.” 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 not all 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’t anyone ?

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 in someone .”

Charlie tore her eyes away from Elias to look at Lou and Abigail. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Her friends exchanged a look.

“What?” Charlie asked.

“It’s just…” Abigail said. “I mean…”

“You don’t put yourself out there,” Lou jumped in.

And once she started, it was as if she couldn’t stop.

As if she’d wanted to say these words for a long time.

“You don’t date. You don’t have crushes.

You never talk about liking any boy or girl—or anyone, for that matter.

And this isn’t some lifelong thing, Charles.

It’s recent. For most of our friendship, you were always the one to chase boys around the playground, or spend hours scrolling through their Instagrams and TikToks, or write ridiculous notes that you never sent.

… You were wild about having a crush. But ever since… ”

She trailed off, but Charlie knew what she was going to say. Ever since Sophie died.

A lump rose at the back of her throat. That was what it came down to, wasn’t it? What everything came down to.

Once upon a time, Lou never had to tell Charlie to put herself out there.

Once upon a time, she and Lou were the adventurous ones, coming up with sometimes dangerous and always ridiculous plans for the three of them, like biking to the beach in the middle of the night or sneaking into Old Man Willer’s backyard to see if the rumors about his dead-rabbit collection were true (they weren’t), while Sophie was their quiet but steady backup, always along for the ride but never leading the way.

Charlie was outgoing, the first to make a new friend or chase the boys around the schoolyard.

Once, in first grade, Mason even had to pull her aside and tell her that it wasn’t acceptable to grab boys at the top of the slide and force them to kiss her.

“Because then I’ll have to punch them,” said second-grade Mason. “And it will be your fault when I get detention.”

Sophie never got those lectures from Mason. She was the good kid, the delicate wallflower, the one who never made waves. The single exception to that rule was the time that Mason switched out their shampoo for purple hair dye. Instead of getting angry, Sophie had absolutely loved it.

“It makes me look like a princess,” she said, studying her reflection in the mirror on their vanity.

“Lucky you,” Charlie had said, pulling at her own purple locks. “I look like a dinosaur.”

Sophie had squinted at her twin in the mirror. “You know we’re identical, right?”

“Nuh-uh.” Charlie pointed at the beauty mark just above her lip. “You don’t have Clyde.” (She had named her beauty mark Clyde.)

Charlie remembered so clearly the day that Sophie had showed up to school with purple hair. Everyone had stared. Sophie Hudson? They whispered. The quiet one? Really? That day, Charlie and Lou had walked beside Sophie like twin bodyguards, ready to pounce on anyone who said a word.

Looking back, Charlie thought that maybe Sophie hadn’t needed them at all. She seemed so serene that day, as if she had finally found her true self.

After she died, Lou and Charlie began to change.

To split into different directions. Charlie retreated into herself; Lou burst out of herself.

Charlie took to sitting on the sidelines; Lou became even louder, even funnier, even more willing to dive headfirst into trouble.

Charlie let herself be dragged along for Lou’s adventures, but she went the way a petal floats downriver: without resistance, but without any excitement, either. At the mercy of the tide.

It was as if, in losing Sophie, Charlie took on some of her twin sister’s personality. As if, by emulating her, she could somehow preserve her memory .

Swallowing down the lump in her throat, Charlie said, “I don’t know what to tell you: dating just isn’t for me.”

Lou narrowed her eyes. Before her best friend could launch into a further interrogation, Charlie looked away. Back at the crowd of seniors, her gaze landing on Elias.

Who was already looking at her.

The breath caught in her throat.

Mason was talking to him, and Elias nodded vaguely at whatever her brother was saying, but his attention was directly, unabashedly on her, his mouth curved up into a little knowing smile. And then, quick as the wing of a hummingbird, he winked.

“Hello?” Lou waved a freckled hand in front of Charlie’s face, startling her out of her staring contest. “Did you even hear what I asked?”

“Did I—” Charlie glanced at Abigail, who offered no clarification. Crap. “Yes?”

“Yes, you heard, or yes, you’ll do it?” Lou asked.

“Yes, I’ll do it,” said Charlie, having no idea what she was agreeing to.

“Great.” Lou clapped once, exchanging a grin with Abigail. “Then it’s decided. We each have a homecoming date by Thursday’s end.”

“Wait.” Panic rose in Charlie’s chest. “What?” She tried to chase after them, but her friends were already on their way toward the school’s front doors, decision made, heads held high.