Excerpt: Walking Shadow

Everything is a lie.

Everything – from the expressions on your faces, to the words you speak, to the books that sit in front of you on your desks, to the clothes you wear.

It’s all a mask, a film that covers everything. But to me, that barrier is as fragile as the surface of a bubble, just waiting to be popped. It has that same, unearthly quality: strange and beautiful all at once. And underneath, there is nothing but empty space. There’s nothing that can be explained or defined.

I know everything about you.

Everything – from your darkest fears, to your deepest secrets, to your innermost feelings. I know your fantasies and your nightmares. I know what makes you feel so happy that you could burst. I know the haunting images and memories that make you wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and crying.

I know you, better than anyone knows you. Better than you know yourself.

I know that you’re all alone. That’s something we all have in common: the loneliness. I know how tortured it makes you feel. I hear it in your thoughts. It’s not a feeling that can be put into words, but I sense it as you all emit it from your minds. It’s like a quiet whisper that shifts into a murmur, and then a painful moaning, until at last it builds up into a soul-wrenching scream. If only you could all hear it. There’s nothing like it. Nothing drives me more insane than that sound, echoing through my mind, filling my skull until I’m ready to explode – even though I know that, somewhere in the midst of all that sound, one of those shrieking souls is my own.

See, that’s the irony, the hypocrisy in all of this: In a way, I’m no different from the rest of you. No, I’m not “normal” by any means. But I’m only human. I feel what you feel. I have a conscience. I have a soul – I think. I know what it’s like to be miserable, to be alone, to feel the pain.

So, in my seventeen years of life, I’ve learned to understand. I’ve learned to accept the insults that your minds throw at me, the jumbled mess of scathing words: freak, girl, freak, witch, goth, freak.

It’s natural to make judgments. That’s only a part of human nature, after all. I can’t change that.

I don’t care what you think about me, or who I think I am. The only thing that matters is that you never know the truth about me. You can think that I chose to dye my hair blood-red, even though it’s naturally that color. You can think that my silvery, reflective eyes are contacts, even though they aren’t. You can think that I always wear long sleeves because I cut myself, even though I’m hiding something else – something very different from the furious red scratch marks that you’d expect.

I wish I could make judgments. Because knowing everything about everyone is a little … well … frightening, sometimes.

I know who likes who. I know who hates who. I know who’s slept with who. I know who’s doing drugs. I know whose parents hit them.

I could blackmail each and every one of you, if I wanted to. Of course I’ve thought of it. I’ve imagined it a countless amount of times. I’ve pictured myself running through the hallways, screaming everything I know at the top of my lungs. God, it would feel so good. I would do anything to release the secrets, to tell someone. Anyone. It’s too much, to have everyone’s thoughts and dreams and ideas and memories and fears all bursting inside my head like fireworks. At some point, I won’t be able to take it anymore. It’s just a matter of time before I just snap.

My jaw tightens. My muscles tense. I can feel it right now, as I’m sitting here in the back of math class, scribbling pictures onto the surface of the desk. I can feel the anger, the impatience, building up inside of me.

I never asked for this. I never wanted it. And my whole life, I’ve kept it inside. But it’s killing me, eating me from the inside out, crawling through my veins like a disease, stirring under my skin.

How much longer? How long can I keep going, before it takes over – before it takes me … like it took my mother?

There’s a burst of fear in my chest, like there always is when the idea saturates my mind. I try as hard as I can to drive it out. I dig my pen harder into the desk, focusing on the lines I’m drawing: thin, black lines that flow like poetry, each one curving into the next – individual, but creating something whole.

It won’t happen to me. That’s what I always tell myself. It won’t happen to me, like it happened to her. Like it happened to all of them.

I force myself to stop thinking about it. I need to lose myself in something else. I focus on drawing, and the rise and fall of murmured thoughts around me.

My classmates aren’t thinking anything particularly fascinating right now. It’s the first period of the day, which means the usual dull and disgruntled thoughts: Bored, tired, hate this class, bored, bored.

I draw people. But I draw them the way that people should look. They’re all the same height, all the same size, all the same shape. Nothing makes one different from the other. They’re nothing but stick-figure-like creatures. They have X’s for eyes, because they can’t see. They have no mouths, so they can’t tell lies. And they hold their hearts in their hands, exposed and bleeding for everyone to see.

I shift my attention to the thoughts of the Precalculus teacher, Mr. Sampson. I always find his thoughts calming, for some reason. There’s nothing particularly complex about what he thinks. He tends to think in graphs and numbers, only the occasional word.

I like numbers. Numbers are safe. Words are confusing; it’s impossible, sometimes, to try to figure out what they mean. But numbers never change and never have any hidden purpose. They have fixed definitions. They put everything in order, in measurements, in boxes.

It’s not that I like math, or that I’m good at it. But if I think about it, it helps me to relax a little. It reminds me that there’s always something that will never change. There’s something that makes sense.

I put my pen down, and observe my finished work: the X-eyes, the outstretched hands, the dripping hearts. What I see gives me no satisfaction, despite all the work I’ve put into it. It’s not that it’s wrong, or that it isn’t a good drawing. It’s just that it means nothing. No one could ever look at it and fully comprehend its significance.

No one can see the world the way I do.

I’m completely alone, and there’s no one.

No one, no one, no one, no …

“Miss Gray?”

I snap out of it, and I realize that I’m standing up. I don’t remember standing up. I just know that now, at the sound of Mr. Sampson’s voice, I’m lifting my gaze away from my desk and I see everyone looking up at me with their soulless eyes, and words pelt me like bullets, like poisoned arrows, sharp and angry and deadly: Weird, freak, girl, strange, crazy, freak, girl, weird.

Mr. Sampson stares at me, giving me a long, calculating look, over the rim of his round glasses. His mind is a murmur of concern with a muttered undertone of fear. “Is something wrong, Miss Gray?” he asks me, from across the room. “Are you all right?”

I swallow. “Fine. I’m fine.”

The words are a bitter taste in my mouth, as I sit down slowly, and the attention shifts away from me again.

And I hate myself – because I’m as horrible as anyone else. No, I’m worse than all of them combined.

I’m the only one who knows the truth, but I’m just another liar.