Sam Weller - Shadow Show

“Let go.” Hayleigh pulled her T-shirt out of Sharon’s grasp. Then she shrugged. Sharon had once counted how many times Hayleigh shrugged in the course of just one hour: The astonishing total was seventeen.

“I’m not gonna do anything,” Hayleigh went on. “I’m just looking around.”

“Well, be careful.”

Sharon wished Hayleigh would pay attention and concentrate. She was close. So close. Close to figuring out what Sharon had figured out about what Hayleigh’s dad was building down here.

As she watched Hayleigh touch the tools, one by one, just a brief tap with two fingers and then on to the next tool, all around the room, Sharon let a picture of her own father rise up in her mind. Dressed in a suit and tie, he was holding a slim black leather briefcase, frowning. You could not fit any of these tools in that stupid briefcase, Sharon thought. Not a single one. Her father didn’t know how to build anything. He always called people to do work on their house: plumbers, carpenters, electricians. He’d called somebody to put a brick patio in the back. And if something broke—the stove or the refrigerator, the TV—he called somebody to handle that, too. Her father was always mad about something. Something was always “the height of absurdity.” That was the phrase he used. Her dad didn’t like things that were illogical or pointless or wasteful. He didn’t like half-finished projects or unmade beds or dirty dishes left in the sink. Or fat daughters.

But Hayleigh’s dad was different. He smiled a lot more than Sharon’s dad did, and made jokes, and teased her and Hayleigh—but that wasn’t the most different thing about him, Sharon now understood.

When they had first reached the bottom of the basement staircase, Sharon noticed it in the corner. That was her first clue. A piece of gray metal, shiny, cupped like a giant palm, running from the floor to the ceiling, resembling the side of an airplane or…

A rocket.

That was it. That was the secret.

Hayleigh’s dad, Sharon realized, was building a rocket in this basement. He couldn’t discuss it, because it was probably illegal. You were probably supposed to get a government permit or something. But Hayleigh’s dad was not the kind of person who filled out forms and waited around for government permits—unlike her own dad, Sharon thought, who always did things the right way, followed all the rules, just so he could complain when things didn’t work out after I did everything they told me to do , he’d say bitterly—no, Hayleigh’s dad wasn’t like that. He was a rebel. He’d do it his own way. If he got into trouble—well, fine. He’d accept the consequences. Pay the price.

Sharon didn’t know how she knew, but she knew. It was a rocket. Hayleigh’s dad had the skills, and he had the tools, and naturally he didn’t want kids fooling around with his stuff. He was building a rocket down here, and one night, one night very soon, Sharon quickly theorized, he would move it outside, maybe load it into the back of his truck and take it out to the park— no , Sharon scolded herself, not the park, that’s a dumb idea, way too public —take it out to the country, out to a big field with no houses in sight. There he’d kneel down and set up his rocket and light the fuse and run away and then squat down behind a tree, a finger stuck in each ear, and watch as the rocket rose with a great whoooooosh into the night sky, shedding sparks and smoke and one long, trailing, beautiful yellow-blue flame, as vivid and pure as the respect Sharon felt for Hayleigh’s dad, respect for his dream, and for the fact that he had worked so hard to make it come true. Respect and awe.

Had Hayleigh figured it out yet? Sharon couldn’t tell. Her friend was still strolling around the basement, grazing the tools with her fingertips, and Sharon began to get an odd sense that Hayleigh had been in this basement more often than she’d said she had. She seemed way too familiar with the layout, Sharon noticed. When she touched a tool, it wasn’t with any degree of surprise at how it felt; she’d sneaked down here many times, Sharon suspected. It made her think slightly less of her friend.

Surely, though, if Hayleigh came down here with any regularity, then she’d figured it out by now. She must know her dad is building a rocket, Sharon thought. And maybe she’d told Samantha Bollinger.

Sharon felt a flicker of jealousy. She decided that she had to ask Hayleigh about it.

“Did you ever,” Sharon said, “bring Samantha down here?” She had tried to sound casual, but her voice betrayed her. It was shaky, too high-pitched. There was also a hint of belligerence in it.

“Huh?”

“Before she moved away, I mean,” Sharon said. “Did you and Samantha ever come down here, too?”

Hayleigh shrugged. She’d positioned her palm along the front of one of the tall workbenches. She followed the smooth beveled edge all the way to the end of it. Then she looked back at Sharon. Her eyes were blank.

“Samantha,” Hayleigh said, “didn’t move away.”

“What?”

“Samantha disappeared. They never found her. She rode off on her bike one day, and she never came home. She’d told her mom she was coming over here, but that wasn’t true. We never saw her.” Hayleigh’s voice was flat. Calmly informational. “It drove her mom crazy and she killed herself. Remember? She locked herself in that garage and turned on the car engine, and that’s how she died. Don’t you remember that, Sharon? I don’t know why you always want to go past their house. Just her dad lives there now, all by himself. He’s gotten sort of crazy. Crazy from being so sad. And from thinking all these weird things about me and my dad.”

It was true. Sharon had to admit it. She had blocked out the real story of Samantha Bollinger, told herself another story she liked better, changed Samantha’s fate, so that it suited what Sharon wanted to feel.

“Anyway,” Sharon said. “You get it now, right? You’ve figured out what your dad does down here, right?”

“Yeah,” Hayleigh said. She shrugged. “I guess I’m sorta surprised that you figured it out, though. So soon, I mean.”

So soon? Sharon wanted to laugh. I’m smart, she thought. I may be fat and ugly, but I’m smart, okay? I’m a smart girl.

That’s what her father had said to her once: At least you’ve got brains . She could fill in the first part of the sentence, the part he didn’t say but clearly meant: You may be fat but at least you’ve got brains.

“Your dad’s building a rocket down here,” Sharon said, blurting it out. She wanted to giggle, too, just from how thrilling it all was. A rocket! Think of it!

“But listen,” Sharon added quickly. “I can keep a secret. Really. I won’t tell anybody.”

Hayleigh looked at her.

There was a noise at the top of the basement stairs. The board creaked sharply when the weight hit it, the concentrated mass of a booted foot. Hayleigh’s dad can fix that was the thought, lightning-quick, that came to Sharon. He can fix that squeak. Bet it’s already on his to-do list. She didn’t take her eyes away from Hayleigh’s eyes. The next noise was a heavy clumping transit down the stairs. With an extraordinarily fluid motion Hayleigh’s dad hooked his hand around Sharon’s neck, while with his other hand he covered her mouth, cutting off her scream.

He was dragging her toward the shiny metal in the corner, pulling her by her neck as if she were a large, lumpy sack, her fat legs useless and churning, and Sharon had a realization—extra-bright, extra-sharp, an explosion of insight illuminating her mind’s sky—that he had only pretended to be talking to his boss, that there hadn’t been any emergency at any job site. Then Sharon had another vision, just as bright, just as sharp, a vision of flying over rooftops and passing over her very own house, and down below were her mom and her dad and her sisters, Elizabeth and Meagan, and her dog, Oliver, and her chemistry set, the beakers and flasks lined up in a tidy row across the top of her bookshelf, just the way she’d left them. She imagined the sound of Hayleigh’s voice on the phone, earnest and concerned: I don’t know Mrs. Leinart she left my house a while ago to walk home and she didn’t say she was stopping anywhere I don’t know we’ll call if we hear from her oh yes.