Amelia Atwater-Rhodes - Token of Darkness

“Damn it, John!” he shouted, rubbing the spot he had just banged. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“I had to sneak up,” John answered. “You run faster than I do.”

Cooper fumbled for words while fighting the urge to do just that—bolt. “Look, man, I’m sorry—”

“No big,” John interrupted. Then he winced. “I mean, of course it’s—” He broke off, and shook his head.

Cooper shut his eyes for a moment and drew a breath, trying to figure out something to say that would help them to get past this. Neither of them wanted to acknowledge that the “big deal” they were both avoiding talking about had to do with Cooper spending most of the summer in the hospital following an eight-car pileup on the highway the first weekend after school let out in June. It had to do with the fact that, in the blink of an eye and the flash of brake lights, he had gone from being John’s best friend to someone even Cooper barely recognized.

When he opened his eyes, though, John wasn’t alone. The black mist from Cooper’s nightmares seemed to have risen from the floor. It rippled and crawled up John’s body, twisting around his limbs like something alive. John didn’t seem to see the shadows, but his skin rose in gooseflesh, and he crossed his arms as if he was cold.

Cooper looked to Samantha, hoping for some kind of reassurance—even hearing that he was hallucinating, and the dark creatures weren’t real would be comforting at this point—but she had backed into a corner and was kicking at them. They didn’t seem to be able to hold on to her, but they stalked around her, snarling.

John took a step back from Cooper, averting his gaze with an awkward expression. “Anyway,” he said with a shiver that dislodged two of the creatures that had been hunched on his shoulders. “I just wanted to see how you were doing. If you’re not up to hanging out, that’s … that’s cool, I guess.”

“John—”

John nodded as if in response to something else, then hoisted his backpack more solidly on his shoulder and backed hurriedly out the door, nearly knocking down a freshman trying to get in for the next class.

The shadows receded into the corners of the room, fading into something harmless. Cooper grasped the desk until his heart stopped pounding, and then he looked up at Samantha, whose form seemed tattered, the colors from her hair to her paisley stockings all a little less bright.

“I thought they were gone,” she whispered. “I haven’t seen them since the hospital.”

Cooper just stared at her, not knowing how to respond. He had not known that she had ever seen the shadows before, but had thought they were part of his private fears. He had once had a nightmare about a living, creeping, hungry darkness, like a swarm of locusts made of smoke and misery. When he woke, Samantha had been beside him.

Cooper made it through his next couple of classes using a combination of willpower and despair. He didn’t know what else to do. As soon as lunch came around, though, he rushed from the school building. As a senior with no history of discipline or academic problems, he had offcampus privileges, so no one looked twice as he walked toward town.

Samantha chattered nervously as Cooper wandered, finally deciding he should force himself to eat something. He hadn’t had breakfast, and it would be a long time before dinner. Besides, it gave him something to do other than search the corners for those things.

“I would kill for a BLT,” Samantha declared as she sat on the table at the deli while Cooper ate. She now seemed to be dressed in faded, torn jeans with dribbles and splashes of paint in a vast variety of colors, a baggy T-shirt sporting the image of a pink elephant, and a large gray sweatshirt with the zipper torn out and the sleeves cut off just above the elbows. Her earlier fears seemed forgotten. “Seriously. If I could taste anything … if I could eat that would be the first thing I would get.”

Cooper’s nerves had settled enough that he was finally able to focus on her and respond. “How do you know you’re not a vegetarian?” he asked, speaking quietly so his voice wouldn’t carry. Thankfully, the sandwich shop was so busy, he figured people wouldn’t notice that a few stray words belonged to a one-sided conversation.

“I can remember what bacon tastes like, and it is goooooood,” Samantha replied. “I’m no veggie. Have you given any more thought to what we talked about this morning?”

The burst of laughter behind him was normal enough not to even draw his attention, but the way it abruptly cut off did. It seemed like an hour passed in complete silence before a familiar voice said softly, “Hi, Coop.”

He tensed, his spine seeming to fuse into a lead bar, and it took a monumental effort to turn his head to face the head of the Lenmark cheerleading squad.

“Delilah, hi.”

Cooper tried to make the words seem welcoming and warm, but they came out flat. He and Delilah had never been very close, but she was part of what had been Cooper’s crowd. They all usually ate at the pizza place down the street, so Cooper hadn’t expected to see them here. He hadn’t considered Delilah, whose social circle wasn’t limited to the athletics department. In addition to cheering, he knew she built sets for the drama department and spent much of her free time in the photography lab’s darkroom.

He stood up and flinched as his hip gave a sharp twinge, a pain that shot from his toes up to his shoulder. The injury from the accident didn’t bother him too much anymore, but sometimes it stiffened when he sat.

For now, he stood before Delilah and felt every inch of his diminished self. She looked, as always, like she had walked right out of a magazine, in designer clothes that suited her strong and lean figure, honed by time in the gym and on the field.

With Delilah were two other girls; both looked familiar, but Cooper knew neither of their names.

“We thought we would get some lunch,” Delilah said, which Cooper thought was fairly obvious. She leaned against the back of a chair as her friends went up to the counter to order food, and sighed before saying, “I’ve missed you, Coop. I called a couple times, but your cell always went straight to voice mail.”

Since Cooper hadn’t ever charged the phone his mother had bought to replace the one destroyed in the accident, he imagined he had more than a few messages.

“Who’s she?” Samantha asked, moving to the middle of the table to avoid being jostled. Cooper still didn’t understand why Samantha couldn’t walk through people or other living creatures. He had seen some people shiver, or brush the place where their skin touched Samantha, but they almost never even glanced in her direction.

Delilah, however, looked up as if she heard something. Her gaze went right through Samantha, so it was obvious she couldn’t see the ghost, but nevertheless Samantha gave an excited hop and said, “Hello?”

Delilah looked like she was about to say something else, but at that moment one of her friends returned and asked, “Who’s this?”

“Oh.” Delilah glanced quickly at where Samantha stood, then shook her head and answered. “Cooper Blake. He’s from the team. Hey, get me a basil-mozzarella sandwich with bacon, then let’s eat outside.”

“It’s all wet—”

“It’s sunny,” Delilah interrupted, “and I’m sure it’s dry enough. Cooper will join us if he has the time.” She reached out to touch his shoulder gently before adding, “Take care, Coop.” She tossed her hair and walked directly outside without waiting for another word.

Well, that was weird. Cooper and Delilah hadn’t exactly been best friends, but in his experience girls were usually more aggressive than guys when it came to asking about things no one really needed to talk about, like the accident or how he was feeling since. Of course, Delilah wasn’t like most girls.