Shotgun Sorceress

Chapter twenty-five

Charlie’s Story

Charlie’s real name was Charlotte, and she met her shadow when she was eleven. Her parents had unwittingly let the monster into her life. Her mother was a wedding and party planner, the kind of self-centered yuppie whose friends all got pregnant so of course she had to have a baby, too. And while the baby was little and cute and everybody oohed and aahed it was all good. But once Charlie started getting bigger, her mother started losing interest. And her father? He was a Paris-trained chef who owned a very successful pair of restaurants in Miami, but he never should have been allowed anywhere near other people’s children, much less been given one of his own, and I’ll leave it at that.

Her parents trotted Charlie out at social functions so they could show off what solid family types they were to prospective business clients. And one Saturday Charlie found herself on the deck of a boat off the shore of St. Augustine, Florida.

She was off by herself when she heard something whisper her name: Charlie …

She gave a start and stared over the railing into the sparkling green water. Nobody was there. But as she looked harder, she thought she saw a dark shape moving beneath the waves lapping against the hull.

I can give you what you want, Charlie, the voice said coyly, a little louder. It was a little girl’s voice, and it was almost as if she heard it inside her head.

Tell me what you want, Charlie.

“I don’t want anything.” It was wrong to want things, she knew, because wanting things made her parents mad. Wanting just made her chest ache and her eyes burn. Wanting never helped her get anything.

“What did you say?” her mother asked behind her.

Charlie jumped; she hadn’t heard her mother walk up.

“Uh, nothing, Mama …”

Her mother bent down to whisper in Charlie’s ear. Though she still wore the smile she used with her clients, her voice and eyes were cold.

“What did I tell you last night?” Her voice took on a nasty edge.

“You told me to act happy, and smile, and play with Mr. Bannister’s kids, ’cause you want him to hire you,” Charlie stammered.

“So what the hell are you doing over here sulking by yourself, honey? Put a smile on your face. I swear, you’d better not mess this up for me …”

Letting the threat hang unfinished in the air, her mother turned away and gave the rest of the boat party a bright smile.

“Is she okay?” called Mr. Bannister. He was a huge, hairy man, but he had a nice smile, and he told silly jokes. (“What’s brown and sticky? A stick!”) Charlie decided she liked him.

“Oh, she’s just a little seasick,” her mother replied. “She’s never been on a boat before.”

“Well, how ’bout a swim? That’ll help us work up an appetite. Not that some of us need any help,” he added, laughing as he patted his belly.

His two little boys shrieked in delight and scampered to the ladder. Mr. Bannister stripped off his bright Hawaiian shirt, and her father slipped off his polo shirt and Bermuda shorts. The sight of him wearing nothing but his Speedos made her feel sick to her stomach, and she had to look away.

Tell me what you want. She peeked over the railing and saw the dark thing spreading like black ink beneath the waves.

“Are you coming?” her mother asked.

The thing in the water scared her worse than anything her parents might do to her later. But she knew her mother wouldn’t believe her if she said she saw something down there. “Can I please just stay up here?”

“Fine.” Her mother smiled tightly, then peeled off her T-shirt and went down the ladder.

Charlie moved around the railing to watch the others swim. The Bannister boys giggled as they splashed water on each other. They probably got to go to the beach all the time. She’d lived in Florida all her life, but her parents never took her to see the ocean. They’d gone to the beach, but always left her behind with a babysitter. Until today. Today she was finally convenient.

A knot of rage tightened in Charlie’s chest as she watched her mother laughing and smiling that fake, fake smile of hers as she treaded water and chatted with Mr. Bannister. And there was her father, floating on his back and looking so very unconcerned and happy with himself, but Charlie knew that men who did what he did deserved to go to hell …

“I want them gone,” she whispered through clenched teeth.

Suddenly, the dark shape surged up under her father. He had just enough time to let out a shriek before it dragged him under and tore him apart, staining the water with his blood.

Her mother screamed.

“Oh Jesus, get in the boat, get in the boat!” Mr. Bannister yelled frantically to his kids.

Her mother, who’d always been a strong, graceful swimmer, had already reached the ladder and was almost clear of the water when the thing grabbed her leg. It yanked her down so hard that Charlie heard her bones snap. Then came another furious churning under the waves. The water bloomed red.

Then silence.

Mr. Bannister, who’d stopped when he saw her mother snatched from the ladder, was treading water with his boys a few yards away. The children were crying, and Mr. Bannister’s face was gray.

Finally, when it was clear the thing had gone, Mr. Bannister towed his kids to the boat and boosted them onto the ladder. After they’d scrambled up to the deck, he hauled himself up with shaking arms.

Charlie was still staring at the fading bloom of blood, numb with shock. What had she done?

Mr. Bannister put his arm around her and gently pulled her away from the railing.

“Oh, please don’t look, you shouldn’t see that,” he said. “Jesus. It musta been a shark. I had no idea they’d be out this time of year. God, I’m so sorry … you poor kid, nobody should have to see something like that.”

She wasn’t sorry, but she was terribly afraid.


The Coast Guard never found any trace of her parents’ bodies, nor did they manage to catch any sharks. After the memorial service, Charlie left Florida and went to live with her aunt’s family in Cuchillo, Texas. It was hot and dry and far, far away from the ocean.

Her mother’s sister, Lois Wilson, was a real estate agent, a tall blond woman in her early forties who’d married the local tennis pro right out of college. They had two teenage girls, Misty and Jennifer, who were just as tall and pretty as their mother, and like their father they had dazzling smiles, good tans, and killer overhead volleys.

Charlie, like her father, had bark-brown hair, freckles, and a pug nose. And, as her mother had often told her, she was fat. She’d taken a lot of teasing back in elementary school, so she knew deep down that she was worthless and ugly, but moving into the Wilsons’ big limestone house just drove it home.

Summer came and school let out, and Misty and Jennifer went off to sports camps. Mrs. Wilson deemed Charlie too young to be left at home alone. So she was sent along with Mr. Wilson every morning as he went to work at the Swim & Racquet Club at the edge of the city.

They’d arrive early, before the club opened. Mr. Wilson would go off to check the courts and open the pro shop. Charlie would be able to swim by herself for an hour or so, when the whole pool was her private blue ocean. She’d pretend she was crossing the English Channel, or she’d throw pebbles in the deep end and pretend she was diving for pearls. Sometimes she wondered about what had really happened at St. Augustine. The voice couldn’t have been real. Could it?

But when the club opened and people started trickling in, her paradise rapidly turned into purgatory. By noon the pool was clogged with screaming kids; the poolside became a maze of greased adult bodies basking in the sun. Even worse, her breasts were growing, perpetually sore little lumps that made her feel even more self-conscious. At school, she was covered, camouflaged. Here her every flaw lay blazing in the sun.

One boy, a big red-haired thirteen-year-old named Jason, delighted in harassing her. At first, it was just the usual taunts about her weight. Then his tactics changed alarmingly.

It started when she was near the four-foot mark in the pool, mutely watching a group of seven-year-olds play Marco Polo, when Jason grabbed her butt. She whirled around, a protest on her lips that died when she saw he’d pulled down the front of his trunks, just enough to expose his genitals.

“Touch my monkey,” he drawled.

The sight made her remember her father. Charlie splashed away from Jason, numb with shock and nausea, and got out of the pool to sit in the cold shade of the snack bar.

Jason was still in the pool, smirking at her. She watched as he called over two of his buddies and whispered something to them. Then all three of them started pointing at her and laughing.

Charlie felt herself blush a deep red. She wished the ground would open up and swallow her. She couldn’t tell the lifeguard what had happened, not now, because even if Jason got in trouble, he’d just tell all the other kids what a p-ssy she was.

She prayed that Jason would get bored and find someone else to bother, but he didn’t. The very next day, he rubbed up against her in the deep end.

“My big brother said you fat chicks are good f*cks,” he giggled. “He said it’s ’cause you’re so ugly, you’re grateful to get any dickin’ you can.”

Charlie fled from the pool and went to the ladies’ locker room. She changed back into her shorts, sandals, and a dry T-shirt. There was no way she was going back into the pool. She’d just go watch her uncle give tennis lessons.

But when she stepped outside, she saw that Jason and his two friends were standing around on the sidewalk that led to the tennis courts. Charlie bit her lip. There was no way she could avoid the boys.

Then she noticed that the back gate was open. There wasn’t much to the land beyond, just patchy grass and a winding arroyo obscured by short mesquites and thick brush. The arroyo snaked around the whole west side of the city, a shallow, muddy gash in the arid landscape. Mr. Wilson said that the club owners wanted to turn the land into a golf course, but some local environmentalists had gotten it protected as a wetland. He’d told her not to go back there because people had seen coyotes skulking in the brush.

After St. Augustine, coyotes just didn’t seem all that scary. And there would be butterflies and rocks and plants and stuff, much more interesting than tennis.

Charlie went through the gate and padded across the dry grass toward the arroyo. The sun seemed hotter out here, and now that she was away from the pool and its smells of chlorine and suntan lotion, her head practically buzzed with the scent of a thousand weedy wildflowers. She waded into the brush and stopped beside a patch of sunflowers that towered over her. She stared up at the bumblebees fumbling in the heavy, nodding blooms. A beautiful black-and-yellow butterfly flitted past her face and lighted on a small thorny bush a few feet away. Charlie stepped over and bent down to get a better look at the butterfly. Her shadow crossed it, and it flittered away. The stench of rotten meat slid up her nostrils.

She looked down and saw the fresh carcass of a headless jackrabbit just a few inches from her toes. Shiny black ants covered the ragged stump of its neck and crawled through the blood-matted fur. She could do nothing but stare at it, morbidly mesmerized.

“Hey, fatso!”

Charlie jumped away from the dead rabbit. Jason and his two friends had put on their sneakers and come through the back gate. They were sauntering toward her, grinning. Her heart pounded hard in her ears as she realized the horrible mistake she’d made coming out here where none of the adults could see. The boys would be able to do whatever they wanted if they caught her.

She plunged into the brush, tripping over rocks and fallen branches. Thorns tore at the bare flesh on her arms as she pushed through the mesquites, trying to find a place to hide. Then she broke free of the branches and nearly fell as she stumbled down the muddy red bank into the arroyo. The winding, shallow creek was wide as a road, and the water came up to her knees. Her feet scared away a school of tiny, translucent minnows.

She tried to splash across to the other side, but the red mud sucked at her soles. Her left foot got stuck when she was halfway across. Her terror turned to frustrated anger as she tried to pull her foot free, only to lose her sandal in the mud.

The mesquites rattled, and the boys appeared on the bank.

“Hey, that creek’s too small for a whale like you,” laughed Jason.

Charlie’s heart was pounding with rage.

These little boys need to be taught a lesson, don’t they, Charlie? It was the little girl’s voice from the ocean, whispering inside her head.

“Yeah, come on out of there,” said one of the other boys. “We just wanna play with you.”

“What if I don’t want to play?” she retorted.

“Then we’ll make you,” Jason replied, not smiling.

Charlie could feel her shadow spreading beneath her, hiding under the red silt, darkening the water to the color of blood. She could feel the beating of the boys’ hearts, and she knew that the cruel power they’d wielded in the pool was gone in this living water.

“Then I guess you’ll have to come down here and get me, penis breath,” she said. “Unless you’re scared of the water.”

The boys looked at each other, then hopped down the bank and splashed toward her.

“You’re the only one who’s gonna have penis breath,” Jason threatened.

“Jason, did you ever think about what it’s like to die?” she asked.

He frowned, confused. “No.”

“That’s too bad. You should’ve thought about it, ’cause now you’re dead!”

The dark, silty clouds curling around the boys’ ankles suddenly turned to hard, razor-sharp jaws that clamped deep into their flesh. They screamed as their legs were ground down into the watery maws like celery sucked into a garbage disposal. In seconds their bodies were liquefied and consumed. The slashed rags of their swim trunks and sneakers were all that remained.

Charlie stared at the bloody water and rags and started to shiver. Dear God, she hadn’t really wanted this, had she?

Her sandal bobbed to the surface.

Run back to the clubhouse as fast as you can, the voice told her. Tell them you came out here to play hide-and-seek with Jason and his little friends. Two men grabbed the boys, but you got away because you were hiding.

She grabbed the sandal, shoved it onto her foot, scrambled up the bank, and ran through the brush. Oh God, what had she done, what had she done? By the time she made it back to the gate, she was crying and screaming for help at the top of her lungs. It felt good to scream. A half-dozen people crowded around her, and she haltingly told them what the voice had said to tell. Someone ran to fetch Mr. Wilson and the club manager.

They wrapped her in a beach towel, and Mr. Wilson sat with her and tried to soothe her with kind words and a soda from the snack bar. Charlie drank it, even though she felt sick to her stomach. Her lower belly hurt, too, a weird crampy ache she’d never felt before.

The police arrived and searched the arroyo. Soon, the officers came back with the boys’ bloody trunks and sneakers in plastic bags.


When she finally got back to the house, Charlie locked herself in the bathroom and drew a big tub of hot water.

She undressed and eased herself in, wishing that the tub was bigger so that she could get her whole body under the water. The dried mud melted away from her arms and legs, staining the water a brownish red.

Charlie …

Suddenly, there came a bright pain like someone had stabbed her lower belly with an ice pick. She doubled over, bile rising in her throat.

Her eyes widened when she realized she was bleeding. A thin tendril of blood began to spread through the water. The pain was so bad she thought she might faint.

You’re a woman now, Charlie. Hurts, doesn’t it?

“Please, make it stop,” she whimpered.

You’d be hurting a lot worse right now if I hadn’t been there today to save you from those boys. I won’t take away the blood, but I can take away the pain, if you do something for me.

“Yes, anything,” she gasped. It felt as if her womb was trying to turn itself inside out.

Tell your aunt and uncle that you don’t want to go back to the club, not after what happened today. Tell them you’re old enough to be at the house by yourself …


The Wilsons reluctantly agreed to let her stay at home, and the voice took her for long walks around the city. They visited all the playgrounds and parks in the city, and she learned about the best places for her shadow: the river, park ponds, drainage pipes, ditches, even the perpetually sodden ground around the public water fountains.

She also learned to spot the quiet men who lurked near the playgrounds. Sometimes they sat and fed the birds, sometimes they jogged or walked dogs, but they always watched the children. One afternoon, she hung around a merry-go-round until one of the men noticed her. Pretending she didn’t see him, she walked off to a deserted alley.

The man followed her in. He offered her a soda, then tried to grab her. She let her shadow devour him in a puddle of fetid water beside a Dumpster.


After that, her shadow made her hunt in earnest. She walked all day, sometimes even skipping lunch when her shadow scented a pedophile or a new wet place. By early August, she’d trapped two more men. Hunting was easiest when she was on her period; when she was bleeding, her shadow spoke to her constantly, urging her on. When she wasn’t near her period, the shadow spoke rarely, and only around water. When it wasn’t there to reassure her, she worried about the hunt, and lay awake at night, wondering if her soul was destined for hell.


When school started, Charlie had to abandon her daily walks for the dull routine of books and teachers and bland cafeteria food. She was in junior high school now; she’d hoped it would be better than elementary school, but it was just bigger.

She sat in the back of the classrooms, as always. Almost everyone ignored her. Everyone except her shadow.

It started to whisper ominous suggestions when she was walking to classes:

See that boy? He burned a litter of kittens alive. He’s going to the restroom; follow him in and let me have him.

See that girl? She’s been trying to poison her baby brother, putting soap in his formula. She’ll kill him soon if you don’t help me take her.

Charlie knew she couldn’t possibly do what her shadow wanted, not at school. Parks and underpasses were one thing; there was lots of space, lots of ways to slip away unnoticed even if people screamed as they were dying. But she was trapped at school. She’d get caught for sure.

She tried to ignore her shadow’s exhortations by making up rhymes in her head while she was between classes or by doing anagrams and palindromes in class when the teachers got boring. But when her math class had a young substitute teacher named Mr. Berling, the shadow became unbearable.

Mr. Berling was young and smiled a lot. He explained things a whole lot better than their regular teacher, and Charlie liked him.

He touches little girls, the shadow told her. Takes them out to see the horsies on his father’s farm and feels them up in the stable.

“Able was I ere I saw Elba,” Charlie muttered under her breath. Her hands were shaking so bad she couldn’t write.

He’s scum, just like the rest of them. Follow him home, let him take you to the farm. He’ll fit nicely in the horse trough.

“Stressed desserts.” Charlie thought she was going to start crying.

“Charlie, are you okay?” asked Mr. Berling.

“I think I ate something bad at lunch,” she stammered. “I think I need to go to the bathroom for a while.”

“Please do,” he agreed.

Charlie bolted from the classroom, ran downstairs to the girls’ restroom in the basement. It was usually empty; Charlie prayed no one else would be in there.

She pushed through the door and found four girls clustered around a pack of Camels. Two were inexpertly puffing on cigarettes as the third showed the fourth how to work the childproof lighter. They all turned to stare at her when she came in.

Charlie, get out of here this instant! the shadow demanded. But it seemed to be growing weaker, recoiling from the smoke. With each breath she took, it slipped farther away.

“Can I try one of those?” she asked, stepping toward the group.

“I guess,” said the girl with the pack. She pulled out a cigarette and handed it and the lighter to Charlie.

Charlie lit it and took an experimental drag, then immediately started to cough and gag. This was surely the foulest thing she’d had in her mouth since … since a time she didn’t want to remember. Eyes streaming, she took another puff.

It was working, wind and fire canceling water and earth. Her shadow’s indignant demands were faint, fading into the rhythmic drip of the leaky faucet.


Charlie soon learned that it only took two cigarettes a day to silence her shadow. She smoked them on the sly in the bathroom at school and in the backyard at home. When the shadow started to talk to her in her dreams, Charlie bought incense and started burning it in her room at night.

She knew she was vulnerable without her shadow. The sick men she’d hunted before were still around. And she had the awful suspicion that she was still attuned to them, and they were attracted to her. She needed a way to protect herself.

So when her aunt asked her what she wanted for her fifteenth birthday, she asked for martial arts lessons. Her uncle took her to Master Kim’s Tae Kwon Do Dojang, bought her a white uniform and belt, and enrolled her for a class that started that very night.


Charlie had always hated PE classes, and although tae kwon do was several degrees harder than any sport she’d been made to try at school, she liked it instantly. Unlike running stairs or chasing balls, the kicks and strikes had a point, a real and practical purpose. Everything she learned was useful; getting into shape was just a happy side effect.

Another happy benefit of the class was David. He was a year older than Charlie, tall and cute but painfully shy. Charlie was attracted to him the moment she saw him. It took her weeks to swallow her own fear and talk to him after class, but once she did they became fast friends. Best friends, and as far as she could tell, each other’s only friend. He already had his driver’s license, so they often went out to see movies or go hiking in the low hills north of the city.

Six months after they started going out, Charlie knew that she loved David, even though he’d only hugged her briefly and had never tried to kiss her. He didn’t say so, but she suspected it was because of her smoking. His favorite aunt had died of lung cancer, and he hated being around smoke. She cut back as much as she thought she could, and wished she could explain her habit to him. But she knew that her shadow, although it had gone silent, would not tolerate being exposed.


A year later, David got his red belt, and Charlie got her blue. They were both drenched in sweat by the end of their respective skills tests. Charlie took a quick shower and changed at the dojang, but David never liked showering in the men’s room there, since Master Kim had not thought to provide separate stalls for the men.

“I feel way gross,” he said as they climbed into his truck. “I probably stink, too. Sorry. Let’s go back to my place and let me get cleaned up, and then you wanna go get some ice cream?”

“Sure.” Charlie suddenly realized that she hadn’t had a cigarette all day. She hadn’t smoked that morning because she wanted her lungs clean for the test, and she’d forgotten to bring her pack with her for a puff in the ladies’ room afterward.

“It’s really cool that you’ve got your blue. Now you’ll be able to spar with us in tournaments. I heard Master Kim on the phone the other day; he’s arranging for all of us to go to Corpus Christi next month for the Tejas Invitational. That will totally kick butt; we’ll get to go to the beach. I’ve never been swimming in the ocean before.”

The ocean. Charlie’s skin prickled with dread.

“I—I can’t go,” she muttered.

“What do you mean? You gotta go, this will be too cool to miss!”

“I can’t.” Dammit, why had she forgotten her cigarettes?

“Is it because you’re nervous about competing? You shouldn’t worry about that, you’re really good. And you know how to intimidate people. I mean, you should see the look you get on your face when you hit the heavy bag—”

“Look, don’t bug me about this!” she snapped. “I said I can’t go, end of discussion!”

“Okay, okay, sorry.”

They drove on in silence until they got to David’s house. The place was empty; his father was probably off on a sales trip, and his mother was probably working another fourteen-hour nursing shift at the hospital. David didn’t like to talk about his parents much.

She followed him into the house and to his bedroom. David kept his room excruciatingly tidy; Charlie doubted she’d even be able to find dust on the tops of his bookshelves.

“You wanna just hang out here while I shower?” he asked as he pulled fresh clothes out of his dresser. “If you want a Coke or anything, just help yourself.”

“Okay.”

David padded off to the bathroom, and she sat down on the edge of his bed, trying not to muss the perfectly smooth green bedspread. She stared around at the neat rows of kung fu movie posters on the walls.

I wonder what David keeps under his bed.

Charlie’s breath caught in her throat. Had that been her own thought, or her shadow’s?

“Are you there?” she whispered, aching for a cigarette. “Damn you, David’s a good guy, there’s nothing bad under his bed.”

Are you sure?

Charlie sat very still, muttering anagrams to herself while she tried to ignore the dreadful curiosity building inside her. She could hear the hiss and spatter of water from the shower.

Are you afraid? If you don’t look, you’ll always wonder.

“Damn you.” Charlie slid off the bed, got down on her hands and knees, and peeked under the bed. She pushed aside a baseball mitt and a pair of cleats and saw a wide, flat cardboard box. She pulled it out and opened it up. Inside was a stack of comic books in plastic sleeves.

“See, it’s just comics,” she said, starting to rifle through them. “Batman, and Nighthawk, and the Hulk, and … oh shit.”

At the bottom was a Swedish magazine, unsleeved. She couldn’t understand the words, but the pictures of naked prepubescent boys were clear enough. The center spread showed an elevenish boy giving a slightly older boy a blow job. And tucked inside the back cover were three Polaroids of a naked boy in different poses on David’s bed. On the same green bedspread she’d tried not to wrinkle.

Charlie felt completely and utterly numb. Defeated. She put everything back exactly the way she’d found it and reassumed her perch on the bed. A few minutes later, David came in, freshly dressed and toweling off his short brown hair.

“You’re right, I shouldn’t be nervous about Corpus Christi,” she announced. “I changed my mind; I’ll go to the tournament.”

His face broke into a broad grin, and he leaned over and gave her a quick hug. “That’s great! We’ll have a terrific time, I bet.”

In her mind, Charlie could see David, the only real friend she’d ever had, being torn apart in the waves. Her shadow felt smug, satisfied.

Was her whole life going to be like this?


Despite her depression, Charlie did well at the tournament, placed tenth in her belt class out of a field of seventy competitors. David did even better, placing third. In fact, most of Master Kim’s students did quite well, so he took all eight of them out for pizza that night, and drove them to the beach in his big van the next morning.

The sky was overcast, and though it was a hot day, the strong, salt-greasy wind from the ocean carried a chilly bite.

“Watch out for undertow!” Master Kim admonished as they piled out of the van in their flip-flops and big T-shirts. “It take you down like that.” He hit his palm with his fist for emphasis. “And watch out for what lifeguard say. If he yell ‘shark,’ get out of water, fast as you can.”

Charlie walked across the sand and set down her beach bag. She pulled out the single-edged razor blade she’d hidden in the folds of her towel. Hiding it in her hand, she kicked off her flip-flops and headed out to meet the waves.

David had run ahead of her and was already paddling around, happy as an otter. The water was dark, a gray like decaying headstones. Then Charlie waded out away from the others until she was in chest-deep.

He’s in over his head, her shadow whispered. Let me have him.

“No.”

For a moment, nothing happened as her shadow considered this new rebellion. Then Charlie felt a sharp cramp, deep in her womb.

Give him to me. The shadow’s little-girl voice was ominous.

The cramp got worse, and bile rose in Charlie’s throat. “No.”

I saved you! the shadow shrieked inside her head. Without me, you’d be less than nothing, and this is how you repay me?

“Maybe I am nothing. But it’s better than what you are.”

I’m your God, and don’t you forget that.

The cramping became a wrenching pain in her stomach and intestines, and she cried out.

“Charlie?” David called, paddling toward her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, please don’t come over here,” she managed to call back.

You’ll do as I say. And today we’re going to start with that little boyf*cker over there.

“You haven’t proved to me that he’s done more than look, and even if he has, I won’t let you. Not today.”

She began to slit her left wrist with the razor blade. Her blood was invisible in the dark water. “I’d rather die than live like this. You’re not getting my permission to kill, never ever again. You asked me what I wanted, and now I want you to go away.”

The shadow shrieked inside her head, the pain almost unbearable. A big, sandpapery shape bumped up against her body. Sharp jaws clamped down on her bleeding wrist.

It yanked her down beneath the waves and shoved her into the sandy bottom. Through the cloudy water, she could see the pearly dead eyes of the big shark holding her down. The shark’s wide, razored mouth was inches from her face.

Give. Me. The. Boy.

Charlie kicked against the shark, churning up the sand, sharp shells and rocks cutting her legs. With her free hand, she beat against the shark’s snout, but the huge fish wouldn’t budge. Her eyes burned, and her lungs screamed for air.

She saw movement in the corner of her eye. David was diving down toward her.

“No!” she tried to scream, but all that came out was her last bit of air in a long string of bubbles.

The shark released her and rose to meet David. She pushed off the bottom, trying to reach them, but she’d gone too long without a breath. She blacked out.


Charlie came to on a stretcher on the sand. Her left arm was splinted and wrapped in bloody gauze. Master Kim and two paramedics hovered over her. Kim’s face was grave.

“Where’s David?” she whispered.

“I’m right here.” He pushed through the crowd and knelt beside her. There wasn’t a scratch on him. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”


Her shadow seemed to be gone. But the shark’s attack crushed bones in her wrist and forearm and severed a couple of tendons. The doctors said she’d need more surgeries and it would be at least a year before she regained full use of her hand. She felt weaker than she ever had before.

David came to visit her in the hospital the next day. He could barely sit still, and his eyes glowed with fever.

“It told me that I could save you, just by wanting to,” he said after the nurse left.

“It?” Charlie felt a deep chill.

“Yeah. It’s like … it’s incredible. I can kick more ass than Bruce Lee and Batman combined! I just have to be near water, and no one can stop me.”

“Oh God, David …” Charlie trailed off as it all sank in.

Her best friend seemed not to hear her. “I’m gonna go away, maybe to New York or Los Angeles. I just thought you should know, ’cause we’re buddies and all. I don’t need school, I don’t need Master Kim. Now I can do anything I want.”

“David, no, please, don’t do this, listen to me—”

“Sorry, Charlie, I gotta cruise.” He planted a quick, hard kiss on her forehead.

And then he was gone.

Charlie lay in bed, listening to her heart pound. Between the beats, she thought she could hear the shadow’s little-girl laughter.