Inside the Shadow City Read Online Free PDF Page B

wore black.
    2. She carried her black notebook everywhere, but never took notes during class.
    3. She was nowhere to be found during lunch.
    4. No one else seemed to know she existed.
    5. She possessed a remarkable ability to disappear at will.
    This last observation—or lack thereof—was the main reason my list stopped short. Countless times on countless days, I would follow Kiki down one of the corridors only to turn a corner and find myself pursuing the wrong girl.
    By March, I grew frustrated. I made up my mind to follow Kiki Strike home, hoping to uncover her secrets once and for all. Were there flowery curtains on her bedroom windows? Did her mother meet her at the door with a big hug? Were there other little Strikes running about? I hoped not. The chance that Kiki might be an ordinary girl filled me with dread.
    I wouldn’t have admitted it, but Kiki had given me a glimmer of hope. Until she had arrived at the Atalanta School, I had resigned myself to a lonely existence. No one ever passed me notes or invited me to parties. As far as my schoolmates were concerned, I wasn’t even there. Kiki was invisible, too, but she appeared to like it that way. She wasn’t interested in being popular. For some reason I had yet to discover, she had chosen to be dangerous instead. More than anything, I wanted to learn her secret. And if Kiki Strike turned out to be just another social misfit, I would be crushed. But that was a risk I was willing to take.
    I suppose you’re thinking that I could have asked her, but if so, you’re missing the point. A girl who’s announced that she’d like to be dangerous is hardly a reliable source of information. I wasn’t interested in what Kiki wanted me to know or was willing to tell me. I wanted the truth, and I needed a way to see it for myself.
    â€¢ • •
    The day I decided to follow Kiki Strike home, I skipped my last class and prepared to hide outside the school and wait for her to appear. It wasn’t until I opened the front door that I realized I had failed to check the weather report. The steps of the school were covered with snow,and I worried that my tracks might give me away. But I was too curious to postpone my plan. I wrapped a beige scarf about my head for camouflage and searched for a hiding place.
    I didn’t have to look for long. The exterior of the Atalanta School was riddled with countless nooks and crannies just large enough to conceal a girl—though few girls chose to use them. We had all heard the story of the boy who had hidden in one of the crevices back in the days when the looming Gothic structure had been a home for wayward children. Before the boy could make his escape, a daggerlike icicle fell from a window ledge and speared him through the chest. Every winter, at least one hysterical girl would claim to have seen his ghost staggering through the halls, the melting ice leaving a watery trail.
    I had always believed the story was nonsense, but when I looked up at the building that afternoon, I could see crops of icicles growing under every window. I kept a safe distance and crouched in the shadow of a boxwood bush near the school’s only exit—an iron gate that opened onto the sidewalk.
    Shortly after the three o’clock bell, Kiki Strike emerged from the building and walked briskly down the path that led to the gate. Wearing a military-style coat that reached down to her ankles and a Cossack hat of the blackest fur, she looked as dangerous as anyone under five feet could. More importantly, because she was dressed entirely in black, she stood out against the snow. For once, I thought, she had nowhere to hide.
    Thanks to the weather, the streets were empty, and for the first few blocks, I was able to follow Kiki at a safedistance. From the school, she walked west on Sixty-eighth Street. There was no car waiting for her on the corner of Lexington Avenue, and she passed both the subway station and the