The Shadow Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B
Author: Jennifer Archer
on my knees.
Iris seeps through my pores and wraps around me, her caress as soft as dandelion fluff. I know she’s trying to comfort me, and I wish that I could forgive her, but I can’t.
“I’m mad at you,” I sob. “You and Mom both. Why is she acting this way?”
You know why, Iris says, her reply a quiet buzz . She’s hiding something .
4
Maybe Mom’s right that Dad wouldn’t have wanted a memorial or an obituary, but Addie told me those things are really more for the living, the ones left behind. Some people don’t need them to get through grief. Like Mom, apparently. But some people do. Like me.
So on Saturday morning, against Mom’s wishes, I have a memorial for Dad at the lake down the road. Wyatt and Addie are with me, of course. And Iris. She hovers just beneath the surface of my senses, dim with sadness, wary of invading my space.
The day is overcast and bleak, cool but not cold. Snow still covers the peaks, but it’s all melted down here below. Friends congregate on the lake’s rocky shore, as do many of Dad’s clients, some I know and some I don’t. I spot Sylvie Rodriguez, a girl I worked with at the coffee shop last summer. I haven’t seen her more than four or five times since school started last August. Sylvie has cut her black hair to within a half inch of her scalp and added a few red streaks since I last saw her. A blue dragonfly tattoo is visible on the back of her neck. I find myself wondering if it’s new, or if it was always there, hidden beneath her hair when it was longer.
Mom didn’t come to the service, but that’s no surprise. She hasn’t spoken to me since she opened the newspaper yesterday and saw the obituary I wrote. I guess she said all she had to say then. Screamed it, really. How I had done the one thing that Dad would’ve been the most against. How I had invaded his privacy, and hers. I can’t remember Mom ever being that upset with me before.
The photograph of Dad and me that I included with the obituary seemed to bother her most of all. In the shot, he and I are standing together next to his van. Behind us, the twin peaks are visible in the distance.
Mom’s reaction to the photo keeps nagging me. Yesterday, Iris kept nagging me, too, coaxing me to ask Mom what she’s hiding, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t bring myself to tell her the strange things Dad said before he died, either. Mom’s closed-off expression and the fact that she’s even more emotional than I am hold me back.
But I can’t worry about my mother right now. This morning is for Dad.
Standing at the edge of the lake, I hold the urn containing his ashes close to me and face everyone. When their murmurs fall silent, I pull a slip of paper from my pocket and start to recite a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
After the first line, I’m too choked up to go on. Wyatt appears at my side to save me. Taking the poem from my hand, he reads:
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap’d for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
As Wyatt’s voice fades, I turn to the water and stare at the peaks. Above them, the sky is chalky gray, and the clouds huddle together, as if for support. Around me, the air is so still that when I sling my arm toward the water, the ashes sail out of the urn in a perfect arc. The lake’s dark surface ripples when they hit. The reverberation lingers, echoing inside of me.
“Good-bye, Dad,” I whisper. “I love you.”
In that moment, I feel Iris’s warmth and hear her words, hushed and reverent in my head: I loved him, too .
Needing her comfort too much to send her away, I mentally fold into her, and when my knees threaten to buckle, it’s as if Iris bears my weight and holds me up.
Sylvie is a high-energy person—a walking nerve ending. She’s
Iris seeps through my pores and wraps around me, her caress as soft as dandelion fluff. I know she’s trying to comfort me, and I wish that I could forgive her, but I can’t.
“I’m mad at you,” I sob. “You and Mom both. Why is she acting this way?”
You know why, Iris says, her reply a quiet buzz . She’s hiding something .
4
Maybe Mom’s right that Dad wouldn’t have wanted a memorial or an obituary, but Addie told me those things are really more for the living, the ones left behind. Some people don’t need them to get through grief. Like Mom, apparently. But some people do. Like me.
So on Saturday morning, against Mom’s wishes, I have a memorial for Dad at the lake down the road. Wyatt and Addie are with me, of course. And Iris. She hovers just beneath the surface of my senses, dim with sadness, wary of invading my space.
The day is overcast and bleak, cool but not cold. Snow still covers the peaks, but it’s all melted down here below. Friends congregate on the lake’s rocky shore, as do many of Dad’s clients, some I know and some I don’t. I spot Sylvie Rodriguez, a girl I worked with at the coffee shop last summer. I haven’t seen her more than four or five times since school started last August. Sylvie has cut her black hair to within a half inch of her scalp and added a few red streaks since I last saw her. A blue dragonfly tattoo is visible on the back of her neck. I find myself wondering if it’s new, or if it was always there, hidden beneath her hair when it was longer.
Mom didn’t come to the service, but that’s no surprise. She hasn’t spoken to me since she opened the newspaper yesterday and saw the obituary I wrote. I guess she said all she had to say then. Screamed it, really. How I had done the one thing that Dad would’ve been the most against. How I had invaded his privacy, and hers. I can’t remember Mom ever being that upset with me before.
The photograph of Dad and me that I included with the obituary seemed to bother her most of all. In the shot, he and I are standing together next to his van. Behind us, the twin peaks are visible in the distance.
Mom’s reaction to the photo keeps nagging me. Yesterday, Iris kept nagging me, too, coaxing me to ask Mom what she’s hiding, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t bring myself to tell her the strange things Dad said before he died, either. Mom’s closed-off expression and the fact that she’s even more emotional than I am hold me back.
But I can’t worry about my mother right now. This morning is for Dad.
Standing at the edge of the lake, I hold the urn containing his ashes close to me and face everyone. When their murmurs fall silent, I pull a slip of paper from my pocket and start to recite a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
After the first line, I’m too choked up to go on. Wyatt appears at my side to save me. Taking the poem from my hand, he reads:
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap’d for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
As Wyatt’s voice fades, I turn to the water and stare at the peaks. Above them, the sky is chalky gray, and the clouds huddle together, as if for support. Around me, the air is so still that when I sling my arm toward the water, the ashes sail out of the urn in a perfect arc. The lake’s dark surface ripples when they hit. The reverberation lingers, echoing inside of me.
“Good-bye, Dad,” I whisper. “I love you.”
In that moment, I feel Iris’s warmth and hear her words, hushed and reverent in my head: I loved him, too .
Needing her comfort too much to send her away, I mentally fold into her, and when my knees threaten to buckle, it’s as if Iris bears my weight and holds me up.
Sylvie is a high-energy person—a walking nerve ending. She’s