Lauren Myracle - Shine

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LAUREN MYRACLE

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(with E. Lockhart and Sarah Mlynowski)

PUBLISHERS NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and may be obtained from the Library of congress.
ISBN 978-0-8109-8417-2

Text copyright 2011 Lauren Myracle
Book design by Maria T. Middleton

Published in 2011 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Amulet Books are available at special discount when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialmarkets@abramsbooks.com or the address below.

www.abramsbooks.com

PATRICKS HOUSE WAS A GHOST. DUST COATED the windows, the petunias in the flower boxes bowed their heads, and spiderwebs clotted the eaves of the porch. Once I might have marveled at the webshow delicate they were, how intricatebut today I saw ghastly silk ropes. Nooses for sawflies and katydids and anything guileless enough to be ensnared.

Movement drew my attention to the upper corner of the porch, where a large web swayed as if it were alive. I stepped closer, and a sour taste rose in my throat. A mourning cloak was trapped within a mass of threads. One wing was pinned to its body, but the other wing, dark brown rimmed with gold, fluttered feebly.

That golden wing made me think of Mama Sweetie, Patricks grandma. It made me think of her Bible, in particular. Its gilt-edged pages were as thin as tissue, and when I ruffled them, the gold shimmered. For Christmas one year, Patrick made Mama Sweetie a wooden stand for her Bible, and I knew if I pressed my face to one of the dirty windows, Id see both the Bible and the bookstand displayed proudly in the front room.

Well, no, I didnt know that, for the simple reason that just because things used to be a certain way didnt mean theyd stay that way forever. Patrick could have stuck the Bible in a drawer, or given it away, or burned it. I couldnt imagine him doing any of those things, but my thoughts on the matter meant nothing.

Sometimes I felt like my entire existence meant nothing.

I went through the motions, however. I showered and generally kept myself clean. I ate at mealtimes, I slept at night, and when it wasnt summer, I went to school and read a lot of books. When it was summer, I still read a lot of books. But mainly, I moved through the world feeling invisibleand maybe I was. Maybe God was a giant eyeball in the hazy June sky, only there was a burn mark on His pupil in the exact spot of Black Creek, North Carolina, and that was why He didnt see me.

If He didnt see me, that meant He didnt see Patrick, either. Was not seeing us better than seeing and not caring?

I backed away from the porch, my head buzzing. I felt blurry around my edges, like smoke, or the soft ssssss of a snuffed candle, and I couldnt for the life of me remember why Id come to Patricks house in the first place. Church started in half an hour, and it would take me almost as long to bike there. What had I been thinking?

The sun pressed down on me, making me sweat. Back when we were kids, Patrick and I escaped the summer heat by worming into the crawl space beneath his house, which was cool and private and, best of all, ours. It was our secret hideaway, and we spent countless hours down there with no one to keep tabs on us but blind and sluggish bugs. The sort of bugs that would eat us one day, we used to say for the shiver of it. Coffin bugs.

The entrance to the crawl space was a small access door made from a scrap of plywood painted yellow to match the siding. It was all of two feet tall and two feet wide, and it blended in with the house almost perfectly. The only thing that gave it away was the rusty hook-and-eye latch that kept it shut.

Patrick didnt much like the dark, so we snuck down candles and matches, which would have given Mama Sweetie a fit if shed found out. We spread a tarp on the moist soil, and we set up a milk crate for a table. On any given day, wed toss snacks through the crawl space hole and then wiggle in after them, and once we were settled, wed just gab away. That was the magic of it, that Patrick and I could just talk and talk.

The crawl space beneath Patricks house held happy memories for me, so thats where I went when I left the front porch with its spiderwebs and dying butterflies. I walked around the house and found the access door, and the sight of it sent my blood pulsing.

I sat on the overgrown lawn beside the plywood door. Aunt Tildy would kill me if I got grass stains on my church clothes, but I didnt care. I drew up my legs, tucked my skirt between my thighs, and hugged my shins. Tiny no-see-ums nipped at my ankles. Humidity pasted my hair to my neck.

The last time I was here at the house was three years ago. I was thirteen, and I was so happy I glowed. Thats what Mama Sweetie told me, anyway. She said I was lit from within, and I believed her, because I felt it and knew it to be true.