I can’t explain how I know this shadow is an imposter any more than I could explain why fingernails grow outwards instead of sideways. Call it delusion, call it a rare moment of intuition, but I will swear on my life that I am not alone in my room.
The shadow under the metal door always shifts, moving with the moon throughout the night.
I want to call for Baba. I want to hear his footsteps as he lumbers down the hall. I want him to open the door and switch on the light with the hand he isn’t using to rub his eyes. Just as he had when I was a child, I want him to sit on the edge of my bed and laugh at how silly I am to be scared of the dark. “Ya binty, what’s in your head can’t hurt you,” he’d cajole, tapping my forehead. Back then, he would take me downstairs for a cup of mint tea, and we would watchSanawat il Daya’auntil one of us fell asleep.
But if I call Baba into my room, something much worse than a shadow will follow him inside.
My phone is under my pillow. I know who I need to call, if I could only convince my limbs to thaw. Some primordial instinct has locked them tight, trying to keep me frozen and invisible until the danger is gone.
Tears collect in my unblinking eyes. I have to call Jesse. I have to move. Otherwise, I won’t just be playing dead. The fear alone will stop my heart.
I draw my phone out from under my pillow. The screen flickers on, harshly bright.
I can’t unlock it without looking away from the shadow.
Saliva thickens on my tongue, syrupy with my rising nausea.Count to three,I order.Count to three and look away.
One.I maneuver my phone in front of my face,
Two.My thumb hovers over the bottom of the screen, ready to swipe.
Three.
I look down.
My thumb shakes as I pull up my call log and press on Jesse’s number. He’d typed it in before I left his house.
It rings. I hold my breath, fixed on his name. (He saved it as “J. Talbot,” probably to avoid giving me the idea that we’re more than glorified business associates.)
Voicemail. The machine’s robotic message passes too quickly, and I’m plunged back into the tomblike silence of my room.
“Jesse,” I whisper. “There’s something in my room. Please … please come.”
I press the screen to end the call, and a weight settles on my legs.
When I was a kid, I heard this story about a guy who died from a prank gone wrong. His friends dressed up as kidnappers and abducted him from his dorm in the middle of the night, throwing him into a van headed for one of their houses. They dragged him into the yard and forcedhim to kneel in front of a tree stump. Trying to keep the laughter from their voices, they told him he would be executed. The poor guy was out of his mind with fear, sobbing and shaking and begging them not to do it.
They played him an audio of a sword being sharpened. In the back, another “friend” dunked a towel in a bucket of ice water. Then they forced him to count down from ten. At zero, they dropped the towel onto his neck.
The guy died immediately.
Ridiculous, isn’t it? A person can’t actually die just bybelievingthey died any more than someone could live by believing they were still alive.
But when my legs are pinned beneath the weight on top of the covers and the seconds tick by like centuries, I can believe it. I can believe a mind can be convinced of something so thoroughly that it bends science and medicine and reality itself into compliance.
The shadow beneath the metal door has moved to my dresser. Back to normal.
And sitting cross-legged on the covers is my mother.
Her hair falls in a rippling black curtain down her spine. Bright green eyes rake over me with concern. “Why are you crying, habibti? Did someone at school upset you?”
Across her sweater,SAWYER ELEMENTARY MOMis embroidered in bold letters. Her jeans are distressed at the knees and belted low at her waist.
Mama scoots closer, and I’m too frozen to do anything but stare.
“Yasmina, what’s wrong?” Tears collect in her eyes the longer I stay silent. “Did someone hurt you?”
This isn’t real. This thing sitting on my covers is not my mother. It’s wearing her clothes, and it even smells like her. The overpowering spice of her ninety-nine-cent bottle of Jordache tickles my nose. Longing surges through me, wrapping around my chest and wringing every last drop of air from my lungs.
