Flicker
Authors: Kaye Thornbrugh
Flicker
By Kaye Thornbrugh
Copyright 2012 Kaye Thornbrugh
Cover photo © Andrea Hübner
For my grandparents
Table of Contents
C
hapter Six: The Good Neigh
b
ors
Chapter Thirteen: Through the Dark
Chapter Fourteen: The Way of the World
Chapter Fifteen: Lightning Strikes
Chapter Sixteen: Hold Your Breath
Chapter Seventeen: Duck and Run
Chapter Twenty-One: Crossing Over
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Hill Folk
Chapter Twenty-Three: Forever in a Straight Line
Chapter One:
Vanishing Act
Wind rushed through
Lee
Capren’s hair as she swung up to meet the sky. Below her, the empty playground sprawled like a chil
d’s kingdom
, wavering in the summer heat.
Th
e ancient swing set screeched
in protest
;
Lee
squeezed her eyes shut as gravity pulled her down again, feeling the strange
exhilaration o
f dropping through empty space.
When she opened her eyes, she tilted her head back
and squinted at the azure sky.
“Ready to go, Lee?” Acr
oss the playground, Kendall was climbing off the top of the monkey bars. The
numerous
metallic
clips in Kendall’s blond
hair glinted in the sunlight.
“Sure,” Lee called
back
, swinging downward again
.
Just then, from the corner of her eye, Lee glimpsed a pair of wild-eyed girls with shaggy dark hair and elongated, snout-like faces.
Their posture was hunched,
feral
, and dark canine tails stuck out from beneath the hems o
f their threadbare shirts.
Their lips were curled back around sharp little fangs.
For a single floating moment, her head half-turned toward the girls that snorted and whuffed at each other in the deserted soccer field beside the
playground, Lee paused, more curious than afraid
. Her red sneakers dragged through the gravel. The dog girls pawed the grass with clawed fee
t. Coarse
black
fur covered their
wiry
arms and reverse-jointed legs.
But by the time she turned her head to look more closely, the impossible creatures had disappeared. In their place were two scrawny black dogs that watched
her keenly, ears pricked.
As she climbed off the swing,
Lee shook her head and tried to dismiss
what she’d seen, just as she
always did when something
curious
flickered at the edge of her vision.
Gnarled faces in the bark of trees
. Pretty, s
nickering
boys
with glimmering cicada’s wings who brushed past her on the sidewalk.
Pale w
omen with
glinting cat eyes
who
sat on the curb
, smoking
weird silver cigarettes
.
But they never lingered for a second glance. Heartbeats after Lee noticed them, the odd creatures always disappeared entirely, or transformed into something utterly ordinary, leaving her wondering exactly what she’d seen.
Lee had gotten into the habit of blaming these rare visions on her own inattentiveness. Lee knew that she was prone to daydreaming, to drifting off into her own imaginary worlds. All artists probab
ly had such active imaginations,
seeing the strange and fantastic in the mundane.
Kendall’s shoes crunched in the gravel as she trotted toward Lee
.
Behind Kendall, the empty redbrick elementary school looked dull
and dusty, baking in the heat.
All summer,
the two of them
had been treading the footpaths worn through the fields, huddling together in the old plywood fort in Kendall’s backyard to read yellowed fantasy novels
,
and
pedaling their bikes to and from the scrap yard outside of town just to feel like they were going someplace.
Exploring the town with Kendall had kept thoughts of returning to Bluewood High far from
Lee’s
mind—but
at
the sight
of the elementary school, the white-ti
led corridors and walls of
gray lockers of Bluewood High School
rose up
in h
er memory
. She couldn’t decide if she was anxious or excited to return for her junior year.
“We’ve been here all morning,” Kendall said
, rattling one of the swing set chains
. “I’m starving. Let’s get something to eat.”
Scooping up her backpack from the gravel near the swing set, Lee nodded, though her mind wasn’t on her best friend’s words. Her hands itched for her sketchbook, which was currently inside her pack, so she could capture the image of the dog girls before the details flitted from her memory. “I don’t have any money,” Lee warned.
“So we’ll get something cheap,” Kendall decided. “My treat.”
Lee snorted. “For once.”
“There’s a first time for everything
—
but
not necessarily a second,
”
Kendall added.
Laughing,
the two teenagers
crossed
the playground. As they stepped onto the sidewalk, leaving that child’s kingdom in silence for another afternoon, Lee stole a glance over her shoulder.
The dogs, she saw, were gone—another
vision, dispersed like smoke.
* * *
Tilting her head to get a better perspective, Lee reached for a pencil. Her sketchbook lay open in her lap and a box of colored pencils sat on the
rumpled bedspread.
“Lee, are you even listening to me?” Kendall asked, with the bemused frustration only a best friend can muster.
“Mm-hmm,” Lee mumbled
absently. She was sitting on Kendall’s bed, eng
rossed in her sketching, trying to trap the image of the dog girls on paper.
Kendall placed her hands on her hips. “You can keep drawing,” she said. “Just help me pick something.”
“What about that shirt you bought the other day? The red one.”
As Lee sketched, she expertly rubbed and blended colors with the pad of her finger.
“Then just wear some jeans with it and your red shoes. Problem solved.”
Kendall rummaged through her closet, soon unearthing a shirt. “This is cute,” she allowed, “but maybe
that sundress would be better
…
” With that, she dove back into the closet.
It was a wonder that Kendall
could find anything
: Her bedroom was a veritable war zone. The floor was covered with mounds of clothes. The top of her dresser was a clutter of makeup and jewelry. Crumpled pages covered in half-written songs were strewn everywhere. Lee, the neat-freak of this friendship, did her best to tidy up whenever Kendall left the room—she smoothed the sh
eets, piled clothes in the laundry basket
and alphabetized books as quickly as she could—but it was useless. The mess always reappeared.
Band members from Doll Hospital, The Lemon Girls and Nimrod Mighty Hunter stared down from the walls. Interspersed among them were all the sketches that Lee had given Kendall over the years. Kendall’s beloved “I Want To Believe” poster hung proudly beside a framed watercolor of Scully and Mulder that Lee had painted for Kendall’s fourteenth birthday. Only
Kendall’s
guitar, which leaned against the wall inside its black case, had a standard place.
“
Hello
,” Kendall called, toying with her necklace. It was a small, wooden heart-shaped locket on a cord. She wore it all the time. “Earth to Lee.”
Lee glanced up. “Oh. Sorry. What were you saying?”
“I
said
, now all we have to do is figure out what
you’re
going to wear.”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it does!
You can’t go to Tessa’s party looking like a ragamuffin,” Kendall teased. “It would reflect very poorly on me.”
Lee shrugged, unfazed. Tessa Willards wasn’t important to her. Kendall was the one who’d been invited to her party tonight, not Lee. Lee doubted she would be welcomed there, but she’d already promised Kendall that she would go.
Lee watched helplessly as Kendall grabbed shirts off the floor and hung them lopsidedly in her crowded closet. Mentally Lee reordered them by color and pattern. Where were those
X-Files
type powers when you needed them? “Who’s coming tonight, anyway?” she asked.
“Lexi Dower, Dev Crossing, Jonathan Shells
…
” Kendall counted attendees on her fingers. Lee grew more troubled with each name. She’d gone to school with those kids for years, and knew them well enough to have zero interest in inhabiting the same social universe as them.
Lee made a face. “Are you absolutely certain we have to go to this party?”
“You say it like it’s a death sentence,” Kendall said. “Come
on
, Lee. It’s not like we’re crossing a zombie-infested urban zone here.”
“No,” Lee contested. “We’re going to one of Tessa Willard’s parties, which is just as terrifying, if not more so.”
“That’s only because you’re so shy.”
“I’m not shy,” Lee said defensively.
It was true. Lee wasn’t
shy
. She
s
imply wasn’t very good at socializing with the kinds of people who came to Tessa Willard’s parties
, the jocks and the theatre kids, already sewn so tightly together into the great high school quilt that there was rarely room for even a single extra thread. Lee was tired of trying to worm her way in.
“Why won’t you giv
e them a chance, Lee?
”
“B
ecause Tessa’s friends are all
exactly
like Tessa. They’re clones of each other, just clothes and hair and shoes. Surely you’ve noticed?”
“That isn’t true.”
“It’s completely true,” Lee scowled. “Remember last year, when Tessa and Lexi were so mean to poor Cora
Lyons
that she spent the afternoon in the bathroom, crying? That could have been you, Kendall, or me. I don’t know why you keep trying to get in good with them.”
“I’m not trying to
get in good
,” Kendall said, a frown creasing her brow. “I just think it would be nice for us to branch out a little bit. That’s all.”