Maybe I should have tossed a penny in the fountain
too.
“Yeah. They might have something.” Emma
smiled, and we made our way quickly down the central
corridor. The tension in my neck eased with each step,
and I only realized I’d been grinding my teeth when
my jaw suddenly relaxed. By the time we stepped into
the cloud of perfumed air near at the Sears makeup
counter, the panic had completely receded into
memory.
It was over. I’d narrowly escaped complete terror
and utter humiliation.
A little giddy from relief, Emma and I glanced
through the dresses, then spent the next hour trying on
goofy, pastel-colored pants and flamboyant hats to
pass the time, while I kept my mental fingers crossed
that, when we left, the coast would be clear.
Metaphorically speaking.
Rachel Vincent / 9
“How you feelin’?” Emma tilted the brim of a neon
green hat and smoothed the long blond hair trailing
beneath it. She grinned and made a face at herself in
the mirror, but her eyes were serious. If I wasn’t ready
to go, she would hide out in the Sears granny section
with me for as long as it took.
Em didn’t truly understand about my panic
attacks—no one did. But she’d never pushed me to
explain, never tried to ditch me when things got weird,
and never once looked at me like I was a freak.
“I think I’m good,” I said, when I realized that no
traces remained of the shadowed horror I’d glimpsed
earlier. “Let’s go.”
The boutique Em wanted to hit first was upstairs,
so we left our hats and sherbet-colored pants in the
dressing room and laughed our way through Sears
until we found the in-store escalator.
“I’m gonna wait until everyone’s there—till the
dance floor’s totally packed—then I’ll press up really
close to him.” Clutching the rubber handrail, Emma
twisted to face me from the tread above, a mischievous
grin lighting up her eyes. “Then when he’s
really
happy to see me, I’ll yank his zipper, shove him back,
and start screaming. They’ll probably throw him out of
the dance. Hell, maybe they’ll expel him from school.”
“Or call the cops.” I frowned as we stepped off the
scrolling stairs and into the bed-and-bath department.
“They wouldn’t do that, would they?”
She shrugged. “Depends on who’s chaperoning. If
it’s Coach Tucker, Toby’s screwed. She’ll stomp his
10 / My Soul to Lose
balls into the ground before he even has a chance to
zip up.”
My frown deepened as I ran my hand across the
end of a display bed piled high with fancy pillows. I
was all for humiliating Toby, and I was certainly up
for wounding his pride. But as satisfying as the whole
thing sounded, getting him arrested hardly seemed like
a fitting consequence for dumping me the week before
homecoming. “Maybe we should rethink that last
part…”
“It was your idea.” Emma pouted.
“I know, but…” I froze, and my hand flew to my
neck as a familiar ache began at the base of my throat.
No.
Noooo!
I stumbled back against the bed, suddenly
swallowed whole by a morbid certainty so vicious I
could hardly draw my next breath. Terror washed over
me, a bitter wave of anguish. Of grief I couldn’t
understand, or even place.“Kaylee? Are you okay?”
Emma stepped in front of me, half blocking me from
the other shoppers’ sight, and lowered her voice
dramatically. “It’s happening again?”
I could only nod. My throat felt tight. Hot.
Something heavy coiled in my stomach and slithered
toward my throat. My skin crawled with the
movement. Any moment, that swelling screech would
demand freedom and I would fight to contain it.
One of us was going to lose.
Rachel Vincent / 11
Emma’s grip tightened on her purse and I
recognized the helpless fear in her eyes. They probably
reflected my own. “Should we go?”
I shook my head and forced out two last whispered
words. “Too late…”
My throat burned. My eyes watered. My head
swam with pain, with echoes of the shriek now trying
to claw its way out of me. If I didn’t let it, it would tear
me apart.
Nononono…! It can’t be. I don’t see it!
But there it was—across the aisle, surrounded by
rainbow-hued mountains of bath towels. A deep
shadow, like a cocoon of gloom.
Who is it?
But there
were too many people. I couldn’t see who swam in
that darkness, who wore shadows like a second skin.
I didn’t want to see.
I closed my eyes, and shapeless, boundless terror
closed in on me from all sides. Suffocating me. That
bitter grief was too hard to fight in the dark, so I forced
my eyes open again, but that did little good. The panic
was too strong this time. Darkness was too close. A
few steps to the left, and I could touch it. Could slide
my hand into that nest of shadows.
“Kaylee?”
I shook my head because if I opened my mouth—or
even unclenched my jaws—the scream would rip its
way free. I couldn’t force myself to meet Emma’s
eyes. I couldn’t tear my gaze from the shadows
coalescing around…someone.
Then the crowd shifted. Parted. And I saw.
12 / My Soul to Lose
No.
At first, my mind refused to translate the images
sent from my eyes. Refused to let me understand. But
that blissful ignorance was much too brief.
It was a kid. The one in the wheelchair, from the
food court. His thin arms lay in his lap, his feet all but
swallowed by a pair of bright blue sneakers. Dull
brown eyes peered from a pale, swollen face. His head
was bare. Bald. Shiny.
It was too much.
The shriek exploded from my gut and ripped my
mouth open on its way out. It felt like someone was
pulling barbed wire from my throat, then shoving it
through my ears, straight into my head.
Everyone around me froze. Then hands flew to
cover unprotected ears. Bodies whirled to face me.
Emma stumbled back, shocked. Scared. She’d never
heard it—I’d always avoided catastrophe with her
help.
“Kaylee?” Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear her.
I couldn’t hear anything over my own screaming.
I shook my head. I wanted to tell her to go—that
she couldn’t help me. But I couldn’t even think
anymore. I could only shriek, tears pouring down my
face, my jaws open so wide they hurt. But I couldn’t
close them. Couldn’t make it stop. Couldn’t even dial
back the volume.
People moved all around me now. Mothers let go
of their ears to herd their kids away, foreheads
Rachel Vincent / 13
furrowed with the headache we all shared. Like a spear
through the brain.
Go…
I thought, silently begging the bald child’s
mother to push him away. But she stood frozen, both
horrified and somehow transfixed by my audio
onslaught.
Motion to my right drew my attention. Two men in
khaki uniforms ran toward me, one yelling into a twoway radio, his free hand over his other ear. I only
knew he was yelling because his face was flushed with
the effort.
The men pulled Emma out of the way, and she let
them. They tried to talk to me, but I couldn’t hear
them. Couldn’t make out more than a few words from
their silent lips.
“…stop…”
“…hurt?”
“… help…”
Terror and grief swirled inside me like a black
storm, drowning out everything else. Every thought.
Every possibility. Every hope.
And still I screamed.
One of the mall cops reached for me, and I
stumbled backward. I tripped on the base of the
display bed and went down on my butt. My jaw
snapped shut—a brief mercy. But my head still rang
with the echo of my shriek, and I couldn’t hear him.
And an instant later, the scream burst free again.
Surprised, the cop stepped back, speaking into his
walkie again. He was desperate. Terrified.
14 / My Soul to Lose
So was I.
Emma knelt next to me, hands over her ears. Her
purse lay forgotten on the ground. “Kaylee!” she
shouted, but made no sound I could hear. She reached
for her phone.
And as she dialed, color suddenly drained from the
world, like
The Wizard of Oz
in reverse. Emma went
gray. The cops went gray. The shoppers went gray.
And suddenly everyone stood in a swirling, twisting
colorless fog.
I sat in the fog.
Still screaming, I waved my hands near the ground,
trying to feel. Real fog was cold and damp, but this
was…insubstantial. I couldn’t feel it at all. Couldn’t
stir it. But I could see it. I could see things
in
it.
On my left, something twisted. Writhed. Something
too thick and vertical to be serpentine. It twisted
somehow
through
a shelf of towels, without ever
touching the shoppers pressed against them, as far
from me as they could get without leaving the
department.
Apparently I was enough of a freak show to justify
the pain of listening to me.
On my right, something scuttled through the mist
on the ground, where it was thickest. It scurried toward
me, and I leaped to my feet and dragged Emma away.
The cops jumped back, startled all over again.
Emma pulled free of my grip, her eyes wide in
terror. And that’s when I shut down. I couldn’t take
anymore, but I couldn’t make it stop. I couldn’t stop
Rachel Vincent / 15
the shrieking, or the pain, or the stares, or the fog, or
the eerie movement. And worst of all, I couldn’t stop
the certainty that that child—that poor little boy in the
wheelchair—was going to die.
Soon.
Dimly I realized I’d closed my eyes. Tried to block
it all out.
I reached out blindly, desperate to get out of the fog
I couldn’t feel. Could no longer see. My hands brushed
something soft and high. Something I no longer had
the word for. I scrambled up on it, crawling over
mounds of material.
I curled into a ball, clutching something plush to
my chest with one hand. Running my fingers over it
again and again. Clinging to the only physical reality
that still existed for me.
Hurt. I hurt. My neck hurt.
My fingers were wet. Sticky.
Something grabbed my arm. Held me down.
I thrashed. I screamed. I hurt.
Sharp pain bit into my leg, then fire exploded
beneath my skin. I blinked, and a familiar face came
into focus over me, gray in the fog.
Aunt Val.
Emma
stood behind my aunt, face streaked with mascarastained tears. Aunt Val said something I couldn’t hear.
And suddenly my eyes were heavy.
New panic flooded me. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t
make my eyes open. And still my vocal chords
strained. The world was closing in on me, dark and
16 / My Soul to Lose
narrow, with no sound but the harsh wail that still
poured from my abused throat.
A new darkness. Pure. No more gray.
And still I screamed…
***
My dreams were a jumble of violent chaos. Thrashing
limbs. Bruising grips. Churning shadows. And through
it all was that never-ending screech, now a hoarse echo
of its former strength, but no less painful.
***
Light shone through my closed eyelids; my world was
a red blur. The air felt wrong. Too cold. It smelled
wrong. Too clean.
My eyes flew open, but I had to blink several times
to make them focus. My tongue was so dry it felt like
sandpaper against my lips. My mouth tasted funny,
and every muscle in my body ached.
I tried to push myself up, but my arms wouldn’t
work.
Couldn’t
work. They were tied to something.
My pulse raced. I kicked, but my legs were bound too.
No!
Heart pounding, I pulled on my arms and legs,
then jerked them left to right, but couldn’t move more
than a few inches in any direction. I was strapped to
the bed by my wrists and ankles, and I couldn’t sit up.
Couldn’t turn over. Couldn’t prop myself up on my
elbows. Couldn’t even scratch my own nose.
Rachel Vincent / 17
“Help!” I cried, but my voice was only a hoarse
croak. No vowels or consonants involved. Blinking
again, I rolled my head to first one side, then the other,
trying to get my bearings.
The room was claustrophobically small. Empty,
other than me, the camera mounted in one corner, and
the high, hard mattress beneath me. The walls were
sterile, white cinder block. There were no windows in
my line of sight, and I couldn’t see the floor. But the
decor and the antiseptic smell were dead giveaways.
A hospital.
I was strapped to a hospital bed. All
alone.
It was like one of Emma’s video games, where the
character wakes up in a strange room with no memory
of how he got there. Except, in real life, there was no
chest in the corner holding the key to my chains and