Shadow Tag
Some people are given the gift of an outstanding personality; others are blessed with the gift of blending in with the shadows. Tess walks the three city blocks home from school, her dark sweatshirt hood barely covering her wild curls and her bangs obscuring her eyes, which seem too large and intense for her eight-year-old body. She carries a paper coffee cup in one hand, and a purple Disney lunch bag in the other, an overfilled backpack slung across one shoulder. She weaves through passersby, her coffee sloshing onto the sidewalk when the walkway gets too crowded, and stops in front of the bookstore where her mother works. The stone, Victorian-style building is quaint and quiet, with friendly displays in the windows and white rocking chairs on the wraparound porch. Instead of heading for the tall wooden doors that welcome customers into the shop, she slips behind the building, where a dimly-lit concrete staircase leads down to a small metal door, one with cracked windows and creaking hinges. She pulls out her house key and lets herself in.
It is Tess and her mother’s first full week at the new apartment under the bookstore, trying to forget the parts of their lives that bog them down like heavy winter coats.
Tess sits perched on the cramped kitchen counter, staring at the dinner table, where her usual wooden chair sits complacently beside her mother’s, alongside a third, the one that had been vacant for three months.
Suddenly wanting fresh air, Tess wanders into the small park adjacent to the bookstore, acutely aware of her mother’s watchful eye visible in a window of the shop. She finds a group of kids she had met over the course of the week, and accepts their invitation to join them. As Angel, the wild-eyed girl from across the street, explains the rules of the game, Tess looks down at her hands. They are calloused, rather plain, the fingernails chewed down to unappealing stubs. Curious, she looks to the others. Arnold, the youngest of the group, has small, chubby hands, with a tendency to reach out and touch whatever happens to be nearby. Charlotte has the hands of a musician, her fingers long and delicate, her long nails painted bright colors. Angel’s hands are restless, flitting about like baby birds constantly attempting to fly. Jack, the oldest at eleven, has dirt beneath his fingernails, but it is hard to tell; his hands are clenched in tight fists.
“If you’re it, tag everyone else’s shadows, and otherwise, don’t get caught. Go!” Angel yells, and the children disperse around the small park like squirrels.
Tess darts around the trees, her hood sliding off her head. Suddenly she stops, her long shadow looming in front of her. Angel, laughing, sneaks up from behind and places a red sneaker in her shadow. “Tag!” she shouts. Tess doesn’t move, her eyes downcast, and Angel falls silent. “Is something wrong?” she asks, a perplexed look contorting her face. Tess shifts her feet, watching her shadow mirror her movements. “Wouldn’t it be easier if we could somehow detach our shadows from ourselves? I mean, wouldn’t everything seem lighter?”
Angel tilts her head. Her hands stop fidgeting, for once. “I guess so,” she acknowledges. “But, we don’t have to carry them around or anything. All we have to do is let them follow us.”
The two stand in silence for a moment, and then a hesitant smile creeps across Tess’s face, a glint visible in her large eyes. She lunges forward and taps her foot on Angel’s long shadow.
“Tag!” she yells.
Elise Stankus 2020. All Rights Reserved.