be clear. Metaphorically speaking.
“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 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.
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.
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 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 two-way 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
