Evil Returns Read Free Page A

thin, shivering sun of January. It seemed like somebody else’s shadow.
    Immediately she knew that it was somebody else’s. It was the shadow of the fingernails, with talons like a hawk’s. She forced herself to stare straight ahead. She was not going to collapse because the tower had switched shadows on her during the night. She had a first day of school to get through.
    In the office, the secretary did not even look up at them. “New student?” she said in a tight, snappish voice. “What grade, please? What courses were you taking at your previous school, please? Do you have your health papers showing you are properly inoculated?” Now she looked up, scanning Devnee for disease-carrying properties. Devnee tried to look clean and healthy.
    Her mother said, “Wonderful!” though what she could be referring to, Devnee could not imagine. “I’ll see you after school,” trilled her mother. “I’ll pick you up in the front drive, darling. Have such fun!”
    The secretary was wearing little half glasses, which she tilted lower on her nose to study Mrs. Fountain’s exit, perfectly aware that having “such fun” was unlikely.
    The secretary finished up doing important things, while Devnee leaned on the counter, wanting to die, and then at last the secretary gave her directions to the guidance office, where they would set up her schedule and take her to her first class. The directions were so complex Devnee felt they probably led to China, not down the hall. She was close to tears, and the chilly damp of last night had come back and was penetrating her brain, making it hard to think or move.
    “Oh, all right,” said the secretary, “I’ll take you there.”
    But the guidance person, a man named Fuzz (which surely could not have been the case; it was Devnee’s hearing that had gotten fuzzy because she was so nervous) was quite sweet. “We have a buddy system for newcomers,” said Fuzz affectionately. “We don’t want anybody lost in the cracks at our school!”
    The expression took on a sick reality. It seemed to Devnee that the linoleum squares parted, and huge cracks opened up, black ones filled with other people’s shadows, sticky and gooey, waiting for her to step wrong.
    Fuzz had a long stride, and Devnee a short one, so she was forced to gallop alongside him. Out of breath and terrified, she arrived at her first class several paces behind, as if her leash had broken. “Devnee, Devnee,” he called, like a dog owner.
    Devnee tried to look at the class but it was impossible. There were too many students, all staring at her, with that settled, certain-sure look of kids who had been here forever and didn’t approve of newcomers.
    She felt unbearably plain and dull. She could feel their eyes raking over her, losing interest immediately, because she was not beautiful, and not worth attention.
    She was perilously close to tears.
    “Devnee has just moved here!” said Fuzz. His voice wafted in and out of her consciousness. “Now we want Devnee to feel at home here, don’t we, people?”
    Nobody responded.
    Fuzz read Devnee’s schedule out loud, demanding that anybody with matching classes should respond and volunteer to be Devnee’s buddy.
    Amazingly, there were three volunteers.
    Seats were shuffled so that Devnee was sitting among her “buddies.”
    Two girls and a boy.
    She immediately forgot their names and hated herself for being a stupid, worthless, pitiful excuse for a human being. Probably why my shadow left, thought Devnee. Needed a better body to attach itself to.
    Class ended in another quarter hour, and Devnee was not even sufficiently tuned in to figure out what subject it had been. “I’m your first buddy,” said one of the girls, touching Devnee’s arm and smiling at her. “I’ll take you on to biology lab, and then Trey will pick you up for English and lunch.”
    The girl—if you could use such a boring word for this breathtaking creature—was achingly lovely.
    All willowy and