Luce hopped off the branch where she'd been standing and approached Shelby,
her cold, musty offering in her hands.
"Here," Shelby said. "I'll take half and you take half, just like we saw in class. Ew,
it's squishy. Okay ... loosen your grip, he's not going anywhere. Let him just kind of chill
and take shape."
It seemed like a long time passed before the shadow did anything at all. Luce felt
almost like she was playing with the old Ouija board she'd had as a kid. An inexplicable
energy on the tips of her fingers. The feeling of slight, continual movement before she
could see any difference in the Announcer's shape.
Then there was a whoosh: It was contracting, folding slowly in on its dark self.
Soon the whole thing had taken on the size and shape of a large box. It hovered just
above their fingertips.
"Do you see that?" Shelby gasped. Her voice was almost inaudible over the
whooshing sound of the shadow. "Look, there in the middle."
As had happened during class, a dark veil seemed to lift off the Announcer,
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revealing a shocking burst of color. Luce shielded her eyes, watching as the bright light
seemed to settle back inside the shadow screen, into a foggy out-of-focus image. Then,
finally, into distinct shapes in muted colors.
They were looking at a living room. The back of a blue plaid recliner with the
footrest kicked up and a badly fraying bottom corner. An old wood-paneled television
airing a rerun of Mork & Mindy with the volume off. A fat Jack Russell terrier curled on
a round patchwork rug.
Luce watched a swinging door push open from what looked like a kitchen. A
woman, older than Luce's grandmother had been when she died, walked through. She
was wearing a pink-and-white patterned dress, heavy white tennis shoes, and thick
glasses on a string around her neck. She was carrying a tray of cut fruit.
"Who are these people?" Luce wondered aloud.
When the old woman put down the tray on the coffee table, a liver-spotted hand
extended from around the chair and selected a chunk of banana.
Luce leaned in to see more clearly, and the focus of the image shifted with her.
Like a 3-D panorama. She hadn't even noticed the old man sitting in the recliner. He was
frail, with a few thin patches of white hair and age spots all over his forehead. His mouth
was moving, but Luce couldn't hear a thing. A row of framed pictures lined the mantel of
the fireplace.
The whooshing in Luce's ears got louder, so loud it made her wince. Without her
doing anything other than wonder about those pictures, the Announcer's image zoomed
in. It left Luce with a feeling of whiplash--and an extreme close-up of one framed
photograph.
A thin gold-plated frame around a smudged glass plate. Inside, the small
photograph had a fine scalloped border around a yellowing black-and-white image. Two
faces in the photograph: Hers and Daniel's.
Holding her breath, she studied her own face, which looked just a little younger
than it did now. Dark shoulder-length hair set in pincurls. A white blouse with a Peter
Pan collar. A wide A-line skirt brushing the middles of her calves. White-gloved hands,
holding Daniel's. He was looking directly at her, smiling.
The Announcer started vibrating, then quaking; then the image inside started to
flicker and fade away.
"No," Luce called, ready to lunge inside. Her shoulders connected with the edge
of the Announcer, but that was as far as she got. A brush of bitter cold pushed her back
and left her skin feeling damp. A hand clamped around her wrist.
"Don't get any wild ideas," Shelby warned.
Too late.
The screen went black and the Announcer dropped from their hands onto the
forest floor, shattering into pieces like broken black glass. Luce suppressed a whimper.
Her chest heaved. She felt like a part of her had died.
Lowering herself to all fours, she pressed her forehead to the ground and rolled
onto her side. It was colder, murkier than it had been when they'd started. The watch on
her wrist said it was after two o'clock, but it had been morning when they came into the
forest. Looking west, toward the edge of the woods, Luce could see the difference in the
light hitting the dorm. The Announcers swallowed time.
Shelby lay down next to her. "You okay?"
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"I'm so confused. Those people--" Luce cupped her forehead. "I have no idea who
they are."
Shelby cleared her throat and looked uncomfortable. "Don't you think, um, maybe
you used to know them? Like, a long time ago. Like, maybe they were your ..."
Luce waited for her to finish. "My what?"
"It really hasn't occurred to you that those were your parents from another life?
That this is what they look like now?"
Luce's jaw dropped open. "No. Wait--you mean, I've had totally different parents