Chasing Shadows

By Swati Avasthi Illustrated by Craig Phillips

“A superb novel about grief, friendship, and mental illness, mixing in graphic-novel elements and themes from Hindu mythology.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred

Corey, Holly, and Savitri are closer than family until a random act of violence shatters their world. A gunman shoots at their car, leaving Corey dead, Holly in a coma, and Savitri the sole witness to the crime.

When Holly wakes up, she is changed—determined to hunt down Corey’s killer, whatever the cost. Savitri fears that Holly is running wild, losing her grip on reality. Friends should stand by each other in times of crisis. But can you hold on too tight? Too long?

Swati Avasthi delivers a riveting novel that will appeal to fans of Laini Taylor and Laurie Halse Anderson.

“Haunting, mesmerizing and intense.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred

“[A] visceral story of love, grief, and madness that is both action-packed and psychologically acute.” —The Horn Book

Holly
I am not The Leopardess, but sometimes I wish I were.
As I dangle off the edge of this roof, I could use her steel claws. Superheroes get Wicked Toys, Cinematic Escapes, and Guaranteed Wins. If I could live in a comic, I'd be The Leopardess. And if I were The Leopardess, I'd be Fearless.
But I'm just Holly Paxton, so I have to run my fear ragged.
I tighten my grip on the cold edge of the roof, close my eyes, and open my breathing. Deep into my body. I sink into freerunning mode. Where my thoughts are dictated by the Morse code of footsteps and the flow from jump to jump. Where Fear Cannot Leash Me.
See your way to safety--my dad's advice when he trains rookie cops--rings through my head. If you can see your way out, you can find your way out.
It works for freerunners too. I force myself to ignore Hungry Gravity and the four stories of free space below, and picture my escape.
My right foot finds the wall. Followed by my left. I jump, jump, jump them up until they are crouched beneath me--and I'm in cat-grab position, hands gripping, legs tucked, ready to spring.
Safe now. Not so different from The Leopardess after all.
Savitri sails over me. Her th-thump landing--much heavier than she is--shakes my grip and I try to dig my fingers into stone.
"I've got you, Holly."
She grabs my wrist, but I don't loosen my grip; I can fix this on my own. More than fix it. Fast as I can, I muscle up, pulling my weight and tucking my feet until I'm crouched on the ledge. I go for a showy move to cover. An A-twist--big one-footed takeoff, flying cartwheel plus a half twist--should do the trick. Just in time, Sav releases my wrist and flattens herself against the roof and I twist over her. As if we'd planned it.
I land, soft as a cat. She laughs. Too loudly; she must have seen how my feet caught the edge instead of clearing it. A quick fall. And quicker grab. Good Reactions--Leopardess-pace reactions. Thank God.
I glance at Corey, my Twin Bro, who is on the far side of the roof already.
Sav gets up, her shirt polka-dotted with rooftop gravel. She squints at me, ever watchful.
"So?" she asks. Our way of checking in.
Options: Collapse and Cry or Keep Moving.
"So," I say. "Close."
"Centimeters." Her voice quiet and as gravelly as the rooftop.
Sav has the best voice in the history of womanhood. Corey calls it sandpaper wrapped in silk. I try to concentrate on that, rather than on how her voice is shaking. Must have looked bad. Must have been bad.
"So." I deliberately unclench my hands. Never Let Fear Rule. "Ready?"
Before she answers, I take off and the world rushes at me. All speed. No hesitation. Just my own heat, pumped from my own heart, running my own blood.
Which helps stop the shaking and settle the stomach.
Corey is closing the distance to the front of the building, to the facade that upgrades its look: a fancy brick front to dress up the cheap sides and a short brick wall that rises above the roof in steps toward a capstone. On his way, he detours, jumps over a single forgotten planter, and then races up the steps to the capstone. I go after him. Sav--just a couple of seconds back--sprints to the far side and joins us. Sav, be nimble; Sav, be quick. When all three of us are gathered on the makeshift podium, panting out our own steam, we Survey Our Domain. I grab Corey's hand and he grabs Savitri's. We stand together for a Moment of Us--our training sign-off.
The Chicago wind kicks up, bringing us a sample of lesser scents from below: rotting apples and nicotine. Snow lies on the ground in half-melted lumps, like campfire-burned marshmallows: black pollution crusts with slashes of white. This false spring day turned the skies a shocking blue, drove the thermometer far above freezing, and Let Us Out. Into our city. So much better than training in a gym with soft mats and predictable obstacles.
When you freerun outside, a standard row of storefronts becomes a multilevel playground. We turn stoops into springboards, ricochet off walls, and throw flips off parapets. We scale buildings, using window ledges as complex ladders. Run outside and the city is no longer dead concrete and asphalt. It becomes an instrument--my instrument. Per-cuss-ive. I. Wake. It. Up.
Now Corey--who apparently has one more trick in him--scoots his feet back to the edge, prepping for a handstand fifty feet from the pavement. I steal Sav's smile: hers fades while mine grows. Sav worries too much; Corey's indestructible.
He places his palms on the platform and levers his legs over his head. Muscles over gravity. Complete control. His blond hair hangs and his face goes from cream to eggplant while blue veins bulge in his neck. His sneakers slice through the setting sun.
I let out a howl that gets Sav to startle and Corey to laugh--his body shaking. He pikes down and, seamlessly, flips backward. I throw a Webster--cartwheeling through the air. Sav just hops down. As Corey walks up to her, she shakes her head and walks away, toward the gardening shed that sits in the corner of the rooftop.
"What's wrong?" he calls to her back. "I'm okay, aren't I?"
"You're perfect," she says, her voice flat.
Corey and I exchange a glance. My turn. As I walk toward her, she is brushing off the gravel that is still clinging to her. She de-pebbles her palms, leaving pink dimples behind. I pick one from her ponytail. We become Monkeys of the City.
"Are you all right?" she asks me.
We've covered this already. Which means she isn't really asking. She's keeping the light on me to hide her own struggle in the shadows. Tricky Sav, tricks don't work on me.
"Better than okay. Great," I say, swallowing the leftover panic.
I hold out a fist and we bump knuckles. Once our hands meet, we unfold our fingers and whisper-hiss: sssshhhaw, the sound of steam power.
I'm about to ask her what's wrong when Sav turns on Corey.
"Did you notice that your sister nearly missed the roof? And here you are, four stories up and--"
"Whoa, whoa, wait a second," Corey says, and puts his hand up. He turns to look at me. I swallow hard.
When I tell him about the stutter step that threw me off, he goes through the "are you okay?" motions to appease Sav. Obviously I'm okay; I'm standing here, aren't I? But Sav has never been entirely on board with the New and Improved version of freerunning we started after the Josh Debacle. Sav argues on the side of Safety Nets and Ground Only. We're on the side of Adrenaline and Rooftops.
But then he says, "You knew it was wrong at the takeoff?"
And I realize he isn't worried about my Here and Now body--he's worried about how long I had to panic. A jump has three parts: takeoff, midair, and landing. You can control the takeoff, driving your muscles, and you can control the landing, channeling your flow. But in the air--those moments when you are Defying the Physical Laws of Gravity--you can't change your momentum, can't reverse your flow. You are In. That. Moment. And there's no going back. It would be a long time in the air to panic.
"No, it all looked good," I say. "I had the ledge in my hands before I even thought about the fall."
His face relaxes and he walks toward Sav, striding into a dive roll that comes up at her feet.
"See," he says, "it's all good."
She doesn't smile, but she lets him take her hand. Still, he has to do all the leaning to kiss her. Mid-kiss, she grabs his face and yanks him closer. Corey hesitates--startled--before stepping in, slipping his hand around her, and pressing on the small of her back.
Her move, his response means one thing: she hasn't mentioned Princeton.
She wasn't supposed to hear anything until April first, like everyone else. But yesterday she brought over a McDonald's bag loaded with fries, root beer, and cherry pie. Corey, who knows that this meal is code for Best Friends Only, vanished. She showed me a letter from Princeton that neither of us could make sense of.
So, this afternoon we brought it to Retired-from-the-Runway Richardson, our stick-thin college counselor. Turns out a few colleges will, very occasionally, try to "capture their best applicants' attention with a note like this to let the candidate know that admission is likely." Likely, just likely, I told myself, but Mrs. Richardson was wearing her Ivy League Grin.
Sav's options, revamped: Princeton alone, or Chicago with us.
I'm sure it will rock her world to turn down her dream school, but she won't go. She wouldn't leave us.
Would she?
I watch Sav as she watches Corey. He throws his foot over the parapet, getting ready to scale his way down. She lets out a soft sigh and smiles, as if recording this moment for posterity.
Shit.

While Corey walks Sav to her car, I am waiting inside The Dana, our zippy silver Mini Cooper. When our mom's parents died, they left a trust for Corey and me, which has translated into a private education and The Dana. Corey wanted to give our baby a woman's name. Fine, whatever. But Sav said he was falling victim to an archaic, misogynistic thought pattern. He crossed his arms and said that it clearly wasn't archaic, and that whether he was "falling victim" to it or not, he was not driving a male car. So they met in the middle, and The Dana was born.
I could take off and let her drive him back to our neighborhood; I should take off, probably. But with Princeton in the mix, I don't know whether they're going to need Time Together or Space Apart. I drum my fingers on the steering wheel.
Stalker defined: a person who sits watching someone through a windshield? Maybe so.
From the backseat, I grab The Leopardess: Origins. I rub the spine where it has bubbled up, preparing to crack. Damn, I'll have to buy a third copy. Corey keeps telling me I should go digital, but I can't get the same visual rhythm on a screen.
I scootch down and disappear into how Larissa Powell goes from Ordinary Girl to Superhero. I get caught in a two-page spread: Larissa stands beside a mouth carved into the earth by the shovels and sweat of gravediggers. A single tear rolls down her cheek as a sea of black umbrellas keeps the rest of her dry. Next to her, her sister's face is obscured, but the stitches across her wrist poke up like barbed wire. Her dad--FBI Agent Extraordinaire--stands helpless on the other side, face of stone while they bury her mom, who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered.
I'm almost through part 1 of Origins when a rap on the window startles me back to the real world.
Corey. I put the book in the backseat while he gets in, locks his door, and straps on his seat belt. He sits upright, not looking at me.
Silence stretches out.
I shove The Dana into gear and we slide around corners, mazing through one-ways until we're heading the right direction. We drive past a burned-out empty lot with one tree standing on its own and Corey is still silent, still rigid. I hate not knowing what to say to my twin, the guy who has been finishing my sentences since sentences were an option. I nudge him with my elbow, and he looks at me.
"So?" I say.
"So," he says. "Princeton."
"Has she decided?"
"There she goes," he says, pointing at her Subaru as she glides in front of us. He shrugs. "She says she hasn't."
"But?"
"It doesn't matter," he says, his voice tight. "I'm sure we'll make it work."
I'm not so sure. When it comes to relationships, there is no halfway with Sav--a condition of her Lioness Loyalty. With Sav, you're either in or you're out. She's just like Corey that way. When Josh screwed me over, they froze him out so fast, he practically had icicles hanging off his fingers.
"Is that what she said? That you guys could make it work?" I ask.
"That's what I said."
The light turns yellow. I start to gun it, remember my two speeding tix, and hit the brakes. One more and my parents won't let me drive. Sav sails through. Her rear windshield wiper waves "So Long, Suckers," but then she pulls over, loyalty winning the day. A good sign?
"Do you think it's a problem?" he asks.
"Nope." I school my face to a Casual Expression that would fool anyone.
"Bullshit. You're worried too."
I roll my eyes. Can't keep anything from him. Might as well share the same brain.
He pauses and an SUV pulls up next to us at the light. "Well, there's another option, then."
"Which is?"
"Transfer. Princeton can't be the only school in New Jersey. Some place will accept me."
I frown. I'm nothing if not a Chicago Girl. And I'm not that into following Sav around the country. But I'm even less into the idea of Corey and me separating for college. We're supposed to share an apartment, for one thing.
I won't look at him. I stare out the windshield--Two Disappearing Acts in One Night, first Sav, now Corey.
Rain starts to tap the rooftop and plunk on the windshield.
"Holly?" he says gently.
As he moves into my peripheral vision, I turn my head and look out my side window, taking in the street.
And I see . . . Everything Change.
Time sl-o-o-ws. Sounds stop as my brain captures images, frame by frame.
My mouth goes bone-dry. I can't manipulate my tongue to say anything, not even to scream.
All the words I've ever known . . . fracture.

Savitri
While Corey walks me to my car, I keep my eyes down, trying to make an ordered pattern out of the random cracks on the sidewalk. Our shadows stretch beside us on the ground, sometimes merging, sometimes separating.
The day my family moved into the Morgan Park neighborhood, Corey and Holly were playing a game of Shadow Tag in their driveway. She chased him, braids bobbing, trying to make her shadow disappear entirely into his. It was a game that worked better with three, a game that started our eleven-year friendship, and now . . . ?
Well.
Our plan was to stay together for college. Chicago has a school for each of us: Holly at UIC for film and video, Corey at DePaul for comp sci, and me at Northwestern or U of C to major in thinking-too-much. Holly said we'd meet up for dinners, twice a week, no matter what. At Penny's, she said, and I knew she was picturing us sitting with overflowing plates of rice noodles while trains rattled above us.