NOTE: some of my friends from when I was Kaeras will know this one if they read it, i think. It was under the name Do You Fear The Shadows at that point, but I have more written and I think it's pretty good, so here it is:



Shadows Of The Past

Draft #2

1
Danny Johnson sat at the cramped little desk, bored out of his mind. He hated school. He made decent grades, but didn’t enjoy the hours. At least I’m in the back. Much rather be sleeping though… he grumbled to himself. Tenth grade-no, school in general-was starting to be a bore. The English teacher, Mr. McIntyre, was droning on in his monotone voice. The warm morning sun shined brightly from Danny’s left. He had a window seat in the class, and on warm days like this enjoyed the light breeze that cooled his skin as the sun fried his insides. Icing the cake laced with poison… the lazily contracted double-entendre grew in his mind. Danny smiled at the thought. He subdued it before maniacal laughter could escape his lips. He uttered a small, suppressed sound that sounded almost like a weak cough.
Looking around to see if anybody had noticed, he turned to his right just to see the beautiful Blaire McIntyre looking at him brightly.
“Was that you?” she mouthed.
“Yeah, I just got choked up for a sec. I’m okay now” he mouthed back, making hand gestures to show the slight choking that sometimes happened to him. Of course, smoking didn’t help this, but he couldn’t help it. He’d been hooked since last year. Damn seniors. Hook me then abandon me here. He thought bitterly. The seniors of last year, the class of ’07, had always made fun of Danny. They were out to get him, especially the Varsity football players. One day, as Danny was walking to wrestling, they jumped him and dragged him into the locker room, a cement-and-plastic palace where everything felt cold. They dragged him back to the far corner of the showers and four held him down while the fifth took out a cigarette. He lit it for Danny, and then stuck it in Danny’s mouth.
“Suck on this, queerboy. Everyone knows you hand out blowjobs like candy.” The one with the cigarette had said. He held it in Danny’s mouth just far enough so Danny would inhale and exhale the smoke, but not enough for Danny to spit the thing out. Danny had been hooked ever since, and wrestling was hell this year.
Now Blaire was staring at him, a funny look on her face. Concern. He thought, a wave of excitement splashing through him. His head lightened a bit-it was already light enough, with the boredom and lack of anything else to do-and he felt woozy. Danny, a six foot three sophomore, had longish jet-black hair and striking yellow eyes. His hair, when he rolled it across his head, had the effect that some referred to as the ‘emo flip.’ It hung down in front of one eye and people told him he cut and that he sucked the root constantly. He was about average size, which meant he was skinny but not deathly thin, and had little muscle in his body. He was by no means big but the desk he sat at got smaller every second. Stupid desk. Stupid school. If someone died it would be more interesting here. He thought.
Suddenly, there was a change in the stifling air. An ominous feeling sank into him. The change was instant, shocking. It left Danny gasping for air. He tried to hide his choked breathing and suppressed the coughing. Mr. McIntyre glanced at him suspiciously, and then got back to his lecture. Danny tried to clear the shockwaves from his brain. He managed to calm his mind, and looked down at his desk, his cheeks reddening.
His eyes trailed to his right side again, following his own shadow to Blaire’s feet, up her beautiful, tanned legs. She was wearing tight Hollister’s with pre-cut holes in the knees and halfway up one thigh. His eyes trailed up her thin form, her dark hoody hanging loosely from her small frame. He could almost see the bra, inside the shirt, inside the hoody, and his heart fluttered for a second. Then his eyes moved up to her face. Her perfect, beautiful face. He thought. She had a cute, small nose. Her eyes were green, and they shone like stars. Her hair was blood red and her bangs hung down over one eye. Suddenly, she turned and looked directly into his eyes. Danny’s face burned hotter than the sun and his heart started to pound in his ears. He liked Blaire, and noticed that she might have taken an interest in him. Asking for her number was his next move. He opened his notebook-a first in three weeks-and wrote, Blaire, I really like you. Can I have your number? Maybe we can hang out sometime?
He was planning to give the note to her after class. His heart pounded almost painfully in his ears now, blocking out Mr. McIntyre’s lecture completely. He could almost see himself, sitting there hunched over in the small little desk, his eyes shining and his face beet-red. The sight was comical. Danny’s mind relaxed and his heart calmed. The eye of the storm, no doubt. When I look into her eyes as I give her the note, everything will turn upside-down again. Danny couldn’t wait for that moment. He stole a glance at her figure again, and his heart filled with joy. Another emotion also came: lust. He wanted her as a convict wants freedom. He figured the physical attraction might take over, but he didn’t care at that moment.
Danny actually started to listen to the lecture-with fifteen minutes left, no doubt-and found that it was about poetry. He listened as Mr. McIntyre explained the difference between a sonnet and a couplet. Danny’s eyes started to close. The warmth was welcoming now, fitting his skin like a blanket. Rational thought left him. Couplets, sonnets, ladybug it. He was starting to slip into a dream where he and Blaire were isolated on a beach, when a sharp, short bark woke him. Mr. McIntyre was looking directly at Danny, his eyes narrowed almost to slits.
“Mr. Johnson, would you like to give an example of a sonnet to the class?” Mr. McIntyre asked dangerously.
“Uh…Um…Sonnet…14? No, Sonnet 13.” Danny guessed.
“Yes, I suppose you dodged the bullet there. Can you recite said sonnet?” Mr. McIntyre tested.
“No sir, I can’t.” Danny resigned.
“Let me cite it for you, then, and pay attention!

‘O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are
No longer yours than you yourself here life:
Against this coming end you should prepare,
And your sweet semblance to some other give.
So should that beauty which you hold in lease
Find no determination; then you were
Yourself again after yourself’s decease,
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
Which husbandry in honour might uphold
Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day
And barren rage of death’s eternal cold?
O, none but unthrifts! Dear my love, you know
You had a father: let your son say so.’

‘How do you like that, Mr. Johnson? William Shakespeare wrote a total of 154 sonnets in his lifetime, and many plays and poems.” Mr. McIntyre said, a proud air in his voice.
“Sound’s like someone’s got time on their hands.” Danny retorted quietly. He saw Blaire giggle quietly from the corner of his eye.
“What was that, young man?” Mr. McIntyre’s face was turning red.
Danny rebuked. “I said, sounds like we have a really talented poet on our hands, this Shakespeare guy.” Danny told him hastily.
“Better be what you said, punk.” Mr. McIntyre grumbled. He returned to his lecture, and Danny breathed a sigh of relief. Dodge a bullet and scored a laugh. Danny thought, stealing a glance at Blaire. The ominous, creepy feeling was still there, but Danny had gotten used to it. He didn’t like it, by any means, but he didn’t try to fight it. It was one of those things you don’t particularly enjoy but live with just the same.
Danny suddenly looked at the clock. It was 10:05. There were ten minutes left in class. Danny felt a longing to get away from the stuffy room, to find some shade to hide from the heat. His skin started to crawl, burning under the light of the sun. His desk grew very uncomfortable, the back of the small chair digging into his spine, the hard seat rubbing against his butt-bone, and the desk itself cutting off his breathing. The air was stifling, heavy. It was as if someone had laid an invisible iron curtain in the air, pressing down and up and every which way against Danny’s body. Danny felt a quick, sharp sense of vertigo as the world turned in his eyes. He blinked once, twice, trying to rid himself of the feeling of falling.
Then the floor came up to Danny’s face very quickly, and he uttered a slight “oomph” as the other students laughed and Mr. McIntyre continued as if nothing had happened. Danny shot back up to his seat, embarrassed and laughing at the same time. Blaire was laughing, a pitying look on her face.
“Are you okay?” She mouthed, more concern on her face this time.
Danny held an embarrassed thumb up in the air and continued watching Mr. McIntyre’s mouth move, watching the slowness with which his tongue formed the words. For a moment, Danny was amazed with the man’s entire movement cycle. His dark, tanned arms moving as slowly as his mouth, exaggerating every word he spoke. Mr. McIntyre was a tall man, even in his sixties. At six-foot six, he was the tallest teacher (not counting freshman gym, of course, Mr. Pennebaker was a towering seven feet tall) that Danny had ever had. Mr. McIntyre’s head was that of the typical sixty-three year old man: bald on top with short white-grey hairs sticking out to the sides and in the back. His eyes were green-obviously the same green that his granddaughter had inherited-and his nose was rather large. It stuck out on his face as a pimple on a teenager’s. His body structure was that of the typical, southern Indiana, late 20th century boy. Strong, firm bones jutted from beneath muscles that used to be coarse and rippled, from working out in the fields all day. Danny was transfixed on the man’s simplicity. He’d never had a need for video games, he’d never wanted for a cell phone or the latest technology. Mr. McIntyre, as a kid, had only known work. Danny’s generation had not.
It was then that Danny recognized the ominous feeling. It was fear. Cold, black fear of the unknown. Something was happening today, in this very room, in less than five minutes. Danny looked around wildly, trying to see what would happen, when his eyes locked on the floor. The shadows that had stuck so willingly to their masters’ forms had taken on a different master. As if being controlled by the hands of a puppeteer, the shadows themselves danced. A chord struck in Danny’s mind. Darkness(n): the absence of light. He thought over the definition in his mind, chewed out every possible explanation for…for this. He couldn’t explain it. The shadows danced wildly, and no one noticed. It was as if everyone in the room, Mr. McIntyre included, was entranced. Danny hadn’t known why he was spared, possibly for whatever it was in the air to have a witness, but Danny definitely wasn’t daydreaming this time.
Then Blaire, sweet, beautiful Blaire, touched Danny gently on the shoulder, making him jump. Danny looked directly into her eyes, wanting to explain the phenomenon he was witnessing, but not having the words. His mouth moved, but no sound escaped his rapidly closing windpipe. Danny was sure he would pass out before this was over. The heat was sucking the air from his lungs. He couldn’t breathe, and yet, he didn’t want to, either. He knew whatever was coming had the force of a bullet train. Blaire looked at Danny, her eyes wide and scared. She had felt the presence too. Danny tried to breathe a sigh of relief. He found this easier said than done.
Suddenly, Danny choked out four words: “…Do…you…feel…it?” he muttered soundlessly. Blaire nodded, and looked at the floor. Danny saw the scream hitch in her throat as her eyes dilated and fluttered. She was going to scream and faint. Right here in class, with three minutes left, she was going to faint and Danny would be caught looking at her when it happened. “Stop!” Danny hissed. She caught his glance and locked her throat tight, uttering no more than a small whistle of breath. Danny motioned toward the shadows again. Blaire shook her head adamantly. She wouldn’t look back down, no matter what. She even went as far as turning back to listen to Mr. McIntyre’s droning lecture.
To Danny’s horror, this was exactly the reaction that whatever was controlling her wanted. At that point, Blaire’s shadow disintegrated. A dark beauty, sinister yet muffled, took over her features. Danny looked frantically for it across the sun-streaked floor. Nothing. It was as if Blaire herself had become a ghostly apparition, a vampire, maybe. Then Blaire turned back toward Danny. Her eyes had taken on a ghastly reddish glow, the whites turned pitch-black. Her pupils, as red as if she was a walking, out of focus picture, contracted. She smiled malevolently. Her teeth were perfect, as they had always been. Not vampire…something else. Danny noted. She sucked in her small stomach and moved her left arm slightly, so the right one was clearly visible to Danny.
Slowly, as if in excited anxiety, she drew back the sleeve of the rather loose hoody. Her left hand pulled on the sleeve with the grace of a churchgoer holding the cup of the Blood of Christ. Something gleamed out at Danny, something he’d never expected. A dark shape was there, held fast by the hoody. It was about six inches in length, and Danny could just make out a small button on the side, close to the small gleam jutting from the hoody. Danny’s fear grew. This was what was going to happen. Blaire was going to rise up and strike someone with that object. That switchblade. What’s she going to do with it? Danny thought frantically. Blaire covered the blade back up and got up, her limber body moving with feline quality. This was to be expected. With two minutes left until the bell, Blaire was normally up and waiting at the door-a benefit she had only because it was her grandfather teaching the class. But this time, she didn’t have her books with her. Just the switchblade. But what’s she- Danny’s eyes widened with horror. He suddenly knew what she was planning.
He could see her walking slowly toward the front. She would look at a classmate, bend down (as if to speak with the classmate) and put the knife through his or her throat. Danny tried to call out, to warn the class. “She’s got a knife! Everybody down!” he wanted to scream; but no sound escaped his lips. They were too dry; his throat was too dry to utter even a single sound.
Blaire’s graceful movements had carried her to the front of the classroom. Her grandfather gave a sidelong glance, acknowledging that she was there but continuing his lecture. She walked straight up to him and, being a little over five feet tall, she reached up, touching his shoulder. She motioned for him to bring his head down, as if she had a secret to whisper in his ear. Danny watched with a paralyzed horror. He was scared to death, no doubt. He saw the big man lean down, ever closer to that extended right arm. Blaire received his head in her hands and pulled his ear toward her face. Danny closed his eyes, waiting for screams of pain and terror from Mr. McIntyre’s own throat as she cut out his eyes or stabbed him up a nostril. What he saw in his mind’s eye made him want the knife himself, to rid himself of that image. Danny opened his eyes, thinking even the truth could be better than his horrid belief of what would happen.
In fact, he was right. Mr. McIntyre leaned down to hear what his granddaughter had to say. She put her right arm across his throat and whispered something. Danny could make out the words “See…in hell…id man,” and saw a look of pained rage float across Mr. McIntyre’s face. The man was just beginning to turn toward Blaire, possibly to reprimand her, when that soft, sick, almost inaudible click sounded. A horrid squelching sound, as if cutting through paper, sounded, and the expression on Mr. McIntyre’s face turned from agitated annoyance to betrayed horror. He looked, wide-eyed, at Blaire, who started to cackle horribly, and crumpled to the ground. Blood gushed from the slit in Mr. McIntyre’s throat. It bubbled sickeningly as he tried to breathe through it. The blood pooled around his limp body and soaked into his shirt and tie. The whole class was silent, except for Blaire’s hysterical laughter.
Then, that was cut off too. Danny saw Blaire staring at her deceased grandfather with hysteria of a different sort rising in her. His eyes darted to the floor where faint shadow mirrored her shocked stance. Her throat hitched again, and Danny knew there was no stopping her this time.
The sound of the bell fell deaf compared to Blaire’s hysterical shrieks of horror.


2
In the living room that night, Channel 6 was giving its nightly news report. The weatherwoman, a cute, springy blonde-haired woman in her late twenties, was describing a possible storm system flowing in from the southeast. It would bring heavy rains and cooler weather…possible highs in the 40s and whatnot. Danny wasn’t listening. His thoughts were on the activities of the morning.
After Blaire’s episode, everything had been silent. Nobody moved to comfort her, help her, or stop her. She just kept on crying. Nobody spoke or even breathed, it seemed. It felt to Danny as if all the air in the room had been sucked out. Leaving them in a vacuum where only Blaire’s sobs could be heard.
Twenty seconds passed in this manner, but it felt to Danny like twenty years and more. A kid had walked into the room to find the entire class sitting and staring at Blaire. His eyes had darted from the class to Blaire and from Blaire to the teacher who was dead in a pool of his own blood. The kid’s eyes widened like all the rest, but he had sense to pull out his cell phone and dial 911.
Before the authorities arrived, the entire school had heard of the murder of Mr. McIntyre. There were stories flying all over the school. One that Danny heard later in the day was that Blaire had gotten up, given a Scarface-esque speech, and peppered her grandfather with a mini Uzi. Danny had had to laugh bitterly at that one.
The authorities had come and questioned everyone in the room. As far as Danny knew, he was the only one who had seen the shadows dancing across the floor, and therefore omitted that fact from his version of the story. The general consensus was that Blaire had gone insane and decided to stab her grandfather for his boringness.
They hadn’t found the switchblade. Blaire had stripped to the nude in an adjacent girl’s bathroom for a couple of women on the force as they tried to find it. The most confusing part of it all was that she claimed no knowledge of the alleged weapon. She was bawling her eyes out, shouting at the officers that she didn’t know of any goddam blade and that she just wanted her grandfather back.


3
“Danny, what’s wrong?” his mother asked. Her tone was sweet but he knew it well. She wanted information. Now her tone turned sultry. “Don’t try to fool me. You hated him. He didn’t really like you either. Your music and the TV you watch tell me that you aren’t really a sensitive kid. I’ve been doing some reading…” she paused and shuffled some books around nervously. “You’re not sensitive, son, but you’re acting like it’s your friend Pete that the crazy girl-”
“She’s not crazy!” Danny bellowed. She didn’t understand. This wasn’t like the movies, or the music. This was REAL. REAL wouldn’t let you change channels or switch stations if it got too hot for you. Hell, the scariest **** you see on TV is the stuff that could be real but (thankfully) isn’t, right?
Danny sighed. “It’s complicated, but Blaire isn’t crazy.”
His mother started, paused as if considering her words, and said, “Honey…” He knew the tone well. It was sweet but vindictive, and the words hidden behind that one were: Daniel Johnson, calm down and listen to your mother. She is right in all things and you should not doubt her. Danny immediately turned off. He wasn’t in the mood to listen to her. He could tell that she was going to start anytime, and stood.
“Whatever you have to say, I’m not listening.” He walked calmly to his room, ignoring his mother’s words, then shouts, then threats for him to go back and listen to her. A ploy for attention and control. When will she learn that I’m not like Dad? He thought bitterly.
His father worked from ten to eight down at a deli on 16th street. It was difficult, but it kept his wife from fearing poverty. She worked at a little pet grooming place in a neighboring town. Her hours were short but, for the current economy, her pay was phenomenal. They lived happily with Danny and his younger brother, Ethan. There was an elder brother, but he was out and gone to parts unknown.
Slamming the door to make his point (and to cut his mother’s rants off quite nicely), Danny flopped backwards onto his bed. His tired and frustrated mind was still trying to make sense of what had happened. He drifted off to sleep without quite knowing when it had happened.
He dreamed.

4
Danny walked through the old saloon-style doors into the classic Western B-movie. His rough, black rawhide jacket clung tightly to his body in the sweltering dryness as the sun baked the ground beneath his feet. He was staring down a wide dirt lane through the little town. The dirt in question was beginning its dance on the wind as the makings of a dust storm came about.
Nine men stood not twenty yards down the lane, spread wide enough that the whole lane was covered. The one in the center seemed vaguely familiar, as strangers in dreams often did, but the soiled, well-worn hat upon his head and the dust flowing eagerly about masked the knowing features.
The dark leather hat atop Danny’s head suddenly blew away as the wind gusted around him. His guns clanked heavily at his sides. They were gifts from his father, if he remembered right: two .45s with inlaid, show off-y pearl handles. Then all nine men started toward him in unison, and all nine stopped roughly ten yards away. The man to the right of dead center spoke.
“So, gunslinger.” He started (with a heavy southern drawl that made it sound more like, So, gonslinguh to Danny). “What are we going to do with you?”
Danny’s mouth shot off before he could stop himself. “ ‘Reckon yooh’ll keel meh, seein’ as ah’m no good ter the nahn o’ ya’ ‘live.” He mocked, heavily exaggerating the man’s accent without reason. He suddenly realized in a disconnected way that this was a dream (and, that if he wanted, he could make a bare-ass baby appear singing Sonatra on any one of these clowns’ heads), and promptly felt like waking up. He felt the same ominous pressure here as he had in the classroom before Blaire’s outburst. He struggled with this unconsciously for a few moments (with thoughts like, My God, for a dream this is pretty realistic and why can’t I wake up?), when the man in the center decided to speak.
The man’s voice rang cold and clear, high above the wind as if he’d been speaking into a microphone. Danny took this in stride as part of the dream. “We’ll not kill you…yet.” God, that voice was so familiar! He didn’t understand why he couldn’t place it. Unless he’s blocking you from finding out. The thought was through his head and dismissed instantly. Dreams couldn’t block reality…could they? He could feel himself slowly going insane over this.
The man spoke again in a blissfully average Midwestern accent. “How long d’you think you’ll live against us?”
Then something that hadn’t been expected. The man on the right (Southie, Danny had dubbed him) turned to his companion. He opened his mouth to speak, and the others all looked concerned. A powerful gust of wind rattled the windows in the saloon at Danny’s rear, and he didn’t hear the name. Quite conveniently, dust so thick it was nearly a fog blew up to obscure Southie’s face as he spoke. The dust settled, and the wind died, revealing a tense scene in which eight were looking flabbergasted at the apparent choice of the one in the middle. His revolver was raised and aimed directly at Danny’s heart.
“There are enemies everywhere, even in the shadows.”
Danny’s mouth opened and closed, for as he’d been planning to question the words, the dust suddenly picked up and all rushed at him. He had to shield his face for a moment, and when the winds finally changed, he could see nothing of the old dirt lane.
“Mark my words.”
A shot rang above the gathering winds, one great big BOOM that sounded more like nine, rang out suddenly. He only had time to see one bullet trail in the dust streaking toward him before he was thrown back in immense pain. One bullet hit him. One bullet that pierced his heart...


5
Danny sat bolt upright. A sheen of cold sweat covered his entire body. His sheets were damp and cold to the touch, as he remembered them being as a young child when he’d occasionally wet the bed. This smell, however, was more pleasant than that one, though it was by no means something to bottle up and spray on yourself. This passed through his head in a mere second.
He clutched his beating heart as it rapped painfully against its cage, repeating the piercing bullet with each heartbeat. He felt panicky and small. He felt as he had after his big brother had tricked him into trying pot: shaky, sick, and feverish.
After assuring himself that he wasn’t dead, Danny glanced at the clock. It read 3:27 in cold, blue digital numbers. He sighed and fell back to the pillow. His heart was still drumming rapidly in his chest. He got up, figuring that he wasn’t sleeping anytime soon, showered, and crept silently back to his room.



6
The next morning, Danny mulled quietly over his strange dream as he got dressed. He wasn’t sure if the dream meant anything, and decided pretty quickly to just drop it. He thought Dreams come and go. You never looked into any of your other dreams, did you? It was a cold, unknown voice in his head. His normal voice of thought (of truth, more like) said promptly, Well that’s interesting. Now you’re hearing voices. Good to know ya while it lasted, Sanity. The cold voice had held logic though, and so the dream was forgotten.
At that point Danny glanced at the clock and noticed that his daydreaming (woolgathering, the old man would’ve called it) had put him back fifteen minutes. If he was going to get to school on time (My God, you WANT to get to school, that cold voice again), he’d have to hurry. Skipping breakfast, he grabbed his keys (with a shout of, “Later Mom!”), and was out the door. He hit the auto-unlock on his keypad and slid comfortably into the bucket seat behind the wheel of the little ’95 Grand AM. With a straight six and the new transmission Danny had helped his father drop in, the thing was a beast.
He slid the key into the ignition and fired the engine, hearing only the dull roar of the engine for roughly two seconds before the circuits completed their rounds and the CD player kicked in. A scream, both terrifying and addicting, pierced all other sound. Then the rest of the band kicked in with a crazy, beautiful mix that could only be called hardcore death metal. The fifteen-inch subs in the trunk blasted the heavy beat of a double bass pedal slamming against the thin plastic of the bass drum. Danny grinned wolfishly a he reversed into the street (too quickly, not watching for traffic), and dropped the car into drive. Seconds later, with a satisfying, window-rattling roar, the car was a black streak on the horizon.


7
Danny pulled into the school lot twelve minutes later. One band had given way to another at a stoplight a few minutes before. Danny cut off the latter in mid-scream and got out of the car. The wind tore at his clothes as if God himself were attempting to blow Danny away. He hunched down and walked toward the door. As he approached the entrance, thunder rolled across the overcast sky. Danny stopped mid-stride and faced the bone-chilling wind. The sky was darkening quickly. Under normal circumstances, people would have taken the day’s weather as a bad omen compared to the beautiful day before. As it was, Danny doubted if anyone wanted another bright, sunny day for a while. The thunder followed him into the school and he thought, Today will be better. That cold voice answered, You hope.
The morning passed slowly. Teachers who noticed any of the students from third period English class the previous day went into seemingly well-prepared speeches on the psychological impact of death on those who’ve witnessed it firsthand (at each speech performed, Danny just rolled his eyes). Third period itself had been awkward. The janitors had come in with sawdust and cleaning agents, and the room smelled of such, but there was still a creepy, dark stain in the tile floor at the front of the room.
Blaire wasn’t at school, and as Danny had suspected as much, he wasn’t surprised. There were those in the school (the ‘hardass’ crowd, who thought they were bigger than life) that called Blaire weak for not coming to school, claiming that they wouldn’t have shed a tear in that situation. What they didn’t say (but that nearly everyone knew), was that they were raised by parents without a care of what they did, and that anyone raised as such would probably shed not a tear for those they were supposed to love (everyone knew that each one had, in fact, no notion of the word).
Danny became an instant celebrity that morning (being one of the people in the room of the murder, that was obvious, but apparently nobody who’d been there remembered it like Danny did, as if they’d been under some sort of hypnotism, Maybe the old man’s droning voice put them all to sleep, the cold voice (ever present as the day drew on) sneered in his head). He recounted the story as he saw it (omitting the part about the shadows, he didn’t feel anyone was ready for that yet) at least twenty times in the first two periods. Premonition (or just plain old common sense) told him that the story would be told many more times before the day was over.
Before fifth period, as Danny wasted time at his locker, a stout boy named Pete snuck up behind him. Pete wrapped a thick arm around Danny’s neck and stuck the first two fingers of his other hand into the small of Danny’s back. Freeze, partner.
“If that is what I think it is, you’re a really sick person.” Danny told him.
Pete laughed heartily. “Dude, what was that? Your mind is never in the gutter. You’re acting really strange today, man. What’s goin’ on?”
Danny shut his locker and, without turning around, replied, “Thinking, that’s all,” in a quiet voice unbecoming of him.
Pete grinned wide. “You? Thinking? Man, I’ll believe that when a pig sprouts wings out its ass and flies me to France.” It was meant to cheer Danny up. The smile that grew on Danny’s lips extended neither north nor south: his eyes and heart were still dull with thought and…whatever the other feeling was that had created the cold voice in his head, grief, maybe.
“Screw off.” Danny said with a mixture of apathy and jest in the tone. It apparently set Pete at ease, because he grinned wide again.
“Later, dude.” Pete then disappeared into the crowd of rushing students.

8
Danny breezed through a peculiarly easy period of Chemistry (pulling and burning Carey Growman’s hairs on the Bunsen burner was quite amusing) and walked quickly back to his locker. He felt a quiet, triumphant sense of accomplishment at actually having participated (thus, earning himself time to screw around with the Bunsen burner and hair). As the little door to his school life swung wide, a small square of folded paper fell to the floor. Danny picked it up. Unsigned, as he figured it would be. Just FOR DANNY in girly block print that could have been half the school’s female population. He just slipped the note into his pocket, shut his locker (after depositing his books) and ran for his car.
There were some rewards to the good children of a small town community. One of these was open campus during the school year. As a freshman, Danny had been only all-too-happy to be rid of the disgusting, sub-par cafeteria food. Now he had wheels though, and could go further, faster. He dropped into the seat, fired the engine, and shot out of the parking lot. He was down Pine Street and onto Burton Avenue before he realized that he was going just a bit too fast for the big five-oh’s liking. He decelerated quickly and still nearly missed his turn.
Danny dined, as was custom in a small town, at a small, family-run burger place on 12th St. BEST BURGERS THIS SIDE O’ THE MISS’SIPPAH the sign proclaimed in big, shocking red letters. The burgers really were pretty good, and the service was excellent (even though these folks catered to nearly a third of the school’s population on any given day, or maybe in spite of the fact). Danny ordered (as usual) two loaded (pickle, tomato, lettuce, etc.) 1/3 lb. burgers and fries, all of which he wolfed when a hunger he hadn’t quite expected had shown up with the food.
After lunch, Danny had a full half-hour to waste, so he just cruised. The windows were down so only slivers of cool air could enter the car at any one time, the music was good and loud, and Danny felt fine. Later, after returning to the school, he remembered the note.

when i type it, i guess.

i'm writing it longhand first, because that feels like the right thing to do. or as much of it longhand as i can, at least.
right now all i have posted is all i have typed, and i have another three or four pages (at least) of longhand, which i add detail to and improvise when i transfer it to typewritten.

the first chapter's festivities are pretty important later on, and it's not the only tragedy that happens, by the way.