I can’t believe her cheek! Emma, throwing me to the wolves like that. Insinuating that I covered for Anton because I’m Matthew’s stepsister. It’s almost as if she thinks I made it up, which I did not. I would never. A few details may have been massaged, but that’s a storyteller’s prerogative.
The important thing is my time with Anton was special and meaningful and classy, no matter what Erin Love and Grayson think. I wish it hadn’t been sullied by this alibi nonsense, of course. But now’s not the time to dwell on the nagging doubt at the back of my mind. I need to focus on running from dozens of hinge-jawed ghosts.
At first, my legs are buoyed by the power of love and determination, and I run like the wind. Five minutes later, I realize that this isn’t how human musculature works. My calves burn and my lungs constrict. A stitch in my side feels like a shard of my rib has broken off and is stabbing me in the liver.
I have to rest. I can’t go on. Then I turn a corner, and up ahead, like a glowing oasis, there’s a subway station. My wristband won’t have a signal underground. The ghosts will leave me alone. I’ll have five minutes before I time out, but it will be enough to regroup.
I barrel through the barriers and shove my way down the escalator. Ghosts continue to appear, floating in midair without any flat ground for them to stand on. I trip off the escalator and scramble along the tiled tunnels, out onto the platform. And then, the ghosts vanish.
There’s a train pulling into the platform with a noisy electrical hum. The announcement is drowned out by screeching brakes, and the doors hiss open. I wouldn’t usually take a risk like this—I have four and a half minutes left on my countdown—but the next station is one minute away. It will get me closer to the river and give me a chance to catch my breath. It’s not cheating, I tell myself.
Inside the train, I slide down onto the floor by the doors even though there are seats. The car is way too bright. I must resemble a sweaty tomato. A woman keeps flicking me curious glances. This time around, it’s not so exciting having people know I’m playing Anton’s game. I try to stay calm, but every time the train wheels clank on the tracks, my heart jumps in my chest.
“Excuse me,” the woman says. “Are you part of that game?”
“No,” I say. “Not me.”
“Oh, I thought your glasses…”
I push them up my nose and smile at her. “Just glasses. Actually, I’m on my way to meet my dad. I haven’t seen him for a while, and he’s coming to visit.”
“That’s so sweet,” she says, returning to her book.
All right. I can do this. I close my eyes and do some deep breathing. In for four, out for eight. Feeling more composed, I open my eyes again. It takes me a second to realize that the countdown on my lenses has vanished and I’m back in the game. That’s weird. Surely that could only happen if my wristband had a signal, and that’s not possible so far underground.
Then it hits me. I’d forgotten about that new plan to increase the free Wi-Fi coverage on the subway.
It’s OK, it’s OK. Shadow City is designed to work for pedestrians, not on forty-mile-per-hour trains. The ghosts can’t take shape properly. They rush past harmlessly as blurs at the corners of my vision. We’ll reach the next station within seconds, and I’ll get above ground.
Only then the train slows. It stops. It waits.
This is more of a problem. Now the ghosts are materializing for real, reaching for me with their horrid fingernails, coming closer and closer. They flicker in and out of existence as the Wi-Fi cuts in and out. I try to exorcise them, but it doesn’t work. Why won’t it work?
“I need to get off this train,” I shout, slapping my hand on the door release button. “Let me off!”
Outside, the tunnel is dark, all wires and filthy concrete. I’m buried belowground, surrounded by endless mud and rock, entombed down here like one of the dead. A ghost stretches its arms toward me, and its mouth becomes this huge gaping black hole that threatens to suck me in. I shriek and shield my face.
Then we’re moving again and the ghost rushes away. The commuters watch me suspiciously. It can’t be much longer. I need to get outside where I can run. I jiggle up and down, skittish with nervous energy.
The lights on the train flicker, and we’re plunged into absolute darkness, broken only by the sudden spark of electricity from the train wheels as we slow to a halt. The Shadow City ghosts vanish with the Wi-Fi signal, and my countdown starts. But in the dark, I swear I can hear a ghost creeping toward me, and this one isn’t from Anton’s game.
This time when I scream, someone else does too, followed by nervous laughter. I want to tell everyone that there’s nothing for them to be scared of. This ghost is here for me and me alone. Because this ghost is Rose, risen from her grave with peeling skin and empty eye sockets. She exhales fetid breath against my face.
“This is on you, Charlotte,” she says. “This is what you wanted.”
Another scream tears its way out of me, and it sets off a chain reaction. People start yelling and crying for help. The whole car becomes this cacophony of sobs and shouts. People hammer on the windows. Someone presses the call button to alert the driver, but his reply is nothing but static.
My countdown ticks over, closer and closer to the one-minute mark, and still the train doesn’t move; the lights don’t come on. I press myself against the divider and squeeze my eyes closed. I can sense her right there, inches from my face. What’s she waiting for? What does she want with me?
“You lied,” Rose snarls.
“I had no choice,” I whisper, hiccuping in my panic.
“All you cared about was yourself.”
“That’s not true! I never meant for any of this to happen.”
The car is a chaos of yelling and fists beating on the doors. I take myself away, into a memory of that night in the maze.
“Tell me about yourself, Charlotte,” Anton said, closing the door of the summer house. He peered out of the floor-to-ceiling windows to make sure we were alone.
“Well, I’m sixteen, and I’m a huge fan. The biggest.”
I told Anton how I loved English and hated math and how I wrote stories in my spare time. I remember I was so nervous being in the same room as him, but you know what he told me?
“Charlotte, you’ve got this. No one can be you better than you can. You’re the only Charlotte here right now, and that makes you the best.”
It made me laugh, and I started to relax. Anton went on to tell me how he’d gotten into making game maps for his friends and turned it into a living. He seemed so different from his online persona, and it only made me love him move. In his videos, I’d seen glimpses of the shy, thoughtful boy he really was. But that night I got to meet him for real.
He told me he’d fallen out with his family and how everything he did was to prove himself to his dad. We had so much in common. Both of us had been abandoned by our fathers in one way or another. Both of us wanted someone to see us.
I told him that he was someone to so many people already, and he smiled. “You’re the sweetest girl,” he said, closing his eyes and resting his head on my shoulder.
It wasn’t long before he was snoring away. I put my hand under his and he squeezed it, and everything was perfect.
That’s what I’m playing for. That’s what I have to lose.
“You have everything to lose,” Rose’s ghost says.
“No,” I reply. “You’re not real. You can’t hurt me!”
The lights come on and I’m alone. Well, I’m in a subway car full of a dozen panicking people, some of whom are crying, some of whom are trying to smash the windows with their briefcases. But Rose is gone.
My timer stops as the signal returns, barely in time. The train shudders and starts to move as the ghosts reappear. Seconds later, we’re pulling into the platform. I press the Open Doors button repeatedly until the car releases me. I dare a quick look over my shoulder at the now-embarrassed passengers trying to act like nothing happened in the tunnel in the dark. They return to their seats or hurry off the train, wiping their eyes and smoothing their clothes.
I push my way through the crowds on the platform and hurry up the escalators, pausing to exorcise a particularly persistent ghost. I burst out of the station into welcome fresh air, and the second I’ve got my bearings, I set off at a run. The ghosts are getting faster, but I can outrun them.
Like Anton told me, I’ve got this.