The first time that I noticed her was when I was eight years old. I'll never forget that day.
I was clothes shopping with Mom and my big sister, Annie. Clothes shopping with your parents is the worst. Everything that you like always has something wrong with it, and you have to go for something that you can tolerate wearing for the sake of them letting you get it. Sometimes you'll end up finding something that your parents can tolerate you wearing that you actually like. The whole thing is an arduous ordeal.
The point is, we were going to the mall to get me some new clothes for school. It was the tail end of August, a nice, sunny day. Mom kept looking at all of the cute little skirts and shorts and T-shirts, with phrases like "Girls Run the World!" and "Princess" printed on the front. I was playing in between the circular racks with Annie when I started to really look at the clothing in the boys' section.
Everything was very different from the girls' section. There were no skirts in the boys' section, and there was many different colors, while the girls' section was dominated by pinks and purples, with the occasional green and blue. There was so much more denim and khaki, and there were far more Disney, Pixar, and Star Wars prints. Annie helped me to pick out a pile of clothes from the boys' section that I wanted and brought them to Mom.
"Krista, no," she said. "Put those back." My face immediately fell. "These clothes aren't meant for a little girl. You need to pick out some girl clothes, okay?" I felt like I had been kicked in the gut. "B-but I like these clothes. Why can't I wear these?" I already felt my eyes welling up. "That's just the way it is. Now, don't you dare get into an argument with me in the mall, young lady."
I did my best to blink back my tears. It was a boring, slow, and torturous process to try on all of the clothes Mom had selected for me. All of the clothes were scratchy and uncomfortable, and felt so painfully twee and silly. I couldn't understand why Annie seemed to enjoy this process so much, why she didn't seem to feel like she was being suffocated by all of the sparkles and the frills. How could it be so much fun for her, but so difficult for me?
When we went home, I ran upstairs and into my bedroom and began to cry. I curled up beneath my blankets and felt so horrible. I didn't understand why I wasn't allowed to wear the wonderful combination of a Darth Vader shirt with denim coveralls instead of a white shirt with the phrase "Girls Rule, Boys Drool" and a blue skirt. I felt like the latter outfit was not me, like it belonged on someone completely different. I felt incredibly alone.
I finally calmed myself down around an hour later, at 4 p.m. The light was flowing through the large window in my room, and that was when I saw her for the first time. It wasn't that I hadn't seen my own shadow before, but it had never had its own eyes before. It never had its own mouth before. And it certainly couldn't talk to me before.
"Hello," she said to me. Her pitch was otherworldly and echoey, and it was quite high. "Who are you?" I asked. "I'm you, Krista. I'm apart of you. Your shadow." Of course, being a child, I had a million questions. "Where did you come from?" "Can you walk around by yourself?" "What are the other shadows like? Do you all know each other?" She answered every one of them. However, the question I remember most was this, "Why are you dressed up like a girl? I don't like wearing girl clothes." It was true, she wore a large skirt and very puffy sleeves. "I have to remind you. You are a girl."
And that was the first time it felt wrong to call myself a girl. I didn't know why it didn't feel right, but I couldn't get around how it felt like calling myself a girl wasn't really who I was. It made me wonder for a very long time.
Author's notes: So! This will be my first story on Wattpad! Please give me any notes or critiques you have of this first chapter as i feel like it's kinda shitty (I guess I am writing this at almost 2 am, so that contributes to it also) Much love! 😘❤️
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The Girl in my Shadow
General FictionSimon is a boy. He knows this, from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. However, *she* thinks otherwise. She's always there, taunting Simon, making him doubt himself. The worst thing is that Simon can never escape her, because she is his sh...
