Shadows 02 Girl in the Shadows by V. C. Andrews

rowboat tied to it. I gathered from her words and her signing that she had come here often when she was little, sometimes with her mother, and many times with Trevor Washington, who took her fishing. She had learned to pronounce his name very well, with only a little exaggeration with the vowels, so it came out "Tre... voooor."
Then she acted out a little scene with lots of grimacing that was meant to tell me that she didn't like catching anything because she felt sorry for the fish immediately after hooking it. Reading her gestures and expressions was like unraveling one riddle after another for me, each one giving me more and more insight into what her life had been like with primarily only her grandmother and Trevor for companions.
She sat on the dock with her feet dangling over and just above the water. I sat beside her and we were quiet, both watching the insects circling in a frenzy. Occasionally we would see a fish pop to the surface to feast on something. The surface of the water was their dining table. I thought.
The sun had fallen just below the tree line in the west so that the shadows deepened and sprawled slowly and lazily over the pond, which was really quite large. To the left it went around a bend of trees. I thought it was the golden moment of the day, when everything paused for a while to enjoy the mere fact of its existence, the fact that it had lived through another wonderful twenty-four hours or so. I certainly felt that way.
I indicated the rowboat and she nodded excitedly. We got into it carefully and I asked her if she wanted to row. She was anxious to do so. She did very well, too. As we glided along. I closed my eyes and thought about how peaceful it was here, and how easy to be contented, even if only for a short while. Inside, my body felt like it was winding down, relaxing and loosening. I think I actually drifted asleep for a few minutes, because when I opened my eyes. I realized we were already around the bend. I hadn't meant for us to go that far and so I sat up quickly and indicated that she should turn around. She shook her head and pointed to the far shore. Obviously, she wanted to show me something.
She rowed with determination. I gazed over her shoulder and searched for anything significant. All I saw was a large rock. She brought the boat close to it and reached out with her hand to guide us right up against it. Then she smiled at me and nodded at the rock.
"Ty and me," she said. She pronounced it almost perfectly and patted the rock.
"Ty and you? What are you talking about?" I stood up carefully and made my way to her side to look at the rock.
There, carved with a pocketknife or something, was a heart, and inside it was clearly scraped "Ty and Me." I stared at it and then looked at her.
"Who did this?" I asked her. I mimed carving into the rock. "Who?"
"Ty," she said.
Maybe he was trying to demonstrate something. I thought. But what? Carving a heart? A young girl's emotions are not toys. He was just arrogant enough to have done something like this.
I felt her eyes on me. She began to sign and gesture. At first I didn't understand what she wanted to know. She became more emphatic and I soon realized she was asking me if I had or ever had a boyfriend. She made me laugh with her gestures to show holding hands, kissing, and then putting her hands together and tilting her head as she flicked her eyelids.
"Yes. yes. I understand,'" I said, glanced at the carved heart, and then sat across from her. A boyfriend? What should I tell her?
I thought about Peter Smoke. the Indian boy I had met while I was going to school in Memphis. He had been my instructor in chess club and had taught me a lot about his Indian beliefs, especially the medicine wheel. We had started to have a romantic relationship. He was really the closest I had come to having a real boyfriend, but when he misinterpreted my intentions, it hadn't ended well. He's probably forgotten all about me by now, I thought. It was certainly