Free Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older Page A

from her bed as soon as Sierra walked in. “Look at you, fly girl!” She squeezed past Big Jerome and the two friends embraced.
    “Shut up,” Sierra said, giving Bennie a kiss on the cheek and extending a pound for Big Jerome. “Whaddup, man?”
    “Is what it is.” Jerome shrugged. “Just chilling, you know, hanging with Ms. B. I heard you got a hot date tonight with Weird Painting Dude.”
    “Bennie!” Sierra hissed. To Jerome she said, “It’s not a date, he’s not that weird, and … yes. We’re hanging out. That’s all.”
    Jerome rolled his eyes. “Okay, Sierra.”
    “You ready for Extreme Makeover , Brooklyn Edition?” Bennie said. She settled back into the cushiony pillow throne on her bed and picked up a glass of tea-stained ice cubes. “It’s gonna be fun! And extremely painful. But mostly fun!”
    “Yeah, listen,” Sierra said. “I know this is kinda messed up, Jerome, but I gotta talk to Bennie.” He stared at her blankly. “Alone.”
    Jerome pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes. “Oh.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Nah,” he said, tossing a supposedly carefree arm in the air. “No doubt. I get it. Girl stuff.”
    “Yeah,” Sierra said.
    “For your date.”
    “No! Other girl stuff. You do realize girls have other topics of conversation besides dudes, right?”
    “I … guess.”
    “Anyway, it’s wack to kick you out, I know, but …”
    “Nah, it’s cool.” Jerome was up, sliding himself awkwardly toward the door. Sierra felt crummy.
    “Thanks for walking me home,” Bennie said.
    “No thing, B.”
    “At least you don’t have far to go,” Sierra said.
    “Yeah, just around the corner.” He laughed lamely and was gone.
    Bennie shook her head. “You’re cold, girl. Ice-cold.”
    Sierra sat in front of her best friend’s mirror. “I know. I feel terrible, but … I don’t know how to explain this.”
    “What? You nervous about the date?” Bennie stood behind Sierra and began combing out her hair.
    “It’s not that.”
    “Then whatsa matter, girl?”
    No words came. How to explain it all? Where to even start?
    Bennie narrowed her eyes in a pretty good imitation of her mom’s suspicious face. “Alright,” she said. “I’ll just start braiding this fro and tell you random gossip until you’re ready to talk.” She separated out a large section of Sierra’s hair and started braiding it. “Did you know Pitkin dumped Butt Jenny?”
    “Already? The party was like yesterday!”
    “Seems he moved on to bigger and better things.”
    “Janice? Oh my God, Bennie! She’s like what? Eighty?”
    “She’s eighteen, Sierra, jeez!”
    Sierra laughed and then it happened: She started talking. The whole weird situation poured out of her mouth, all the things she hadn’t even known how to express to herself, from the crying murals to Grandpa Lázaro’s strange, doomed fellowship to Nydia the librarian and the search for this spirit Lucera.
    “Dang!” Bennie said when she’d finished. “That’s wild!”
    “Pretty much,” Sierra said, breathing a sigh of relief now that it was all out of her system and her friend hadn’t called her a raving lunatic. Not yet, anyway.
    “I’ve never hearda anything like that in my life.”
    “Basically.”
    “But still, there must be some explanation.”
    “You and your explanations!”
    “I can’t help it,” Bennie said. “I’m a scientist. That’s what we do: We explain stuff.” Bennie had spent every year of the decade that Sierra had known her obsessed with one branch of the natural sciences or another. She had settled on zoology recently, after having one eye glued to her telescope for what seemed like forever. “I’m just saying not everything is necessarily how it seems. Okay?”
    “Okay. Ow!” Sierra wrenched her head away from Bennie’s fingers. “Leave it!”
    “You can’t leave a half-done braid. C’mere.” Hands returned to hair, and the yanking and tugging began all over again. “Look,” Bennie said,