When she was little, Alicia had two shadows.
The first shadow followed her, copied what she did, and always stayed flat. It was the Good Shadow.
The other was the Bad Shadow.
It only copied her when people were near, and never all the way. If her hands were still, it twiddled its fingers. When she was walking, it jumped ahead so she had to hurry to keep up, or it lagged behind, slowing her down. It ignored light and cast itself in the wrong direction.
Once when her parents were out, the Bad Shadow unstuck itself from the floor and raced through the house. It knocked the TV over, smashed a vase, and threw laundry all over the floor. When her parents returned, they were furious.
That night in bed, hungry and miserable, Alicia vowed to get rid of the shadow.
The next morning, she slipped outside with some sidewalk chalk and made a show of drawing something small and secret, hiding it from her shadow's view.
Intrigued, the shadow crept closer.
"Fine," Alicia said, getting up. "Look."
The shadow obliged. While it focused on the drawing, Alicia swiftly drew a circle around it. She left the circle, and the shadow couldn't follow.
It immediately panicked, ramming against the inside of the circle like a trapped animal, and its face split open into an unhappy white mouth.
"You need to leave," Alicia said. "If I let you out, do you promise to go?"
The shadow nodded.
Alicia rubbed out a spot with her foot, and the shadow fled. It pulled itself up from the concrete and transformed into an enormous crow. It cawed, and the noise fell into Alicia's head in a way that said, sorry!
And then it took to the air and was gone.
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