Shadows only have one job, and that is to follow their owners. Some shadows get celebrities, some shadows get lawyers and some shadows get farmers, but no matter who the owner is, the shadow gets attached to them. I mean, after all, who could not? Shadows stay with their owners from birth till death, basically growing up with them and growing old with them, sharing in their hardships and joys.

I myself am a shadow. However, something extremely odd happened to me many years ago. It was a seemingly ordinary day in July, nothing unusual. A little girl of the age of 7 with long dark hair was running down the road in the park, and I was her shadow. Her name was Krystal and I’ll never forget her. I knew everything about her. How she loved to eat oatmeal in the morning and how she liked to snuggle with her stuffed cat before falling to sleep. How she always skipped when she was happy and how concerned she was when someone got hurt. How beautiful her voice was and how she got teased because her best friend was a boy. He was chasing her that very instant, but I knew he was never going to catch up to her. He never did. She was always too quick.

“Catch me if you can!” she yelled while laughing. I matched her movements easily, turning around the corner with the silhouette of her hair streaming behind her. But at that very moment, I felt myself fall. Krystal had tripped over a rock in the middle of the pathway. I was worried but she got up again at the speed of lightning. I let out a soundless sigh of relief and kept on running in sync with her.

However, her fall had given her friend enough time to catch up with her. He was literally at her heels now. To lose him, she ran out into the main road and before I could even register it, Krystal and I were both knocked down. But this time, Krystal didn’t get up. And that was when I saw the red.

“Krystal! KRYSTAL!” her friend shouted. I looked at him and he was shaking. I was shaking on the inside too. Krystal had to be alright, she had to be.

I heard him yell for help and I saw someone dial for the ambulance.  Everything happened so quickly after that. Krystal was put on a stretcher and rushed to the hospital. I remember matching her body’s movements of shallow, ragged breathing inside the ambulance and I willed her to stay strong, to hang on. When we got to the hospital, she was wheeled into the emergency room and everything was a blur. Her crying parents, the concentrated doctors trying to do whatever they could for her. And somewhere in between all of that, she stopped breathing.

I cannot describe the sorrow and sadness I felt that day. I had lost my companion and my owner. After that, I remember waiting for my own existence to end. After all, without an owner a shadow couldn’t exist.

And then her best friend appeared at her side. He was sobbing his eyes out, and I had never ever seen him do that. But then I noticed something. His shadow was gone. I tried to grasp the situation. So instead of me vanishing, his shadow had vanished. I didn’t know what to do, I had never ever heard of this situation happening before. And so I did the only thing I could think to do at that moment. I shaped myself into his silhouette and I became his shadow.

Even after 10 years of practice, I still have to struggle keeping up with his movements. Copying him does not feel as natural as it did with Krystal. I can’t keep up with his thoughts either. Although I could predict everything Krystal would do, I am still sometimes surprised at the choices her best friend makes. Of course, this all makes sense since I am not his original shadow. I still have Krystal’s thoughts, Krystal’s actions, Krystal’s feelings.

Everything in this situation is so unusual. I shouldn’t be surprised that something else unusual happened, but I am.

I should’ve seen the fondness she had for her best friend even as a young girl. I should’ve known that she would have grown up and fallen in love with him.  But it’s too late to back out now, because I, a shadow, have already fallen in love with a human.