A common response when Shadow first told someone her name was to repeat it back to her as a question, with an air of disbelief. Shadow had learned to be patient with that sort of thing. After all, hers wasn’t exactly a usual name, and she didn’t exactly look like a shadow, with her pale skin, platinum blonde hair, and light gray eyes.

She had learned to be patient about worse, so it wasn’t really a big deal.

She hadn’t been named because she looked like a shadow. In fact, it was more or less the opposite. Her father had high hopes for her upon her birth, predicting she would loom large and cast a shadow across the world. Her mother had been searching for an original name for her daughter, having come from a long line of Elizabeths, Victorias, and Elizabeth Victorias. When she heard this prophecy, she suggested they take that name and give it to their daughter. And so the infant became Shadow.

If there was one thing that couldn’t be argued, it was that Shadow had lived up to her name, though whether it had been in the way her parents had hoped was another story all together. The older she got, it seemed, the more she blended into the background. She provoked a quiet fear in some, quiet hatred in others, and in a few, quiet respect. For her part, everything about her was quiet. No one talked to her, and she talked to no one. Whether or not this bothered her was something she never let on, so most chose to believe it didn’t, because that required no action and no guilt.

Perhaps Dawn’s parents had a bit more forethought in naming their child after the sunrise, not the dark shapes it created. From a young age, her mind was an open book she read aloud to anyone who was there to listen. Her personality lit up every room she was in.

One might have guessed that Shadow and Dawn’s friendship was one of those “opposites attract” situations, but it actually came about because of their similarities. It began when they were in elementary school, back before Shadow began to fade, when she was still a light in her own right and could actually be considered outgoing. Not as much as Dawn, but outgoing nonetheless.

What really brought Shadow and Dawn together was that they were in the same class, and the new girl in the school the same year. Dawn liked to talk, as did Shadow, but what really made it work was that she liked to listen. Within a few weeks, Dawn and Shadow were officially Best Friends Forever, saying they were like sisters, exchanging last names like they were planning to get married.

Perhaps the “Forever” part of their shared title was a bit ironic, because it wasn’t long until Dawn was coming up with ways to end their friendship. It started one morning when Shadow had come into the classroom and gone to play with Dawn. Dawn told her she didn’t want to be friends anymore. Crushed and confused, Shadow started to cry, but before tears could actually fall, Dawn assured her it was just an April Fool’s joke. Shadow accepted this, even though it wasn’t April.

From that point onward, Dawn ending their friendship was a near constant presence in said friendship. It could happen in the classroom, at the lunch table, on the playground, whenever the mood hit her. Shadow didn’t cry anymore, just got up and left, going somewhere to sit on her own with a shard of bitterness lodged in her chest until Dawn came and told her she was joking. April Fool’s Day could be any day. Somewhere along the way, Shadow lost the ability to say no to Dawn and accepted the explanation, but the shard of bitterness never quite went away, and more and more eventually began to build up over time. She never really forgave Dawn for the cruel jokes, partly because even though Dawn always said she was joking, she never said she was sorry.

The next year, Dawn upped the ante. The break-ups lasted for days instead of seconds, and she began introducing replacement best friends who she taught her and Shadow’s secret handshakes to right in front of her, just to make her former-for-now best friend angry. At recess, Shadow climbed onto the monkey bars and watched them from afar, shards of old bitterness and new jealousy digging deeper and deeper into her heart. She didn’t have anyone to play with, because within the first year of becoming best friends, Dawn had chased off anyone else who tried to get close to Shadow.

Maybe it was ironic that years later, in middle school, Shadow knew their friendship was truly dead when Dawn asked her to affirm it was not, in fact, over. Shadow assured her reflexively that they were still best friends, because she still couldn't say no to her, but the moment the words left her mouth, she knew they weren’t true. They almost never spent any time together. Dawn had new friends; Shadow didn’t consider herself to have any real ones. As soon as she had her confirmation, Dawn breezed past her and went to talk to her group of other friends, the group Shadow had tried and failed to break into. Shadow went to sit alone on the gym bleachers and pulled a book out of her backpack.

And maybe it was ironic that years after that, in high school, Dawn was the one staring jealously while Shadow sat with a group of friends at lunch. She still didn’t talk as much as they did, but she listened, she smiled, she laughed. Some light had returned to her eyes, while Dawn’s had become dark and sunken. Dawn couldn’t understand how the girl she had watched fade into her namesake for eight years suddenly so bright, present, alive. Still, she was determined not to show interest in her, even as Shadow sensed someone watching her, glanced in Dawn’s direction, and became visibly uncomfortable before forcing her shoulders to relax and returning to her conversation.

And then in their senior year, the two passed each other by in the hallways. Shadow was wearing a pair of worn jeans and a sweatshirt, the name of the college she would be attending next fall emblazoned on the front. She had cut her hair considerably shorter since her younger years, and she carried herself upright, with a quiet, nonintrusive confidence. Nonintrusive, that is, to everyone but Dawn, who noticed her unmade face and thought back to the elementary school playground, when Shadow told her that she didn’t think she’d ever wear make-up and Dawn responded by telling her that her face would rot if she didn’t. Shadow had been so torn between having to wear make-up and having her face rot, she’d started crying, and Dawn was quick to assure her she’d been joking.

Dawn, on the other hand, had shed a considerable amount of weight from her already slim frame. She was wearing a sleeveless, cropped, white shirt and a checkered skirt. Her make-up made her eyes look sunken and haunted, and her gait was the over-exaggerated walk of someone trying to exude confidence.  Her hair hung around her face unevenly. She still had the bangs she had gotten in elementary school.

Shadow had bangs when she met Dawn, though she had already taken to parting them down the middle and pushing them to the sides when they annoyed her. Dawn had grow out her bangs, but got them back a couple years after she and Shadow became friends. Shadow grew out her bangs a few years later, around the same time she started dancing. Dawn joined the dance school the next year, but she never quite got to Shadow’s level and quit after a couple years. She joined Shadow’s Girl Scout troop, and became better friends with the girls in it than Shadow had ever been. Starting to feel like an outsider in the groups she had been apart of since the first grade, Shadow quit. Then, Dawn joined the school musical, which Shadow had done the previous year. Shadow had loved it then, but the second year she despised it. Dawn got the starring role, while the most significant thing Shadow did was wave a flag made from foam and a cardboard paper towel roll. Added to the pressure Dawn put on her to change her hair and make-up and various things and the fact that she teamed up with her newest not-best-friend-who-she-spent-more-time-with to do it, Shadow didn’t do the musical again next year. She took up piano instead.

Dawn knew she was a great singer. She had been taking voice-lessons for as long as she had known Shadow. She had even been in an outside theater company, though she had never been the star of those productions. She had thought that first starring role in the sixth grade musical was the beginning of her payoff, the first step towards future greatness. She never had a starring role again. Through seventh and eighth grade, she played secondary roles as she watched her peers rise, and once she got to high school, it was all over. She was stuck in the Ensemble. It wasn’t that she had any less talent than she had before, just that she was stuck on stage with people who had more. There was also the fact that as her body became thinner and thinner, she became incapable of the same energy that her peers were able to put into their roles. She just couldn’t keep up.

Shadow’s problem wasn’t a lack of energy, nor singing talent, though she herself had never taken voice lessons. Her problem was a lack of confidence. When she tried to sing in front of the directors at the middle school musical auditions, she had been so nervous, her voice had gotten all squeaky. But Dawn had heard heard her with no one but her best friend around, back in elementary school. Back when they had decided they wanted to form a band. Dawn was the lead singer and Shadow was the backup. Neither of them played an instrument. It was then that Dawn discovered that Shadow could actually sing and sing well, but the fact that Dawn was better was a given in the minds of both girls.

The funny thing was, despite their titles, Dawn and Shadow had more of less equal parts in the songs they wrote. Maybe this had something to do with the fact that Shadow was the main driving force behind the writing of them. She had more ideas, more creativity with her lyrics, and a better sense of what sounded good and what didn’t. The songs weren’t good by any stretch of the imagination, they were written by elementary school girls after, but they had had an impact on at least one member of the “band”.

Shadow had taken up writing lyrics again in the sixth grade, when her and Dawn’s friendship was somewhere between hanging-on-for-dear-life and had-all-gone-to-hell. The song had been, more or less, a person singing about a friend’s dual nature and how it was hurting her. She hadn’t written it with Dawn in mind, but in retrospect it did apply to her very well. That song also hadn’t been very good, but she kept writing, long after she had trashed that first attempt. And, as she got older, she also got better, not mention she began to learn the piano and with it, the ability to give her lyrics musical accompaniment, turning them into real songs. She began taking voice lessons as well as piano. It gave her a place to channel the tumultuous emotions of middle school, when she found herself unable to connect with, or even seem to talk to anyone, after Dawn asked if they were still friends and Shadow said they were, but realized they weren’t.

She didn’t know about the malicious rumors circulating about her, so she blamed herself when people seemed awkward around her, and avoided conversation. Her songs took on an intense melancholy as she described herself as a dark, empty creature searching for a light that never appeared, calling out for someone to find her, to save her, to be her friend.

When she got to high school, Shadow scrapped all of these songs because she decided they were poorly written, egocentric self-pity anthems with little to no originality. Without Dawn around to fill the role, Shadow had become her own greatest critic.

When she made it to high school, Shadow was determined not to spend the next four years alone, and made a point of overcoming her shadowy nature and making some new friends. She succeeded, and from that point on, she didn’t write songs about crushing isolation anymore. She wrote about high school stuff: stress, unrequited crushes, and the joys and terrors of figuring out who you are.

The first time Dawn saw Shadow walking with a group of friends, laughing and smiling, she had done a double take. She had gotten so used to seeing Shadow by herself, standing in the background, that she hadn’t thought she’d ever see her with anyone else. Anyone but Dawn.

Ever since she had met Shadow, Dawn had been terrified of her best friend meeting someone she liked better and replacing her, not being her friend anymore. Dawn had been the new girl, just like Shadow, and the two had connected. She had almost lost Shadow, too, to some other girl she began to befriend. She even went to that other girl’s house for a playdate, but in the end, Dawn had won. She had marked Shadow as Mine and no one else got close to her.

Still, Dawn got scared. So scared she told Shadow she didn’t want to be friends anymore. She had to dump Shadow before Shadow dumped her. Shadow started crying, at which point Dawn realized her mistake. Shadow wasn’t planning to dump her after all. She backtracked quickly and told her she was joking. Shadow had cheered up quickly, but asked her not to joke like that.

Dawn did it again the next week.

She couldn’t help it. When Shadow got upset because Dawn didn’t want to be her friend anymore, Dawn felt important. Like she was an essential part of someone’s life. It was an addicting feeling, and Dawn chased it like an addict.

Then Shadow stopped getting upset. When Dawn dropped the “I don’t want to be friends anymore” bomb, it didn’t seem to shake her anymore. Shadow’s face fell, her eyes not watery, just glassy. Cold, see-through glass with nothing on the other side. She left Dawn alone without protest. And then Dawn got really scared. Because what if Shadow stopped being upset by the idea of being Dawn’s friend? What if the next time, she simply went and played with someone new? And liked them better than Dawn? And didn’t want to take Dawn back and ended their friendship for real?

So instead of just scaring her with the idea of not being friends, Dawn started trying to make her jealous. When she ditched Shadow, she pretended to become someone else’s best friend. The replacements never lasted long, only longer than she meant them to. Shadow was still her real best friend, always her real best friend, but she had to know that she was Shadow’s, and when she saw Shadow sitting alone on the playground, watching Dawn and her new “BFF” dejectedly, she knew she was. So the addiction continued.

By the time they got to middle school, Dawn had found a group, not of fake best friends, but real not-best friends. Shadow was a part of the group too, but only sort-of. Dawn made sure to not include Shadow in the group entirely. She had grown out of many things, like fake replacement best friends and the idea of starting a band with Shadow, but she hadn’t grown out of the fear that Shadow would grow close to someone else and not want to hang out with her anymore. It helped that Shadow had grown into a natural introvert whose mother thought she was too young for a cell phone and didn’t like social media. So, Shadow was kept out of loop, and all her attempts to get in were thwarted until she gave up. No risk of her getting too close to someone if they had nothing to talk about. So at their lunch table, while Dawn talked and laughed with the other girls, Shadow was safely off to the side, quietly eating her lunch. She eventually started bringing books and passing the time reading.

This all gave Shadow a bit of a reputation. Strange, reclusive, quiet, mysterious. Rumors began to spread.

Some boys must’ve liked the idea of having a mystery for a girlfriend, because every now and then, a boy came running up to her, asking if she would date his friend. Shadow always said no, because she had a strict policy against dating anyone a) who couldn’t work up the courage to ask in person, b) she didn’t know well, and c) at all before high school.

Dawn didn’t quite understand that reasoning, mostly because Shadow didn’t confide in her. She didn’t trust her with words anymore, mostly because every time she did, they ended up in other people’s mouths. Dawn didn’t want to admit, to herself or anyone, that she had lost her best friend’s confidence, so she made things up and pretended Shadow told her. Once, while pondering with a friend why a girl wouldn’t want to date, Dawn suggested she might be a lesbian, then ran with it and claimed Shadow had confessed to her. The rumor spread like wildfire. Most didn’t really believe it, but it itched in their mind, like a what-if they couldn’t scratch. The town they lived in was politically conservative and still trying to decide if that kind of thing was okay. The school was full of children trying to be mature by embodying the images of high school they saw in movies like “High School Musical” and “Mean Girls”.

The rumor turned out really well for Dawn. Not only did boys stop asking Shadow out, but girls became uncomfortable around her. This came at a critical time, around when Dawn asked Shadow if they were still friends and Shadow realized she was sick of being alone and not having real friends. So when the grade went on a field trip and there were no empty two-seaters, she sat next to one of the girls from the group, a girl named Star she had been in Girl Scouts with, someone she had known since the first grade, and tried to strike up a conversation. She could only get one-syllable answers out of her if she asked a direct question, grunts at best when she said something else. Shadow wasn’t talented enough at conversation to keep it up by herself, so she went silent for the rest of the bus trip, wondering what it was about her that made it impossible for her to make friends.

The drawback of all this was that Dawn couldn’t exactly be seen with Shadow alone, but she still wasn’t allowing other people near Shadow, so she couldn’t really be seen with her at all. Theirs became a secret friendship. In a way, it was exciting for Dawn, pretending not to know each other at school, but meeting secretly at their houses after school or on the weekends. It never occurred to her that as Shadow sat by herself, her only friend refusing to acknowledge her, the bitterness was growing, digging deeper into her, old shards combined with new hurt.

That all changed one Saturday. Dawn was over at Shadow´s house, in her bedroom. Golden sunlight was streaming through the window, and Shadow was showing her a new song she was writing. Shadow had mentioned she was still songwriting, Dawn had asked to see it, Shadow still couldn't say no. The song was part of the beginning of Shadow´s dark melancholy period, and it was about feeling abandoned and stepped over. Shadow had sung it. Her voice had surprised Dawn with how clear and controlled it was. She didn't remember anything about Shadow taking voice lessons, but she couldn't imagine her voice was like that naturally. Shadow took Dawn to the basement and started to play on the piano. Dawn listened, and just when Shadow took a breath to start singing, Dawn started singing the song herself. Dawn had a better, more practiced singing voice than Shadow’s, and for a moment, her voice and Shadow’s lyrics and playing seemed to come together perfectly. For a moment, Dawn remembered her old dream of starting a band with her best friend, and wondered if it might really be possible after all.

Then, something didn’t quite fit. It was at a part of the song which, when Shadow sang it, was raw and emotional and definitely the climax of the song. Dawn couldn’t summon that same feeling, so it sounded just like the rest of the song and, as a result, the whole thing felt flat. Dawn nearly stumbled when she realized it, and finished uneasily. Shadow’s fingers slowed, and finally came to rest on the keys. She stared at her hands and didn’t say a word. She hadn’t said of sung a word the whole time she was playing and Dawn was singing.

They sat for a while, side-by-side on a piano bench, in uncomfortable silence. Finally, Dawn took a breath, and asked if Shadow wanted to try again and sing with her this time. Shadow didn’t respond. Dawn nudged her, and then Shadow looked up. The look in her eyes took Dawn by surprise.

Her eyes were like shattered glass, scattered shards of bitterness, broken windows with no light coming through. They were eyes that were empty of tears, but longing to cry. Eyes that had spent their tears long ago, dry and empty as a desert, filled only with darkness and something that used to be bitterness. Something like anger. Something like hatred. Shadow looked at her with that broken expression before finally nodding and saying sure. They sang together, but Dawn couldn’t get quite comfortable with the song, wondering what about brought out the raw emotion in Shadow’s voice and the broken emptiness in her eyes. Finally, Shadow started to sing over her, and Dawn, for the first time since they met, let her.

The look in Shadow’s eyes followed Dawn home that afternoon, and stayed with her for the rest of the day, until she was in bed and staring up at the ceiling, turning lyrics and looks and the meanings of both over in her head. The next day, she was so desperate for answers, she approached Shadow in school, on the way to recess, and asked if they were still best friends. Shadow said yes, but her eyes turned into bitterness and broken glass when she said it, and Dawn left feeling like ice was spreading over her, clawing its way deep into her chest. She went to sit with her friends, but felt distant and detached. Not wanting to seem disinterested, she fell back on her acting skills, becoming an actress playing Dawn. The whole room became a set, her friends becoming, in equal parts, fellow actors and audience, watching her every move for any hint of a slip-up, any sign that she wasn’t her normal self, any sign of the actress playing the part.

The performance persisted for a long time afterward, but she soon realized that someone wasn’t playing her part. Shadow. She was distant. Distracted. Like she had lost the ability to pay attention to of even care about the rest of the world. Once Dawn saw the broken glass in her eyes, she couldn’t unsee it. Something was wrong with her. There had to be. And Dawn told her friends that. Over time, she assigned just about every mental illness she could to Shadow. She was depressed, she was bipolar. She saw things. She heard voices. She self-harmed. She tried to kill herself once.

The people who had previously just been uncomfortable around her now actively avoided her. Slowly, Dawn stopped hanging out with her altogether. Or maybe Shadow stopped hanging out with her. Dawn preferred the first version because she still didn’t want to let Shadow dump her. She had to dump her first. And she could never accept that, after all this time, Shadow had finally chosen someone over Dawn. She had chosen Nobody.

In the spring of their freshman year of high school, Dawn saw Shadow walking to her next class with a boy. The two were talking and smiling. Her eyes didn’t look empty anymore. Light reflected from the broken glass like tears of laughter. Dawn turned to the nearest available friend, a girl named Star, and asked if she thought that boy was Shadow’s boyfriend. Star glanced at the pair and said she seriously doubted it. After all, Shadow was a lesbian, right? Dawn’s eyes widened in surprise and asked if she had come out. Her friend gave her a look and asked what she was talking about. Everyone knew she had, she came out to Dawn. Dawn, shocked, said she made that up. She hadn’t thought anyone would actually believe that anymore. Star’s brow furrowed, like she couldn’t believe it, she had just made that up? Dawn said yeah, so what, and asked again if she thought Shadow and that boy might be a couple. Star didn’t answer, instead turning her eyes to the floor with a faraway look and realized that Star was wondering how many of the other things she had heard about Shadow had been simply made up by Dawn.

The next day, Dawn went to greet Star at lunch, but she breezed right past her and went to where Shadow was sitting with a group of friends. Seeing Shadow with a group was bizarre enough, but what happened next was even weirder. Star crouched next to Shadow and started talking. Shadow watched her, first with curiosity, then shock. Star had her head hung, apparently in shame, and Shadow’s hand covered her mouth. Then, Dawn saw the sunlight reflecting off Shadow’s cheeks and realized she was crying. Star looked up and saw Shadow’s tears, and Dawn saw she was crying too. Then, Shadow leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Star. Star looked frozen in shock for a moment before hugging Shadow back, resting her chin on the other girl’s shoulder and letting herself cry. Dawn could only watch them for a second before turning away.

That afternoon when she got home, Shadow put off doing her homework for a few hours to write a song about friendship and forgiveness. Four years later, with the use of her college’s recording equipment, it was the first original song she recorded.

But a year before that happened, Shadow was walking down the hallway of her high school, senior year, on the way to her first class of the day. She noticed Dawn pass her, so close they could have touched. Instead, Shadow put her hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt and with a quick glance noted how thin Dawn was. She had always been thin, but her friends had been talking, recently, about just how thin she had become, how even petite clothing was starting to look baggy on her. They had mentioned something about medication for some mental thing of another, Shadow couldn’t recall what. She couldn’t judge all that from one quick glance, and Shadow didn’t look again. She felt a hint of concern for her former best friend, but she also knew it wasn’t her problem and there wasn’t anything she could do to help. She didn’t think about Dawn often anymore, but when she did, there was this weird feeling of emptiness, that came from the muddied mix of nostalgia for a childhood friend and the memory of how deeply that friend had hurt her, positive and negative so confused, they didn’t feel like anything at all.

Shadow wondered if she could write a song about it, but as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she knew she couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

There wasn’t anything left to say.