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Some people believe that the best part of an adventure is coming home at the end of it.
For most of her life, Webby hadn’t subscribed to this opinion. Obviously the best part of an adventure is the adventure. With family, preferably. And a heretofore unsolved mystery. And a sword horse. All those things were much better than coming home, since coming home had for so long meant being more or less alone in the mansion. Since the triplets had entered her life, time at home had gained a little more flavor. But time at home still seemed better off devoted to waiting for and/or planning the next adventure, rather than having much value in itself.
Recently she’d gained some appreciation for the end of an adventure, for stepping back into the mansion, saying goodnight to the others, and climbing up into the loft that was her bedroom, alone.
On this night, as she did on most nights at home these days, Webby sat on her bed, on top of the covers and with the lamp still on, and watched the wall, and tried to be patient. One would think she’d be good at patience, having spent the first decade-plus of her life waiting for adventure and recognition and family time – and she was good at it – but she didn’t like it.
Sitting turned to lounging, turned to standing on her head, turned to pacing the floor, turned to lying on the bed once again, one hand held up in the lamplight, watching her shadow on the wall as she twisted her fingers into rabbits and butterflies and jackalopes (that one took two hands).
She was in the middle of trying to create a shadow-hand-puppet for Jaw$ the Money Shark when her patience finally paid off.
Aren’t you a little old to be sleeping with the lights on?
Webby grinned and let her hands drop. Her shadow wasn’t mimicking her movements anymore, anyway – it was pale blue now, and sticking out from the wall a little farther than it normally did, and was more tall-rebel-teenager-shaped than Webby-shaped.
“Who’s sleeping? I’m not sleeping. Are you sleeping?” Webby said, trying to seem like she hadn’t been desperately waiting for this moment, and knowing from Lena’s smirk that the pretense wasn’t working.
“You’ll run up the electricity bill,” said Lena. “Scrooge won’t like that.”
“Aw, he can take it out of my share of the treasure we found today.”
“Are you ever actually going to see any of those doubloons again? Last I checked, he just has some oblivious lackey dump it all in the money bin.”
“Yeah, that’s true. It’s probably for the best. I’m not sure there’s a bank in the country that’ll let you cash in seventeenth-century ghost pirate treasure.” Webby tapped her toes together thoughtfully. “Not in this economy. The adventure itself is the important part, anyway. I was just thinking about that. How adventure is the best thing ever.”
“Are you sure your last name isn’t McDuck?”
Webby giggled, more about the normalcy of the moment than anything else. It was exactly the kind of thing Lena would say during a sleepover.
That was an odd thought. This basically was a sleepover, and that was Lena. Even though the sleepover had an unknown time limit on it, since Lena could disappear again at any moment.
But it wasn’t the first time Webby’s brain had brought up a thought like that. Ever since she and the boys had found Lena’s room, and her journal, and learned that her new best friend was actually a shadow brought to life by Magica de Spell. It made her brain play back everything Lena had ever said and done on repeat, all those sweet, fun, “normal” moments, and wonder at how normal it all had seemed.
Well. It had been normal. Lena-normal. Like how Webby-normal was different from normal-normal. And knowing that it was Lena-normal and not normal-normal let Webby know, and remind herself, that she liked Lena-normal, and that Lena-normal was what was happening right now, with Lena here in her room.
Sure, she was a shadow, but she was Lena. She was a two-dimensional, monochromatic, glowing girl now – and not glowing as in pretty, but literally glowing – though she was still pretty, like she’d always been.
Hm. Was that a crush-y thing to think? (What even was a crush?) No, no, crushes implied the use of rose-colored glasses, and Webby knew that Lena was objectively beautiful. Thinking about it was just mentally stating the obvious.
It wasn’t the first time she’d had a thought like that, either. It was especially easy to notice that Lena was gorgeous when their faces were so close together. They’d had a few moments like this before, during sleepovers, lying down facing each other either on the bed, or in a blanket fortress, and that one time in the air vents, talking about whatever. Or mostly, Webby talking about whatever, while Lena listened. She was always there to listen. That was Lena-normal.
It was a little different when the person listening wasn’t entirely three-dimensional. It shouldn’t make a difference – Webby knew that this was Lena, the same girl from the sleepovers and the movie nights and the death-defying adventures with sword horses and Beagle Boys, so it shouldn’t be any different to talk to her now than when she had a body and when Webby didn’t know about her connection to Magica de Spell – but it did.
If she had noticed sooner, would things be different now? If Webby had pressed more when Lena dodged questions about her family, or done the miniscule amount of detective work necessary to discover that Lena was homeless, or figured out that the Sumerian amulet was the remains of an actual magical staff… could she have helped?
“Webby?”
“Huh?”
Lena was looking at her, brow furrowed. Webby realized she’d been lying there in silence, lost on the tracks of her train of thought, oblivious to whatever Lena might have said in the last few minutes.
“You know,” Lena said, “we don’t have to talk right now, if you don’t feel like it.”
“No, no, I do feel like it!” Webby reached out a hand as if to hold Lena in place, not that there was anything she could actually do if the shadow slipped away. “I don’t have any reason not to feel like it, right?”
“Maybe it’s because I’m a sullen teenager, but I don’t think you need a reason not to feel like talking to somebody.”
“Don’t leave.”
Lena blinked, surprised by the sudden intensity – a serious intensity, not the excited intensity she was used to from Webby.
“I won’t,” she said, cracking a small smile in an attempt to lighten the mood again. “Don’t worry; we have time.”
“How much?”
Lena shrugged.
“Lena, how much time?” Webby repeated.
“I could say I knew, but I promised not to lie to you anymore, remember?” Lena couldn’t help but come off as defensive. “What’s with you and specifics tonight, anyway? What does it matter?”
“I dunno, I just…” Webby sighed. “I miss you when you’re not with me.”
“I’m always with you.”
“You sound like the boys.” Webby started twisting the friendship bracelet around her finger. “They like to say that to me, and I know they’re trying to help. But that ‘always with you’ thing, the way they say it, it’s the kind of thing they think about their mom. Or like what I’m supposed to think about my parents. It’s what you say about people who are really gone.
“But that’s not you. You could be here. You should be here, like this,” she motioned at Lena’s more-or-less physical form, “where I can see you and hear you, and we can enjoy each other’s company, all the time! But most of the time, you’re not. And when you do show up, it’s just for a few minutes, and you’re here to drive a getaway car or punch a werewolf in the face or save my life some other way, and we don’t have enough time to actually hang out at all, and it’s not fair!”
“You’re preaching to the choir, Pink.” There was an icy edge to Lena’s voice. “You think I like being in 2D? I mean, it’s better than having my aunt stuck to me, and insulting me, and possessing me when I don’t do what she wants, and –”
“I know, I know, I’m sorry!” Webby sighed. “I didn’t mean to make you bring that up. I just… Why can’t you stay longer, Lena? You’re a shadow, but before, you were here for a long time. We had sleepovers.”
Lena was silent for a few moments, her mouth pursed in a way that Webby knew meant she was carefully weighing her words. In hindsight, a lot of the time Webby had seen that look on Lena’s face, it probably meant that Lena was about to lie about something. But Webby was determined to trust her more than that.
“When Magica zapped me, she dispelled the first enchantment she put on me – the one that brought me to life at all,” Lena explained. “She’d already done away with my body and sent me back to the Shadow Dimension –”
(Webby bit her tongue to stop herself from asking about the Shadow Dimension. Now was not the time for that tangent. Maybe tomorrow night. Definitely tomorrow night.)
“– but I was still me in there.” Lena shrugged. “I guess, after fifteen years alive, you build up a personality that won’t go away. I still knew who I was, and what I wanted. My freedom, your safety… and when she attacked you, I wanted nothing more than to make her stop.”
“And you were totally incredible,” Webby interrupted.
“Thanks. So yeah, she zapped me, tried to get rid of me. She severed me from her magic. That should have been enough to do me in. But by that point, I wasn’t really living off of her magic anymore. I had a different magical source.”
“Friendship magic,” said Webby, holding up the bracelet.
“Exactly. It’s totally cheesy. But it kept me here when all the other shadows were sent away. And it’s enough to keep me around, playing tagalong with your shadow, but…”
Again Lena paused, searching for words.
“It’s like… you know how it is, when people are sick? But not the kind of sick that you take some medicine or cast a healing spell and get better. It’s the kind of sick that never goes away, when you don’t have enough spoons.”
Webby frowned. “Spoons?”
“It’s an internet thing, ask the boys. It means you don’t have enough energy or you’re in too much pain – no, forget that I mentioned pain,” she added at Webby’s concerned expression, “stick to the ‘not enough energy’ thing – the point is that you can’t do everything you want to do. You have to pick and choose. Do you take a shower, or do you make food? Do you go to the doctor, or go grocery shopping? And if you do too many things one day, you can’t do anything the next. You with me so far?”
“Yep.”
“It’s kind of like that. I have enough magic to stick around, but actually showing up and doing things? I have to pick and choose. And Webby, it’s hard. I hate having to choose. Because when you’re out having crazy adventures with your family and you end up getting, I don’t know, chased by a yeti or whatever, I want to help you with that! But if I show up for that, then I won’t have the energy to show up for moments like this. Quiet, normal moments. I can’t have both. I want to have both; heck, I want to be here all the time! But I can’t. And I really, really wish I could.”
Webby nodded slowly, the pillow rumpling her hair as she did so. “I understand. You’re doing your best.”
“I don’t like letting you down.”
“You could never let me down.”
“Liar.”
“I mean it! It’s not your fault you’re a shadow living off a friendship bracelet. And I swear, I’ll figure out a way to set you free from this,” Webby said, holding up her wrist and glaring at the bracelet. “There has to be a way. You deserve better than to be tied down by a piece of yarn.”
Lena chuckled. “It’s not the yarn, Webby. It’s you.”
Webby bit her lip. “Well. I guess there are worse people you could be stuck to. I mean, you of all people can definitely think of worse people you could be and have been stuck to.”
“There are. But I also can’t think of anyone better to be stuck to.”
It took a moment for the compliment/flirt? (was that flirting?) to set in, but when it did, Webby buried her suddenly very warm face in her hands. “Lenaaaaa.”
“Hey, I promised I wouldn’t lie to you anymore, didn’t I?” Lena said, clearly enjoying Webby’s embarrassment. “That said… I miss you when I’m not here, too.”
Webby lowered her hands, scooted forward on the bed, and put her arms around Lena. The shadow-girl let her do so, but lay very still, not reciprocating.
“You can hug me back, you know,” Webby said. “It’s okay.”
“Trust me, you don’t want that,” said Lena with an awkward little laugh. “Whenever my aunt touched me, it wasn’t exactly comfortable.”
“I do trust you,” said Webby, closing her eyes. “But there’s a big difference here.”
“What’s that?”
“Magica de Spell was a super evil sorceress and abusive parental figure. You’re my best friend.”
After a pause, Webby felt Lena’s arms wrap around her. They were cold, yes, and mostly incorporeal, and served her a heavy dose of the indescribably uncanny, but they were Lena’s arms, and so she smiled at their touch.
“Darn it, Webby,” Lena whispered, “don’t do this to me. I have a reputation to uphold.”
“Don’t worry,” Webby replied with a yawn. “I won’t tell anyone you’re a big softy.”
The bed had never felt so comfortable. The lamplight bled through her eyelids some, so Webby turned her head to a more shaded position, somewhere between the pillow and Lena’s cool blue form. Yes, that was better.
“I’m sorry we only talked about gloomy things tonight,” Lena said, very softly.
“S’okay,” said Webby, her voice a bit muffled by bedding. “I don’t care what we do… as long as you’re here…”
There was only one person in the mansion, if not the world, who could enter Webby’s room without waking her, and Bentina Beakley did so about an hour later. With the kind of quiet efficiency only achievable at the cross-section of spying and grandmothering, she picked up some of the toys and adventuring gear Webby had left lying around and organized them into a much neater stack, tucked her granddaughter under the covers, and turned off the light.
“Sweet dreams, you two,” she whispered, and though there was no sign of a response in the physical world, somewhere in the darkness a teenager smiled.