Haunted by My Shadow

Every time I tried to approach Harmony, she'd immediately pretend to be busy, and her odd behavior made me uneasy. That night, I found myself unable to sleep, my mind restless. Eventually, I fell into a nightmare, waking up drenched in sweat. The dorm was pitch black, the sky still dark, and I couldn't tell what time it was. Suddenly, I felt something at the foot of my bed. I turned and saw Harmony halfway up the ladder to my bed, half of her body crawling under my mosquito net. Her expression was grotesquely exaggerated, filled with fear as she stared at me. I let out a terrified scream and jumped upright from my bed in shock. The following scream came from Harmony, louder than mine, and then there was a crash as she fell off my bed, landing hard on the floor. Celeste and I rushed Harmony to the hospital in the middle of the night. The doctor said it wasn't serious, just a sprained ankle, and she'd be fine after some rest and realignment. But Harmony insisted on having

Celeste didn't respond immediately, and for a moment, we all fell into deep thought. Finally, I broke the silence. "You're right, Celeste. When facing the unknown, the first thing we should do is try to understand it. Only through understanding can we figure out how to deal with it. At least now we know one thing for sure: She's my shadow. And if my shadow isn't here right now, that means whatever I do, she won't know about it, right?" I asked.Celeste's eyes lit up. "Exactly." I then asked, "Do you have Howard's number?" Howard Johnson was the school heartthrob and the person my shadow had been seeing. I asked because I knew Celeste and Howard moved in the same social circles.Sure enough, Celeste puffed up her chest and proudly answered, "Not only do I have Howard's number, but I also have his girlfriend, Helena's number. She's my cousin's best friend, a true lady from an old family." She continued, her voice dripping with gossip, "Although Howard is a playboy, he's totally dev

There had never been a lesson in any book telling me how to check if my shadow was normal. I could only rely on the most clumsy methods to test it myself. I set an alarm, making it go off every hour. When I woke up, I would look at the wall to see if my shadow was still there. Every day, I checked, and slowly, I began to accept the reality that my shadow had returned to normal.Celeste didn't stay with me every day anymore. She decided to go back to her usual weekend trips home. Her family had been urging her to visit for a while. The day she left, she was worried about me and kept reminding me over and over again, "Call me if anything happens, okay?" She repeated herself so much that I was getting annoyed.In the middle of the night, she called again. I almost cursed her out, but then I heard a voice on the other end that I knew all too well. "Anastasia, you're so good at guessing. Why don't you try guessing why Celeste's phone is in my hands?"My mind exploded, and I blurted out,