Imposter Syndrome: Chapter 2, Part 3
Welcome to Shady Springs
Imposter Syndrome is a spooky young adult mystery set in the weird town of Shady Springs, where nothing’s ever quite what it seems. Paid subscribers can read full segments of the story as they’re released (and help support my fiction writing in the process). Annual subscribers will also get a free physical copy of the novel when it’s published in full.
Previously…
“I started making it about a month after we got here,” Alex said, as they pushed their bikes along the sidewalk. “That’s when I first started noticing.”
They’d left The Inky Dungeon shortly after Alex’s revelation about the binder. Fintan had watched them all the way to the door, muttering under his breath about Alex not buying anything, yet again. She’d promised to bring Tiffany next time - Fintan stopped complaining immediately.
Now, as they walked along Main Street, part of Theo wished they were still in the cool shade of the comic book store. They hadn’t been inside long and it was already hotter than before.
Alex didn’t seem to notice. She was alive now, talking fast: “Have you ever been in a place, or around a person, and afterwards wondered if you’d just imagined it’d happened? Like it was a dream, or something? That it wasn’t real? It’s like that here, in this town. All the time, everywhere you go. Look.”
She pointed across the street. Theo followed her finger to a coffee place with a big cartoon mug above the door. The mug grinned toothily as coffee sloshed from his head. The sign next to him read Bean In Shady Springs.
“That place,” said Alex, “uses coffee made from crickets.”
“What?” Theo laughed. “Crickets? Like, bugs?”
“Not like bugs,” Alex replied, her helmet swinging on her bike’s handlebars. “Bugs. Crickets. Big, chirpy, crunchy crickets. They grind them up to make their coffee.”
“No they don’t,” said Theo uncertainly.
“They do. I saw it once, and so did someone else I know. They have the crickets out back, feeding them until they’re nice and fat. Then they go into the coffee. I think the owner isn’t totally human. And when people come out of that place, they have a weird spring in their step. See?”
She pointed again as a man in a crisp navy suit left the coffee place with a takeaway cup in one hand, his phone pressed to his ear with the other. Sure enough, as he hurried down the sidewalk, Theo saw him skip a little.
“Like a cricket,” said Alex.
“I don’t think… there’s no way…”
“Way,” Alex said, with an air of that’s-the-end-of-that. They arrived at an intersection and she pointed down another street. The arrow-shaped sign on the corner building read ‘Spring Boulevard’; it was much quieter than Main Street. “See the store down there? The big one with the blue sign?” Theo nodded. “It’s a vampire coven.”