Imposter Syndrome: Chapter 5, Part 2
A New Mystery.
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…
Neither of them spoke until they reached the park.
For once, Theo took the lead, marching along the path with his flashlight pointed straight ahead. It was fully dark now; the trees on their right and left leered towards them as they passed, trying to coax them back to the shadows. Theo kept his eyes fixed resolutely on the way ahead, listening to the dull thump thump thump of his sneakers on the ground.
Alex trailed after him, clutching her flashlight in one limp hand. Theo didn’t glance back often, but every time he did, her head was down. The Alex of before - the one filled with gutsy confidence and thirst for adventure - seemed to have retreated somewhere inside her. At one point, she caught her toe on a snaking root and stumbled into him, and still said nothing.
Theo was relieved when the end of the Woodland Trail appeared up ahead. He had no idea what to say to Alex and desperately hoped she would speak first. His younger brother was much younger than him (his Mom once said he’d been a “pleasant surprise”) and this sort of situation was totally alien to him.
Maybe we don’t have to talk about it at all, he thought as they passed beneath the wooden sign marking the entrance to the woods and flicked off their flashlights. Maybe we can just pretend it didn’t happen, or something.
But when Alex finally said, “Hang on, there’s something in my shoe” and sat down on a bench, he knew the time had come.
Theo cleared his throat. “Listen…”