Her name was Shadow. Well, not really. It was actually Kelsey, but she hated her real name. We were at Girl Scout Day Camp--the place where every counselor and counselor-in-training doesn't use their real name, they use a "camp name". Mine's Bookworm. Hers was (or, is) Shadow.
I heard she even has people call her that in school, which I can believe. She's such a daring, fearless person, toting around a sword made out of some PVC pipes and several rolls of duct tape.
I worshipped her. I suppose she though I was goofy at times, which I was, but she didn't seem to care. She called me "Wormy", instead of Bookworm, but I didn't mind at all. In fact, people still call me that sometimes.
I was even "knighted" by her, so now I'm "Sir Wormy". That summer...
Several of my counselor-in-training friends and I, along with Shadow, started a sort of organization. We had the rank all figured out, too. Shadow was the leader, Kermit the Captain, Garfield was the "mascot", and then was me (after a cat? I was ticked off). After that came Puppy, the scribe, and Geek, the treasurer. We had such a great time together.
And then I had it. I would write a book about Shadow. It would be fantasy, of course, because she was the sort of person you couldn't capture in any other genre. She would be the main character, with Kermit as her sidekick. She would travel around this mythical world, fighting evil with her sword.
Nowadays, I don't see Shadow much anymore. Sometimes I can't even remember her that well, which is hard when I'm working on the book about her. In fact, she seems more fantastical than real, since the only Shadow I know is in my computer file. But I know that she's out there, and I wonder if she still thinks of me.