Spotlight: The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass by Leslye Penelope
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For four years, Zahara Douglass has been haunted by the mystery of her sister’s disappearance—not where she went, but whether she ever existed at all.
In April 1995, Zahara watched her twin sister, Annica, get hustled into a stranger’s car and disappear—only to return to a world where no one has heard of Annica. Not her mother. Not the police. No one.
Four years later, as the world braces for the looming Y2K crisis, Zahara finds evidence proving her sister was real and hires a private investigator to dig into her family’s shadowed past. When the investigation leads to two charismatic men who once served with her father in Vietnam, Zahara realizes she and her sister may be pawns in a dangerous power struggle with unthinkable consequences.
To find Annica, Zahara must face the truth about her family, her memories, and the power lurking within her. But the sisters’ reunion comes at a price—one that could bring about the end of the world.
Excerpt
April 30, 1995
Zahara, do you know why you’re here?”
Goose bumps rippled up her arm in the chill of the examination room. Her gaze followed a brown streak of water damage from the ceiling down the beige wall as her fingers plucked at a hangnail on her thumb.
“Zahara? I need you to tell me why you’re here.”
She tore her attention from the unsightly stain to focus on the doctor. With his pockmarked face, drooping eyes, and fleshy jowls, he reminded her of a bulldog. He tapped the paperwork on the clipboard in his hand. His right ring finger bore a large class ring, the stone blood-red.
Zahara hadn’t bothered with a class ring, but Annica had—a blue moonstone at the center, the June birthstone they both liked best. It had always been too big for her skinny finger.
“My mother thinks I’m a danger to myself,” Zahara said, voice monotone.
Mom’s cries echoed in her mind, the last words she’d sobbed, repeating like a broken record. “I don’t know what else to do, baby. You’re scaring me.”
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her mother cry.
“And you think your mother has no reason to be concerned?”
Zahara blew out a breath. Shifted in her seat. Tugged at the tiny bit of skin hanging from her cuticle. “She’s just not listening to me.”
The dog-faced doctor blinked. “Listening to you when you say that you have a twin sister who disappeared. Is that right?”
“Yes.” She crossed her arms, bracing herself.
“But you don’t have a twin sister. You’re an only child. Do you see why claiming otherwise has created cause for worry?” He didn’t wait for her to respond. “And your actions—”
“I was never going to harm myself.” She squeezed her fists tight, hoping her hands would go numb.
“According to your mother, you haven’t eaten, you haven’t slept, you’re skipping school, and you’ve been wandering the streets day and night, searching for this sister of yours.”
Zahara slumped in her chair. "The room’s single window looked out onto a sunlit courtyard. Bright flowers bloomed, orbited by giant, heavy bumblebees. It was probably supposed to be cheery.
An enormous spider had woven a web in a corner of the window— on the outside, thank God. It was there now, the many segments of its articulated legs moving slowly, winding up a fly that had gotten caught in its trap. She commiserated with the fly. "Then again, the spider was probably hungry. Everything in this world had to eat.
"The doctor said her name again, but Zahara ignored him.
∺ ∺ ∺ ∺ ∺
11 days earlier
Zahara’s scream ripped through the kitchen.
“Oh my God, Z, what is wrong with you?” her sister snapped, not looking up from the computer in the kitchen nook.
“Spider,” she breathed, pointing to where the giant bug was crawling across the kitchen counter. Right behind the bowl of oatmeal she had just set down. Her limbs seized and her eyelids refused to shut. If she blinked, she might miss its path and then it could be anywhere. No, she would stay right here staring at it so at least she’d know if it tried to get closer to her. Or crawled in her ear to lay eggs or something. Spiders laid eggs, right?
"The chair scraped as Annica stood and marched over. “And you say I’m the drama queen,” she muttered, grabbing an envelope from a stack of mail and waving it menacingly at the creature.
“Don’t kill it!” Zahara shrieked. "The envelope her sister had snatched bore red lettering stamped across the top. OVERDUE. The PG&E bill.
Annica rolled her eyes. “What do you want me to do, release it into the wild?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. It doesn’t have to die. I just don’t want it in here. With us. Where we live.”
Her sister shot her a sunny smile, but suspicion made Zahara narrow her eyes.
“So do you want to take it outside?” Annica asked sweetly, tilting her head.
“Eww. No. I don’t want to be near it.” She cringed and backed away a step.
Bam! Annica slammed the envelope down, sending the tiny beast to arachnid heaven. Zahara jumped and shivered as her sister wiped away the remains with a paper towel before throwing both into the trash. Then she returned to the computer, falling into the chair ungracefully.
Zahara bit back the question forming on her lips. Are you okay? she wanted to ask, but then Nica would snap something like They wouldn’t have let me out of the hospital if I wasn’t okay, right? and she didn’t feel like starting a thing this morning.
She looked at the trash can and considered fishing out the electric bill, spider guts and all—she needed to pay it (well, part of it) when she got her check on Friday—but figured she would just call and find the amount due then. Annica had left the stack of mail askew, so she patted it back into place, all the edges lining up neatly. If only it were so easy to put their lives back in order.
Her oatmeal sat there cooling, but she wasn’t hungry anymore. Her stomach still 1uttered from the close encounter with the creepy crawly beast of many legs. She shook herself and spun around. “Hey, can I use the computer for like five minutes to check my email?”
Annica glanced over. “Sure. I need to start getting ready anyway.” With a few taps, she closed all her windows and opened the mail program before standing again and stretching with a yawn.
“Thanks.” Zahara replaced her in the chair and logged in to her email account. Two messages greeted her, double the number she was expecting. The presence of the first one, though she’d known it would be there, still caused a heavy weight of disappointment to drag at her shoulders.
The sender was director@nationalballettheatre.org, and inside the email was sure to be the end of a certain road. A dream she’d had to defer. She needed to open it, had sat down with that very intention, but maybe now didn’t need to be the time. It would still be there tomorrow. And the next day.
She figured the email would probably still be in her inbox in twenty years, maybe until the end of time, or until the email server thing got unplugged or something. She’d have to ask Nica about it.
Deciding that no matter what was inside, it could wait at least for a few minutes, she considered the second message. The sender was listed as a perplexing wielderofshieldz@xnet.nex. The subject line, “Concerned,” made her frown. Her cursor hovered over the message when the front door opened and closed again.
“Nica?”
Sounds of the shower came from Mom’s first-floor bedroom, and no one else was in the house. But Annica wouldn’t have left for school without her. It was too early anyway. Zahara peered around the corner into the empty living room. Through the front window, she saw her sister hurrying down the sidewalk with her backpack on.
“What the hell?” "e wrongness of it had her springing from her chair and racing to open the door. “Nica! Where are you going?”
Her sister, headed in the opposite direction of their high school, didn’t turn around; instead, she quickened her pace.
Zahara stepped onto the front porch and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Annica!” she yelled. Her sister just picked up speed.
In the yard next door, Mrs. Yee stood in her housecoat watering her freesias. The older woman was hard of hearing, but she looked over and waved. Zahara waved back distractedly, watching her sister’s progress. The feeling that something horrible was about to happen was a vast black hole opening up inside her.
Zahara began to run.
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About the Author
Leslye Penelope has been writing since she could hold a pen and loves getting lost in the worlds in her head. She is an award-winning author of fantasy and romance. Equally left and right-brained, she studied filmmaking and computer science at Howard University and sometimes dreams in HTML. She hosts the My Imaginary Friends podcast, co-hosts the Ink and Magic podcast, and lives in Maryland with her feline dependents.
