It was a normal, balmy day in Richmond, Virginia. Sydney Withrow and her friends ate ice cream on the bench by the ice cream parlor. They were laughing and enjoying themselves. The air felt heavy and sticky, but the laughter made everything feel fresh and cool. They were all cracking up at Trevor's snarky remarks and jokes when Sydney shook her head. She had a habit of shutting her eyes tight when laughing, but as soon as she opened them it caught her eye. A man in a faded yellow T-shirt, longer denim shorts and black sneakers. His smile was a bit queer and off, and she noticed that at certain times he didn't blink at the same time. Quickly it turned into something very wrong. She knew what she saw, but, if she told anybody, it would be shaken off as her schizophrenia acting up once again. She didn't say a word.
The moment stretched. Sydney couldn't keep her eyes off the cracked pavement where the thing had been standing. Her friends were still laughing and didn't suspect anything as she plastered an awkward but believable smile on her face. She got lost in her thoughts about the thing she saw. Who was he? Why didn't his eyes blink at the same time? Why was his smile so weird? She couldn't find the answers to all these questions. The thing he had shown her started creeping into her mind. It was hard to explain, but it was something stomach-dropping and terrifying. Then she snapped out of her thoughts and felt her hand was sticky. The ice cream was melting in her hands. She jumped off the bench and grabbed Trevor's perfectly clean tissue. She quickly wiped her hands. He looked at her with a puzzled expression and then a small snicker escaped his mouth. "The word please isn't in your dictionary?" he teased. "You sure love snarky remarks, eh?" Sydney replied enjoying their banter. However, the thing she saw was still lingering in her mind.
As the group finally decided to split paths and make their way home, Sydney didn't feel safe. She thought that the man would come to her again, maybe even approach her. That didn't happen, though. Elouise, Sydney's best friend, continued walking to her house when she suddenly noticed someone walking behind her. She turned her head around and saw the same man Sydney had seen. However, there was no possible way of her knowing who he was as Sydney didn't talk about him. Elouise kept on walking a bit faster, an instinct when she was alone. He came in front of Elouise. As she perked up at him, he showed her the past when she was bullied and mocked about her ugly freckles and her witch-like ginger hair. He showed her the same disturbing real self that he had showed to Sydney. Elouise froze. She couldn't move out of pure shock and fear. The man moved out of her sight and she ran home. She heard him yelling from far behind "Run Elouise, run!". Elouise didn't look back at him and she managed to reach her home safely.
After Elouise's encounter, the man didn't disappear. He lingered on and they all knew it wasn't random. He was there for a reason. When Stanly had an encounter, he was shaken to the point that his soul left his body. He stood there and watched the man showing him his inability to act when something bad was happening. Max looked at the man, almost crying. He showed him his mom dying in the house fire. He tried to convince himself it was just a dream but, after a while, he realized it wasn't a dream; it was reality. Belle was always the brave one, but the man showed her when she was sobbing in her pillow because her friends had been picking on her or when she was crying because her friends had said she was annying. Trevor was reminded of his proneness to run after danger which made him fall apart every time.
The group decided to talk about it in Max's room, as always. They talked about the encounters and they tried connecting the dots discussing how the man mimicked humans, his off-timing blinking or not blinking at all, the way he moved too smoothly, the visions he showed them that made them face their own terrifying selves. Max grabbed his older brother's nerdy book about monsters and theories. They went through the pages hesitantly, reading each word carefully. They concluded that the man was a shapeshifter and that he feeds off of people remembering their past traumas.
The shapeshifter continued appearing every summer and every summer the kids dealt with their past traumas more and more intensely. They thought that the shapeshifter feared the cold, but that was just a theory, though. Their summers were never the same again. He might have stopped if they tried to defeat him, but they weren't brave enough, not even together.
It's crazy how a single encounter can change everything, even the happiest of teens.