I knew Callie Johnson for the first eleven years of my life in the way any two people in a small town might know each other. We were in the same grade at school, but never in the same class. Her dad worked in the same building as my mom, so sometimes when I accompanied Mom to her office I’d catch a glimpse of Callie tagging along behind her dad. Her family was one of those families Mom and I always bumped into at the grocery store. Mom always stopped and said hi to Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. She said hi to Callie too, but Callie never said hi back. She just looked sulky and shifted sideways to hide behind her mom.

I never blamed her. If I were Callie Johnson, I’d want to hide, too. Callie was ugly. Not cute ugly like some kids are, but truly, irredeemably ugly. At eleven, an age at which most kids have grown out of their baby fat, she had a tummy as round as a lumpy pumpkin planted above two chopstick-thin legs. She had a mouth too small for her teeth, which were all crowded together inside like too many people in an elevator, and her nose was squashed like a pug’s and set slightly off-center beneath her squinty, murky green eyes. And she had pimples, even though she was too young for them. She was the kind of girl you tried hard not to look at. Even the bullies at school didn’t tease her because they didn’t want to point their eyes at her ugly face.

I was forced to really look at Callie for the first time over twenty years ago, in October, when the two of us were assigned as partners for the fifth-grade science fair. There were an odd number of kids in both of our classes, and so our teachers decided that Callie and I could work together. They let us meet in the hallway before lunch to decide what type of project we wanted to do.

“Maybe we could make a volcano,” I suggested. The idea was unoriginal, I knew, but I was too distracted by trying to look past Callie’s face instead of at it to come up with anything better.

“No,” Callie said. “Let’s use potatoes to power a light bulb.”

And so the two of us started meeting every day after school to work on our project. The first day, we met at the library to do preliminary research. My mom drove me there, and I pestered her to drive faster so I could arrive before Callie.

“What’s the rush?” Mom asked.

“I hate research,” I said. “I just want to get it over with.” I didn’t tell her that what I really wanted was to arrive before Callie so I could walk into the library alone instead of meeting her on the curb and walking in together. I knew it was petty, maybe even cruel, but I didn’t want the other kids in our grade – many of whom I knew would also be spending that afternoon at the library in preparation for the science fair – to see Callie and me together. I was a friendly, popular, athletic boy, and I was aware that other kids saw me a certain way. And so, while I didn’t actually mind spending time with Callie, I minded that other kids might see me spending time with her. I worried that, in their eyes, some of Callie’s ugliness might rub off on me.

I did arrive before Callie. I loitered in the lobby until I saw her walk in, and then I looked quickly around to make sure nobody was watching before hurrying to her and explaining the research strategy I’d thought up. In this strategy, Callie and I scoured the shelves separately for any relevant books, and then we met with our findings in a small nook behind the picture books, which I had discovered, and where I thought there was little chance of any of the other kids spotting us together. We sat side by side on the floor against the wall, books on our knees. Callie opened to a fresh page in her composition book and took out a pencil to make a list of materials we would need. “Stop goofing around,” she said.

I had grabbed a picture book from the shelf and was thumbing through its pages. The illustrations showed a brave knight rescuing a beautiful princess from a pair of ogres. It was the kind of story I’d loved as a little kid. I’d always pretended I was the brave knight, slaying the ugly monsters with expert slashes of my sword. Callie tore the book from my hand and stuffed it back onto the shelf with what I thought was unnecessary roughness. I forgave her for it, though – if Callie had ever read books of that sort, I doubted any strength of imagination would have allowed her to pretend she was the beautiful princess.

Callie pointed at the pile of books we’d collected. “Figure out what materials we need.”

I picked up a book of experiments for kids and flipped through the pages. “It says here we need a potato, two nails, two wires, and a light bulb.”

“You’re thinking too small, Stuart,” Callie said. “We need a whole bucket of potatoes. We’re going to make the most spectacular potato light bulb in the history of science fairs.”

She sounded so excited that, without thinking, I looked up at her. She was grinning, and the sight of her crowded teeth and her squashed, off-center nose sent a jolt through my stomach much like the electrical jolt I imagined a potato could send to a light bulb. I had almost forgotten how ugly Callie was as we sat side by side and paged through our piles of books, and the sudden remembrance flustered me so much that I dug into my jeans pocket and pulled out my little pocketknife, which I flipped open and closed like I did whenever I was nervous or didn’t know what else to do.

Callie’s murky eyes watched the blade fold in and out.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “That’s a cool knife, that’s all.”

Once we had our list of materials, we gave it to Callie’s mom so she could buy what we needed, and then we started meeting in Callie’s family’s basement after school. Powering a light bulb involved sticking two different types of nails into a potato, twisting wires around their ends, and attaching the other ends of the wires to the light bulb’s two terminals. We worked carefully, getting used to the stiffness of the wire beneath our fingers. Callie grasped the science behind the experiment better than I did, and she tried to explain it as we worked.

“The nails react with the potato to make electricity,” she said. “Electricity makes electrons in the potato flow through the wires to the light bulb, and that’s what makes the light turn on.”

“What do electrons look like?” I asked.

Callie considered for a moment, then shrugged. “Bright, I guess.”

I looked at the potato dubiously. It was plain and brown and lumpy and didn’t seem capable of allowing anything bright to flow through it. I took out my knife and pricked through the skin to see what was inside, but all I found was pale potato flesh. Callie slapped my knife away. “Stop it, Stuart. This is serious.”

When we got everything hooked up, Callie turned off the basement light, and we saw that the light bulb emitted a faint glow.

“Eureka!” I yelled. Callie giggled at this exclamation. It was one thing to read about a potato-powered light bulb in a book, but it was another to see the phenomenon in real life. It was enough to make me half believe in magic. Callie and I high-fived, and then, thinking our work was done, I said, “I’ll call my mom to pick me up.”

I started for the basement door, but Callie ran to block my path. “Not so fast,” she said. “Sure, we got a little bit of a glow, but we need something much brighter than that.”

I looked back at the faintly glowing light bulb and had to admit it did look rather weak. “All right,” I said. “What do we do?”

Callie picked up another potato.

We managed to hook three potatoes up to the light bulb that afternoon. It glowed brighter with each tuber we attached. “I think that’s as bright as it’s going to get,” I said as the two of us admired our handiwork.

Callie giggled, just as she had when I’d yelled eureka. “What?” I said.

“I’m just happy,” she said. “This was fun. It’s like – well, I’ve never really had a friend to do things like this with before.”

My hand dove into my pocket for my knife. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

“It is,” Callie said. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad or anything. It’s just a fact. I know I’m ugly on the outside, but the outside’s the only part of me anyone sees.”

“Hey,” I said. I wanted to tell her that I saw more than that, but I didn’t quite have the courage, and I wasn’t sure if it was true. My thumb flicked the blade of my pocketknife in and out instead.

“It’s all right,” Callie said. “Let me show you something.” We had turned the basement lights back on so we could see to hook up the other two potatoes, but now Callie went to the switch and flicked them off again. Then she went to the table where we had been working and situated the brightly glowing bulb so it cast a circle of yellow light against the bare, whitewashed basement wall. She stepped between the table and the wall, so that her shadow was cast, larger than life, in the circle of light, and struck a pose – one hand on her hip, the other behind her head, hips jutted to one side, like a model.

She was so ugly that I felt my cheeks reddening as I watched. But then I noticed something strange about her shadow. The solid Callie in front of me had a pumpkin belly and chopstick legs and two scraggly mouse-brown pigtails, one on either side of her head, but the shadow on the wall had none of those things. The shadow on the wall had long legs like a ballerina’s, a tapered waist, and an elegant neck. Its hair was piled on top of its head like a princess’s, not a single lock out of place. Callie twirled around, and the shadow twirled too. But while Callie wore sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt, the twirling shadow had a skirt that furled out when she spun, like a fancy ball gown out of a movie.

I felt my mouth fall open. “How did you – ?”

“It’s the light bulb,” Callie said. She sounded extremely pleased with herself. “If you shine a light bright enough at something, you can see what’s beneath the surface.” She saw by my expression that I was unconvinced. “Like a page in a picture book,” she said. “If you shine a bright light at it, you can see through to the text on the page beneath, right?”

I nodded. “But that’s different. A light can’t change the shape of your shadow.”

Callie, apparently deeming my argument beneath notice, went to the light switch and turned the basement lights back on. “Tell your mom you need to come back tomorrow,” she said. “I have a new project, one that has nothing to do with the science fair, and I can’t do it without your help.”

When I arrived at Callie’s house the next day, she already had a light bulb hooked up to three new potatoes. The basement was dark. The illuminated circle on the wall looked like a spotlight.

“What do you need my help with?” I asked.

Callie appraised me. “I’m not sure if I should tell you yet. You might not be ready. I might scare you away.”

I crossed my arms. “It would take a lot more than anything you could say to scare me.”

Callie stepped in front of the light bulb and made her shadow – the same beautiful shadow I’d seen yesterday – perform a pirouette. There was something mesmerizing about her shadow, something so strange and sad and wonderful about the contrast between Callie’s ugly body and her shadow’s grace that it made everything else I was about to say catch in my throat. Callie turned so her shadow was cast in profile. “See that?” she said. I watched the shadow’s perfect lips move beneath its regal nose. “That’s the real me, the one that’s trapped inside my skin. The one nobody sees.”

And it was Callie. I could sense the truth of it. I had spent many hours with her over the last few days, and I could see that the shadow on the wall matched the smart, blunt, cheerful Callie I’d come to know more truly than her solid body.

“I want you to help people see the real me,” the shadow Callie said. “You have your pocketknife, right?”

I nodded and pulled it out.

“Good.” The shadow Callie’s head tilted in approval. “I want you to cut me out.”

“What?” I yelled.

“Shush!” Callie hissed. She ran to turn on the lights as the basement door opened and her mom stuck her head into the room.

“Is everything all right in here?” Mrs. Johnson asked.

“Fine, Mom,” Callie said. “Stuart just got too excited about our potato light bulb.” She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, and I felt a flash of repugnance at the sight of her ugly pimpled face. That face was simply wrong, shockingly wrong compared to the beautiful profile her shadow had displayed. Callie elbowed me in the ribs. “You’re such a dweeb, Stuart.”

“Yeah.” I did my best to look chagrined. “I am a dweeb.”

Mrs. Johnson chuckled and retreated from the doorway. Callie checked the door to make sure it was firmly closed.

“What do you mean, cut you out?” I whispered.

“With this.” She reached out and grabbed my hand with the knife. She guided my fingers to unfold the blade and then drew me close to her, pressing the tip of the knife against her skin just above her shirt collar, on the ridge made by her collarbone.

My heart started beating faster. I pulled away and closed the knife. “No,” I said. “I can’t do that. I can’t hurt you.”

“Please.” Callie stepped toward me, her ugly face twisted up like she was about to cry. “You see how kids at school can’t bear to look at me. You can hardly bear to look at me. I don’t want this to be what the rest of my life is like.” She swatted a hand over her pimpled cheek, and I realized her eyes were wet. “You wouldn’t be hurting me, not really. You’d just be cutting away the ugly outside to let the real me out.”

I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, so I hadn’t grown up soothing temper tantrums like a lot of other kids in my class had. I hated it when other people cried. I started flicking the blade of my pocketknife open and closed, faster and faster, wishing Callie’s tears would stop. But they didn’t stop. She just looked at me with those glistening murky green eyes. Snot streamed out of her squashed, off-center nose, her lips quivered over all those crowded teeth, and silent tears ran down her pimpled cheeks. “Can I think about it?” I finally said.

Callie nodded. She sniffed once and wiped her face on her sleeve. “Come back tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

She lunged forward suddenly and latched around me in a hug, her pumpkin of a stomach pressing into mine. “Thank you,” she whispered.

I extricated myself as gently as I could. “I haven’t said yes yet.”

“But you will,” she said. “You’ll see that it’s the right thing to do. I have confidence.”

I was quiet all that evening. Mom asked me, over dinner, if anything was wrong. “No,” I told her. “Everything’s fine.” But everything wasn’t fine. I couldn’t get Callie Johnson’s ugly face out of my head. It was there every time I closed my eyes, and I kept imagining what she would look like transformed into a body that matched the shadow our potato light bulb had cast onto her basement wall.

When Mom dropped me off at her house the next day, I was nervous but resolved.

“You’ll do it?” Callie asked as soon as the two of us were alone in her basement.

“I’ll do it.”

“Don’t be scared,” Callie said as I slowly drew out my knife and unfolded the blade. She touched the spot along her collarbone. “Start right here. It won’t be hard. All you have to do is cut me out.”

She turned out the lights, positioned a new potato light bulb, and sat down with her back against the illuminated wall. Her shadow nodded along with her as I knelt down and carefully touched the tip of the knife to the spot she had indicated. “That’s it. Now cut.”

Slowly, half afraid of what I was doing, I pushed the tip of the knife through her skin. It felt like pushing a nail into a potato. A drop of blood squeezed out, trickled down her skin in a thin line, and disappeared beneath the collar of her shirt. It’s working, I thought, and I looked to Callie for confirmation. Callie winced a little, but she kept nodding. “That’s it,” she said again. “That’s it. You’re doing great. Now cut me out.” I took a breath and steadied my hand. My knife gleamed in the glow of the light bulb like the knight’s sword in the picture book I’d thumbed through at the library. I started to slice.

The cut was only about three inches long when Mrs. Johnson came into the basement. I don’t know why she came in – maybe she needed to ask Callie something, or maybe she wanted to see if she could make us a snack – but the reason doesn’t matter. All that matters is that Mrs. Johnson started screaming, and next thing I knew she had pulled me off Callie and wrenched the knife from my hand. I don’t remember the details of what happened after that. I do remember Mom picking me up, and I remember looking down at my hand after I got into the car and seeing that it was red with Callie’s blood. I didn’t go to school the next day. In fact, I never went back to that school, and I didn’t get to present the potato light bulb with Callie at the science fair. Mom and I moved away before the fair, and I visited a therapist every week for the next two years, until Mom was convinced that whatever disturbance of mind had possessed me in the Johnsons’ basement was gone for good.

I don’t know what happened to Callie after that. Maybe she eventually found someone else to free her from her skin. Maybe she died in the attempt. Or maybe, against all logic, she succeeded and finally stepped into the world in the shape she was meant to inhabit. Or maybe she simply grew up, as I grew up, and became an ugly woman made uglier by the long, thin scar along her collarbone.

I don’t wonder about Callie often. I’m too busy with my present life to reminisce. I have a lovely wife and two lovely little girls to occupy my attention. But sometimes I find myself sitting alone in our living room after my wife and daughters have gone to bed. Sometimes I sit there so long that the fire dies out, but I don’t switch on a lamp to replace its flickering light. It’s in those moments that I think about Callie. Most times, I shake my head and get up from my chair and tiptoe upstairs, where I slip into bed beside my wife. But tonight, for some reason, I turn instead to the mirror that hangs on the living room wall and squint through the dark until I think I can make out my reflection. I take my old pocketknife from my pocket and carefully unfold the blade. Then I tease down the collar of my shirt and touch the cold tip of the blade to my sternum.

What would happen, I think, if I peeled back my own skin? Is there another me inside me, a truer me not even my wife and daughters see, waiting to get out?

There’s a section of bare white wall beside the mirror, reserved, my wife and I have agreed, for one of the many fine paintings we will buy someday. There’s a lamp behind me that, if I switched it on, would cast my perfect shadow onto that blank white space.

The sharp pressure of the blade against my sternum clarifies my thoughts. I don’t believe in magic, in mismatched shadows, in secret selves hidden beneath the skin. I don’t even think I believe a potato can power a light bulb.

I fold up the knife and put it back into my pocket. I don’t turn on the light.