Shattered (6 page)

The job posting was for an Assistant
Building Attendant for McCray Hall. It sounded like a janitorial position,
which was not what I wanted to do with my life, but it would give me a reason
to be here until I stopped letting Devin’s last words get to me. All of her
classes were in McCray Hall. It was perfect.

I called the number as Christine filed
into the main studio to meet one of her professors.

A feeble voice answered. “This is
Griffin.”

“Hi, Griffin. My name is Nathan Reece.
I’m calling about the job. The building attendant job. I just saw a flyer for
it on the first floor of McCray Hall.”

“Oh, yes. It’s still open. Someone called
about it this morning, but he can’t come in until later. If you can come now,
I’ll interview you. I’m in the basement.”

The stairs were to my left. I texted
Chris and ran to the basement, praying nothing would happen to her while I was
gone, like Kamon showing up and repaying her for slamming him into a house.
With the potion in her system, she wouldn’t be able to do it again.

The only entrance into the basement was
locked. I knocked on the door, and someone smelling of tobacco and a peaceful
spirit moved slowly on the other side. I would never, ever, ignore the scent of
a person again. This Griffin guy smelled like he’d never know someone like
Devin.

The door opened and revealed a short
elderly man. He was maybe 209 or so. “Are you Nathan?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Sir? I like it. Come on in.” His hands
rattled as he locked the door behind us. “We stay locked in, son,” he said.

“Why? Is this school not safe?”

“I don’t know what place
is
safe these days. Don’t you watch the
news? College kids are something else. I tell you the truth.” I slowed so he
could pass me and lead the way. “Reminds me of the war days. Almost.”

I managed to laugh, but I was nervous now.
This guy was old school. Maybe old school enough to ask for a blood test. My
old coworkers lived in those times when you couldn’t even go to grocery stores
without someone checking your blood at the door.

“So what makes you want to be an
attendant, son? Good-looking guy like you should take pictures. Or you could be
on a television show.”

I laughed, a real one this time. “Thank
you, sir. But my girlfriend is starting school here. I just want to be around
her.”

He walked into a small office and sat
behind a desk covered in loose papers, toilet tissue rolls, and about twelve
Lysol cans. “Are you a stalker, son?”

“Uh …”

“That was a joke. I get it. My wife works
in the cafeteria. She’s Miss Margie. If you get the job here, she has lunch
delivered every day at twelve.” He paused and widened his eyes. “For free.”

“That’s my favorite word.”

“Mine too. And when you marry your little
girlfriend, if you’re so inclined to do such a thing, she’ll get free tuition
because of you. Or sort of free. Margie takes sculpting classes or something
like that. Maybe it’s painting. I haven’t really listened to a word she’s said
since the 80s.” I laughed and relaxed in the chair. I liked this guy.

While laughing, he patted around his desk
for something. Eventually, he found a tiny pair of glasses and pushed them to
his eyes.

“
Alrighty
,
let’s see here. Interview …. interview … interview.” He shuffled through a
stack of papers and sighed. “Interview questions. Here they are. First one.
What is your work experience?”

I cleared my throat. “I’ve mostly done
volunteer stuff. Food lines. Clothing drives. That kind of thing.”

He would probably have a heart attack if
I told him who those volunteer events were for and what my old boss really
wanted the world to be like.

“That’s nice, son,” he said. “Next one.
What …” He adjusted his glasses and brought the paper closer. “What is the
highest level of school you’ve completed?”

“High school. I graduated.” So says the
leader of the world.

“A graduate? My, my, this is looking
good.” I chuckled. “Any felonies?”

“No.” Not that I was convicted of.
Someone could make a case for accessory to murder, but that was neither here
nor there.

“No record? We’ll see. I have to run a background
check. It’ll take a couple of days. Don’t be nervous. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

His phone rang. It was on the other side
of the room and not cordless. It took him a few seconds to react to it, then
another five to get out of his chair, and then he started the slow walk to the
phone. “Nathan, why don’t you take a look at that binder there and make sure
this is something you want to do.”

I scanned his desk and found a thin white
binder propped between two cans of Lysol. “Yes, sir,” I said. He was still
walking to the phone. The caller didn’t give up.

“This is Griffin,” he said. “Uh-huh.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh.”

While he continued his call with just
those two words, I flipped through the binder. There were cleaning schedules
for all of the bathrooms in the building, the proper way to sign out expensive
cleaning equipment like floor buffers, and how to complete work orders. I would
be part janitor and part handy man, it seemed.

I flipped to the last page. It was a map
of McCray Hall. It showed all of the exits and emergency routes for three
scenarios–active shooter, fire, and bomb threat. This school was well
prepared for danger, but not the kind that could happen to Chris. But I could
work with this. Knowing the ins and outs of the building where my girlfriend
was every day, given that she could have a target on her back, would probably
be enough to help me relax.

“Uh-huh,” Griffin said. “We’ll it’s
probably just the bulb. I’ll get to it today. Don’t worry about the form. I’ll
get it for you. You’re very welcome.” He hung up and snail-walked to his desk.
“Okay, Mr. Nathan. Where were we?” Please don’t say blood test. Please don’t
say blood test. “Oh. That’s right. The binder. Does this seem like the job for
you, son?”

“It’s perfect,” I said.

He smiled, and I wedged the binder
between the Lysol cans. “No,” he said. “Keep that. Read over it at home. And
what do you want for lunch? Margie has just about everything in there.”

And just like that, I had a job at
Trenton.

A month of being normal passed. A month
of being a college student. A month of being … good. I hated that I had to work
so hard at being the person I was supposed to be, but I was getting there. The
hard part was Trenton. A month of going through the motions hadn’t magically
turned me into someone who liked school, but I hadn’t let a single complaint
out of my mouth.

If the tedium of Trenton was my only
problem, besides ignoring my fear of Kamon, that was a wonderful problem to
have. So even though my classes weren’t as awesome as just walking around the
art gallery or doing my own thing at home, I liked it here. I liked what it
stood for–predictable days and nights and behaving like someone’s
daughter, not a rabid copy.

And of course … there was Nathan Thomas
Reece. My boyfriend worked as a janitor just so he didn’t have to be too far
away from me. That was enough to make this place epic.
He
was enough to make this place epic. So I didn’t have the right
to complain.

In addition to Nate, I had foster grandparents
who spent their days formulating the right concoction for my powers, and
parents who saw to it that I had everything I needed for school.

Though they weren’t speaking to each
other, they’d come to an agreement through me about who pays what. My money was
only used for Emma’s new job as my personal stylist. My best friend might have
played the biggest role in making Trenton suck less. Because of the fame I’d
gotten from disappearing from St. Catalina, I’d been the focus of internet
blogs and gossip magazines all month.

 
After the first week of me looking like a
deer in headlights in all of the photos, Emma hired herself. She banned me from
wearing jeans and plain t-shirts and made sure I was dolled up every day. That
girl was brilliant. She got the gossip world focused on my clothes and jewelry
and not on whether or not witches still existed. For single handedly calming
the world and saving my reputation as the
girl
who lied
, she wanted to be paid in clothes. It was Sophia and Mom’s idea to
actually pay her.

She was also in charge of spotting blog
posts or tweets with my direct location and reporting them to us. Hunters
hadn’t shown up at Trenton, but we still liked to stay one step ahead.

Today, at the end of my fourth week of
school, someone spoke to me directly for the third time since the start of the
semester. “I like your boots, Christine,” the girl said.

I grabbed the towel from the supply shelf
that I’d walked across the room for.

“Thank you,” I said. “And … hi.” Without
powers, I didn’t know her name or anything about her. “Is your painting going
okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yours?”

I nodded, and she turned back to her
easel. I guessed our conversation was over already. The short exchange would
undoubtedly be on the internet in a few minutes, blown out of proportion like
the last two were.

“Christine, I’m confused,” Max said, as I
walked back to my stool. My teacher had taken the seat in front of my easel. He
lifted his glasses from his eyes and squinted at my painting. I didn’t
understand why he wore them. He seemed to trust his own eyes more.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I’m not sure if I understand where
you’re going with this.”

I frowned. He had only given us a few
words of instruction on this assignment.
Two
forms of water. Some combination of solid, liquid, or gas. Make it interesting.

I thought I
had
made it interesting with the vibrant colors I’d mixed on my
own.

“Well … it’s an orange stream cutting through
blue snow. The colors compliment,” I said. “And the image is interesting.”

“And difficult,” he said. “You’ve managed
to maintain the look of snow while adding this blue tint.” I smiled. Blue snow
wasn’t easy to make. A few wrong strokes and you could have a blue blob on your
hands. “But …” My smile dissolved as I braced for criticism. “Is there a reason
for the stream to be orange? Other than the blue snow?”

He pushed his glasses back to his eyes and
tilted his head in my direction. He had a smudge of red paint in his salt and pepper
hair.

“Max, it’s just water,” I said. “I didn’t
think it needed a reason to be a certain color.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, prodigy. You
are an amazing painter, but every stroke, every color, every line must have a
purpose. Find it.” He pulled a paintbrush from behind his ear, and several of
my classmates gasped. Every student at Trenton knew about the six inch, round
tip “Max brush”. He dipped it into the perfect shade of blue I’d mixed and painted
an X on my canvas.

His rejection-correction teaching method
was legendary at Trenton. He’d been here for years. The students had joked
about it during orientation, and I’d seen it several times in the past month,
but never on my canvas.

“Start over, prodigy,” he said. “After
you take your march.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Yes, sir?” he asked. “No tears? No …
please, Max don’t send me to the wall … like the rest of these kids?” I
shrugged my shoulders. “Don’t you care?”

“Of course I care,” I said, all in a rush
like my guardians were listening. Me liking school and not hating my life kept
everyone at ease, so I would hate for them to think what Max was thinking. I
didn’t want my apprehension about Trenton to make everyone worry that I would
open another portal or do something else equally as horrible. “Maybe I’m in
shock,” I added.

“Oh, okay,” he said. “Shock is good. Get
to marching, prodigy.”

I faked a pout and lifted my painting to
carry it to the Wall of Shame–where paintings go to die in Max’s class. I
propped mine next to an interesting painting of a woman with steamy tears
leaking down her face. I couldn’t imagine what Max had against that one, it was
great, so I put mine next to it.

“Oh!” Max yelled. “I have a meeting with
the Dean. Clean up and get the hell out. And if you’re in Johnson’s Critical
Studies class next, it’s cancelled. Though, I’m sure you won’t be too torn up
about that.”

My classmates laughed like adoring fans,
and I returned to my easel to pack up. My brushes were so caked with the blue
and orange paint that had failed me that I was tempted to throw them away. But
they were a gift from my father who, until recently, was dead, so I took them
to the sink and cleaned them carefully like the prized possessions they were.
My next class, my last of the day, was cancelled. I didn’t have to rush.

With my supplies in place, I stepped out
of my classroom and into the hall. At St. Catalina, this used to be the worst
part of the day, but at this school, I didn’t have to fold my arms close to me
and stare at the ground as I fought my “magic”. At this school, I just had to
hold still as cameras flashed.

Hunters weren’t stalking me, but college
students were. Everyone watching was about to get a glimpse of the second most blogged
about aspect of my life after fashion: my relationship with the hot janitor. He
was pushing his cart toward me now.

“You’re early,” he said.

“Max and stuffy old Professor Johnson
have a meeting with the Dean, so I’m done for the day.”

“Nice,” he said. He kissed me and pulled
away before it grew out of a peck. “I have a few more classrooms left. You want
me to ask Griff to go home?”

“No. I can wait.”

A guy with a face full of piercings
passed us on the hall and was not polite enough to silence the camera on his
phone. We both ignored him, and I walked next to Nate’s cart into an empty
classroom.

He readied his dust mop, and I said,
“Need help?”

“No. I’m fine. It won’t take too long.”

I sat in the far corner of the room, out
of his way, and opened my binder. Multicolored sticky notes covered the inside
flap, my reminders for things I needed to remember for the week.

Max extra credit sketch due Mon.

History take home quiz due Tues.

Don’t ruin your life.

 
“My dad is going to be pissed,” I said.

“Because I still live with you?” he
asked.

I chuckled. Though new to my life, my dad
was a real dad. Not a friend kind of dad. He took his role seriously, and he’d
asked me a million times to kick Nate out of the house. He saw me as seventeen
days old rather than seventeen years, and it didn’t help that Nate had
threatened to kill him during their first conversation.

Things hadn’t gotten much better since
then. Dad mostly ignored Nate when he accompanied me to his house or if we sat
in on one of Dad’s healing sessions with Sophia. While she chanted over his
brain to heal the injuries regaining his memories of Mom had caused, Nate
usually sat there like a mute unless I asked him something directly.

“No,” I said. “He’s going to be mad about
my grade on the history paper he helped me with. I got a C.”

“Sorry.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “He’s going to
be more upset than me. I don’t really care.” He shot me a worried look. “I mean
... I care, but a C on one paper isn’t going to ruin my whole semester. That’s
all I meant.”

“Oh.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I
welcomed the distraction from talking about Trenton. It was a text from Emma.

She’d sent me screen shots of two new
blog posts: one with me walking to the Wall of Shame and another that announced
I was in a classroom cleaning with the hot janitor.

Should
be fine
, I replied.
I’ll tell my mom just in case
.

I forwarded the messages to Mom and
started my homework. For the extra credit in Max’s class, he wanted us to
sketch a scene depicting one word. I’d chosen
happiness
, and I was going to draw this moment of Nate cleaning, while
I sketched, in our chaotic life that had somehow become normal.

For the next hour, I moved from class to
class with Nate as he cleaned. My sketch went from awful to great to awful
again. As I contemplated starting over, my phone buzzed. It was an email I’d been
expecting all day from Gregory.

He’d sent one every day since warning me
about taking the potion permanently. They were always the same: an
inspirational quote about power, forgiveness, or letting go of the past.

Today he sent:
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has
crushed it. –Mark Twain.
Then he added:
Never forget the good you did and the good you can do. The portal is
the past. Forgive yourself and reach towards your future.

He ended with the same line every day.

There
is greatness inside of you, my dear, just waiting to be unleashed. Have a happy
day.

He hated the idea of me not using my powers,
but he was the only one. The potion kept me in control. It was why I wasn’t
sitting in a corner, worrying about things I had no business worrying about.

But since I loved him so much, I responded
in the same way every day–some variation of:
Thank you. I will work on forgiving myself, but for me, being powerless
feels better.
There was a part of me that hated typing those words, but
that didn’t stop me from taking the potion. Nothing would.

“Almost done,” Nate said. “The next classroom
only has a work order for a light bulb.” He pointed to the long cardboard box
at the bottom of his cart, and I packed up once again.

In the next room, Nate stood on a desk
and unscrewed the blown light, and I tried to selvage my sketch. Max gave these
extra credit assignments every week, but he wanted them perfect. Messy sketches
earned zero points.

I was so focused that I almost didn’t
notice a pink balloon falling to the floor in front of me. When it hit, it
stole Nate’s attention. It was the strangest thing I’d ever witnessed. A
phantom balloon. Nate jumped off of the desk and landed right by it.

“Where did this come from?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe it was under a desk.
Maybe the wind blew it out.”

Nate popped the balloon and tossed it
into the trash bucket on his cart. Then another appeared. It floated out of
thin air and landed near me like the last one. “Okay?” I said. “Maybe Emma?”

He took out his phone. I assumed it was
to call her. While he dialed the number, two more pink balloons appeared.

“Em?” Nate said. “Yeah. What’s with the
balloons?” I kicked one away and watched it
bounce
across the floor. “You’re not sending balloons to Christine?” I snapped my head
up. “Okay. Let me call Sophia. We’ll call you back.”

He didn’t look at me as he called Sophia.
He tapped his foot nervously and said, “Come on. Answer the phone.”

As he waited, another balloon appeared.
Then ten more. Then a cloud of them hovered over our heads and rained down in
the classroom. My heart pounded in my throat as pink and yellow streamers
looped through the light fixtures. With each pop of color, my stomach sank
deeper.