The Invisible (17 page)

“Okay,” I say flatly. Inside, I feel raw and rejected. I’m already putting a hard shell around myself again. Building up a wall where before, with Ford, I felt only tenderness. “I’m here for you as a fr—”

“You’re not understanding me.” He shoots me a pained look. “I need to work on this,
alone
. I can’t see you for a while.”

“But . . . that doesn’t make any sense,” I say, trying to sound reasonable and not just hurt. He can’t cut off contact
entirely
. Can he? “We’re friends. Before anything else, we’re friends. You don’t just end that, just because . . .” I trail off, afraid to finish.

“Yes I do. I can’t risk exposing you to that person.”

I open my mouth, but nothing I think of to say seems right. The way he looks at me, the defeat in his eyes, the way he’s shut himself off from me, tells me whatever wall I’m erecting between us, the one he’s built is ten times as thick. He’s already written me off.

“You’re not making sense,” I say, wondering why I’m bothering. He’s clearly made up his mind.

“Maybe not. But this is the only way I know how to be right now.” His mouth is pinched with that fighting determination I’ve only seen before in the boxing ring.

“Fine,” I say. But I give him one last look, hoping he’ll change his mind, realize how this seems, and start to backtrack. Say something to let me know he still cares.

But his face only hardens, and I feel the punch-in-the-gut pain of rejection. This is how he’s chosen to end things. Because of the masquerade ball, and meeting my parents, and renting a tux that smelled like another man’s cologne. Because of the way the police questioned him, as if he was a suspect. All of it told him we were too different to be together.

I search his eyes for ulterior angles, but all I see are eyes that won’t meet mine, flickers of pain moving across his face.

Against my better judgment, I still reach out a hand and touch his shoulder. Hoping I’m wrong, somehow. That he doesn’t really want to end this. “Maybe we should talk this thr—”

“I’m not asking you,” Ford interrupts me, his voice gruff. Shrugs my hand off his shoulder. “I’m telling you. Go home, Anthem.” He shuts his eyes for a minute and turns away from me.

“Fine.” I back away slowly, then turn around and walk away, trying to keep my breath level and calm and not give in to the hurt twisting inside me.

I turn back once, and he’s still standing there in the gray alley, his hands balled into fists. Staring at me.

“Bye,” I mutter under my breath. And then I’m running, in the cold, as alone as I’ve ever felt.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

The next day the kids are all over the news. There are nine of them. Five of them go to Cathedral, and four are rich and famous enough in Bedlam that I know of them from the papers, even though they go to Lakeside Academy. They range in age from ten (Jasper Cawl, scion of the Cawl Paper Products family) to eighteen (Astrid Weathers, the only child of tennis champion Pete Weathers and MegaMart heir Patti Selz). The only one I know well is Will, but three others are a few grades below us: Sheldon Mandell, a sweet-looking freshman at Cathedral whose family inherited the Huntley car fortune; Celestial Deal, a wild junior who’s been suspended from Cathedral twice but who will never be kicked out because she’s part of the powerful Deal Hotel dynasty; and Mik Elder, son of actress Meeka Post and Reginald Elder (lead singer of The Broken Bottles, a band that was huge when my parents were young), who’s only in eighth grade but who is so handsome and sweet that it doesn’t really matter that he can barely read.

The rest of the kids are all from high-profile families too. The news anchors speculate that this is why they were taken. For maximum media exposure.

The next morning, two of the families give a press conference about enormous checks they’re writing to the South Side Children’s Hospital. “Because it’s the right thing to do,” Meeka Post says, her beautiful face puffy and quivering with emotion in front of the news cameras. “We are proud today to donate seven million dollars to Children’s Hospital. And”—she looks directly at the camera, her green eyes blazing—“we would like our son back now.”

Pete Weathers goes on next, talking about personal responsibility and about doing the right thing for the city. “So many of our friends are making sizable contributions,” he says. His tanned, surgically perfected face is devoid of emotion, but his voice catches, betraying his worry for his daughter. “Please, everyone. Give what you can. The money is going to good places, and our children need your help.”

The morning brings endless thrumming of police helicopters in the skies. Mayor Marks, looking medicated and doused in grief, his eyes ringed in dark circles, does his own press conference, encouraging the city to “go about your business as we hunt down these maniacs and work to retrieve your children.”

School is not cancelled. What is there to do but to go? Sit around here with my mother, who’s taken to her bed? No thanks, I decide. So I go. And after a long day of sad talk among students and emotional, unfocused teachers, everyone consumed by the missing kids, I head to ballet.

Even though the day is mild, a shiver rocks through me, as I wonder how many of those kids are going to come out of this alive. I resolve to try to follow up on Ford’s idea about the drugs, see if I can follow the trail. Maybe someone in the South Side will know something.

Normally, I would ask Ford to go with me. I push thoughts of him away, until I can almost ignore them. I’m on my own now.

I’m five minutes early for ballet, so I take my time arranging my boots and socks and changing my clothes in the small dressing room. When I emerge, five of my fellow Level Sixers, each already bunned and burnished in leggings and leos for practice—are gathered around Constance and her tablet.

It’s an Invisible transmission.
Again
. I can tell by the hush in the room. By the hum of electronic static. But this time it’s different, because now they have collateral.

I pull a pair of boy shorts on, a high-necked tank top covering the faint line of my scar, and creep out of the dressing area, tentatively stepping toward the crowd.

“She’s amazing,” Constance says, her ankle in her hand as she stretches her quad, standing like a flamingo in her hot pink cutoff sweats and white sports bra.

Liberty Sewell sighs with admiration. “Graceful and scary at the same time.”

I lean in slightly to see a slice of the tablet, and my heart whirs with surprise. It’s new footage, of the night I captured their decoy. Even though I took the camera, somewhere there was a second one, filming me.

I see myself lunging at him in the surgical mask, the black mesh band covering my eyes, attacking the decoy on the fourth floor of the hospital in Lowlands. But I’m so covered up, even I can barely tell it’s me.

I move closer to the tablet when Invisible’s masked face comes into view again, the curved mask revealing his chin and hair and nothing else. His voice robotic and disguised as always. This time, the wall behind him is blank and white. He could be anywhere.

“Citizens of Bedlam. We would like to encourage you to come forward with any information about this masked girl. We’d like to have a word with her. Post a video if you know anything about who she might be, and we will reward you handsomely.”

The mask moves and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. He’s smiling underneath it. I’m certain of it. The girls hiss and boo around me, but they quiet down as he keeps talking.

“And now on to more important matters. Today was a record-breaking fund-raising day for the South Side Children’s Hospital, the South Side Orphans’ Association, the South Side Food Pantry, and the South Bedlam schools. We congratulate you on your contributions. Many of you, hundreds of you—” Here he pauses, then laughs, though it sounds like a wheeze. “We are keeping track, dear friends, and we know your names—” Pause for throat-clearing. “—have complied with our requests. But it’s not enough. If we do not reach one hundred million dollars in donations for South Side public works projects by midnight tomorrow night, we will be forced to say good-bye to our youngest little friend, Jasper Cawl.”

I feel the bile rising up in my throat as a feed of the kids flashes on the screen, this one in color. All nine of them sit slumped against a wall, eyes glazed with boredom and lack of sleep. They look filthy and hungry. Celestial waves her fingers in front of her face, as if batting away a bug or perhaps just to make sure it’s still attached to her body. The others stare straight ahead with blank, hollow expressions. Jasper, only ten years old, is the only one sleeping. His head is on a girl’s shoulder, a sweet shock of his dirty blond hair sweat-stuck to his cheek.

I start shaking involuntarily, my hands and even my teeth vibrating with the cold forces of fury and fear.

I need to find them. And I only have thirty hours to do it.

I imagine making a video of myself, showing the world it’s me, that I’m the masked girl. Would they let the kids go, if I offered myself up? He didn’t present it as a trade, and I wonder if it would be yet another trap.

“Enough of this.” Madame has arrived in a swirl of red scarves and jingling jewelry. “Put it away, dancers. We will have none of this Invisible in this studio, thank you very much.” She flashes a disgusted look at Constance’s tablet.

I look from one face to another as they scurry to tie up their hair, or begin to stretch alongside the barre, or wrap their ankles. But nobody pays me any mind. They keep chattering with each other.

“She’s so graceful. The way she kicked that guy in the neck, like it was nothing? What a badass.”

“Wish I could move like that,” Liberty Sewell says.

“Yeah, you
do
wish,” Constance jokes, raising an eyebrow.

“Who d’you think it is?” Sadie Lockwood asks.

“Some South Side girl raised by pro fighters,” Constance says. “Trained to kill.”

“I hope nobody outs her,” whispers Clarissa Bender, moving from first to second to third position before we start our barre work.

Me too.

“Someone will,” says Constance, always a know-it-all.

“Who would do that?” Liberty asks.

“Someone who wants money.” She shrugs. And she’s probably right.

As I move through our battement, all I see is little Jasper Cawl, asleep on someone’s shoulder. A little boy whose luck it was to be born famously rich, whose luck has turned into a curse.

I lift off into the air, leaping into a
grand jet
é and landing hard, watching in amazement as the other dancers follow suit, not one of them paying me more than the usual attention. Not one of them hearing the violent revolutions of my heart.

After practice, Serge drives me home.

“I saw the video,” he says as soon as I shut the door. I wait a minute to answer, fiddling with my ballet bag, putting it next to my school bag on the seat next to me. I peek at the rearview and see Serge’s dark eyes staring at me. Eyebrow raised.

The air in the car is close and humid and full of things unspoken.

“I have some information I think might be of use.”

“What is it?”

“I was reading about a series of security breaches that happened a couple of months ago. A large group of young people escaped from the maximum security ward of Weepee Hills, where the worst psychiatric cases are sent.”

“Weepee Hills? Is that like Weepee Valley?”

“Similar, but state-funded instead of private. It’s where the mentally disturbed are sent when they can’t afford to pay.”

He hands me a manila envelope, filled with news stories about the escape. He’s circled a few of the people, and I sit up straight with recognition of one boy in particular. I’m sure he’s the blond kid from the arena.

LINKS SUSPECTED IN ESCAPES AT WEEPEE

The rest of the article is harder to read, the print on the copy blurred.

“You’ll notice they all have something in common.”

All of them were sent to Weepee Hills for addiction issues. Most of them were Droopers, with a few of them hooked on drugs I’ve never heard of, pharms of various kinds or Smokestacks or BodMod injections.

“Drugs.” I nod. Ford might have been right about Invisible ensuring loyalty with drugs. I shake my head slightly, willing myself not to think of last night. The hurt is still so raw.

“We could try to find their families, see if anyone knows anything,” I muse, refocusing myself. “But I think it might be smarter to talk with people who know about the drug trade. I think they’re all on the same thing.” I flash on the smears of shoe polish, the glazed red eyes they all have.

Serge nods. “There isn’t much time.”

I stare out the car window as Bankers Alley smears past the windows, all navy blue and gray with pops of white and black, people’s faces, umbrellas opening up on sidewalks as a sudden burst of rain falls on the windshield.

We turn onto Foxglove Court, and Fleet Tower rears up in front of us, all lit up with spotlights, two of the doormen standing outside at attention, umbrellas floating above their heads. Three police officers are stationed on the block, guns raised, standing still as statues. Everyone is on high alert again.

“Do you think my parents have figured it out?”

“I am assuming not,” Serge says.

“Nobody else seems to have a clue,” I say. “It’s . . . weird.”

“People see what they expect to see,” Serge says. “They often don’t notice what’s right in front of them.”