The Invisible (9 page)

She waves a slip of paper in her hand. Everyone is picking daisies out of their hair, rumbles of conversation growing louder.

“Is this a prank?” Debbie yells. “It’s not funny, you guys!”

I pick up one of the slips from the ground and my blood freezes in my veins when I read the words, hand-scrawled in blue ballpoint:

Like the humble daisy, The Invisible grow every time it rains. Expect us, children. We are everywhere.

“I need to get out of here.” I jump to my feet, shoving my way past Zahra’s knees on the end of the aisle. I want to get outside and see if they’re still nearby. But the aisles immediately cram with people. Everyone wants to get out.

Principal Bang’s voice is projected from the mic. “Please form an orderly line to exit the chapel. School is cancelled for the rest of the day while we investigate this matter.”

I suddenly remember there’s another exit behind the pulpit. I skirt the edge of the pews and head straight toward it, but lots of other kids are doing the same.

“Hey, Red,” a deep voice too close to my ear says from right behind me. I speed up, pressing forward in the crowd, but I can’t get through. Will moves up in the throng until he’s next to me. “I . . . I know you don’t want to talk to me,” he says haltingly.

I sneak a sidelong peek at him. His light blue eyes are clear, no longer bloodshot and crazed. He’s smiling nervously. “Let’s not do this,” I say. I just want to get out of here.

“I just wanted to say sorry. About everything. I wasn’t myself. I’m better now, and I guess you’re part of the reason why. I hope we can, I dunno, be friends, someday.”

“I’m glad you’re better,” I say tightly. And I am. Really. But that doesn’t mean that I trust him or want to have anything to do with him. Planting a hidden camera in my bedroom, blackmail, stalking, countless threats—it’s not something we can come back from. We’ll never be friends.

I see an opening in the mass of people and I take it.

But when I finally get outside, the riot police have already colonized the courtyard. They’ve got a ladder against the chapel wall. Six of them already on the roof. Their gray coveralls, their gas masks. Their enormous, gleaming Uzis.

When I turn around, there is a bullhorn in my face, a riot policeman screaming into it: “PLEASE EXIT THE CAMPUS IN AN ORDERLY FASHION. PHOTOGRAPHY IS PROHIBITED.”

Invisible will be long gone by now.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

Zahra and I are walking toward the Scrambled Yolk, our usual diner, when a familiar voice calls my name.

I look across the street. “Ford!” Heat rushes to my face. I didn’t realize how badly I wanted to see him until now.

“Hey. I was in the neighborhood and heard the sirens. Everything okay?” His eyes are clouded with worry, but his cheeks are flushed with health and vitality.

I’m speechless for a second. I haven’t seen him out of his apartment since before the shooting. “You were
not
in the neighborhood,” I say finally, touched that he cares so much. “Did you come to check on me?”

“Is that weird?” He smiles feebly. “I saw that the girl who was murdered went to your school. It’s getting kind of freaky out here.”

“It’s sweet,” I say. And I mean it.

“So you’re okay?” Ford is practically bouncing on his tiptoes when he pivots slightly toward Zahra, who’s been standing here the whole time, silent, with a bemused smile of her own. “Hi.” He puts his hand out. “I’m Ford. You must be the famous Zahra.”

“Why yes, that would be me.” Zahra reaches out and shakes his hand. “You’re the guy who got shot, are you not? Anthem’s been worried about you. She didn’t tell me you were . . . um . . .” Zahra turns to me.
A stone fox?
she mouths, her eyes widening in mock-panic. Turning back to Ford, she says: “an athlete.”

Ford shrugs, still bouncing from the ball of one foot to the other. “I used to be.”

“Well,
Ford
,” Zahra says his name like it’s an exotic delicacy or punch line to a great joke, “we were just going to get some breakfast and discuss some insanity that just went down at our school. You should come with us.”

Z starts pulling me down the sidewalk, leaning in at one point to hiss, “You kept him a secret!” in my ear.

I snort-laugh at Zahra and grab Ford by the arm, and for a moment I’m able to forget about Martha dead in her room, to ignore the sick feeling that Invisible is closing in on all of us. All I feel is a surge of simple happiness over being with Zahra and Ford together, of Ford being well, of my two favorite people colliding at last.

At the Scrambled Yolk, we cram into a red vinyl booth. Zahra insists I sit next to Ford, and though I roll my eyes at her obvious delight in embarrassing me, I’m happy to do it. To feel the fact of him, alive and healthy and flushed. We all order the Unemployment Special—two sunny-side-up eggs, toast, hash browns, and coffee for four ninety-five.

“So what happened at your school, exactly?” Ford asks Zahra. I concentrate on adding creamer to the coffee the waitress has plunked down for us, then gulp it down, draining the cup in one long swallow. I’m nervous, watching them talk. Zahra will tell it better.

“You heard about Martha Marks, right?” Zahra asks.

“Yeah.” He looks from me to Z. “Were you two friends of hers?”

“We knew her,” Zahra says. I feel my hands clenching and unclenching under the table, picturing Martha’s vacant cold eyes. I feel guilty now, for allowing myself to have a moment of happiness today. “Anyway, they had this memorial service for her and there was this prank . . .”

“It wasn’t a prank,” I interrupt. “It was a threat.”

“Well, whatever it was, it said ‘Invisible is everywhere, blah blah blah’ on these little pieces of paper and then there were our friends the riot police, bum-rushing the school, and we were free to go. And now we’re here,” Z sighs. Invisible is still an abstraction to her, I realize. Even with Martha dead. Like politics in another country. Like pre-calculus. For a second, I envy her that.

“Pieces of paper, huh?” Ford knits his thick brows together. “They never would have cancelled school over paper at my high school.”

“Where’d you go?” Z asks through a mouthful of toast.

“West Bed.”

One of the giant public schools in the South. People at our school call it West Dead because of all the knife fights. I should know where Ford went to high school. It suddenly strikes me as weird, how little I know about his past.

“They killed Martha,” I say quietly to Ford. “And now they’re making their presence known at school. I just wish we knew why . . .”

“Three Unemployment Specials,” the waitress says, interrupting our conversation. For a while, the three of us are quiet, all of us tucking into the food like we haven’t eaten in a year. Ford folds his toast around a fried egg and eats the whole thing folded up like a pizza slice. I’m pleased to see him chowing down like this—he’s eaten like a bird since the shooting.

He’s keeping up with me as I mow down my hash browns, then use my buttered toast as a tool to shovel the eggs in my mouth. I’m starving, and I feel comfortable enough around Ford that it doesn’t matter how I eat.

“Gotta tinkle,” Zahra says out of nowhere. “I’ll be back. Ant, I have no cash. Can I pay you back?”

I nod, and then Ford and I are alone. Our food is demolished.

“Penny for your thoughts.” He elbows me in the ribs.

“Ow!”

“Sorry,” he says. “I just can’t believe I’m out at a restaurant, with you. With the famous Zahra.”

“I know,” I say. “Me either. It’s—it’s great.” I grab his hand in my two hands, running my fingers along his knuckles, squeezing and not wanting to let go.

“I was there, Ford, but I was too late.”

“Where?”

It all comes out in a rush. Marks Manor. The scream I heard. The gunshot in the forehead. Ford’s fingers grip my hand now as I almost choke on the words. “I’ve got to find them.”

“Okay.” Ford nods. “I want to help.”

And then there’s nothing more I need to say, and we’re just staring at each other. Our faces serious and composed as everything in the restaurant crystallizes and individuates and slows. The clatter of plates, the light streaming in through the fingerprinted windows. The squeak of the booth as Ford moves toward me.

Which is when I notice the waitress standing over us, looking at her watch.

“Can you guys settle your bill? We kind of need the table.”

“Sure thing.” Ford straightens up, embarrassed to be caught about to kiss me—
was
he about to kiss me?—by the waitress.

I shove him hard in the shoulder this time.

“Ow!” he yells. We’re both biting back grins as we divvy up the check.

Outside the diner, the warm spring day has begun to melt into a pastel-colored afternoon. The middle soft and sweet, the edges of things sharper, a little bit sour. His hand finds mine and it feels like a promise.

“Be safe today,” he says, his ropy arms wrapped around my shoulders for a brief chaste hug. My stomach flips when his scratchy cheek meets mine. And then he leans in and kisses me. Softly. He tastes of coffee. Everything he’s felt all these months comes out in this kiss. The softness of it. The care. And I respond in kind. My hands run over his soft short hair. The kiss is like a punch in the gut; the way I want him suddenly feels wrenching and deep. We keep on kissing, right there on the sidewalk, under an elm, outside the restaurant I’ve been coming to since I was eleven years old and came here with Serge and my parents on school vacation days.

And I want it to go on forever. His hands around my shoulders. In my hair. My body thrumming with adrenaline and pain from Martha’s death and an ache for Ford all at once, until I pull away slightly, dizzy from it all. I have an urge to laugh, and I do. It feels good.

“What’s so funny?” he whispers.

“I’m just . . . I guess I’m just really . . . this is good. You. Being here. Us.” Saying it makes my knees go watery.

He nods. Looks at me with soft eyes. “I know just what you mean.”

“Get a room, you two,” Zahra interrupts us, stepping outside the diner. We both laugh awkwardly and move away from each other then, but I can still feel the heat of him on my skin long after we part.

“So. Ford. Very cute,” Z says once we’re in the backseat of the Seraph. After we both fielded calls from our parents, my father sent Serge to pick us up at the diner. Ford declined a ride, instead heading off to the boxing gym for his first day back. “Anthem’s got a boyfriend,” she singsongs, teasing me.

“Shhh,” I hiss, pointing to Serge in the front seat. “And he’s not my boyfriend,” I protest, but my blush says otherwise.

“Call it what you want,” Z says. “I know what I saw. He’s so . . .
nice
, too. I approve a hundred percent. You have my blessing.”

“Are you sure I shouldn’t just get back together with Will?” I joke.

“Hmmm, psycho daddy’s boy who is the embodiment of all that is evil about prep school, or sexy boxer boy who looks at you like you just cured cancer? You know, it’s a tough decision, but I think I’d go with Ford,” she says in mock-seriousness. “Does he have any boxer friends?”

“What about Dando?” I pretend to act shocked, but Z knows I’m not. She grows bored of whatever boy she’s with fast—usually in a week or two, tops.

“Dando is getting on my nerves,” she sighs. “He has weird teeth. And this annoying way of laughing, sometimes. And I don’t like the undershirts he wears. V-neck, yuck.”

“Sounds awful,” I say dryly. “I don’t know how you’ve stood it this long.” I feel so close to Zahra right now, I wish I could tell her everything about what’s happened to me, here in the car. I imagine the whole story spilling out here and now, the way she’d react if she knew about me falling into the river. If she knew about my hummingbird heart. About my . . . abilities.

It’ll be fun to show her someday.

But then Z gets a call from her mother, and I’m snapped back into the moment. Both Z’s and my parents are on edge after what happened at school. It’s hitting closer and closer to home.

“Okay, okay. Got it. I’m in the car. We’re almost there. It’s okay, I’m fine!” She hangs up and rolls her eyes. “She’s so worked up about the school closing, my god.” Z sighs. “Want to come over and hang at my place for the afternoon under the watchful eye of Melinda Turk?”

“Sounds fun, but my parents want me home, too. My dad sounded like a vein was going to pop.”

Z sighs sympathetically. “They’re all bonkers right about now.”

“I think they might be right to be worried.” I wish I could piece together Invisible’s actions and figure out his next move. “What do you think they meant with the flowers and the notes?”

“On the one hand, it was a little like they were saying sorry, you know, for what happened to Martha.” Z chews her cuticle and looks out the window, where several Cathedral kids are still waiting for rides and loitering outside a newsstand. The headlines scream at me through the Seraph’s tinted glass:

MAYOR’S DAUGHTER FOUND SLAIN IN HER BEDROOM.

BAND OF VIOLENT CRUSADERS PRIME SUSPECTS.

ART MUSEUM EXPLODED BY ‘INVISIBLE’ MADMEN.

‘INVISIBLE’ CALLS OUT THE NEW HOPE—AUTHORITIES STUMPED.

“Then why say they are everywhere and getting stronger?” I counter, shivering as I turn away from the newspapers.

“Right. On the other hand, it was just rubbing our faces in what they did and trying to scare us. Where’s the New Hope when you need her?” Zahra sighs wistfully.

I hope she doesn’t notice the blood rushing to my face as we pull up in front of her house. I think back to a month ago when I was still going out nights, looking for Syndicate thugs to round up. When I was still avenging a death Gavin had faked.

The Syndicate has been quiet lately. There’s been very little in the papers about them. Just a few minor robberies in the South, some looting when Invisible made their announcement, and a turf war with some dealers near Hades, the abandoned mall that’s now a black market for all manner of contraband. They must be regrouping now that their top lieutenant is dead. Or perhaps their brand of crime is just relegated to the back pages of the papers, what with Invisible taking up all the headlines.