The Invisible (11 page)

I ignore her and stare at the floor as I follow Madame to her office, still turning the room with the desk in it over in my mind. How many blocks away is Lowlands? Twenty? More?

“No lies. I want the truth. What is it you are taking?” Madame says, her accent crisp, her words precise so there can be no misinterpreting. “This is unacceptable.”

“What?” I search her face, shocked that she would actually accuse me of using drugs. “Nothing. I swear.”

“Nobody can move like this,” Madame hisses, her eyes frantically searching mine. “So high in the air.”

“I . . . I’m sorry. I just . . . it’s just something I figured out how to do.”

She crosses her arms and leans over me, towering over me in her three-inch character shoes. Her black shawl abandoned over a chair, her bony caramel shoulders tensed, arms crossed over her black cami.

The silence between us is heavy and hot in the airless room.

“Very well,” Madame says tightly after a long assessing pause. “I am watching you very closely. If I hear anything about illegal substances among you girls, the consequences will be immediate. And irreversible.”

I nod, making my face blank and empty. The default weapon of every teenage girl. “Got it. Sorry. It won’t happen again.” My body slouched, my eyes dulled, waiting for her to shoo me back to practice.

In my head, I’m halfway over the river, already flying toward Lowlands.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

I’m prowling the streets of Lowlands, my heart on fire, Serge’s gun pressed between my boot and my sock. It’s 2:33 in the morning.

I’ve told Ford nothing about tonight’s expedition, even though this is the neighborhood where he goes to box. Now that he’s well, he would insist on coming with me, and that’s not a risk I’m about to take, since last time he helped me, he wound up shot.

Everywhere here is marked by a musty dampness that hangs in the air, and by a black line on every structure, just at my shoulders, that shows where the water rose during the last big flood.

I make a loop around the neighborhood, bordered by the river on one side, the freeway on another, and Oleander Way to the east. Then I circle back, moving down each street and alley so fast that there’s only the occasional toe-touch of rubber to asphalt. So fast, I assume I can’t be seen. The Lowlands are almost totally deserted because of the floods a few years ago that kept it underwater for weeks. Most all the buildings here are condemned, or should be.

The South Side gets all the flooding these days, but before I was born, things were different. Back then, it was the North—my neighborhood in particular, which isn’t far from the river—that was always flooding. Back then, the North was underwater at least once every winter.

When my father was first getting into real estate, he and a group of other developers came up with a redevelopment plan to add height to the land north of the river (which they were smart enough to buy up “for a song,” after a particularly flooded spring, as my dad puts it whenever he tells the story) by trucking in garbage from a few landfills, adding layers of soil over the top, then paving over the new higher ground.

Building on top of the hills he created in the North is what turned my father into the king of Bedlam real estate. Or at least that’s how my parents tell it. I’ve heard the stories a million times. They like to leave out the part about how building the hills in the North made it so the South became the flood zone.

After my father’s redevelopment of the North, everyone wanted to live there. When the river overflowed again a few years later, people who could afford it up picked up and left, and the South Side became more and more neglected, and more dangerous.

When the most recent floods hit a few years ago, Lowlands was submerged for weeks. Now there are only a few blocks with electricity here, toward the center of the neighborhood where there’s a little hill. That’s where Jimmy’s Corner is. Ford might be boxing there at this very moment.

I see something move out of the corner of my vision and come to a stop behind a Dumpster, landing hard on my heels. An animal comes into view, flitting in the tall grass growing in a vacant lot behind a chain-link fence. Its black eyes blink curiously at me, two shining beads disguised in its black mask, just a raccoon. Pretending to be someone else, or nobody at all.

You and me both
, I think, reaching a hand in the pocket of my black windbreaker to make sure the mask I’ve made is still safely stashed there. It’s only a four-inch-tall strip of stretchy black mesh with holes just big enough to see through that I cut from an old costume, but the effect is startling, since it obscures my eyes and nose so completely. In my closet mirror, I felt a strange ripple of pride when I put it on. Combined with my black hood, it disguises me well.

I edge away from the Dumpster, away from the vacant lot, keeping my run slow now so I don’t miss anything. Up ahead, I spot a Droopie den, marked as is the custom in Bedlam with two shoes with laces tied together and flung over an electricity wire—though without electricity, the wire is only decorative.

I slow to a walk that I hope appears casual and concentrate on getting my breathing under control, quieting any lingering sounds of exertion. The nice thing about Droopers is that they are docile and unguarded with their speech.

Two pallid, vacant-eyed teenagers are sprawled on the brick front steps. One of them, the girl, braids the hair of the other, a boy. Neither speaks or raises a hand in greeting when I walk up to them. They stare so listlessly out at the street that it’s like they’re staring inward, at whatever visions or chasms lurk in their minds. The girl’s fingers work slowly and skillfully through the mane of the boy’s dirty blond hair. She’s giving him cornrows. A package of tiny rubber bands—megamart brand, $.42 for 42, the sticker says—spills out onto the steps.

I approach slowly, hesitant to get closer than ten feet away in case I’m wrong and they’re not as Drooped out as they look, and are hostile or territorial, or worse, ready to empty my pockets any way they can.

“Hi.”

The boy doesn’t look up, but his hand flaps in a low wave.

“ ’Lo, girlie. You looking to score?” The girl smiles big and fake. “I can get Pepe, just needa finish this project here.”

“No, don’t bother . . . um, Pepe,” I say quickly, jumping lightly from one foot to the other. “I’m just looking around for this guy I used to know.”

“Mmmkay.” The girl shrugs, her fingers moving strand over strand in a five-sectioned pattern that I have to admit is impressive. “Not that many of us in Moldlands.”

“Right. But I think this is where he said he’d be,” I say, thinking again of the condemned sign, of the tag that I know I’ve seen before around here. In fact, I’ve seen two just tonight, since I’ve been out here.
WrastlDown
sprayed in silver on a peeling black wall. The shorter version,
WDown,
in black marker on what was once a phone booth, now just a urine-scented shelter made of cracked glass.

“Shay!” Someone calls down from a higher floor. “Go to the corner and get some chips!”

The girl squints upward.

“Fine.” She stands up, pulling the boy up with her, by his hair. “You’re paying,” she says to him.

He snorts and follows her.

“So . . . have you seen anyone new hanging around here the past few weeks?” I say, moving with them to the corner.

“Just those guys with the videquip. Shooting a movie or somethin’,” the boy says. He can talk after all.

“You know, that sounds like who I’m looking for. I’m supposed to be in their movie,” I say, wincing at how obvious the lie is. I try to mimic Shay and the boy’s slouch, mirror their vacant faces. Maybe they’re too Drooped out to notice the way my story keeps changing. “Where were they, do you know?”

The boy hawks a loogie, and I look away as he spits it into the gutter. “You take Ivy Street and turn—”

“You’re going to need to buy us some chips first,” Shay says, elbowing him in the ribs. “You are so high, you don’t even think,” she whispers at him.

“I am not,” he protests, his braids already unraveling. “I
wish
I was,” he snorts. “I hate thinking.”

In the MiniServ the girl points at random things she wants me to buy her, her limbs loose and wild from the Droops. “Four SnoPops—no, wait, six. And those JumboCrisps. And the Chocobuzz. Three cans.” And I do without a word, my arms full of stuff. Six bags of chips, two BrainFreezes, and the rest of the stuff all paid for and bagged by a clerk who might also be on Droopies judging by how slow he’s moving, we step out into the night, and I clear my throat. “Okay,” I say. “Now tell me where you saw the videquip.”

“It was, like, a few days ago. But they were in the old hospital. On Gypsum Street, the entrance to the ER. Mold city. Here, I got extras. You’ll need this.” He digs in his jeans pocket and pulls out a frayed blue surgical mask, the edges where it’s been folded lined with grime. Blinks at me, then stumbles off the curb.

“He is so out of it,” sighs Shay. “That all you want, girlie? We gotta split.”

“Thanks,” I say to the boy. And maybe I imagine it but I think he does a Drooper’s version of the Hope sign. Hand over his heart. Fingers crossed.

I check his eyes. There’s a flash of clarity there. Then he cough-laughs.

I shake my head slightly, finger to my lips, and back away. He just waves, his eyes vacant again. Too high, I hope, to care all that much about who he thinks I am.

Inside the hospital, everything is black. The ER waiting room linoleum is slicked with glistening mud, and black mold marbled with green and gray crawls up the walls. I’m glad for the surgical mask I’ve put on. Even if it’s filthy, the air in the hospital is filthier still. And even though it’s dark, I pull out the black mesh mask from my pocket and tie it over my eyes. I must look like a demented raccoon surgeon, but there’s no one here to see. All that’s here is the dripping sound of water leaking from pipes, running like slow tears down the walls.

I shove open the double doors leading to the back of the ER, pushing against a toppled gurney slimed with mold and mud until the doors give. Could anyone really be here, in this foul space? With every step forward, there’s less light to see by, and more squeaking of rats or mice. I shudder as I step in deep mud, my sneakers sliding. After a few steps, I slip and nearly fall on my face, grabbing onto a bar against the wall.

Then I freeze. My spine turns to ice. Someone is whistling the jingle for Buzz Beer.

The words are so ingrained in me, I think them as the low whistle marks the syllables. It’s coming from above me. Along with shuffling footsteps. I move down the hall, barely able to see, opening every door I pass in hopes of finding the stairwell.

When you need a lift, it’s Buzz time

When you ask for more, it’s Buzz time

When the party’s on, it’s always time

for Buzz Buzz Beer.

When I find the stairs I climb them cautiously, stopping every few steps to listen. The whistling continues.

Slowly, I push the door open and assess the second floor. Up here is less muddy, less ruined. The walls are still veined with mold, but the floor is dry and dusty.

Something—a shadow, a rat, a person?—moves around the corner, down the hall. I keep singing the Buzz Beer song in my head to keep calm, and pull Serge’s gun out of my boot. The black plastic is warm. My chest kicks with revulsion at the thought of shooting someone, but I will if I have to. If there is no choice.

I creep to the corner where the hallway turns and edge slowly around the wall, just enough to see with one eye. Ice shoots down my spine when I spot someone in the shadows twenty feet away. I don’t dare breathe. I don’t dare move.

It’s a guy. Not as young as me, but close. He is thin but strong. His shoes are encrusted with mud. And his head is crowned with the same springy dark curls as the man in the Invisible’s transmissions.

My hands flood with sweat as I try to decide. Do I run? Do I continue to stand here, frozen against the wall?

But then he steps into a room halfway down the hall. He hasn’t seen me.

I dash-fly down the hall, willing my feet not to touch the ground, dizzy with my own speed.

My heart revs painfully when I reach the doorway to the room. It’s a former hospital room, with a plastic hand sanitizer dispenser still attached at the entrance. But inside, there is no bed. No curtain. Just a desk. Draped with the Invisible flag with the wide hazel eye, unblinking.

The man—really a boy, around the same age as Ford, maybe twenty—is adjusting a camera on a tripod. His back is to me. Stage lights shine on the desk, impossibly bright in the moldering room. My breath hitches as I move toward him. I spot the telltale graffiti on the wall. The condemned notice decorated with the tag:
Wrastldown
.

The mask he uses when he does the transmissions lies on the desk, faceup. A hard white plastic shell he wears over his face, because he is a coward.

I stand there, ears ringing, watching as at last he turns in an achingly slow arc to face me, a calm and open expression on his face as he studies my mask.

“You came.” He puts his hand out. Blinks. “Nice to meet you.”

How could this unassuming boy be Invisible?

Then he flashes a grin. His teeth are stained. His eyes have a glassy, drugged quality to them. “You’re as predictable as we thought.”

I nod. Blood pulses through me, every extremity tingling with anticipation. “Then you know what I’m about to do to you,” I say.

Before he can answer, I am upon him.

I leave the gun in my waistband for now, jumping up and coming at him with my muddy feet in the air, my sneaker making contact with his shoulder. He staggers against the desk, sending his white plastic mask flying to the floor, and I hear something in him crack, maybe a rib.

A broken, choking sound emerges from low in his throat.

But he straightens up and starts to fight back, batting his arms. He gets a fist punch to my neck before I swat him away like a slow-moving moth, pushing him over the desk so he lands on the floor on the other side. He’s a surprisingly poor fighter. When he looks up at me, there’s still that odd, pained smile pulling at his mouth.