The Invisible (12 page)

I yank the flag with the eye off the desk and come at him, fast enough so he sees I’m not all human. To his eyes, when I move like this, I’m just a blur.

“Jesus.” I detect a tremor in his voice. “What
are
you?”

“Just a girl you pissed off. Did you predict this, too?” Before he can answer, I pull my right hand back so it’s just above my shoulder and release, just like Ford taught me, aiming for a knockout. My fist explodes against his temple, and he smashes against the wall, eyes still open, before sinking to the floor, lids fluttering closed.

I hum the Buzz Beer jingle as I use my keys to cut the flag into long strips. The satin is strong. It will do as rope. The sprinkler heads are attached to metal pipes on the ceiling. I tie Invisible’s wrists and ankles, then tie two strips of the flag together and toss it over the metal sprinkler system. I fasten the long strips to the knots binding his wrists and ankles and test each of my knots. I learned these knots in Scouts when I was nine, things I never thought would come in handy.

Knots, kindness, how to build a fire. All of these are so much more important than I realized.

His head lolls on his neck, shoulders pulled back because his hands are tied behind him. I walk behind the desk to fetch the mask and put it on him. Invisible. Masked and in his own room.

Then I take the camera, unlatching it from its tripod and zipping it into my windbreaker. I double-check the other two cameras are off, then leave the room and shut the door behind me, making a note that he’s in room 327.

In the hall, I call the tip line. “Room 327 of Lowlands Hospital. The person who calls himself Invisible is in there.”

I race to the stairwell and move higher and higher, careful to hold on to the camera inside my jacket with one hand, until there are four stories between me and the third floor. Finally, I reach the roof. I push the stairwell door open and dash across the tar-papered surface of the roof until I find an alcove on the water tower that is just the right size for a small person like me.

I take off the surgical mask and put it in my pocket.

The other mask, the black one, I keep on. It feels like protection, somehow. Then I wedge myself into the alcove and wait for the police helicopters to arrive.

It takes twelve minutes. I time it on my watch. Soon there are dozens of riot cops pouring out of two helicopters, glass riot masks lowered, their Uzis raised.

“This is it,” I say to nobody, my words sucked into the air filled with the beating of chopper blades, deafening revolutions in the black night. “No more.”

This is the last of it, and all I’m willing to do. Their leader is toppled, just like Gavin was. The police will have to do the rest on their own.

I watch the blades of the chopper swoosh round and round above the spotlights, six helmeted cops hoisting the still-unconscious boy with the curly dark hair on a stretcher, his hands bound tightly in white plastic ties. I feel a sensation of unwinding deep in my chest. Something like what people must mean when they talk about a sense of peace.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

By the time I scurry down a fire escape on the side of the hospital, it’s after four
A.M.
I take off running through Lowlands, one arm curled around the bulky camera still hidden under my jacket, feeling giddy and triumphant. Something nags underneath—him telling me I’m
predictable
, maybe—but I tell myself to ignore it.

My legs take me the six blocks to Jimmy’s Corner as if I’m on autopilot.

Standing on the threshold, I listen, looking up at the lighted upstairs windows until I detect the
thwunk thwunk thwunk
of fists hitting a big unyielding bag.

I know those hits. This sequence of sounds is perfectly familiar, the way a lullaby is, or the school bell, or the sound of your family’s car starting.
Low low, high low. Low low, high low.

They are his.

My skin tingles in anticipation, a syrupy warmth spreading through my chest and down into my legs, to my knees.

I dig my keys out from my jeans pocket and find the one Ford gave me months ago when I first started training, the one that unlatches all of Jimmy’s bolts. In a minute I’m flying up the stairs, slowing as I push open the door.

He’s at the big bag, the red one I once knocked across the room, the first night my own impossible strength shocked us both. Pounding away, his face red and fierce and dripping with sweat as he one-twos from foot to foot, he hasn’t noticed me yet.

I move toward the ring in the center of the room and grab one of the ropes surrounding it to steady myself for the rush of desire and relief I feel when I’m near him. How funny that you can start off so completely platonic with someone and all of a sudden you feel like a million tiny magnets are just under your skin, pulling you toward him.

His hands are wrapped with white surgical tape. He wears a gray tank top with holes around the seams, wet with sweat around his chest, and his usual black training pants with the white stripe.
Slam-slam-slam-slam. Right right left right.

His face is a sweaty mask of ferocity and focus. A vein pops up on his shoulder, traveling up his neck.

It feels too intimate watching him, having him not know I’m here. I clear my throat: “Ford.”

When he looks up at me his eyes are hooded and entranced, still in the fight zone. Then he softens, and blood rushes hotly to my cheeks.

“Green.”
His nickname for me.

A dimple pops through on one smooth cheek. He moves toward me, hands still clenched. Muscles almost as defined as ever. But how can that be, since he’s only been back in fighting form a few days? Has he been living at Jimmy’s for the past forty-eight hours, lifting weights?

He’s in front of me now, tall and imposing. I sway a little on my feet. The air between us seems to hum with electricity. He hasn’t even touched me. Yet.

“I’m glad you came.” His voice is husky.

My hands shake as I unzip my jacket, carefully taking the camera out, placing it on the mat beside me.

“What’s that?”

A long beat of silence. How do I tell him? “A souvenir.”

“Of what?” His slow smile melts me. “What did you do?”

“Took care of things,” I say, relief catching in my throat. Or maybe it’s pride. “Of Invisible.”

Ford’s jaw drops open. “That simple, huh? Where is he now?”

“With the cops. Unconscious,” I add. “Or he was a little while ago. He’ll have a headache when he wakes up.”

“Nice.” Ford nods, pride in me shining in his eyes, but something darker there too. “You didn’t want backup?” he says lightly. “I would’ve been—”

“I needed to go alone,” I interrupt him. “I’m still . . . you were so sick.” And slowly, slowly, I’m moving toward him, until my hands find his arms and the heat of his torso is near enough to feel.

“I’m better now,” he says, his breath warm in my hair. “Better than ever.” And then he’s pulling me toward him, closer, closer. Until there’s nothing between us but the clothes we wear. “I’m glad you’re okay. And that you kicked his ass,” his voice low. And then his lips traveling on my neck, until we find each other.

Kissing Ford is like pressing my lips against a tropical storm. Wet, wild, thunderous, unpredictable.

Before I know what’s happening I am against the ropes of the ring, the soft vinyl floor pushing against the backs of my knees, and I don’t quite know where he ends and where I begin.

Everything we’ve never said, we’re saying now, with hands and lips.

I am feeling him press against me, my heart twisting and flipping and spinning. He pulls away and puts his hand to the scar on my chest, the place Jax cut into for the transplant. He caresses it with a calloused knuckle.

A tiny moan escapes me.

And then we are kissing again, my legs wrapped around his torso, moving against him, breathing him in like he’s oxygen.

The ropes aren’t holding us, and I slip under them, Ford following me, and then we are lying on the air-filled boxing ring, the smell of old matches—blood and sweat and dust—billowing up around us. I am on top of him, his head in my hands, his skin on fire. My eyes closed, he grows warmer and warmer and I’m somewhere else, a place I’ve been before but never, ever like this—

Until I hear him yelp. My eyes flutter open just as he pushes me away,
hard
. I fly off him, nearly to the edge of the ring, and land hard, on my tailbone.

“Ow.” I frown, frozen, confused. Blinking dumbly.

“Sorry,” Ford says. He’s up on his feet, pacing. He’s bright red. Even his shoulders and neck, not just his face. His expression is strange and intense, that vein pulsing in his neck again. He opens his mouth to say something, then shuts it abruptly.

“What is it?” I say.

He shrugs, suddenly looking ill and miserable, then turns away from me.

“Did I do something wrong?” I say, my voice small.

“Nothing. You did everything right,” Ford says to the wall, still facing away from me, his head hanging low. “I’m sorry.” He turns around. “I’m just . . . not totally myself right now.” His voice is thick with remorse. Hands clenched in fists, the white tape on his hands contrasting with the red-purple shade his olive skin has taken on. He looks up at the drop ceiling, as if seeking answers there. His expression hopelessly confused. “I’m sorry. I—you can’t possibly know how happy this makes me. How long I’ve wanted this. I just, I just . . . I need to get myself together, I guess.”

“Okay.” I nod, unsure what to do. What is he holding back? Normally I feel like I can read Ford better than anyone else, but he’s totally opaque to me right now.

“Let’s try this again another night,” he says, keeping his distance from me, when all I want is to be close to him right now. I move forward. He backs away. “Sorry.”

“Ford.” I try again. “Just tell me. What is it?”

He shakes his head. “Go home. Don’t hold this against me, okay?” Then, more quietly: “I’m crazy about you. Have been from day one. Just, I need to slow it down. For now.”

I scoop up the camera, swallowing down a dozen confused questions. I believe him when he says this. Maybe things were just moving too fast for him. I didn’t know boys ever really felt that way about this kind of stuff, but what I know about boys could fit on the head of a pin. If he wants to take things slow, I can do that. I want to do that. I just wish it didn’t feel so strange, and so much like something’s wrong between us.

I wave good-bye, backing awkwardly toward the door.

“I can’t believe you found him, Green. Way to be,” he says as I go.

“Next time I’ll show you the footage,” I say. Before I leave, Ford smiles at me, and something in his face is horribly off, like he’s in serious pain and trying to cover it up. I turn away so I don’t have to see it.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

I wake late the next morning, weak from hunger. My fingertips are turning a faint blue that extends all the way to the nail beds. I stagger to my desk across the room and open my desk drawer to grab an oatmeal cookie from a box I’ve stashed. I chew it without tasting it and wait for my dizziness to subside as the sugar hits my bloodstream.

When I go to the bathroom I discover the electricity is finally back on. I flip the light switch on and off a few times, enjoying the bright immediacy of the power compared to before, with the generator in the building, when everything was dim and delayed.

How perfect
, I think as I wash my face. I capture Invisible and the power comes back on, all at once.

When I pad out of my room and down the hall, I hear my parents in the kitchen, talking to Lily.

“Got to be the same girl from before.”

“No question,” says my dad. “What I’m wondering is, what’s she on?”

“What are you talking about, Harris?” My mother snorts. “Is there a drug on the market I don’t know about?”

“Gotta be. No human being can run like that without drugs.”

I press my back against the wall in the hallway and freeze, hoping they haven’t heard me come out of my room. They’ve obviously seen some footage of me. Do they suspect it’s their daughter?

“She’s amazing, whoever she is,” Lily declares.

“Think it might actually be a small, feminine-looking man?” my father muses, his mouth full. “What kind of girl goes head-to-head against these people?”

I bristle, feeling indignant before I realize I should be relieved he’s so clueless. I walk the rest of the way to the kitchen, stand in the doorway, and make a big show of yawning.

“The kind of girl who can do
that
,” my mother says, pointing at the TV, which is muted, but flashing surveillance footage of a person moving with impossible speed down a dark street. So fast she’s a streak, a blur. It’s all surveillance footage, different black-and-white, grainy captures from several different angles, spliced together by
Channel Four News Roundup
.

Then the TV cuts to the anchorman, who wields a stylus pen and begins circling things on the screen. His lips move but the sound is still muted, and the footage is replayed, much slower this time. He draws arrows, circles the figure. She’s still blurry. Then the footage plays slower still, and crops and zooms in on the figure until I can make out the shape of a nose, the black eye mask, the legs and hooded head of a girl-like figure, grainy and black-and-white.

My mask is on, and I know I’ll need to wear it whenever I go out at night. My hood bounces, but enough of it covers my hair. The footage is all in black and white.

“Morning, kitten,” Dad says, reaching out to ruffle my tangled hair before turning back to the TV.

“She’s incredible,” Lily sighs as she continues to watch the footage. “They’re going to try hard to find her. Probably want to know how she’s so fast.”

I shudder in my seat. Jax was right. And Will was too, when he threatened to expose me if I didn’t do what he wanted. If anyone ever finds out that girl is me, my life as I know it is over. My blood, my bone marrow, my brain matter will be tested; I will be poked and prodded, possibly for years.