Walk Among Us, page 5
“Well,” she said and headed left toward South Campus, “I guess I’ll see you Friday.”
“See you,” Clea said, starting off in the opposite direction and into the wind. The cold bit her face so harshly that she pulled her scarf up over her nose and walked faster, desperate to get back to the warm safety of her dorm.
At the same moment, she realized it was too early and her roommate and friends might be there still. She realized that Brendan was walking in front of her and slowed her pace so she wouldn’t catch up with him. When the wind became too much, she stopped short and veered left, heading toward the library instead.
Another night alone was better than crossing paths with Hannah’s friends, that was for sure. They’d only gotten more vicious since the Burrito Incident.
But in the back of her mind, the thought prickled her: What would you do if you were literally invisible?
And for a moment, as she thought of her roommate’s vicious bestie, of Delaney’s jeers and taunts, of Hannah and their friends snickering in the background—and she let herself think of the things she could do to them if they couldn’t see her, she wondered if she really would use her powers for good after all.
Chapter Four
“Hey, Cleopatra, do you ever get out of bed?” a voice jeered. “Or do you just lie around all day like a slug?”
Clea thought she had dreamed it at first. She was curled up on her side, facing the wall. She took deep breaths and didn’t react to the comment except to open her eyes and then narrow them, clenching her fist around the corner of her pillow.
“Oh my God, shut up, Laney,” Hannah hissed. “She’s still asleep.”
“It’s almost dinnertime. On a Friday. What a freak. Is she, like, narcoleptic or something? Or just seriously that lazy?”
Clea had, in fact, been up for so long the night before that she’d been awake to hear Hannah’s alarm go off for her eight a.m. class. She’d been at the twenty-four-hour science and engineering library, filling her sketchbook with . . . what had she been drawing? She could barely even remember.
She could hear the scowl in Hannah’s voice. “She’s out just as late as we are most of the time. Give her a break. I didn’t hear her come in this morning, and I got home at, like, five.” Hannah yawned as if on cue. “Good thing I got to take a nap this afternoon. . . .”
“Out all night? Doing what? Does she even have friends? Or is she just hiding somewhere like a sad sack? She must’ve had a wild night out to have gotten back later than you. Maybe she has a secret fuck buddy,” Delaney added sarcastically, with a horrible laugh.
“Jesus, Delaney, lay off,” Hannah said. Clea could hear her zipping up her backpack; she must’ve just gathered the last of her things. “What the hell did she ever do to you?”
The door opened and closed, but Clea could still hear their muffled voices as they made their way down the hall. Only when she heard the elevator ding did she drag herself into a sitting position and reach for her phone.
Jade had texted her several hours ago, the very first text she had ever sent Clea since getting her number on Monday after the meeting: Dinner today? I just wanna talk before the coffee thing tonight. Don’t worry it’s nothing bad lol
And then, about an hour ago, Jade had followed up with: Didn’t mean to freak you out, just wanted to touch base about Prettyboy before tonight cuz I have a feeling about him
Clea didn’t have to ask who she meant by Prettyboy.
Sure, dinner sounds good, Clea texted her back. Sorry. Was in class.
That’s a long-ass class. Where to eat? Jade responded almost immediately.
Somewhere on High Street so we can take the bus down to the coffee shop? Clea typed and followed up with her first off-campus choice: Cane’s?
Sure, can’t say no to chicken fingers lol. Time?
Seven? Since we’re meeting at 8:30 for coffee and I need to shower
Sounds good, Jade replied, meet there?
Yep
OK, see you at 7
Kk, see you there. Clea typed out her answer and hauled herself out of bed, swallowed her meds dry, and undressed.
She pulled on a robe; grabbed her shower caddy, towel, and dorm room key; and poked her head out the door. The hallway was mercifully empty, so she made sure the door locked behind her and scurried as fast as she could to the bathroom’s communal showers. They were the bane of her existence since college began. She tended to use the showers only in the very early mornings when she’d gotten back from her wanderings, or not at all—not until she got disgusted enough with herself that her revulsion outweighed the thought of anyone potentially making fun of her in her robe.
But tonight she was braving it because she was actually going out, to meet people, in the Short North of all places. She didn’t think she’d ever be the sort of person who got invited to hang out there, but here she was. The thought warmed her along with the hot water as she washed her hair.
She finished showering, wrapped her hair in a towel and pulled on her robe, and made her way back to her room—only to find the door open and voices coming from within, causing her to stop dead in her tracks, clutching her shower caddy in both hands.
Hannah must’ve forgotten something—and sure enough, when she and Delaney exited the room, Hannah was stuffing a bottle of perfume into her bag.
“Y-you don’t have to lock it,” Clea said as they exited the room and Hannah reached for her key.
Hannah looked surprised to see her but slipped the key back into her pocket and said, “Okay, cool.”
“Look at that—it lives,” Delaney sneered at Clea as they brushed past her.
Hannah said nothing, only gave her roommate a fleeting, pitying look over her shoulder.
Something in Clea began to crumble. No—to burn.
What would you do if you were literally invisible?
“You know what, Delaney?” Clea said quietly, facing the door.
Both of them stopped and turned around. It took them a second to realize that Clea had just spoken to them.
“What, Cleopatra?” Delaney jeered, taking a few steps toward her. The crust of thick mascara and layers of eye shadow made her blue eyes look small and beady, her blond hair with its long, dark roots seeming to glow in the fluorescent hallway lights. She looked like some sort of luminous sea creature as she stood there grinning her horrible grin.
Clea turned her head sideways and stared her down. “I hope one day karma bites you in the throat, and you don’t even see it coming.”
Delaney made a choked sound of surprise, then let out a loud guffaw. Then she took a few more steps forward and got right up in Clea’s face—so close that Clea could smell the alcohol on her breath—and said, “We’ll see about that, Cleopatra.”
Then she whirled around and stalked off with Hannah, and Clea went back inside and closed the door behind her, leaning against it, her heart hammering in her chest.
She’d done it. She’d really done it.
And Hannah hadn’t said a damn thing.
When she was able to pull herself together, Clea got dressed and used Hannah’s expensive blow-dryer to dry her hair. Then she grabbed her backpack, bundled up in her parka, and headed out into the chilly evening to meet Jade.
“Thanks for meeting me,” Jade said, as they both slipped into a booth with their trays of food: lemonades, a basket of chicken fingers and fries, the best dipping sauce Clea had ever tasted, and a big slice of Texas toast.
“Of course,” said Clea. She was still feeling a bit off after her confrontation with Delaney earlier, so she was a little shaky being around another dominant personality like Jade. This was also the first time she was actually sitting down and having a meal with another human being since she started college. Clea was always hypersensitive to how much she was eating compared to people around her, but Jade had explained that there had been a giant cookie tray in her dorm’s lobby that afternoon and she’d stuffed herself on them. So she’d ordered her food in a to-go box and was currently picking apart her chicken tenders into dipping-sized bits “to get the most sauce per square inch onto the chicken.”
Clea was too hungry to waste her time doing that, but she agreed with the general idea. She’d asked for an extra dipping sauce herself, after all.
“So do you have, like . . . a weird feeling about any of this?” Jade asked eventually. Her eyes were such a dark brown, they were almost black and focused on Clea so intensely that she shivered.
“Not really,” Clea admitted. She finished off her first chicken strip and took a long sip of lemonade. Jade’s eyes didn’t leave her the whole time. After a moment, Clea put her drink down and continued, “I mean, not about Finn, at least.”
“But the other one. That Ingrid girl. She gives me the creeps.”
“Yeah.” Clea shifted in the greasy booth. “Me too.”
“Really?” Jade asked, raising her eyebrows. “Are you just saying that to agree with me, or do you really think so?”
Clea almost crumbled at the accusation but stood her ground. If she could stand toe-to-toe with an antagonist like Delaney, she could surely stand up to her own sort-of friend. “You think I’m just a sheep, huh?”
Jade shrugged and picked apart another chicken tender.
Clea had never shown anyone her artwork before, but then again, she’d never had much to prove. Swallowing her anxiety, Clea wiped her hands on a napkin, unzipped her backpack, pulled out her sketchbook, opened it to the page where she’d drawn Ingrid the other night at the library, and slid it across the dirty table to Jade.
“Holy shit,” Jade said, wiping her own hands before pulling the sketchbook closer. “Did—did you draw this?”
Clea nodded. She watched Jade take it in, let out a deep breath, and then slid the sketchbook back across the table.
“Why does she look like . . . that?” Jade asked, gesturing at the drawing.
“It just came to me.” Clea closed the sketchbook and put it back in her bag, then resumed eating her dinner. “I thought it was fitting.”
“Well, it’s like . . . I mean it’s really good.”
“Thanks.”
A couple moments of silence passed. Jade picked up her lemonade and put the straw to her lips, looking thoughtful.
“I just think we need to stay on our toes,” Jade said at last. “I wasn’t kidding when I said these people could be a cult. Think about it. . . . I mean, there’s a chance that this is not just a support group for the disenfranchised. It could be more like a recruitment tool for something a lot more sinister, you know?”
“Like what?” Clea asked. She didn’t know many other people her age who talked about disenfranchisement and recruitment. Then again, she admitted, she didn’t know many other people her age. Still, Jade was truly fascinating.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out,” said Jade with certainty. “Like, I haven’t seen any flyers up around campus since the first meeting, right? And then all these scumbag boys show up. Maybe Finn and Ingrid are starting to advertise online. On, like, seedy message boards. What do you wanna bet half those guys are Internet trolls?”
Clea thought of Brendan and said, echoing her own sensible inner voice, “That’s awfully judgmental.”
Jade rolled her eyes; she was clearly thinking of Pimply Boy. And now Clea was thinking of him, too—a bully like Delaney, emboldened because they thought Clea was an easy target.
“Just . . . Clea, listen.” Jade leaned in. “Ingrid seems like a piece of work, but Finn? The dude’s got charisma. However tonight goes, please promise me you won’t just take him at his word.”
She really does think I’m a sheep, Clea thought, offended. And then, her brain whispered, But you are, aren’t you?
And then another thought:
She seems to genuinely care about me.
And when was the last time Clea was able to say that?
“I will,” Clea said. “I promise.”
The coffee shop in the Short North was bustling and cozy, and Finn and Brendan were already there when Jade and Clea got off the bus. Finn waved them over to where he sat in the corner once they’d gotten their beverages—a small cup of tea for Jade and an iced white chocolate mocha for Clea—and they settled down in the comfy chairs in a separated area of the café.
“Thanks so much for coming tonight,” Finn said. He was wearing dark jeans and a button-up, his blond hair smoothed back into a ponytail, his beard freshly trimmed. “It’s great to see you three outside of that crappy old building. How has your night been so far?”
“Pretty good,” Clea said, and Jade and Brendan made similar noises. What Clea really wanted to ask Finn was where he was from, but she wasn’t sure if that would be rude, so instead she said, “So uh, Finn, are you a student too?”
“A graduate student, actually,” he replied. He was still smiling, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “I finished my undergraduate degree in Europe and I wanted a change of scenery.”
Europe seemed pretty vague, but Clea nodded anyway instead of asking him to elaborate.
“I was lucky enough to meet Ingrid during orientation,” Finn went on, “although her graduate program is in social work while mine is in computer science.”
“Are you guys a couple?” Jade pressed, with a significant look at Clea, who pretended not to notice.
Finn looked back and forth at all three of them and made a gesture that was half-shrug, half-nod. “Well, she was one of the first people I met when I moved here. You see, Ingrid was very passionate about starting up a Common Cause when she heard about it, and that passion inspired me, too, so we hit it off. You know how sometimes you meet people you just click with?”
Brendan and Clea made vague gestures of understanding—clearly lies, since neither seemed to have clicked with anyone before—but Jade didn’t look convinced.
“Anyway,” Finn said, clapping his hands together the way he did to get people back on track during Common Cause meetings. “I asked you all here because I really liked what you had to say the other night at the meeting, and I was wondering if you’d be interested in helping me out with a project I’m working on.”
“A project?” Clea asked.
“What kind of project?” Jade’s tone was a bit more suspicious.
“Well . . . it’s sort of a secret,” Finn said quietly, leaning forward—both so they could hear him and so he could reach into the messenger bag at his feet and pull out a laptop.
Jade gave Clea a meaningful look, and Clea thought she could read her friend’s mind: Told you it was a cult.
“I have an email list,” Finn said, his voice almost lost in the noise of the café, “of two hundred of the richest people in the state. I’m writing emails to ask them for donations to the local domestic violence shelter, but I need every email to be unique down to the subject line so these people won’t just delete them as spam, you know?”
“Huh,” said Jade. Clearly this wasn’t what she was expecting.
“So I was hoping that, between the four of us—we each write, what, fifty emails?” Finn said, opening the laptop. “I can email you guys profiles of these folks and the link to the donation site right now, if you want. But I know you’re all busy, so feel free to say no. It’s just, if we send out the same email to a bunch of people, it’s more likely to be marked as spam. If you tailor it to them, they’d be more likely to read it.”
“I mean, finals aren’t for a few more weeks, so I’m sure I could help,” Brendan said, and Clea nodded.
Jade even shrugged and said, “Sure, why not?”
“Great,” Finn said with a grin. “What are your emails, please?”
They told him, and he typed them up.
“All right, excellent,” he said. “Now, I’ll email you all a link to the email account we’re to be sending them from and a list of donor profiles so you can make every email unique. I’ll also pass along a link to the donation website. But please just copy and paste that link, don’t click on it yourself—it’ll disrupt the final data for how many clicks we get.”
They all nodded. Again, Jade looked a little wary, but all she said was, “This is . . . surprisingly kind of you to be doing, Finn. You got some kind of connection to the shelter, or are you just a do-gooder?”
Finn flashed her a grin. “A little of both, actually. It’s important to Common Cause to give back to the community in any way we can, and I thought this would be a great place for our chapter to start. Plus, judging by your answers the other night, I thought you three, of all people, might be interested in helping the less fortunate.”
“Even me?” Clea asked in a small voice, for her answer had been uncertain.
“I just had a feeling about you,” said Finn with a twinkle in his eye. “I figured that, even with your answer, you’re the kind of person who would punch up.”
Clea felt a rush of heat to her face and took a long sip of her iced beverage.
“What about Ingrid?” Jade asked. “Why isn’t she helping? I thought she was the one into social work. Doesn’t like helping the less fortunate, does she?”
Finn blinked a couple of times and said, not unkindly, “You know, Jade, I’m a little confused as to what you have against her.”
“She just rubs me the wrong way,” Jade said, casting a look to Clea. “And I’m not the only one. Show him your sketchbook, Clea.”
Clea froze, her straw still in her mouth, and shook her head mutely.
Jade lurched forward and grabbed Clea’s backpack before she could react, and before Clea knew it, Jade had flipped open her sketchbook to the drawing of Ingrid.
Finn was completely still, his eyes not leaving the page. After a moment, he reached out a rigid hand and took the book from Jade, his expression inscrutable.
Please don’t turn the page, please don’t turn the page, Clea thought desperately, for she’d added some far more embarrassing sketches to her collection as of late. But luckily for her, Finn’s stiff expression forced itself into something a little warmer. “You drew this?”
Clea nodded silently.
