The Invisible (4 page)

One less Syndicate capo on the street. Which means he’s one rung closer to the top of the organization. To ending them for good.

Hours later, he wakes to her getting dressed. He pretends he’s asleep, watches her precise movements through slitted eyes, her small hands buttoning the white blouse of her school uniform, her body blotting out the dim winter light coming through the window, leaning over him, his vision bleary and shot through with stars, light coming in around the edges. That’s how tired he is.

The smell of coffee and he sits up. She’s filled a blue aluminum camping mug with it for him. “Morning,” she says and grins. The light spills through her tangled white-blond hair, and he cannot recall her ever looking more beautiful.

“Thanks.” He sits up, takes a sip. Black and sweet, three sugars.

She leans down and fingers a fresh cut above his eyebrow, careful to hold the coffee away from him, not to spill it on the bed. “You okay?”

“Just a scratch,” he says. “Shallow.”

Her big blue eyes are playful, capable of detecting people’s bullshit a mile away. Especially his. “Put some disinfectant on it.”

He nods. “You’re up early.”

“I have to go,” she sighs. “Math test.”

“Where do they think you were last night?” Her parents, he means. He’s terrified they’ll find out. Hire a private investigator, then a bodyguard just for her, and a hit man for him. Or more likely, they’ll lock her up at home. Hire private tutors. Keep her forever in that gilded cage of an apartment.

“At Aaron’s.” She shrugs. “They’re so wrapped up in work, they barely care where I am.”

She sighs and her breath blows dust motes through the chilly air of the squat. The rattling space heater in the corner does all it can to warm the place, but it’s still cold.

“Brought you something.” She unbuttons the top two buttons of her cloak, pulls a zippered leather case from her inside pocket and hands it to him. It’s heavy. The stack of bills inside is two inches thick.

“I can’t keep—” His voice is hoarse now, embarrassing him. In his chest, his heart stutters. A swell of gratitude smacks up against a wall of pride.

“Don’t. It’s nothing to me. To us,” she interrupts him. “You know that.” She shrugs as if to emphasize how little the money matters, her expression faraway as she walks to the window, checking, he assumes, to make sure she wasn’t trailed.

His belly rumbles, thinking about eggs in a pan. Butter sizzling. The thought moves him to nod, to tuck the pouch of cash underneath his mattress. He has to take her money. He can’t get by without it. “I’ll pay you back.”

She doesn’t bother responding. Never does, when he says this.

“When this is over,” he says, “we’ll go somewhere far away.”

“Maybe we won’t have to.” She leaves the window and re-buttons her cloak. “The city’s changing. You’re changing it.”

He nods, humoring her. Knowing there will be a price on his head for eternity here. “Maybe.”

If he stays here much longer, it won’t end well. No matter how much moving around he does, from apartment to squat, residing farther and farther from the center of the city, their network is vast. The reward for him is substantial. How many South Side kids would rat him out to get enough to buy their families food for a year? “I hope you’re right.”

Her eyelashes are blond at the tips. He never noticed it before. There are so many things to know about a person. Especially when it’s
the
person. The one you can’t get enough of. Most people, he doesn’t want to know a thing about. But with her, he catalogues everything. Each factoid given its own drawer in his mind, labeled specially for her.

How he wound up this hooked on her, of all people, is still a mystery to him. Since he was a little boy he knew what he was meant to do. After his father was killed in front of him, he suspected it would fall to him to do what the police would not.

A girl, especially someone like her, was never part of the plan. But he can’t help it. It feels too good to be near her.

They are from different worlds in every way. Him, the one they call The Hope. A ridiculous name, since he has less hope than almost anyone. He’s certain it will catch up to him, that he is destined to die in the act. To die fighting them.

And her, Bedlam royalty. Her father in many ways responsible for the way the money rolls upward in this city, all concentrated at the top, in real estate, banks, and politics. And the rest of them with nothing. Gina Fleet, raised in a glass tower built of dirty deals.

Gina Fleet, whose father would be shocked to learn what a radical she really is. More radical even than he is. He’s got his reasons for what he does, only some of them to do with making the city better. But Gina believes in it. She calls it a
movement
.

And then her coat is zipped, hat pulled low on her head. She kisses him on top of his head. “I left the paper on the table,” she says. “You’re everywhere in it.”

Before he can answer, she’s closing the door. Heading back to her other life. Without her, he might have stopped already. But she makes him feel like it can maybe be done. All the violence, ended. The crime, the fear, all obliterated by his own fists.

And then what
, he wonders. What happens after?

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

Monday morning arrives with a torrent of pounding rain, the dark skies matching my mood. The halls of Cathedral Day School smell like the gym locker room, the air close and sweaty and the floors slippery with tracked-in rainwater, everyone’s galoshes wet and squeaking on the slick stone floor. There are only nine more weeks until the end of the semester, which means graduation for us seniors. Nine more weeks of wearing the regulation pleated plaid skirt, the white blouse with cap sleeves, the scratchy burgundy or gray cardigan, the coordinating-with-the-cardigan knee socks.

Nine more weeks until I never see most of these people again.

If I don’t get into the Bedlam Ballet Corps, I’ll be heading to the U with Zahra. If she doesn’t flee the city and head south to try to be an actress, that is.

After I take my books out of my wet knapsack and put them in my locker, I thread my way through a group of beefy rugby players nearly bursting out of their uniform blazers as they jostle and slam one another. I pass by Z’s locker, but she’s not there.

I wait around a minute or two, avoiding eye contact with Olive Ann Bang, the principal’s daughter, as she struts by with one of her henchgirls, Clementine Fitz. In my peripheral vision I see Fitz lean over, whisper something to Bang, and give me the side-eye, but I turn away and face the lockers. These girls are toxic. Ever since I staged an “intervention” with my ex-boyfriend Will’s parents and had him sent to rehab, they’ve been giving me disapproving looks. They likely have no idea that he planted a camera in my room, discovered who I became after the surgery, and used the footage to blackmail me. But even if they knew the truth about what Will did, they’d probably still take his side.

Nine more weeks
, I tell myself,
and I never have to see them again
. I wait a couple more minutes but Zahra doesn’t show, so I head to homeroom.

On my way, I pass a group of Martha Marks’ friends gathered in a tight cluster, huddled around a video playing on one girl’s cell phone.

I edge closer. “Anyone hear from Martha today?” I ask Alexandra Veern, one of her best friends, but she shakes her head and shushes me, gesturing at the phone held in the middle of the cluster of people by a petite blond girl wearing pearl earrings. I recognize her from the horse show the other day. Her whole posse has their eyes glued to her phone.

“Have you seen this yet?” hisses Alexandra.

I shake my head, and she pulls me by the elbow until I’m in the circle, able to see the screen.

I stand on tiptoe and lean over Alexandra’s shoulder, assuming it’s a replay of Martha’s dramatic horse-bucking incident. But instead it’s a fast torrent of still photos, spliced to move faster and faster, each image more disturbing than the last, with a slick electronic beat and a few chords in minor keys laid over as a soundtrack. The images are punctuated by a deep, electronically modified voice. I hold my breath as the jumble of words and pictures starts to pile up, dread calcifying in my bones.

A six-year-old boy picking through burnt rubble from a fire. The voiceover: HAPPY CHILDHOOD.

A homeless mother with an infant in rags clutched to her breast. Voiceover: HAPPY FAMILIES.

A guard with a BulletBlower 3000 pointed at an old man with a cane. Voiceover: FUN FOR ALL AGES.

Then the scenes change to North Side pictures. Everything tinted a sickly green. The words turn grayish yellow.

A group of laughing adults dressed in tuxedos and gowns. Voiceover: AND WE ARE ALL SO HAPPY.

Two five-year-old girls wearing pearls, flanking an ornate cake with flowers dripping from its tiers. Voiceover: SO HAPPY IT HURTS.

The mayor laughing with a group of cronies, his mouth open wide, a gleam of gold glitter smeared across his teeth. SO PROUD OF OUR FAIR CITY.

And then the still images stop, and the music thumps faster. We see a large desk draped with a flag. The camera pans up to a white T-shirt with an open eye on it, the bottom of it done in black, fading to gray, and then disintegrating at the tip of the top lashes. A flood of sweat begins to pour from my torso as I flash on the three drugged-out creeps in the control booth at the arena. The unblinking, all-seeing eye. This is phase two of whatever they’ve got planned.

The camera pans up above the shirt. A neck. A masked head. Molded white plastic. The mask a crude black-on-white drawing of a grinning face. A crayoned red mouth. Black dots for eyes on the blank white plastic surface. In a different context, the mask might look innocent. But here, after what I’ve just seen, it sets my teeth on edge.

Could this be a Syndicate thing, some sort of new campaign to fill the void I helped create when Gavin fell off that cliff?

The smiling mouth never moves, but the robotic monotony of the artificially deep voice that begins to drone beneath it sends a chill down my spine.

“Citizens of Bedlam City: Things are about to change. We are a group of people dedicated to making the invisible visible. To making the comfortable less comfortable, and the unhappy a little happier. Ask yourself—am I
too
happy? Too smug? Too comfortable? Do I have so much that I don’t know what to do with it all? Could someone use a little of what I have?

“We are here to help. We are here to right the wrongs. To balance the scales. We are the Invisible, and we are everywhere.”

The screen on the girl’s phone goes static, then white.

“Spooky-cool,” one of the girls sighs.

“Right? I bet he’s hot under that mask,” another says.

“My brother ordered a T-shirt,” someone offers. And the cluster of girls breaks into excited chatter. Their talk circles around me, not touching me. Not penetrating the growing sense of alarm punching through my head. I’m conscious of the skin on my arms crawling, my hands shaking slightly, a slick of sweat blooming in the small of my back.

This is definitely not a Syndicate thing. It’s too professional. Too performance-based. And the goal is too vague. The Syndicate operates with one goal in mind—money. They steal from the wealthy and the poor alike. They’re not interested in making changes like this. This person—persons—is after something bigger.

I step away from the crowd of girls and move down the hall, disgusted by how excited they seem about the video.
We are a group of people dedicated to making the invisible visible. To making the comfortable less comfortable
. Do they not understand that the people who will be targeted are
themselves
?

I move through the crowd, my head buzzing with panic and confusion as I push through the crowd. When the homeroom bell rings, I head mechanically toward Mr. Brick’s classroom. As I walk, I start to feel like I’m hearing the word everywhere. Roderick, Cathedral’s resident pharms dealer, is talking about it with his pill-head friends, and I turn to look at him. “Invisible’s the only one doing anything other than just sitting by, watching the city go to hell,” he’s saying to a medicated-looking red-haired boy, his voice full of sober conviction. Just above the lapel of his blazer he’s sewn a small patch, the single gray eye in a circle of white, its gaze infuriatingly calm.

When I turn the corner I spot Zahra, her black hair shot through with hot-pink pieces, closing her fringed umbrella near a side door, droplets of rain spraying out in front of her. She slips on the wet floor, cursing under her breath as she grabs onto a wall of lockers to keep herself from wiping out.

I rush toward her, relieved to be able to talk to someone I can count on to be cynical about all this. “Have you seen this video going around?”

She raises her eyebrows, her lips turning up at the corners. “Saw it last night. Why are you always the last to know stuff?” she jokes, clapping me on both shoulders and squeezing, her violet eyes ringed in silver liner that looks left over from a night out with Dando, a bartender she met a few weeks ago. “Kinda cool, right? Maybe something will finally happen around here.”

My stomach is starting to hurt. “Stuff already happens around here,” I say. “Lots of stuff, actually.”

“Only on the news,” Zahra says. “Never, like, here, or to us.”

That’s a good thing,
I want to remind her, but I don’t want to sound like a bore or a prude. If there’s anything I learned since spending my nights in the South Side, it’s that things happen all the time, and most of them are terrible. Zahra is lucky not to know about them.

“I’m okay with that,” I say at last. “Look what happened to Martha. She could have died if she hadn’t moved out from under that horse.”

“That
is
pretty messed up.” Z nods, digging around in her purse and pulling out a compact. “But I’m sure that wasn’t supposed to happen. I think it was a prank that got a little out of control. Have a sense of humor, Ant. At least they’re not boring. And come on, it’s not like anybody died.”