Sharp Absence (Sharp Investigations Book 1)

by Kate Anders

  And I can feel myself slowing down with every passing minute as I work through other people’s academic articles trying to find the right quotes to put into my paper. No, it’s worse than that. I can feel my head fall down toward my chest before jerking upright because this shit is literally putting me to sleep. Note to self, next time I can’t sleep, do this.

  “Yes!” Clara declares. We’re both in the living room working on school crap, but she looks all kinds of relaxed spread out on the couch with her laptop in her lap, propped up by a million pillows, while I am sitting in one of the smaller corner desks we have in the room. I swivel in my chair to get a full on look at her.

  “Progress?” I ask.

  “Yep.” She smiles at me while removing her headphones. “That error message I have been getting for days finally stopped popping up. I thought I would never program my way out of that mess, but I finally did.”

  “That’s because you’re a genius,” I tell her with a laugh.

  She giggles and throws a pillow, which misses by a mile.

  “Seriously though, with any luck, the rest of the project will proceed at pace and I won’t have any major issues. I’m still on my schedule—”

  “Self-imposed schedule,” I interrupt.

  “Fine, yes, self-imposed schedule. I was really getting worried that I was going to get stuck at the beginning and have to change all my plans.”

  “But you didn’t,” I remind her when she sounds annoyed.

  “Yep, so right. So I think what needs to happen now is that we should take a break. Because while I am super excited and feel like I just won a million bucks, you look like you’re going to pass out on top of your laptop. Well, that or take a baseball bat to it.”

  “Am I that obvious?” I ask.

  “I told you not to take all those classes in one semester. You spread it out, one crap class per semester and then it hurts less.” She tells me so matter-of-factly.

  “See, I figured it was more like do it all at once and it will be over faster.” I hang my head. “I was wrong. Clearly. I feel like I am pulling my own teeth out while listening to polka music on repeat.”

  “Wow, now that’s a visual.” Clara laughs at me. “Come on, let’s take a break. We can head over to grab some coffee, and maybe this time it will actually stay in the cup.”

  She actually has the audacity to wink at me. Of course, I have no other choice but to reach over and grab the pillow she threw at me earlier and send it hurling back toward her.

  “HEY!” She laughs. “If you can’t laugh at yourself, you’re never going to make it in this world,” she tells me.

  I stand up from my chair and stretch out, feeling the burn in my muscles loosen and elongate after being stuck in that chair for the past three and a half hours.

  “Fine, but I’m not ordering coffee,” I tell her with a hard look.

  “You have never ordered coffee. In fact, I’m not even sure you have ever even tried it before.”

  “It smells. I don’t eat or drink shit that smells bad.”

  “Coffee does not smell bad!” The offended tone completely takes over. “Coffee is the nectar of the gods, it smells like heaven and productivity.”

  “Trust me, you don’t even want me to tell you what I think it smells like.” I grab my car keys and head to the door. “Coming?”

  “I really want to say something snarky about not wanting to hang out with a coffee heretic, but I really want some coffee, so yes, I’m coming. But hold on, I need to save all of this stuff to my cloud.”

  “Seriously? I’m sure you already saved it on your computer, and we are only going to be gone for like a half hour,” I tell her. She really is obsessive about this stuff.

  “Yes, I have to. Literally anything could happen while we’re gone.”

  “What? You think crazy Mr. Peterson is going to come steal your laptop?” I look at her like she’s nuts.

  “You never know! Besides, you’ve been working on that paper for hours, what if you tripped and fell and broke your laptop? Which is not out of the range of possibility since you trip and fall over nothing all the time. You’re gonna wish you had a supercool cloud backup so you don’t have to end up rewriting your paper from hell,” she lectures.

  “Yeah, okay, come on, let’s go.”

  She closes her laptop and starts toward me. “One day you are going to wish you were as cool as me with my cloud.”

  “I’m sure I will.”

  I’m already sitting in one of the corner booths with my hot chocolate in hand, while Clara is standing at one of those stands making her coffee perfect with all the little add-ins they have. I swear, the best part of a hot chocolate is you don’t need to add anything to it to make it great. It’s already perfect and ready to go as soon as it hits your hands. Plus, it’s not a half bad hand warmer.

  Clara finally finished and plops down across from me in the booth.

  “So nice to be out of the house,” she tells me.

  “You get out of the house every single day, Clara. It’s not like you’re being held hostage in there.” I laugh.

  “Yeah, I know, I just like a change of scenery. Well, that and a fantastic cup of coffee.” She smiles as she takes a sip. “Yep, it’s perfect, totally worth the trip out.”

  “You’re such a dork. But you’re right, it was definitely time for a break. I was going a little crazy in there.”

  “I could tell. So tomorrow is Monday, anything we need to figure out for next week, any big plans or anything?” Clara asks while playing with her stir stick.

  “I don’t think there is anything that needs to be figured out. Did you see that notice about the complex coming to check on everyone’s heaters and swap out filters and stuff?” I ask.

  “Yep, I don’t have class during our scheduled time on Thursday, so I figure I will just hang out at home that afternoon. That way, we don’t have some stranger in our place by themselves.”

  “Perfect. I’ll try to be there too, but my last class ends like right as our window starts, so I might be a little late.”

  Clara shrugs. “It’s cool. I’ll be there either way. It probably really only needs to be one of us. So nothing else?”

  “I’ve got the career counselor tomorrow.” I fiddle with the lid of my hot chocolate. “To be honest, I’m actually kind of nervous.”

  “You made the appointment? That’s so great. I’m telling you, this is just what you need. For the last three-plus years, you’ve had an idea what the future looks like and a plan to go along with it. This is the perfect first step to making your new plan. The YOU plan.”

  “I’m sure you’re probably right, but why am I so nervous about it? Like seriously, every time I think about it, I feel like I am going to break into a cold sweat.”

  “Hmm, I gotta think about that,” she says as she stares into her coffee like it’s going to give her all the answers. About a minute passes before she jerks up and exclaims, “I got it!”

  I can’t help but smile. She really is one part crazy, two parts genius.

  “Alright, let’s hear it.”

  “You’re nervous because now you have to make a choice. And it’s an all-you choice. Last time you had a plan, you made it with someone else, with Collin, and the two of you were planning out what the two of you wanted. Those choices didn’t work out, so now you are starting over, and you don’t want to make the wrong one,” she explains.

  “I really don’t want to make the wrong choice. I don’t want to be one of those people who hate their jobs for forty years and are miserable every step of the way.” I sigh. “I’ve had enough miserable to last me a lifetime.”

  “Worst case, let’s say you pick a job you hate, you can totally change careers, people do it all the time. There’s a guy in one of my classes who is in his midforties, and he’s great. One of the greatest in the program. And he’s done nothing with computers for work. He has this really refreshing perspective and different way of thinking than everyone else in the cl
ass, and he seems so excited to be starting something new. So worse case, you regroup and pick something else.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “I’m sure there are a lot of logistics to figure out, but you love making plans, all that color coding, and just think about the to-do lists.” She wiggles her eyebrows at me like she was talking about a hot guy and not my obsession with organizing.

  “Okay, you’re right, that part doesn’t suck. I just wish I picked a major that has a straightforward job trajectory. Think about it, you’re going to graduate, and you already know all the tech firms here that are going to be trying to recruit you guys, and that’s not even considering nationwide.”

  “True.”

  “I’m going to graduate and besides talking about going into teaching, there isn’t really a set path forward. I think every adviser I’ve had has always talked about going into academics or how every company needs people with communication skills. Not exactly super helpful, you know?”

  “I get that.” She pauses. “I know you and Collin had talked about you teaching while he went through law school. Is that something you are still considering?”

  Was I ever excited about teaching? The genuine answer is no. I have wanted that elusive family unit for so long that the job part was just one tiny part of making my dreams come true. Teaching was going to get us through Collin’s time in law school, and then in a few years, we would talk about having kids. I get lost in that picture in my head about how I am going to be the best mom, how I’ll go to all the parent-teacher meetings, drive them to all their soccer practices, always carrying a cooler of snacks in the back, how I will always listen to my kids when they tell me about their days, and help them build their science fair project. Basically, everything I missed out on.

  I was so busy planning out how my kids would never go to bed hungry, or forgotten at school for hours, that I never really even considering if teaching was something I really wanted. And now, thinking about it, it doesn’t really feel like me. Teaching the same novels year after year to a bunch of high school students that don’t really want to read the books in the first place doesn’t really feel like fun to me.

  “No. I can’t really see myself going into teaching,” I finally answer her honestly.

  “Well, see what the career counselor says tomorrow. This is literally her job. I’m sure she will have a lot of ideas for you to consider. Maybe she can even set you up with an internship somewhere so you can get a feel for something before you graduate.”

  “That’s true. I never really thought about getting an internship.” I already felt myself feeling less anxious about this whole thing.

  “Plus, if you still don’t know what you want after the meeting tomorrow, there is always grad school. And with your undergrad, you could go a ton of different directions with that. Buy yourself a little time before you enter the real world?”

  “I have mixed feelings about staying in school. I love learning, always have. It’s been my sanctuary since I was a kid, so obviously I’m not opposed. But I also don’t want to keep going just to keep going, you know?”

  “Totally. You want to have a goal.”

  “Exactly. You still planning on doing grad school part time?”

  “Definitely. I’m about positive I’m going to get a job off of my internship. I don’t think they have ever not offered to an intern before, and the company has a reputation for being very accommodating of continuing education, so yeah, definitely. All the really cool classes don’t even start until you get to grad school level.”

  “This is going to end up being another conversation about high-level math, isn’t it?”

  “Nah, not unless you want it to be, because if you want to talk about high-level math, I can certainly accommodate that desire.”

  “Nope, nope, totally good. But thanks for the offer.” I smile at her with a small laugh. “What about you though, anything important going on this week?”

  “I’m probably going to be at the university all day tomorrow. We have a guest speaker coming into my machine learning class and they said he normally sticks around all day to answer questions and look at people’s projects and stuff. I’m going to soak that up, spend every second picking this guy’s brain,” she explains.

  “You look like one of those fangirls talking about a boy band,” I tell her. “Who is this guy?”

  “He’s one of the Google engineers working on AI. So basically, he’s a subject matter expert with my dream job. Plus, if he could give me some feedback on my project, I’m sure it will be amazing. He has this reputation with the teacher as being really helpful to the students. Most of our guests that we get either don’t know how to communicate with young people and their talks are more like corporate sales pitches, or we get people who are closer to our age bracket and revert to college students as soon as their talk is over.”

  “Makes sense. So basically the long and short of it is I am on my own for lunch and dinner tomorrow,” I tell her.

  “If you wanna grab lunch on campus, I can totally carve out some time for my bestie.”

  “I think I can manage that. We could go to the smoothie bar; that way you can get your peanut butter fix and grab like a flatbread or something.”

  “That works perfect. I’ll meet you there after your appointment. What time do you think it will end?”

  “She said in the email to expect to spend at least forty-five minutes in the office going over all the options, so let’s say around one? Give me time to get over there from her office.”

  “Perfect.” Something catches Clara’s eye up toward the front of the store.

  “What’s up?” I ask her since I’m facing the back of the store.

  “Don’t look now, but evil nemesis just walked in.”

  “Great. I swear to God if I end up with a latte on my clothes again, she’s going to end up with the plastic surgery she always dreamed of,” I tell Clara.

  Clara tries and fails at suppressing a snort.

  “Don’t draw attention!” I hiss at her as I sink down into the booth a little more.

  “You aren’t hiding from her, are you?” Clara whispers.

  “NO! Of course not. I’m just not inviting trouble,” I hiss back. “Well, that and I’m trying really hard not to go to jail.”

  Clara once again snorts, but at least this time she muffles it a bit.

  “As soon as she gets to the counter, I say we make a run for it,” Clara says. “After all, spending the afternoon bailing you out of jail doesn’t seem like the best use of my time.”

  “Aw, you’re so sweet.” I roll my eyes. “I’m down with that plan. Let me know when she makes it to the counter. I’ll just be here working on my invisibility spell.”

  “Oh my god, and you say I’m insane!” Clara whisper-yells at me.

  I watch Clara’s face as she tracks Chanel around the coffee shop. I haven’t seen Chanel yet, but I definitely hear her. That high-pitched laughing sound she makes that is sure to upset every dog in a five-mile radius. She can’t really think that it’s cute, right? She can’t be that delusional, can she?

  “Alright, I think we are good, just don’t make any sudden movements,” Clara whispers.

  “Why? Is she like a T. rex and can only track us with movement?” I joke.

  “Don’t make me laugh! I can’t sneak out of here if I’m on the floor,” Clara hisses at me.

  We both slowly start grabbing our bags and sliding out of the booth. It’s not until we are both standing up next to the booth that our eyes catch and we can’t help but burst out laughing. This is ridiculous. We are seriously hiding from this bimbo like little middle school kids and not like the adult women we are.

  Clara grabs my hand and starts pulling me to the entrance while still laughing her ass off. Just as we are crossing the threshold, I hear Chanel once more.

  “It’s her! It’s her! Look, I told you, guys, she stalks me everywhere I go!” Man, the pitch on her makes my eardrums feel
like they’re going to explode.

  Clara looks out at me once we are outside. “Does she really believe her own shit? How does someone stalk someone else by already being somewhere for a half hour and then leaving when you arrive? Isn’t that more like avoiding stalking?”

  “Ah, but you, my friend, are using logic, and I don’t think God was dealing out a lot of logic skills when he was making Chanel,” I tell her.

  “True, he really broke the mold when he was making her, huh?”

  “You said it, not me.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “WHERE IS MY MIND?” BY PIXIES

  I’ve always hated when people bounce their leg up and down while sitting near me. It’s distracting and honestly sometimes it makes me kind of dizzy. It’s like nails on a chalkboard for me. Yet, here I am sitting in an uncomfortable chair made of easily cleaned fake leather, bouncing my leg up and down, waiting for the career counselor to call me back.

  I know I shouldn’t be this nervous. Yesterday’s conversation with Clara really made me feel so much better about the situation. But now it’s a day later, and I can’t help but have all those feelings of anxiety rush back. I guess the long and short of it all is that I feel rudderless. My whole life, I have always had a direction to go in. When I was little and life was still on the more normal side of things, it was all about getting validation and attention. I wanted to be the perfect little girl that my mom could brag about to the other moms. I craved the phone calls from my dad while he was on deployment where I could tell him about my solo at the dance recital or how I got an A in math, just so I could hear him tell me he was proud of me. Even after everything changed, I kept all those goals. After my brother died, no one really cared what I did or how great I was. There was no more “Way to go, Kenzie,” or “I’m so proud of you,” followed by my dad’s signature hair ruffle. In the end, my goals changed to getting away from the train wreck that became my family.

  I worked my butt off to get into a good college, and when Duke gave me a scholarship, I couldn’t have said yes faster. This was the plan: leave my dumpster fire of a family behind and carve out a new life for myself with the family I made on my own. I really thought I had it all figured out, like everything just started falling into place once I got to Durham. At first, I couldn’t trust it, but then I thought I deserved this. After everything, I deserved things just working out for me.