by Dan Rix
This car had become my sanctuary.
Once satisfied the car was locked, I let out a long sight and sank into the seat, closed my eyes. In the silence, my agitated nerves began to relax.
Time to go.
Keys in hand, I opened my eyes and sat forward, glimpsing the backseats in the rearview—brand new suede upholstery, never been used. I hesitated, my eyes frozen on the mirror.
Wait.
I tilted to the mirror to get a better view, and saw it again.
A strange, fist-sized dip marred the otherwise smooth fabric. Huh? One by one, the hairs rose on the back of my neck.
As I stared, the dip rose slowly, returning to a smooth surface.
Chapter 15
My heart thudded against my sternum with enough force to shake me. Something had moved in the backseat, but now I saw nothing. Had I imagined it?
My gaze flicked across the rearview mirror, scanning for motion. I tilted the mirror again, aiming it down. Without warning, the seatbelt buckle tumbled to the side as the car’s weight shifted underneath me.
It was her.
I ducked and threw myself flat across the passenger seat, just in time. An invisible arm swept through my hair, barely missing me. My ribs crunched into the hard knob of the gearshift. But no pain. Adrenaline doused my body. I rolled onto the floor, wiggling down in front of the seats to escape her. Ashley was in the car with me.
She’d laid an ambush.
The seat squeaked to the side, and I heard her breathing fast behind me, coming for me. A hand closed on my arm, and I shrieked and shook her off, kicked blindly. My heel made contact with a limb, winning a satisfying yelp.
Freed, I scrambled toward the passenger door, toward my only escape. But the seatback shook as she vaulted over, landing in an invisible lump on the cushion to block my path. I swiveled and reversed directions, wriggling backward as the car keys dug into the palm of my clenched fist. But she moved too fast. Her arm looped around my neck and yanked me back onto the seat, crushing my windpipe and locking me in a chokehold.
Wheezing and gurgling, I scraped at her forearm with one open hand and one fist, trying to pry her off me. My fingernails cut into her skin, and for a moment I thought I might be able to tear the dark matter off her, but it had fused to her skin. My vision was already dimming. Blood quit flowing to my brain.
The keys . . . still in my hand. The pepper spray!
For an instant, the fog cleared, time seemed to slow, and I saw my thumb flip up the pink cap and slide over the button—just like Megan had showed me. With what little brain function I had left, I aimed the nozzle behind me and squeezed. The sprayer hissed, filling the car with sharp, stinging pepper. Instantly, my eyes burned and watered.
Not a chance I hit her face, but her body recoiled from the spray anyway. Her arm withdrew, and I pictured her cowering against the seat, covering her face. Thumb clenched on the trigger, I continued to spray the bottle behind me as I scrambled for the driver’s side door and wrenched it open. I sprawled face first onto the asphalt, rolled onto my back, and kicked the door shut behind me, then staggered to my feet. Still spraying, I backed away from the Corolla, jerking the jet of red mist back and forth. The car remained motionless.
Terrified gasps ripped at my lungs. The pepper spray sputtered in my hand, and the hiss fell away to a feeble trickle before going silent. Still I held on, sweeping it back and forth, knuckles white on the pink plastic. My body continued to twitch.
How had she gotten in the car? The locks had been engaged . . . I’d checked, hadn’t I?—the car keys, duh. They’d been sitting in plain view on my bedside table. She must have snuck back into my house last night, grabbed the keys and unlocked the car, then returned them to where she found them. She could lock the car from inside.
This wasn’t a dumb animal hunting me. Nor was it a human. It was something else, a creature that could deceive me and ambush me and outsmart me. I had to remember that.
At last, I let my thumb off the pepper spray trigger. No sound. Just the rustle of wind in trees. Just my own panting. Just the scuff of my tennies on asphalt as I retreated, shaking, into the middle of the street. Was she still in the car? Maybe I could lock her in—
The car rocked slightly, and the passenger door opened and slammed shut.
My body went rigid. I gaped at the vehicle, still wobbling on its suspension. I scanned the empty street, my pulse galloping. Not empty. The soft thudding of footsteps approached with startling speed.
Run! I dropped the keys and bolted up the street, hurtling my body into a dead sprint. The wind howled in my ears, but so did her panting breath, racing up behind me. Each of her angry gasps lashed me like a whip, driving me faster.
I blew through the first stop sign and kept running, my lungs burning for air. At my top speed, she couldn’t gain on me.
Her footsteps fell away, but I knew it was a trap. She would follow farther back, where I couldn’t hear her, and when I slowed, she would strike. I kept running, but my legs were failing, my body about to collapse from exhaustion.
A hard object jabbed my upper thigh, wedged in the pocket of my shorts. The contact lens case . . . dark matter.
I had to.
I couldn’t beat her like this, her invisible and me visible. I had to put it on, but she couldn’t see me do it. Only then could I slip away from her. I still heard her keeping pace farther back, her bare footsteps like whispers to the clomp of my tennis shoes.
She didn’t have shoes. Of course!
I veered onto the next lawn, leaving the flat street and plowing right through a strip of landscaping—right into the spiny stalks of baby palm trees and the jagged branches of dry bushes. My rubber heels stomped over them painlessly.
I glanced back, just as another path cut through the garden, palm fronds whipping to the side.
Not good enough.
A family was loading up a minivan in the driveway. They paused to stare at me as I streaked past, jaws slack. I kept going, dragging my collapsing limbs into the backyard. A fence separated the lots. I hurdled it—a pathetic jump that grazed my heel—and flew through the huge leaves of a plumeria, bursting out on the other side. Staggering to regain my balance, I cut through another backyard, cringing at the softness of the grass. A rustle sounded behind me, Ashley still on my heels.
My gaze swept left and right, seeking out the most treacherous area possible. Back into the street. Then I saw it.
And almost laughed.
An entire front yard made entirely of cacti, towering spires of thorns, balls of needles packed into every square inch of ground. No way around it, either. Try to go through that barefoot. I gritted my teeth and charged straight through it, knowing it would hurt.
I managed three bounding steps into the thick of it, barbs crunching underfoot, before a knife-like thorn pierced my calf. My step faltered, and I pitched forward, throwing out my palm right into a cactus to searing pricks of pain. I ignored the sting and stumbled through it, scratching up my ankles. At last I emerged on the other side, wincing, and hobbled around the side of the house to kneel under an orange tree and catch my breath, my throat raspy. Shaking from the exertion, I undid the contact lens case and dipped my finger into the dark matter, then smeared it in sticky streaks across my arms and legs, which joined and spread, leaving my skin invisible and tingling.
Next I wrestled off my tank top, kicked off my shoes, and peeled off my shorts. I backed away from my clothes, while dark matter swallowed the last of my extremities. I looked down and saw only crunching, shifting gravel where my feet should have been. I pinched a lock of my hair between my fingers and held it in front of me. Nothing.
Now we were both invisible.
Leaves and twigs cracked nearby, and my head jerked to its source. A wall of bamboo separated the lot from t
he one next to it, now shaking from side to side. The stalks parted mysteriously before my eyes, then whipped back together.
Careful footsteps crunched on the gravel, and the whisper of heavy breathing passed right in front of me. Right through empty air.
She’d gone around.
I held my breath until she passed, staying perfectly still, then let it out slowly. She didn’t know I was invisible, which meant I had an edge. With my toe, I nudged aside a dried orange carcass and stepped carefully, putting distance between us.
Oblivious, Ashley’s footsteps slunk along the side of the house, dislodging pieces of gravel every few feet. She paused at my discarded clothes.
My tank top lifted into the air, exposing the open contact lens case underneath. She cast the shirt aside to pick up the case, which appeared to turn over in the air. Studying it.
A panicky shudder slipped through me.
She knew.
I took another petrified step backward, and the gravel made a loud scrape under my heel. I froze.
The contact lens case jerked in midair, meaning she’d suddenly turned. Then it dropped, and just like that, all sign of her vanished. Gone.
Silence.
Where? My gaze darted across the gravel, and I listened, my ears tuned for the tiniest movement. Had she located me? A breeze swished the bamboo next to me, and a bird chirped in the distance, its cheerful tone grossly out of place. I had to slip away without her seeing. Near the house, the gravel gave way to concrete, which wouldn’t give away my footsteps. I lowered myself into a crouch and leapt onto it like a cat.
The force of my jump blasted two craters in the gravel, sending rocks skittering away. I landed on the concrete on my toes and gripped the underside of the wood siding to keep from falling backward. Behind me, where I’d dislodged the rocks, a flurry of movement ensued. Gravel scattered in a series of explosive footsteps. She’d just attacked and missed.
I craned my neck to peer behind me, hoping to glimpse the direction of her movement, but she’d moved on, presumably to solid ground where I couldn’t track her. I had to get out of here. Hugging the wall, I crept along the foundation, careful not to disturb a thing. A whoosh of air brushed my side, and the house shuddered under my palms, and I scooted right into her invisible body.
The impact knocked her off the wall, but as she fell away, her palm closed around my shoulder and she yanked me down with her. We collapsed in a tangle of invisible limbs. Kicking and clawing, I wiggled out of her grip and rolled away, then scrambled to my feet and sprinted back the way I’d come, barreling on the verge of a heart attack.
The wall of cacti loomed ahead of me. Trapped.
Ashley swooped up behind me. I dodged to the left. Her fingernails scraped down my back, drawing blood. She didn’t have a weapon, which meant she was going to kill me with her bare hands. If it came to a hand-to-hand grapple, I had no doubt I would lose.
I needed to get back to the street, out in the open, where I could run and hide. I skirted the clumps of cacti to get away from her, then veered back toward the side of the house, but her rasping breath moved in front of me and cut me off, then closed in, anticipating my feints.
She had me cornered.
I sidestepped her and raced back toward the landscaping, zigzagging this way and that. She veered after me, and her hand caught a clump of my hair and held it for an instant before I yanked free. I couldn’t get far enough away to outmaneuver her. She was right behind me, right on my heels, tracking me by sound . . .
An idea.
I broke away and ran in a straight line until I heard her coming up behind me. Then I dropped and skidded to a stop, tearing up my knees in the process. She didn’t have time to react. She tripped over me and I heard her crash into the gravel, but I didn’t see her land. I was already up and sprinting back toward the house. I dove into the bamboo, whacked through into the adjacent lot—a nice, soft lawn—and made a beeline for the street.
Over my own ragged breaths, I heard her panting behind me again. My God, she never quit. I hit the asphalt and veered left, running off pure adrenaline. My limbs wobbled, barely holding me up. Still she followed, her feet thudding on the street behind me. If I could hear her, she could hear me. I took the next right toward State Street, two blocks away, which would be busy with commuters at this hour.
I jogged onto State Street just as a bus roared away from the curb to join the honking, growling, rushing traffic. No way could she follow me here. With my last ounce of stamina, I put on a final burst of speed and darted across the street, pausing at the median to look both ways. On the opposite sidewalk, I jogged back the way I’d come, hopefully throwing her off.
I cut through a random parking lot onto a cross street, took a left at the first stop sign, then a right, then another right, and finally another left.
At last, I stooped to gulp down air, fighting my body’s need to vomit. No phantom footsteps followed me. I’d lost her . . . I’d finally lost her. But I didn’t want to linger, in case she stumbled on me by chance. As soon as I could stand without getting the spins, I started walking. My sore feet carried me from street to street at random, making a path she would never be able to follow.
As the panic ebbed from my system, my brain began to function again. For now I had escaped, but I wasn’t safe. She would continue to hunt me, and eventually I would have to sleep. Eventually, she would find me.
By becoming invisible too, I’d evened the playing field, but I still had to kill her. And soon.
Today she’d attacked in broad daylight. She was getting more daring. How could I kill her? My thoughts slogged in hopeless circles.
How did you kill someone who couldn’t be seen?
We had detected each other by the sounds we made, by our footsteps. It wouldn’t be enough. After today, she would walk on tiptoe, I’d never hear her coming . . .
I felt my eyebrows pinch together, and I halted in the middle of the street.
Wait a minute.
Dark matter . . . it could be seen.
Chapter 16
“Psst . . . Megan!” I hissed from her doorway.
She looked up from her terrarium, which she had been studying with pursed lips. Her confused gaze swept across me without seeing anything.
“Megan, it’s me,” I said.
“Who . . . who’s there?” she stammered, backing away.
“It’s me. Leona.”
“Leona?”
“I’m invisible.” I shut the door behind me, and she jumped a little. “Megan, it’s just me. Look—” I grabbed her hand, startling her again, and brought it to my face so she could feel me.
“Leona?” she said, feeling my face. “Where have you been? I was worried she’d gotten you. And why are you invisible?”
“She attacked me on my way over,” I said, collapsing onto her bed to rub my blistered feet. “But I have an idea—” I nodded to Sarah Erskine’s apparatus, still leaning against the wall, “that.”
Megan glanced around. “What? What are you referring to?”
“Sarah’s apparatus,” I said. “It can see dark matter. We can use it to find Ashley without touching her!”
A UCSB graduate student, Sarah Erskine, had built the thing a few weeks ago. We’d borrowed it—okay, stolen it—from her lab after she killed herself. From what I recalled, the device could detect the presence of an invisible object by splitting a laser beam, sending half of the beam through the object, and measuring the interference. The details were hazy.
Megan looked vaguely in my direction, unable to see me. “Can you take that stuff off? This is getting weird.”
“Nuh-uh. No way. You weren’t there. I’m keeping it on until Ashley’s dead, even if it takes a week.”
“You think that’s okay? Wearing it for a week?”
/> I lowered my eyes and fidgeted, even though she couldn’t see me. “I don’t know, I just . . . you weren’t there, okay? This is all I have right now. It saved my life.”
“At least put on a hat so I can tell where you are.” She tossed me a baseball cap.
“Kind of defeats the purpose,” I muttered, scooping my long hair back so I could slide on the hat. “There. You happy?”
“My best friend’s a talking hat, of course I’m happy. Okay, what happened?”
I told her the rest of the story, how Ashley had ambushed me in my car and chased me through my neighborhood, and with each new detail, Megan’s jaw fell open a little more.
“So she was just going to choke you out?”
“I think,” I said. “She didn’t have a knife or anything.”
Megan paced her bedroom and paused to peer into her terrarium. “Shouldn’t we tell someone? Your parents . . . or the police?”
“What are they going to do?” I said. “I tell them there’s an invisible girl who’s trying to kill me. That’s called schizophrenia, Megan.”
She peered at me. “Not if you show them . . . you know . . .” she gestured to where she thought my body was, “this.”
I bit my fingernails, wondering if she was right. “No, there’d be too much explaining. They’d all be focused on me, and they’d take me in somewhere, and I wouldn’t be able to hide if Ashley tried to attack me. That would give her the advantage.”
“And you’re absolutely certain she didn’t follow you here?”
“Positive,” I said. “She’s going to wait for me at my house. She knows I have to go back there eventually.”
