by Dan Rix
I can see you.
I reeled back, startled.
That voice, the voice in my head . . . it didn’t belong to me. I touched my temples, my head swimming.
I realized then.
The voice belonged to it.
And it had been in my head the entire time.
“What . . . what do you want?” I whispered, peering cross-eyed at my nose.
Go to her room, Leona.
It had spoken to me.
The dark matter had spoken to me. It had formed a thought inside my head, which I had mistaken as my own. That was deeply unsettling. As I tried to fall asleep that night, its terrifying instructions cycled through my brain.
Go to her room.
Why? What would I find there?
I clicked on my cell phone to get the time. 11:40 p.m. My parents would be asleep.
I could go right now.
Go to her room, Leona.
“Shut up,” I hissed into the darkness, yanking the covers over my face and turning over. I buried my face in my pillow, exhaling hot breath into my cocoon.
But my eyelids opened against the fabric.
Just take a peek. In and out. I could ride my bike, take the side roads. No one would be out driving on a Monday night.
An itchy sweat clung to my skin, the need to scratch everywhere. Only one thing would numb the itch . . . wearing it again.
“I’m not doing it,” I muttered into my pillow, but already, my resolve was crumbling.
I needed to see what was in her bedroom.
Otherwise it would haunt me.
I threw off my covers and lunged for the contact lens case, twisted off the cap, and reached inside.
The back door of the Lacroix residence opened into a dark laundry room with a gentle screech. Invisible once again, I slipped inside and pressed the door shut behind me, then paused to catch my breath. My bike lay up the street, hidden behind a hedge.
If anybody had been watching, they would have seen a bicycle riding itself. I darted through the kitchen and dining room and tiptoed past the sleeping Golden Retriever to the stairs.
The fourth one squeaked.
The dog’s ears flapped, and he began to stir.
I dashed the rest of the way up the stairs, tore across the landing, and backed into the darkness of the hallway, nerves buzzing with adrenaline. From downstairs came the clack clack clack of claws on hardwood floor. But no barking.
I let out my breath and crept up the hall.
Back in their house.
I shouldn’t be here. This was wrong to be here.
But if I didn’t check, if I didn’t peek, it would nag at my subconscious.
Ashley’s bedroom door lurked at the end of the hallway, menacingly dark. Like the back of a cave. For a long time, I stood very still in the hallway and stared at that door.
It stared back at me.
Just one peek . . .
I crept forward, my toes sinking into carpet, and trailed my palm down the wood to the knob, ice cold. Her bedroom. My breathing came faster.
Could I really just open it?
My hand refused to twist the knob, as if frozen.
Then I heard something I shouldn’t have. A shuffling, scratching sound.
Coming from inside her bedroom.
An icy finger drew down my spine. No, no, no . . . it must have been coming from outside. I pressed my ear to the door to listen. Only muffled silence, and my breathing relaxed—
Then I heard it again.
Scratch . . . scratch . . . scratch . . .
Like a fingernail on wood.
Coming from just on the other side of the door, from inside Ashley’s bedroom.
I jerked away, took a fearful step back.
But I couldn’t run. If I ran now, the unsolved mystery would haunt me. So I willed myself forward, seized the doorknob with a sweaty palm, and twisted it until it clicked. Heart hammering, I pushed the door open.
The scratching sound cut off abruptly.
Blackness. The faint outline of a window, blinds drawn. A bedside clock displayed 12:59 a.m. September 22. As my eyes adjusted, the hulking shape of a bunk bed came into view, a dresser, shelves, a beanbag chair.
I was in Ashley Lacroix’s bedroom. The bedroom of the girl I’d murdered. Suddenly, my insides felt like lead.
Why was I here?
The bedroom still looked lived in, as if she had just gone to sleep over at a friend’s house. Because they couldn’t let go.
Movement flashed off to the side. My head jerked. Just blackness, a boxy shadow. I backed away, straining to see details. A metallic clang split the air, followed by a scuffle, jolting me senseless.
Terrified, I fumbled for the light switch, then shielded my eyes against the blinding glare. When I saw the source of the noise, I blinked.
A cage.
Peering out at me from inside the cage, quivering with fear, was a mouse.
Ashley had a pet mouse. Her parents were still feeding it.
I wrestled my bike out from behind the hedge and took off pedaling into the night, needing desperately to burn off my frustration. There had been nothing in Ashley’s bedroom. Nothing but loss and sadness and guilt. Stuffed animals, more pictures of her and her friends, a calendar still open to July with not a single day crossed off.
Because she had been murdered on the first.
What was I supposed to see in there?
“Huh?” I said out loud. “What did you want me to see?”
My brain remained silent. The stuff that coated my skin had no answer.
Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing.
The wind whistled through my hair. I took the curves fast, sticking to the neighborhoods without streetlamps. Wasn’t worried about cars. Their headlights would give them away with ample time to disembark and hide my bike, so my mind wandered.
I stopped paying attention.
The pedals dug into the bare soles of my feet, whipping around faster and faster. I leaned hard around the next curve and flew through the stop sign.
And almost hit him.
The homeless guy pushing a shopping cart across the street.
I yanked the bike sideways, clenched the breaks, and flew over the handlebars, barely missing him. My palm flew out to cushion my landing, and I tucked in my head, rolling over my shoulder. No helmet, no clothes, just my bare skin on asphalt. Skin ripped off my hip, my elbow, my knee, leaving white-hot streaks of pain. I rolled into a heap, moaning. But nothing broken.
I climbed to my feet, wincing. I checked my wounds, but they were invisible. Did the stuff soak in or something? That had to have taken off the top layer of skin and some.
The homeless guy!
I spun around, covering myself.
But he wasn’t looking at me. I was invisible. He was looking at my bike, which had skidded some distance away, scratching his wiry beard.
Tonight he would see something impossible.
I grabbed the bike and rode like hell.
Smashing into her with my car and killing her was the first thing I did to Ashley Lacroix, but not the last. That first part was an accident, I recognized that. I may have been reckless—exceeding the speed limit, violating the six month probationary period by driving Megan, smoking weed—but my intent had never been to kill.
Killing her was not what haunted me.
It was what I did after killing her that haunted me.
Chapter 15
“Oh God, oh God . . .” Trembling from head to toe, I collapsed to my knees in front of the body. The girl sprawled on her side, not moving, not breathing, her skin a bleached white under the glare of my headlights. Drops of blood seeped into her blonde hair and crawled down he
r cheeks like hideous black beetles. Drip . . . drip . . . drip . . .
I was aware of Megan stooping next to me. For once, speechless.
Strange details registered. The gentle mist settling through the high beams, the whir of a fan under the hood, the new car smell wafting from the open door. Those details seemed to belong to another life, another universe. To which I no longer belonged.
“She was just standing there,” said Megan, her breath pungent with marijuana. “Why was she just standing there?”
“I . . . I didn’t see her,” I said.
“Should I check her pulse?” she asked.
I nodded, my throat too dry to form words. Megan reached in, probed under her neck, held her finger there.
But I already knew. I’d hit her way too fast. Hadn’t been looking, hadn’t been paying attention.
Megan shook her head and pulled her hand away. Dead.
A sick dread welled up in my stomach.
What had we done?
I scanned our surroundings. Gnarled oak trees, lonely streetlamps, a windy road.
No one saw.
I pushed the thought from my head.
We’d stopped in the middle of the street. Someone would come soon. Someone would come, and everything would be okay.
9-1-1.
Call 9-1-1.
Everything would be okay.
I pulled out my phone, but my hands shook so badly I dropped it. The phone bounced on the asphalt, the case cracked off. I picked it up again, began pressing buttons. The home screen, my contacts list, the home screen, my contacts list, my recent calls, the home screen. My fingers moved randomly, didn’t know where to go.
I couldn’t think, couldn’t make a call.
My insides seemed to be shrinking, like I was going to throw up.
“Leona, we’re high,” Megan breathed. “They’re going to come, and we’re going to be high. They’re going to smell it. That’s like a year in prison.”
I dropped the phone again and began shaking violently, my teeth chattering. So cold, so cold inside. “I’m . . . I’m not supposed to drive anyone. I was speeding.”
She looked at me. “What do we do?”
“Megan . . .” my voice cracked, “Megan, I killed her.”
“It was both of us,” she said firmly. “I was the one who . . . it was both of us, okay?”
I nodded. It was both of us.
“What do we do?” she said again.
I glanced around again. It was past midnight, a Wednesday morning. No one around. Only a few houses nestled back in the trees, their windows dark.
“No one saw, right?” I whispered.
Megan peered sideways at me. “You mean . . . if we just left her here?”
“We should call 9-1-1,” I said.
“Yeah,” she croaked. “We should.”
My eyes welled with tears, and I cradled my face in my hands. “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus . . .”
She rubbed my back. “It’s going to be okay.”
“No, it’s not!” I snapped, jerking my head up. “She’s dead, Megan.”
She stared at me. “What do you want to do, Leona?”
“If we went home . . .” I swallowed hard. “If we went home and pretended it never happened . . . I mean, it wasn’t our fault, right? How would they know?”
Megan nodded. “She was just standing there . . . like she was high.”
I glanced up, hopeful. “You think she was high?”
“I don’t know, she just looked . . . like . . . in a trance.”
My gaze went back to the girl’s face. The full horror of it had only begun to hit me. “A hit and run,” I said. “That’s manslaughter . . . if they find the body . . .”
“How are they going to know it’s us?” she said. “Your parents don’t even know we drove the car.”
“They’ll know, they always know,” I moaned, and a tear dropped off my cheeks. “I don’t want to go to jail!”
“I’m going to go to jail too,” she said.
“What if we hide it?” I said. “Hide the body?”
“Isn’t that even worse?”
I nodded slowly, and the sickness in my stomach deepened, became an aching chasm. “I’ll grab her arms, you grab her legs.”
She said nothing for a long time, and humiliation flared in my cheeks. I was a monster to even suggest it.
But then she said quietly, “We’re really going to do this?”
“Do you want to go to jail?” I said. “Do you really want to go to jail?”
“What if we get caught?”
“Grab her legs,” I said, frantic now. “Before someone comes.”
Megan shuffled to the girl’s feet, and I looped my arms under her shoulders, running off pure adrenaline now. We lifted together, and the girl’s head lulled backward, scraping my shirt with blood. Evidence.
I cursed and hauled her faster, scurrying, half stumbling, to the back of my car. Trunk open, we piled her in, readjusted her limbs so she’d fit. I gave her one more lookover—she was really pretty—then slammed the trunk.
That sound echoed off the trees, a sound that could never be taken back, and I knew right then that life would never, ever be the same again. The silence of the night throbbed in my ears.
Megan shook me gently. “Where should we take her?”
“I know a place,” I said.
“Something’s wrong,” said Megan, feeling around the bottom of her terrarium with pinched eyebrows. “I can’t feel Salamander.”
“Your snake?” I sat up on her bed and shoved my homework aside, instantly alert.
“I think she’s gone.”
“You mean . . . she’s dead?”
“No, I can’t feel her body anywhere. She’s not in her favorite spots, or along the sides . . . or anywhere.”
A wave of prickles swept down my arms. I leapt off her bed, suddenly feeling the creepy-crawlies everywhere, and brushed my arms and legs frantically.
Megan withdrew her hand and sealed the terrarium. “That’s so weird.”
“Could she . . . could it have gotten out?” I shuddered and pushed aside the image of Ashley Lacroix’s body in my trunk, shelving it for later.
“Look, the screen was sealed the whole time,” she said. “No holes.”
“Shake the cage. Maybe she’s hiding.”
Megan hesitated, then she rocked the terrarium back and forth. Water sloshed from the bowl, and wood chips skittered around. She stopped rocking.
Nothing moved.
I tapped the glass with my knuckles. “Salamander, wake up!”
She grabbed my hand. “Don’t tap on the glass. That’s mean.”
“You just said she was gone.”
“Yeah, well . . .”
I stared at her. “Megan, where’s your invisible snake?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Did it die? Did it get out? Did its body dissolve?”
“I don’t know, Leona. She was there yesterday, she’s not there today. I don’t know what happened to her.”
I went back to the Lacroix residence the next night.
And the next. And the one after that. I put the dark matter on after my parents fell asleep, after their low voices faded off, and slipped out the back door, a nervous thrill buzzing in my veins.
As summer drew to an end and fall began, the nights took on a numbing chill, and my forays across town became icy, shivering affairs, nearly ending in hypothermia. I did it anyway. Soon it would be October, the season of Halloween and ghosts and all things spooky.
The best time to be invisible.
I could do anything, go anywhere, see anything. But really, I only wanted to see Emory Lac
roix.
In the corner of his bedroom, I sat and watched him. I watched him pore over clues to Ashley’s murder, unaware that the murderer sat ten feet away. I watched him mourn for her. I studied him, learned his habits, became fascinated by him.
I got better at being quiet, and he didn’t notice me anymore.
Even though part of me wished he would.
I could help him.
Why did I keep coming? Why did I obsess over him and crave the knife twisting in my heart when he sobbed for her? Looking for closure, maybe. Sometimes, I fell asleep in his room and jolted awake at 3:00 a.m., shivering and terrified.
I never went back to her room.
But I knew why the dark matter had led me there, why it kept coaxing me back to their house, why it spoke to me and urged me to put it on night after night. Invisibility allowed me to experience things no human could ever experience, to see things no human could see, to hover over him like a ghost and look all I wanted, but never touch. Only by getting this close would I feel his pain, and only then would the urge begin to overpower me.
Now I understood where it was leading me.
I wanted to confess.
“Paper’s squishy, right?” I said to Megan after school on Friday. “Like a sponge. When you write on it, it does this—” I held up a sheet of lined paper on which I’d penned an English free write, showing her the letters clearly indented on the back.
“Yeah, so?” she said.
“Now that I wrote on it, it’s thinner there, right?” I pointed to a letter stamped into the paper, excitement in my voice. “My pen compressed the paper.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You okay?”
“Sarah’s apparatus, it measures interference,” I said. “Interference happens when light passes through something invisible and skips to the other side, getting out of sync. So if something’s covered in dark matter, the thicker it is, the more it’ll offset the light, and the more interference you’ll get. Megan, it will measure thickness. Her apparatus will measure thickness.”
“And this is important . . . why?” she said, cocking her head.
