“Thank you, Lindsay.”
I’m choking but it sounds so normal that she doesn’t notice. The line goes dead and I know she’s back to work, following the orders of a monster she doesn’t understand.
I lean back in my chair. I have to stand, hurry, meet Mr. Glass. But I’m frozen with thoughts that jar my head, my heart, my whole body.
I sit there, lost in the maze that is my mind. I’ve been here for so long. Years have been lost in this glass castle. I can barely remember what life was before.
I remember I miss it.
Lindsay’s message echoes. Panic is a freight train and I have to push it deep into my body to keep it from showing. A meeting with Richard Glass is never a good thing. And I know why he wants to see me. He’s displeased with the little progress I’ve made on the Project.
It’s not enough.
It’s never been enough.
I stand, shrugging out of my lab coat, straightening, smoothing down my suit, leaving the laboratory.
The long glass hallway from my office to Glass’s office is blinding, sunlight reflecting off everything. The floors and walls and ceiling are all glass, all sustained by only steel frames. Light filters into the building from every direction.
I approach Glass’s office and Lindsay McCallister is standing there, sighing, the muscles in her tight face relaxing.
“He’s waiting for you.”
A reassuring smile touches her lips and I think she’s the only person in this place that could smile like that.
Perhaps it’s because she doesn’t know why I’m here or what I do.
I nod and face the door. Stand taller, set your shoulders back, I tell myself. Expendability is dangerous here.
I take a deep breath, twisting the doorknob, stepping into the room.
There’s a plaque on the desk. Richard Glass. A man sits behind it, tall and heavy, brooding with anger. His eyes are flat black, relentlessly watching, cold and dangerous and not human even if his DNA says otherwise.
“Doctor,” he says coolly. His voice is like a hurricane, powerful, merciless. “Sit down.”
I sit in the chair opposite him, waiting for him to speak, wishing he wouldn’t.
“Six months have passed since the last subject for the Project,” he says, leaning back into his chair. “Explain yourself.”
“It’s more complicated than I anticipated,” I say, because there is nothing else to say. “There are so many variables.”
“That may be the case but I cannot afford any more delays. I need results, Doctor.”
I’m cringing, though I told myself to show strength and confidence in here. “What do you want me to do?”
“Find me a subject for Project Five.”
“Sir,” I say, carefully, nervously, “It isn’t a simple process. You can’t just pull anyone off the street. The subject has to be in prime health. Any experiments over the age of thirty die. We can’t go around kidnapping children.”
Glass raises an eyebrow, cool with indifference. “Why not?”
Ice runs up my spine.
“Doctor,” Glass says, standing, towering with menacing height. “Do whatever you have to. Just get me a subject. A teenager is preferable. I need a successful subject. Don’t mess this one up.”
I wince.
Mess this one up.
So many Projects ruined with insanity and agony and instability. Perfection comes at a high price.
“Yes, Sir.”
Glass turns away, looks at the small pile of papers on his desk. I know this is the only dismissal I get. I leave, stand, walk away. Outside, I look at Lindsay sitting at her desk and waiting for instructions, the dutiful receptionist.
“Lindsay,” I say, putting on the mask I wear so often, “Send an invitation out of Lincoln Park High School science classes to tour our building.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
I turn and walk off. Away from Glass, away from the woman with the voice of a songbird. I head for the labs.
There’s work to be done.
Kate
“I had everything mapped out. I was going to graduate, enroll in a dance school, become a professional ballerina. It was perfect.”
-Kate McCallister’s journal
Three
People say I’m dangerous.
Reckless, impulsive, rude. I’m a danger to others and to myself and to anything else within reach.
Whatever.
This supposedly dangerous girl has a name, you know. Katherine McCallister. Kate. Call me Katherine and I will kill you.
Slowly. With a dull knife.
Maybe I am dangerous.
Anyone that’s met me agrees. If you saw me walking down the street, you’d avoid me. Everyone does. I’m different and defiant and that scares people. No one knows what to expect from me, no one knows how to handle me, no one knows a thing about me.
It doesn’t help that I get into trouble so much.
I want to say I never ask for, never do anything to illicit fear from people, never do anything to deserve this. But that’s a lie. I ask for it every day. Everything that’s happened to me is my fault. And I can’t say I feel sorry.
Maybe because it was worth it, maybe because it’s who I am, maybe because I can’t help it.
I really do love a good fight. That addictive feeling of owning your enemy, of holding all the power in the world, of proving that you are the stronger opponent.
I am definitely dangerous.
That doesn’t mean people are right about me. They think I’m out of control and wild, like a starving animal. They’re wrong. I control myself. Every day, I’m a little better at it. I will always be reckless but I am learning to fight back. A destructive need has been awoken in me but it is not in control.
Yes, it wasn’t always there. Yes, there is something fierce inside of me. There is a hunger that craves destruction, death, chaos.
But I will never use it, I will never be the monster they fear I am.
People think I am uncontrollable, that my rebellious nature is the problem.
Lies.
I wasn’t dangerous as a girl. I am dangerous as the monster they made me into. But destruction taught me bravery and chaos taught me selflessness. It was the monstrosities within me that taught me how to be a hero. Yes, I am wild and impulsive. But it’s those things that make me who I am.
The Black Kat.
Four
I’m a natural.
The music is in my bones. It sets me on fire, calling, crying, craving for release. I don’t know how to disobey. I don’t know that I want to.
I’m told my mother used to feel the same way. I’m told she danced with grace and nothing was more important than the music that begged her to set it free.
She danced in this same studio, her feet glided across this same floor, her body spun through this same room. It was here that she released the music and here that she met my father.
My father was never a dancer but they say he felt the music the same way she did once. He watched her move across the floor with all the grace of a queen. She was captivating and he was lost the moment he saw her.
Dancing is the closest I’ve ever been able to get to my father.
He died before I was born. And before then, my parents were divorced.
They were a hot spark, put out by the reality of a marriage they didn’t know how to work. It’s too late now, too late to try, too late to go back, too late to love.
But knowing that he loved to be here, to watch my mother dance, to get caught in the music, makes me feel closer to him. Sometimes, I can almost see him standing at the edge of the room, watching me dance.
A foot dips into pink silk and I lace the ribbons up my leg, securing my foot inside the ballet slipper. A second foot tied into the other shoe and I’m standing.
Trembling with anticipation, shivering with the music within me, frozen with fire, I’m balancing my weight on the flat-topped toes of my shoes. Years of practice, years of bruised
toes and aching feet and twisted ankles have brought me here.
I sashay to the stereo and music fills the room. The soft notes of a piano echo through the studio, slow but steady, and my bones are burning.
Not a moment is wasted.
I move and my feet are sliding spinning sailing across the floor. My arms are long, held out like the wings of an angel, fingers reaching for the music they will never touch.
Faster, louder, hotter, the music fills my head and I can’t hear, can’t think, can’t stop. I spin across the room, leg whipping in and out. The music doesn’t stop and I leap across the floor. My arms are wings and I’m flying and falling and standing.
The music seems to be growing louder and I don’t know if it’s the music calling for me to dance harder or if the notes are simply growing in intensity.
A flick of my toes and I’m twisting, turning, spinning across the floor, moving so quickly only years of practice and natural talent keep me from running into anything.
Eventually, the music stops and I realize I’ve been dancing for an hour.
Down into a proper ballet curtsy, one leg behind, one in front, and the fire inside of me is gone and the music silent.
My clothes stick to me in a mess of sweat. I glance at the clock. 10:00 AM. I should be in school, I shouldn’t even have access to this place, but the owner of the studio was never good at hiding the key. I made my own copy long ago.
At this time and hour, I’m the only one here. Most of the students, most of the teachers even, are in school.
Like I should be.
My mother will kill me if she finds out I ditched again, if she knows I didn’t go to school for the sake of the music she has forgotten how to feel.
I don’t care. I need to be here and if she doesn’t understand that anymore, it’s her fault not mine.
It’s a rude thing to say about my mother.
All I can say is so what? We’ve never had any kind of a relationship and we are only family by blood, related by force. I don’t owe her anything. Not even my respect. She doesn’t put in any effort and neither do I.
Besides, school is hardly important for someone like me.
I’m not going to college. High school is pointless. The moment graduation is over and I’m holding that diploma, I’m off to a dance school in New York. They won’t care about math or science or English there. Dancing will be the only thing that matters.
I sigh, wishing I could be there now, wishing that dancing was the only thing that mattered now. High school destroys those wishes.
Yes, I don’t care about missing one class. But I can’t get away with more than that, not without the school calling my mother, not without failing the semester and ending up stuck in high school for another year. The dance school requires a high school diploma.
I walk to the edge of the room, kneel at the bag next to the door. I yank it open and dig around until I find my phone. Three texts stare at me, waiting to be opened, to be read. I look at the first one:
You can’t seriously be ditching again.
I roll my eyes, shake my head, chuckle to myself. Worry wart. No surprises there. Years of friendship have passed between us and he’s always been so uptight about everything. And nothing makes him more nervous than an absent best friend. I ditch and the world will collapse into nothing.
Relax Alec. Breathe. In, out, in, out. I’ll be there soon.
I can imagine his tight scowl as I send my response. Typical Alec.
Reading the next text, my teasing smile becomes a grimace. It’s from my mother.
I won’t be home until late tonight. Make yourself some dinner and do your homework.
Not worth a response. I don’t have anything to say to her. I know some girls who have a mother-daughter relationship that makes them life-long friends but that will never be us.
Things between my mother and I have always been strained.
We barely talk, barely see each other at all. We are the college roommates who don’t know how to deal with each other. Ignorance is simpler than trying.
I’m not sure when or how or why it started. It seems like there has always been this tension between us, as if I was born a problem child, as if my very existence makes her uncomfortable.
I wish my father was alive instead of her.
For most people, that’s a terrible way to feel. For most people, that’s unacceptable. But I don’t know how to feel any other way. I can’t help but feel cheated. My mother treats me like a mistake, the look in her eyes, the way she avoids me when she can, the lack of love in our house. She doesn’t care about me. I’m just a responsibility and I know things would be different with my father.
I shake my head. Moving past, pushing aside, tucking away the hurt and the anger and the wishes I never speak. I look at the last text on my phone and my heart rises to my throat.
Ditching again, babe? Meet me under the bleachers in the gym before class. You owe me, stranding me in math class by myself. I missed you.
Guilty as charged.
A smile cracks my composure and I’m a giddy little girl. Only Dalton could turn me from sarcastic cynic to giggling school girl.
I shake my mind free of its dysfunctionality.
I toss my phone back into my bag and throw it over my shoulder. A skip forward and I’m stepping into the bathroom to change into clothes more acceptable for the occasion.
In the bathroom stall, with my bag hanging up and my heart returning to something that almost resembles normalcy, I peel off my sweaty tank top and sticky shorts. I step into my jeans, yank them up over long legs. Pull a white sweater over my head, wrap a green scarf around my neck. Slip my feet into a pair of green heels.
I press my fingers against the bathroom stall, pushing open the door and standing in front of the mirror.
Tug my ponytail free and a blonde mess falls around my shoulders. I run my fingers through it, smoothing sandy locks, too straight to be anything but boring, into neat lines framing my face.
I don’t wear any makeup. I never do.
My skin is flawless, markless, without a single blemish. Even in the winter I’m tan enough for any beach.
I study myself in the mirror with hard eyes, green as juniper trees. Dalton calls me his Little Juniper. But I’ve never really been sure what juniper tree looks like.
With one last scrutinizing look, I heft my bag and leave the bathroom and the dance studio behind, saying goodbyes to this fantasy world and
hello to reality.
Five
He’s following me.
A man standing at the street corner, wearing a black suit and sunglasses. Always there, always watching. Not always the same man but always someone there. Every time I leave the house, every time I step outside the dance studio, every time I run out of school screaming hallelujahs. I can see him out my window at night and in the parking lot when school gets out.
I don’t know what it means to be truly alone.
As a little girl, I had fantasies of guardian angels sent by my father to look after me.
Ludicrous.
These men aren’t angels sent to protect a fatherless little girl. They’re creeps.
I should tell someone. The police, a friend, someone who can make them stop.
I tried once.
I was seven. My mother laughed, brushed it off as coincidence. But there’s always someone watching her too and, even if she doesn’t notice, I know it’s not coincidence.
I barely look at him as I walk past his street corner. He will follow me to school but I don’t care. He’s below me. I always notice him watching but he’s just a part of the background after decades of his presence.
Silence passes between us as I stride through the streets of Chicago. My feet are loud, heels clicking against concrete, perfectly in tune with my own heartbeat. His are quiet, barely rustling the ground beneath him.
How does he do that? How does he walk in such silence that he is all but a ghost?
I stop.
/>
Lincoln Park High School stands before me like a jail, a prison, a dungeon. The bell shrieks, releasing students from their first period classes. Five minutes until Second Hour.
My heart stutters. Dalton.
I’m tempted to run. People would stare and I don’t care and I wish there was nothing stopping me. But high school kids are nosy. The man that follows me so constantly would never step inside the school but a snotty freshman might follow the girl running to the gym, curious and surprised and wondering.
I will not run.
I walk through the halls, pushing aside the couples stopping to make out in the middle of the hallway, striding like a queen in her palace. These are Dalton’s hallways and he shares them with only those who can get close enough to be friends with him.
Popularity and nobility are one in the same, I think.
The gym is empty, hollow, forsaken. Until Second Hour begins.
I step inside, heels tapping wood floors. My heartbeat is moving much faster than my shoes now. No time wasted on hesitation. I walk behind the bleachers, peering behind metal, wondering if he’s even here yet.
A hand around my waist and I’m yanked behind the bleachers with a laugh. “Dalton.”
His grin splits my breath. “Hey,” he says, snatching up my hands. “How’s your day been?”
Lungs recovering, heartbeat steadying, I throw him some attitude with a casual smile. “Pretty good, considering I haven’t been dying of boredom in class.”
Dalton shakes his head, dark eyes scowling. “Thank you for that, by the way. I had to suffer through math class by myself.”
“I’d say I’m sorry but I’m not.”
“Cold.”
A second of a foreign expression crosses his face. It’s annoyance and frustration and it’s gone before I can decide if it was real.
“Don’t worry,” I say, a smirk falling back into place on my mouth. “I’ll make it up to you.”
A step closer and I kiss him. He doesn’t move, doesn’t hold me, doesn’t kiss me back. I’m on fire and he’s not and now I’m uncertain, unsure, confused.
Only he can do this to me, only he can make me wonder what I did wrong, only he can bring out this unsure vulnerable side that I didn’t know I had, didn’t think existed.
The Invincibles (Book 1): Trapped: A girl. A monster. A hero. Page 3
