How much did his former friendship mean to him? Getting this one thing back might not be enough to heal all the wounds dealt when it was stolen.
I look around at the guys I’ve reunited with and somehow found myself so much farther apart from at the same time, and suddenly all I want to do is burrow under the covers on my bed and imagine we could start this whole situation over from the beginning. And that it’d turn out better this time.
Twelve
Andreas
Riva doesn’t act all that different even when she thinks she’s alone. At least, I assume she believes she’s alone.
It was more than a year after she disappeared that I stumbled onto one of the new extremes of my talent—in front of a couple of the guardians, just my luck. I was in the middle of a testing session, trawling for memories in the mind of some random woman they’d pulled in from who knows where and pretending I couldn’t find half of what they asked for, when I started thinking about how nice it would be if I could just erasemyselffrom all their minds.
Technically, I could have. Or, it’d have been possible if my talents hadn’t been blunted by the drugs they kept us on. I could right now if I really wanted to—simply wipe all memory of my existence from every mind in the world but my own.
It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve essentially erased someone.
But my skill with memory doesn’t come with that many gradients. I could destroy one set of memories at a time, person by person, or I could sear away all impressions in a massive wave.
I’d be screwed if even my friends couldn’t remember me. And it wouldn’t have gotten me very far with the guardians anyway, since they’d still see me right in front of them and know something was up. The digital records of me wouldn’t disappear.
All those thoughts passed through my head in a meandering sort of way, with the wish to vanish getting increasingly strong—and then I glanced down at my hand and realized I could see right through it to the chair arm I was resting it on.
Invisibility should have been a super useful skill, but all the accidental discovery accomplished was giving the guardians even more to prod and question me about. The few times they tapered off the drugs enough that I could pull off a full disappearing act, they had me in an ultra-secure exam room I couldn’t escape from anyway.
Most of the time, when I tested myself in the semi-privacy of my regular room, the best I could manage was to hide a limb or two. Not enough to factor into our plans in any significant way.
But the drugs wore off completely a few days ago, and I feel like I’m breathing unclouded air for the first time in years. When Jacob suggested I follow him and Riva up to her room invisibly and keep an eye on her for a couple hours, it was a piece of cake to come along.
I slipped into the room after her while he held the door open and propped my transparent body in the corner away from anywhere she might walk, since she could still bump into me. And since then, I’ve been watching.
But really, there hasn’t been much to see.
She sits on her bed for a little while with the same serious expression that’s been alternating with annoyance on her face since we found her, pulling out her necklace and clicking it around. Then she hunkers down on the floor and runs through a series of exercises—pushups and crunches before getting back up for some squats and lunges.
It’s impossible not to appreciate the strength that flows through her deceptively delicate-looking frame. As her face flushes with the exertion, tingles of heat course through my own body.
I’m not any kind of peeping Tom, though. When she moves to swap her now-sweaty tank top for a clean one, I turn toward the wall until I’m sure she’s done.
It’s not my fault images of what her slender curves might look like play out in my mind anyway. Riva was the only girl I ever really wanted, even after I had a chance to meet others—if briefly—on my missions into the wider world.
No matter what else has happened since, some feelings don’t just vanish, even if you’d like them to. As I’m pretty sure Jacob could attest to if he was willing to own up to it.
When the rustling of fabric fades, I let myself look again. Riva walks over to the window and pushes it open a few inches so a waft of cool autumn breeze can seep in.
Good. I think we’ll both benefit from that.
There’s a digital clock on the dresser. I’ve been in here a little more than an hour. I flex my muscles, checking for any sign of flagging energy, but there’s no indication that maintaining my invisibility is wearing me down.
At least not that way. I’ve gone as long as several hours in the facility’s exam room, with none of the aches that creep in if I’ve been poking around in people’s memories for too long. But the sensation always rises up after a while that I’m permanently fading—that if I wish my body out of view for too long, I’ll never be able to bring it back.
It’s probably just paranoia, but I don’t plan on pushing myself to the limit just to test that assumption.
Riva sits back down on the bed and flips idly through a magazine she grabbed on our foray into the campus convenience store. It doesn’t appear to be doing much to captivate her.
Jacob is going to be disappointed that I can’t report back some vast conspiracy that she’s been conducting behind her closed door.
Boredom itches at me. I could slip into her memories again, but so many of them I’m already familiar with because I was there too—and I’m not totally sure how well I’ll hold my invisibility if I divert my concentration that much.
I fish in my pocket for the smooth shoelace I picked up a pair of along with our new clothes and twist it between my fingers. One knot, another knot, another knot, until I can’t tie any more and I need to pick them all apart again.