I knew she meant to hit Conn, yet even though the knife spun through the air like it had been thrown by a ninja, Marsha’s aim was really, really bad. The blade was whirling straight toward my chest.
For a moment, every sensation and thought was a sharp, clear crystal. The sound of Marsha’s scream. The blistering ache of my hands. A bitterness on my tongue. Conn stumbling toward me. The shining blade.
My heart shrank, curling into itself. But a knife couldn’t hurt it more than it already had been.
Then, just as the knife should have pierced my skin, I vanished.
I had been looking down, unable to tear my eyes away from my soaked shirt and the blade about to rip through it, when suddenly I wasn’t there anymore. I was gone. I was air. I was nothing.
The knife cracked into the fish tank behind me. The glass broke, spilling water and panicked angelfish onto the patch of carpet where my feet had been.
“No.” Conn whispered. “No, no, no.”
Was I insane? Had my mind snapped during Conn’s attack? Maybe my five missing, forgotten years, and the ones that came after that, the times when I appeared in one foster home only to disappear months later, had led to this. To believing that I had truly become a ghost.
Conn stared at the place where I should have been. Not in disbelief. More as if everything was lost.
“Darcy?” Marsha’s voice wavered. “Where are you?”
I didn’t understand what had happened. But I knew this: I needed to get away from Conn.
Could I run? Could I do that, without legs?
Yes.
I leaped over the sofa and rushed out the front door. I had made it to the street when something dragged me down. My own feet. They flickered into being: solid, heavy. I tripped, and fell onto the heels of my brutalized hands. Shrieked.
I tried to bite back the sound, but Conn had heard me. He had seen me. He was racing across the brown grass.
Get up. Get up.
Then I was running again, slightly ahead of him. My legs blurred and vanished once more.
It was dizzying, being invisible. Staring at the ground as I ran gave me vertigo, and I didn’t have the courage to look back at Conn, so I kept my eyes trained on the wide streets. The pastel houses. The cars parked neatly in their driveways.
The neighborhood was deserted. Everyone was tucked inside on this chilly Saturday, playing video games or watching TV or doing anything except noticing a bloodied young man chasing nothing at all.
The quick thud of Conn’s footfalls stopped. I glanced over my shoulder. He wasn’t there. Had he given up?
The roar of a motorcycle.
No. He hadn’t.
I sprinted through the narrow spaces between houses, zigzagged through backyards littered with toolsheds and swing sets. I turned a corner, and an unexpected fence loomed in front of me. I tried to slow and stop, but apparently that wasn’t necessary. I flew through the wooden wall.
Some small kernel of me was fascinated and thought that maybe Conn didn’t have a chance if I could zoom through solid objects. But I remembered how my feet had materialized beneath me, and realized that I couldn’t control this. This thing. Evaporating. Ghosting. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to be in the middle of a wall when it stopped working. So I skimmed through open spaces.
Then it happened: quiet. No more motorcycle. Only the scratchy rustle of a squirrel stealing from a bird feeder.
Maybe Conn had driven off in the wrong direction.
Or maybe he had parked somewhere and was hunting among the houses.
I skirted an aboveground swimming pool and slipped through an open gate to a front yard. Hugging the driveway, I moved slowly toward the street. I looked left. I looked right. I didn’t see Conn or his motorcycle.
I felt weak and heavy with relief.
No, not felt. I was heavy. Heavy, solid. There. My body had returned. My damaged self. The misery of my burned fingers.
I saw my reflection in a car window. This was what Marsha had seen when she’d come home, when she’d parked her rusted Camry and strolled toward the front door, completely unaware of the wreckage inside. She had seen a girl soaked from head to toe. A girl with burned, jagged hair. Torn clothes. Hands red, puffy, blackened in some spots and oozing blood in others. A welt on her chin from where it had hit the desk. Neck smeared with Conn’s blood. Eyes wide, black, animal.
Shaken by the sight of myself, I had nearly turned away when I noticed something. There, lying on the passenger seat of the car, was a cell phone.
I should hide. Now that Conn might see me, I should hide.
I weighed temptation and risk. Call for help? Or find some dark corner to hole up in?
First get the phone. Then run and hide.
Holding my breath against the pain, I tugged at the handle of the passenger door. Locked. The windows were closed.
I scoured the area for some kind of tool, and my gaze fell on a stone garden gnome in the front yard, dressed in a painted blue coat and hat. I scooped up the gnome and hurled him through the car window. It smashed, the car alarm blared, and I reached through the shards to grab the phone. Then I ran down the street, away from the scene that would surely catch Conn’s attention if he was still nearby. I ducked into a backyard and saw that the door of a toolshed had been left wide open. I hurtled into the shed, slammed the door behind me, and took stock of what was inside. Bags of dirt. Fertilizer. And weapons: a rake, a shovel, a trowel.
A good place. A safe one. Safe enough, at least, for now.
Wishing the door had a lock, I peeked out its tiny square window. I saw nothing, so began to punch numbers into the cell phone. My fingers shook as they bled onto the keypad. I looked at them and realized that my hand really had disappeared, that day in the art room. I remembered telling Conn. I remembered how he hadn’t laughed.
Because he had believed me.
I pressed the phone to my ear and listened to it ring. And ring. And ring.
“Hello?” Lily’s voice had that suspicion everyone gets when an unknown number appears on her cell phone.
“Lily, I need your help.”
“Darcy?” Her tone instantly sharpened. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s Conn. Raphael was right. I don’t know Conn. I never did. I didn’t know anything about him. He attacked me, and—”
“He attacked you? Are you hurt?”
I touched my mouth, still swollen from that rough kiss. “Yes.”
“Have you told anyone else?”
“No.”
“You need to call the police. I’ll help you, I promise. I’ll do anything I can. But you’ve got to hang up right now and dial 911. Then talk to Marsha before you call me back. I’ll be waiting.”