Standing on a bridge with no idea if a freight train was coming was likely unwise. The last thing she wanted to have to deal with was a sudden leap into the river. Then again, at the base of the structure, the foliage created a dark and shielded nook. Roofs poked above the treetops all around, and it was likely that these banks were on private property, but as long as she was gone by the time the home owners began to stir, there was no harm, surely.
El trudged across the bridge at top speed. On the other side, she leaped from the leveled mound and dropped her entire body beneath the trestle. The soil was a mire of green gook and silt, but fifty feet up the bank, a cluster of large growth created what seemed to be a perfectly acceptable campsite. Shedding her bag in relief, El peered through the branches at the nearest home. It was a large one, with manicured lawn, a few chandeliers, and probably a sophisticated alarm system, but it was most definitely far enough away that she would probably not have to worry about being seen, so long as she kept her flashlight use to a minimum.
Collapsing in the dirt, El stared into the viridescent river. If she had been at home right about now, she’d have eaten her dinner and been sent upstairs to chew her dental pill. Then she’d spend the next twenty minutes trying to get every trace of red dye off her teeth, her mother checking in every few minutes to assess her progress, squeezing her cheeks as if she were a horse at auction. Next would be pajamas and the obligatory reading of the Bible. Her mother would sit there beside the bed and work her somnolent way through untold chapters and verses, sipping her wine all the while. Then sleep until El shot awake the next morning with her heart hammering.
But she wasn’t at home. It was time for a new routine.
El opened her pack and removed the tent Riley had chosen. It was camouflage print and supposed to pop up like magic. At the time, El could not see a reason for it, but had purchased it to keep up appearances. Now she was grateful for it. It slid out of the bag and with a good shake, sprang out of her hand, fully assembled, its walls framed with rigid wires that unfurled. Only one side had an opening, and this could be completely sealed with Velcro. Her bedroll and sleeping bag came next, so tightly wound that she had to press them to the floor of the tent to get them to uncurl.
At the waterside, El ate a meal of gas station junk food and brushed her teeth with bottled water. She removed her boots and washed her blistered feet with a bar of soap, rubbing the sore bits with ointment from her first aid kit. The alarm on her phone went off just as she finished dressing for the next day’s hike.
She turned on the data and checked her location. She hadn’t come as far as she would have liked, but it was good enough.
Oscar dispatched a phalanx of messages. El shared her location with him to appease him and then bid him a good night.
Text me if you need anything.
Lying on the hard ground, uncomfortable and sticky with perspiration even though the night had finally fallen, El found herself chuckling. What she needed was not to be camping next to a river in midsummer, listening to the insects buzz as if hankering for her blood. What she needed was to wear two pairs of socks and buy new Band-Aids. What she needed was not to have pooped so close to her tent.
Everything had its learning curve.
She plugged the phone into the emergency power bank and curled up on top of the sleeping bag.
Dozing in and out, she contemplated the unanswered question: had she turned away from Riley’s help because she didn’t trust her? No, it couldn’t be. Riley would never breathe a word of any secret, El was sure. So why hadn’t she run to the girl and confessed everything? Given her current position, that would have been much easier, and Riley might have had some ideas El could never have come up with on her own. Was it because she was afraid Riley wouldn’t return her sentiments? A bit, she had to admit, but the closer she’d come to leaving, the more she’d thought there might have been a bond between them greater than her fantasies.
The actual answer presented itself as she drifted off to sleep, when her guard was down.
El wasn’t sure of anything. If she ever looked into Riley’s eyes again, she wanted no doubts to cloud her thoughts. She wanted the purity that only came from having her resolve tested.
That was what Riley deserved, anyway.
Riley packed with her mind on absolute utility and the need to get to El before anyone else could. Three of the five-hundred-dollar advance for supplies went directly into her own rainy-day account. Her father checked out the bike and made sure everything was in tip-top shape. At dawn, Riley got out of bed and showered, her jaw clamped so tightly she nearly snapped her toothbrush in half.
In her armor and brain bucket, she looked mean, scary even, and that was exactly how she felt. Her rage on El’s behalf was rooted in her own experiences, and while El might luck out, while nothing bad might happen to her, there was no way to know for sure. El needed protection more than anything, and that was one thing Riley was more than capable of offering. Her temper was formidable, even if everything else about her might be a mess most of the time.
As Riley snugged her fingers into the gloves and tightened a squeaky fist, she imagined it going through Mama’s Escalade window and wringing her spray-tanned neck. If Mama were being strangled to death, would her paralyzed face be able to form expressions? Riley doubted it and something about that pleased her.
Her father was remarkably quiet as he bid her farewell. Gathering her up, he lifted Riley fully off the ground, swinging her legs from side to side like a Newfoundland with a rag doll. She remained limp, her head crooked over his shoulder. When he put her back on her feet, she expected to find him blubbering.
He was stony. “Go get her. Keep her safe. Call me if you need me. Any time, day or night, for anything.”
Somehow, she hadn’t pictured it going this way. Riley was positive she’d have to convince him one last time, but he seemed as determined as she. Her father was confident in her, because she’d proven herself. Knowing he felt that way, however, made leaving difficult, because she suddenly felt closer to him than ever before. In a way, if he’d struggled, it might have made this easier for her, because she was used to leaving people in a furious storm.
Riley took a step back, pausing as she lifted the helmet. “I have to do this. It has to be me.”
He gave a single nod. “Yeah. It does.”
Suddenly, the butterflies in her gut settled. The snarling, wayward temper was pacified for the time being. Her father was the only person on earth whose opinion had ever mattered to her. If he said it was so, then it was so, and she was doing exactly what was right. Misgivings, hesitation, anything in her that might pull her from this course, be damned.
Riley slid the helmet into place and straddled the bike. “I’ll call you when I get to Alderson. Should take about five and a half hours.”
“You’re already a day behind her. Get moving.”
She started the bike, revved it a few times, and shot out of the drive without a parting word.
On the road, her mind wouldn’t stop running over all the scenarios that El faced. The girl had absolutely no street smarts of any kind. She could be secretive and clever—that much was obvious from her website—but struggling to keep her sexuality hidden from her parents was something completely different from outrunning the cops . . . or the commandos hired to find her.
What had El done last night? Where had she gone? When darkness had fallen, was El safe? Riley prayed to the universe that El had been sensible enough to pack the tent, that she’d taken the water filter, that she’d remembered to buy food. She hoped that El had enough money to get by, until Riley could track her down and shake some intelligence into her.
Riding at top speed, she found herself glad it was a straight shot northward on a divided interstate. It wasn’t her first long tour on a bike, but it was her first on Aella, and they were still bonding. Not having to worry about sharp turns or oncoming traffic gave her time to really listen to the workings and get a feel for the beast. F
rom the stereo equipped helmets to the acceleration, it really was perfect for her. With Aella, Riley felt more confident than ever before.
And then there was that empty second seat and the helmet to match it—for her, the promise that her life would one day expand and bring some kind of connection.
Before she could block it out, a rendering of El flickered briefly in sunlight across her mind. She shook it away with a mutter.
Riley barely saw the tall trees and slopes around her. The line in the road hypnotized her, releasing all the memories of El’s gaze. With hindsight’s perfect lens, Riley could see the longing.
The practical half of her mind told her it was stupid to make plans based on poetry. Relationships were complex things. She only knew what her father had told her, but if he was right, then the other person had to have something she was missing, and that list was longer than any other person should ever have to check. There was a great deal of chaos to Riley that she kept hidden. El was under no obligation to help her make sense of any of it. El’s devotions were the naive fantasies of a girl sheltered from the world, a kind of mental exercise to keep hope alive. They didn’t mean anything, and Riley had no right to see more in them.
Besides, if El had run, perhaps it was because she didn’t actually want their relationship to evolve. El might grow out of Riley. That was just the way it was. El needed help. She needed someone to run interference between her trail and the shrew in the McMansion. Riley’s primary focus had to be giving El whatever she needed, because it was the right thing to do, even if it excluded her.
If Riley was on this mission just to see what might happen, or to selfishly steal El’s heart, then she should turn around and go home.
She kept her nose pointed north, because it was the right thing to do.
Riley finally reached the tiny hamlet of Alderson in the afternoon. It was a quaint place spanning the river, with a waterside gazebo, Victorian homes, and bucolic charm. Riley had eyes for none of it. She went directly to the filling station and sat outside on the bike wondering how to go about interrogating people.
If she came in with guns blazing, as she wanted to, she’d get nowhere. Things like this took finesse, something Riley didn’t keep on her person in large supply. Thankfully, there was a teenaged boy behind the counter who wasn’t likely to be suspicious or ask her for some kind of badge.
Riley smiled sweetly at him. “Howdy.”
“Hi.” He pointed to her head with a grin. “Like the hair.”
“Thanks! I’m wondering . . . my friend was in here last night. She moved on, but she knew I was going to be passing through. She says she thinks she may have left her wallet here.”
He stepped back and looked down behind the counter. Picking up a lost and found box, he presented it to her. Riley made a show of looking through it.
“Is it there?”
“Nope. Hmm . . . She was in here at about five or six o’clock last night. Were you here then?”
He shook his head. “Not me and Sonny may not have noticed.”
“He would have noticed my friend.”
“She fell asleep twice on the job last year. It’s kind of a joke.”
“Well, shit.” Riley looked around. She needed to find that clerk. There was no way to get the particulars on the events or El’s state of mind without speaking to Sonny directly, but asking for her address would be overstepping the boundary. “She’s going to be really upset if I can’t find that stupid thing.”
“Well, Sonny is back on at four. Till midnight. You can come back then.”
Two hours, killing time in this village, while twiddling her thumbs? Two more hours of El wandering alone. Two more hours she had to allow such a thing to happen. It sounded horrible, but Riley hadn’t eaten, and there was no reason not to refuel if she had to wait anyway.
“Anywhere around here to get a burger?”
“Sure!” He pointed up the road, and Riley was gone with a promise to return.
At the restaurant, Riley asked for a table out of the way. Seated in her corner, she connected her laptop to her phone’s hotspot. Picking over her food, she read through a few more of El’s entries, the ache in her heart expanding as she confronted the unimaginable reverence in which El seemed to hold her.
All her life, Riley had been stared at—children who were looking for someone different to punish for their own flaws, racist shitheads who saw her dark tan skin and her father’s ginger beard and wore their contempt on their faces, drooling men who objectified her curvy figure, women who wanted her to conform to their standards of presentation—a whole gallery of expressions pointed at her in judgment. Then Riley had realized the only way to fight the intrusion was to take ownership of it. If people were going to gawk anyway, she might as well give them a show, because when she was the performer, she could leave the stage any time she liked.
But someone had been trying to see beyond those illusions to find who she was at her core, and it astonished Riley. That she had not felt how different El was from the others crushed her with regret.
The chip on her shoulder had finally caught her in the jugular, just like everyone always said it would. Now, Riley was thinking over a lot of the advice she’d blown off and wondering if it had untold applications too.
She stopped scrolling at an entry from several months previous, her eyes tearing up, even as she tried to sit back and disconnect from the emotions there.
I’m invisible.
The capabilities of the human race are measured in peaks and valleys. Here I am, sitting on one slope or another, but never an example. I’m one of those tiny details lost in averaging. That isn’t who I want to be, but I can’t compete and I’m not allowed to fail, and so I end up this way.
But I suppose, being invisible is a power. I can haunt this place and walk through every secret, because no one sees any reason to keep them from me.
I notice things about R. I can’t tell what caused them, but I can imagine.
She’s lonely. Not the way most people are, not even the way I am. She’s lonely because she’s complicated and exceptional. She’s on the peak, you see, at the very tippy-top, where only one person can be at a time. Other kids our age can’t even conceive of what her life has been, and they don’t bother to put together the details she does share. They find her off-putting, because she is always so unforgiving and real. They think she’s an unqualified snob, because surely they’re better than her, and so she hasn’t any right to ignore them! They’re the “cool kids.” People should let them have their illusions of grandeur and oh my, what a bitch she is for denying them their make believe.
They don’t realize that she’s already seen some truly terrible things, but that’s because they don’t even know how truly terrible it can get. She’s the cool one, the true Big Fish. She’s that, but she never even bothers to mention it to them, because she’s seen horror and she doesn’t want to frighten them.
How do I know?
Because I’m invisible. I see it when they repeat their parents’ politics and her face hardens, or when they won’t shut up about “having fun” with someone and her dark eyes turn to stone, or when sexual assault is casually mentioned, and she breathes like she’s just finished a marathon. I’m allowed to see it, because I am not someone who concerns her. I’m not a threat, because I don’t exist.
Irony, isn’t it? That the person she cannot see is the one who sees the most of her? I’m not sure I’d have it any other way, to be honest. I can’t imagine what I’d feel inside if every time I looked at her, she tried to hide. I think I’d die if one day, she gave me that same fake smile she gives to others, when she’s tired of entertaining them, and just wants them to vanish.
I’d rather notice that her fists clench when she hears racial slurs, as if she is building the strength to one day crush their faces. Or that when she is disengaged from a conversation she finds disgusting, she tucks her chin to her chest. Most people look up when they are trying to dismiss someone, as if l
ooking for permission from God. I don’t know why, but R looks down at her shoes or her crossed arms. It’s like she’s commanding her body to be still, because she is the one who sanctions her actions. I’d rather notice that she rolls her tongue piercing against the back of her teeth when she’s being lectured, as if she wants to bite the speaker so badly, that she has to give her mouth something better to do. Or that when a boy thinks he can sexualize her, for a small moment, before she emasculates him, there’s a spark of fear in her eye.
Or that sometimes . . . she disappears.
Where does she go?
I wondered myself, until I realized she was trying to be invisible like me. She’s terrible at it. Being invisible is something you’re born to.
We unseen children know the best places in our school to feel relaxed in our anonymity. We pass each other going to and from like ghosts. We never even look at one another on our way, and no one ever divulges the secret. Who would we tell?
I found R behind the maintenance shed. She was just breathing, her face tipped up to the sun and her eyes closed. But this little meditation had the ring of ritual to it—something in how she opened and closed her hands, tilted her head back and forth. This was like some kind of exercise to clear her thoughts, to get through another hour. Then she was back out again, scattering idiots left and right, engaging in every fight the way she always does.
It made me very happy to witness this. It gives me hope. If she needs to be invisible for a little while to calm down, then maybe being invisible isn’t so bad after all.
“Come on, El,” Riley whispered, shutting the laptop. “You’re killing me.”
The best protection was the kind that no one could see, and Riley had spent a long time carving hers out of pure bitterness, certain it was completely perfect and that no one would ever know there was a person underneath who could be harmed. But pain was pain.
Abuela had once told Riley that if she ate through good sense to fight the world, one day she was going to realize she was starving and alone. It had been said in a moment of uncharacteristic frustration from the old woman, during their spat when Riley announced she was going to flee New York with her father. Riley hadn’t known what it meant at the time.
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