Convergence - The Last Science #2.1 - In Plain Sight

B2: Chapter 11 - The Emerald City (Part I) - IV

  Natalie boarded the first bus she saw. She was desperate to get away. She figured she'd just hop buses a few times until it was close enough to the end of the day, then find her route and ride it back to the boarded up old store. So long as the timing wasn't too far off, she doubted Kendra or Lily would notice anything wrong. If they even notice I'm gone at all.

  She'd been gone for more than a day before, and the Laushires hadn't noticed at all. Besides, did she really want to just go back to the house? That wouldn't do anything for her. She'd just be trapped in another place, still wishing she were elsewhere.

  When the bus pulled up to the last stop she knew, Natalie didn't move a muscle. She let the music pumping through her ears block out the name of the stop over the bus intercom, watching the people bustle around outside with glazed eyes. The bus trundled away a few moments later, and soon enough Natalie was in unfamiliar territory.

  Anything that isn't the school or the house.

  She rode the bus for hours, until she realized it was traveling in a circle. If it was just going to keep showing her the same things, Natalie didn't feel like staying on any longer. She waited until it had gone deep into the city, in an area she was totally unfamiliar with, then took her leave.

  No one on the bus paid her any mind, which was exactly how she wanted it. Out here, she wasn't the tragic little kid everyone kept fawning over, tiptoeing around subjects like she didn't understand what they were talking about. Nor was she the object of obsession like at school, the mysterious troubled girl that everyone wanted to know more about.

  Being alone in the city was the same feeling Natalie usually got from being outside in the woods, but in this case she wasn't alone. There were people everywhere, but she was still anonymous. She could come and go as she liked. The best of both worlds, and in this place she actually knew how to make it do what she wanted. The city ran on money, and Natalie—for the first time in her life—had cash to spare.

  With her dad, she'd never really considered money much. Even on the one vacation she could remember, their trip down to California, she'd been paying attention to the rides and the cute characters and things way more than how everything actually worked. Only once she'd been abandoned and sent to live with the Laushires did Natalie really start thinking about the little pieces of paper that everyone just took for granted.

  Thanks to Lily, Natalie had a whole pile of bills stuffed deep inside her purse. The Laushire twins were rich—much richer than anyone Natalie had ever met. Where her dad might consider a twenty dollar bill a luxury jewel and take precious care of it, the Laushires wouldn't be even slightly concerned about losing wrapped stacks of a few thousand dollars, neatly packaged and stored away. In that way, when Lily had handed her a stack from the pile to keep on her 'just in case', she'd been unnervingly casual.

  To Natalie, it was more money than she'd ever seen in her life, by a massive amount. Even when she helped her dad count rent money a couple times, college kids usually paid in checks, so she'd never seen so many bills. Natalie took a handful, and then another, and then even more from the pile. It didn't stop coming, and soon Natalie had an entire section of her purse dedicated just to holding the sheer amount of cash the Laushires gave her. After she lost count, Natalie stopped growing her little stash.

  She supposed Lily trusted her since her purse wouldn't ever lose the bills. Nothing could ever fall out of it, after all, unless she let it fall or took it out herself. If she turned it upside-down, nothing happened. It had its own special law of gravity, as Lily explained it. No matter what direction she turned the bag, everything inside stayed upright.