Convergence - The Last Science #2.1 - In Plain Sight

B2: Chapter 7 - Identity - II

  As it turned out, Natalie didn't have to say a word. Not the next day, or the day after that. In fact, Quinn didn't turn back up for a whole week. He was missing from every class. She didn't spot him at lunch, and without him there, she was too nervous to join his friends at their table. She retreated back to her spot in the girls' bathroom for lunch, and every time she heard the name 'Quinn Kincaid' called in roll, she felt a little bit worse.

  It was a game of cat and mouse all week. Quinn's friends—apparently in the dark themselves—tried to find ways to run into her, but none of them were confrontational enough to manage it. Every time Natalie saw one of them coming, she found a reason to duck into a classroom or a side hall. At lunches, she hid out in the bathroom none of them could enter.

  They tried to camp out the door once, but Natalie could hear them whispering outside. She unlatched the lock on the tiny frosted-glass window at the top of the wall with a spell and boosted herself up. She climbed outside, entering the school from another direction. When they saw her hurrying down the hallway, their jaws dropped.

  She managed to make it through the week without ever talking to any of the Glasses Gang. The entire weekend was dedicated to trying to feel more like herself, after her near-breakdown in the library. Natalie went out into the woods surrounding their house, which was far away from the convenience store but still close enough that the spell to create the doorway wasn't too taxing for Kendra.

  Natalie still wasn't sure where they lived exactly, but it was totally surrounded by forest. She could only see the city if she climbed up high enough in the trees to see the skyscrapers and the Space Needle in the distance. She took Percy with her, along with a pile of snacks and two full water bottles.

  She didn't intend to come back for the whole day, and she ended up staying out all night too. With Percy keeping an eye out from the sky, and a pair of red foxes who wandered in from their den patrolling the forest nearby, Natalie found a nice quiet spot where she could sit down and read, or play on her phone, or do anything she wanted. If anyone got within earshot, her friends would let her know long before.

  But she couldn't focus. She tried, but every time she found something she wanted to do, her mind wandered back to the memory of Quinn's body flying through the air propelled by her own hand. If she tried to drive it away, more memories surfaced alongside it, of blasts of lightning and men falling by the dozen in front of her.

  Natalie kept trying anyway. She pulled out her earbuds and a pillow she'd managed to stuff inside her purse. It practically exploded the moment it emerged from the small opening, and she already dreaded trying to fit it back inside again, but she'd take anything to help her feel more comfortable. A fair-sized stack of her favorite books lay inside another pocket, but Natalie had way too much on her mind to read anything. She laid back on the grass and stared at the clouds drifting across the sky between the branches, letting her phone shuffle between anything it could come up with.

  After the third depressing pop song in a row, she had to stop herself from throwing it at the nearest tree as hard as she could.

  <As hard as I can would probably knock the tree over,> she said to Percy, who had taken up a perch in the lowest branch of the nearest tree. He cocked his head to the side, tapping on the branch with a talon as if to admonish her.

  <Yeah, I know. You'd be ticked off. I promise I won't knock over any trees.> Natalie sighed, picking up her phone again. She turned it on and thumbed through to her messages again. As usual, there still wasn't anything new. Nothing from anyone she cared about, or didn't care about.