Chương 62: Teardrop Two-Step (3) [June 11th, Age 15]

Bell was so prepared for this sort of mission that she'd even brought a set of smaller clothes. I suppose that was another reason why she had to give so much thought into who she'd replace, even if that seemed like kind of a minor consideration in hindsight. When I'd asked her what was so difficult about this one, she first dodged the question by saying that she was always this prepared for a multi-day mission like this one, but when I pressed a bit harder she gave in.

"I took the place of the owner a few years back," Bell said.

"Remember? It's under new management now but I remember some of the folks in the back. And I think the owner is the previous guy's brother. As weird as it sounds, I've got to be prepared for people to be suspicious of me. Most of the time when I do this, it's kind of easy, because nobody's ever expecting anything, but there's an extant chance that someone back there is and I need to be ready for that." And that sounded reasonable enough to me.

So on the morning of June 12 th, the day after my birthday, Bell rose sometime before me and left for work. I woke up alone. With the curtains drawn the mid-morning sun came through only a knife-slice crack in the windowed wall, warming the carpet in a sliver so tight I could barely stand on it—but it was there, and I did stand on it, letting the warmth seep through my toes for just a moment to remind myself there were senses other than the one I'd lost. Mornings were hard, sometimes.

Especially mornings when I woke up alone. After I'd taken those few moments to myself, I went through the rest of my morning routine in silence, slipped on my shoes, and went to meet whoever was going to check up on us at the same bus stop we were at the day before.

And as I approached it, I half expected the scene as it was: Benji and Bell and Ava sitting on that cold metal bench underneath the glass overhang, shielded from wind, weather, and me all the same, waiting for my arrival so I could be handed to Bell like I'd wanted. Thinking about it like that, though, made me squirm a little. I liked to think my autonomy wasn't quite that weak, but the amount of time I spent thinking about Bell even when she wasn't there suggested otherwise.

Surely I wasn't that totally reliant on her presence. Even eight months after the incident, I still found myself falling out of a normal walking cycle. Having to keep track of every object in my near-perception via their outlines with droplets tended to make me hyper-focus on my footsteps. To outsiders, it must have looked like I was trying not to step too hard on the sidewalk, lest its crust crack and I tumble into the center of the earth.

Over time, I'd gotten better at tuning certain things out—like birds and road signs and such—but with the way things were now I could only do so much of that. It was a vulnerability, albeit a funny one. In a mission with Yoru a while back I'd joked with him about it—after a drink or two to widen the filter over my lips, of course—and said that "the best way to assassinate me would be to dress up like a pay-phone or a tree."

He'd thought it was funny, too, for the amount of time it took him to process the implications of it. Then he found it a bit more sobering, and so did I. There wasn't much of a way around it, though. Keeping track of the wider-than-needed-but-still-somewhat-curated list of objects around me was exhausting enough as it was. If I kept track of everything, I'd be sleeping twelve hours a day just to keep up. Like everything, practice made perfect, but eight months in and I was still only proficient.

At around noon—I'd stopped for a snack—I came to the bus stop, but nobody was there yet. For around half an hour, I just sat on the bench and let the droplet-cloud I held over the road in front of me count the sedans and pick-up trucks that went by, trying to feel the shape of their manufacturers' badges as they zipped past.

Realizing I wasn't interested in explaining to a bus driver that I was waiting for someone, I stood up from the bench and went behind the bus-stop to the field of overgrown grass and wildflowers right behind it, a semi-marshy area where tadpoles and frogs and such lay, and I passed another hour or so just looking for frogs and other critters.

Frogs were easy, since they were so moist—I could see just about a perfect shape for them, enough to identify different ones and name them and re-locate them after a few minutes if I so chose. Mice were much harder, since they went around so fast and the grass caught the droplets if I tried to sense their shape, but I found one after forty minutes or so. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Every time I remembered to, I'd turn back to the bus stop to check if anyone I knew was there, but even as the sun hit its apex, nobody came. And so I left and got some food, went back to the bus stop, and passed the rest of the afternoon doing much of the same—looking for Horace, an abnormally large spring peeper I'd heard earlier in the day, and plucking some of the local grasses to dehydrate and turn to dust between my fingers.

When the cool air started to settle over the marsh, I checked the bus stop one last time, and then headed back to the motel. 0 0 0 Bell was there when I got back, in her normal shape. I quietly closed the door behind me, and Bell asked, "Hey—where've you been?"

"At the bus stop," I said, "Waiting for the check-in. Nobody ever showed up."

"You sure you were in the right place?"

"It was the spot we met yesterday. That was—that was it, right? That was the right place?" Bell nodded, lips pursed.

"Yeah, that's right. Kind of weird that nobody was there, but it wouldn't be the first time."

"First time for me," I said, kicking my shoes off and flopping over on the bed.

"Man, I'm tired.'

"What'd you do all day?"

"Play with the frogs in the marsh behind the bus stop, mostly," I said, stretching backward to grab the remote off the nightstand between our beds.

"It was good practice."

"Sounds like a nice life," Bell said, heading over to her bed, stacking up the pillows, and lying down. She gestured to the TV and I turned it on.

"It was kind of fun, honestly." Bell shook her head.

"Glad you had a better day than me, anyway. Thank God this Candace person lived alone. If she's this annoying at work, I can only imagine what her family's like. Jesus."

"Bad day?"

"Something like that. If I wanted to go somewhere where I'd get weird looks all day just for existing and everyone would talk to me in a stilted way, I'd just go home." I found I didn't have an answer to that, and couldn't dredge one up fast enough to be anything but awkward, so I kept my mouth shut.

"No leads yet," she went on.

"Tomorrow, hopefully. God forbid Sal decides he's gonna go vegan on a whim."

"Hopefully not," I said.

"That'd suck." Bell chuckled.

"It sure would. Did we miss Jeopardy?"

"What time is it?" Bell blinked, then said, "Oh, right. Digital clock. It's—seven-thirty, actually, we're right on time." I put in the channel number and returned the remote to the nightstand, right as the show was starting. I lost again—by a score of 30-10—but it didn't matter. I got what I wanted. 0 0 0 Sometime during the night, there was a thunderstorm. One loud enough to wake me up.

I couldn't say what time it was—I had no way to read a digital clock—but I knew it had to be the center, a few hours past midnight. Bell was still in the bed across the room, asleep or dead or something along those lines, and there was nobody conscious in that moment except for me. I sat up and listened to the rain clatter against the windows, drumming fingernails on my awareness's visor.

Every couple of seconds, or possibly minutes as time had no concrete meaning in a space as deep and dark as that, a lonely vehicle would rumble past, the Doppler-effect swish of its tires through the wet roadsides' occasional puddles serving as a cymbal to the rain's rattle. I wanted, for a moment, to go outside. Just to lean against the doorway and feel, hyper-aware, every contour of the world. In the rain, nothing could escape me. I was not simply invincible—I was omniscient. A god on par with Bell.

If it existed under the rain, I knew where it was—in all directions, at all times. I could slip through the door and stand, back against the window like I was out for a midnight smoke, a moment of solace in a world that whirled around me without end. Just for a moment, out there in the rain, I could make it stop. I could raise my hand and everything in existence, all of humanity's treasures, would pause at my command.

And at my leisure I could inventory the whole world—every last speck of dust in every corner catalogued and understood under the cover of a stop in time. The night, and the rain, would last as long as I commanded—so what harm was there in taking every second I could? In a stopped world there was no difference made for anyone else. I think it was then that I knew why nobody had shown up at the bus stop that day. Bell and I didn't discuss it after I came home, but I'm sure she knew, too.

The pleasantries we'd exchanged as our sole talk on the matter didn't even scratch the surface of it. They might as well have been outright lies. Tomorrow, I knew, I'd go back there, and do the same thing again. As many times as I needed to until someone came and told me otherwise. It was okay that that was the case. I didn't need to have it any other way. I wanted to open the door and become everything. But that could blow my cover. I didn't know who was out there.

So instead, I went back to the bed and laid back down. Curled up a bit and tried to go back to sleep.