The Assassin's Shadow

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The next day I got off the bus and walked across the street to my school with my sister and the first thing I saw was that black car. The two boys weren’t there today, it was just the girl. Today, she wore a jacket that looked too thin to be keeping any heat in.

“Look!” Ava whispered, nudging me and nodding towards the girl. “That’s one of the people I was telling you about last night, though yesterday there were also two boys.”

“Hmm. That is weird.” I murmured. “Maybe they’re past students here, come to visit some teachers.”

“Wouldn’t they be inside the building, then?”

“I don’t know.” I said, suddenly feeling exhausted.

We passed the girl. She was really closer to a woman, in her early twenties, and she looked as exhausted as I felt. There were dark circles under her eyes and she looked stoically around at the people walking by, her face carved of stone. I didn’t know what to make of this strange woman.

As I walked by she looked over at me and caught my eyes. Her expression didn’t change at all but neither did she look away from me like she had been doing with every other person. In the end it was Ava who broke the strange exchange. 

“Elaine?”

I looked away from the girl.

“Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You just looked kind of weird for a second there.”

“Oh no, I’m fine. I’d better get to history. I don’t want to be late.” I babbled out my excuse and ran into the building, going up to my classroom.

I was shaking as I sat down in my seat and my hands were bone white.

How long is this going to last? I asked myself. Who are these people?

It made no sense why these people should be snooping around a high school, unless they were undercover cops. In that case it made a lot of sense, but these people didn’t strike me as such.

And that girl only made eye contact with me.

And then such a horrible thought came to me that my stomach clenched from the fear of it.

What if these people somehow knew about my secret?

I shook my head and every particle of my being shied away from the very thought  of it. Nobody knew about my secret. I had told no one, not even my family about it. I had known that they would’ve accepted me even if they did know, but I was determined that no one would ever find out about my... my deformity. I had been careful around sharp objects, making sure no one ever saw me bleed from a wound that wasn’t there. And as for that incident in sixth grade, I was sure no one remembered it. It had died down after a few days and by the end of the year it was as if no one remembered it had happened, such was the the power of my invisibility to the eyes of others.

No, it was impossible for these people to know about my secret. Like that old saying “people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.”, I had kept my record clean. I hadn’t thrown any stones. I’d left no trace.

I nodded to myself. The chances of some random group of college students just suddenly discovering my secret was infinitesimal, it was ridiculous.

And yet, A nasty voice said in my head, what’re the chances that you are the only in the world who can survive landing on your head from a fall of twenty feet? Infinitesimal?