Of The Sea : John Murphy

Kiss Of Invisibility

"How come I've never seen you before?" He asked, keeping his full attention on me. "It'd be hard to miss someone like you. Especially with hair like that."

Subtly, I slipped the bag of Jobi nuts into Adrian's hand for him to shrink away and take care of things.

"I'm usually pretty invisible," I answered, shifting my posture and stepping slightly to the side to guide his sights away from the food station. "But it's hard to miss someone like you, Bellamy."

I crossed my arms and kept my posture relaxed. Trying to keep friendly conversation with him was all I could do to avoid friction and suspicion, but it was extremely difficult when I found myself slipping on a couple of words here and there. The accent that these people had was unnatural to my tongue.

"It'd be pretty concerning if you hadn't, people would question if you were even here this past week." He now sounded less concerned with my behaviour and instead trying to ease the tension that was clearly evident.

I forced a smile and chuckled in response to his attempt at lightness.

"So why did they send you down here, you don't seem like the criminal type."

I stared at him blankly, suddenly being confronted with a question about my false past, I found myself empty minded and lost for words.

"Murder." I suddenly blurted out when it became awkward with my silence.

His eyebrows pricked up in interest, like he didn't believe me.

From the corner of my eye I saw Adrian signalling me with two thumbs up. Finally, the scrawny kid took long enough.

I wanted desperately to escape the conversation and was about to excuse myself when Bellamy spoke first. "Not many murders happen on the Ark, and I don't think I've ever heard of your case before."

Having to think quickly, the words just fell from my mouth like a constant stream of blubber. "Of course you didn't, the higher uppers wanted it to keep it under wraps, wouldn't want your people to know you had rapists lurking amongst them."

He stared me up and down as I made slow moves to get around him.

"You know, that's really something I'd believe. The damn assholes can't tell the difference between right and wrong."

I swallowed hard, letting out a breath of relief and smiling awkwardly as I stepped back. "Well, I, Uh, have to get back to... Curly..."

Without waiting for his response I turned on my heel and strode over to Adrian, rolling my eyes immensely and groaning. "That was the scariest mulch I had ever had to experience in my life."

"What? Holding a conversation while I did the heavy lifting?" Adrian complained, rubbing his arms to warm himself.

"Oh, and handing over bags of nuts was so hard." I retorted.

"I had to talk to those two!" He exclaimed quietly, gesturing vastly towards Jasper and Monty. "Do you know how much I had to pretend I understood?"

"Fine!" I surrendered, folding my arms. "We'll call it even."

He rolled his eyes then raised a brow at me. "Okay chief." He mocked, testing his limits in regards to opinions.

His playful smile dropped slowly as his eyes flickered back and forth between something behind me and my face.

"What?" I hissed.

"You promise you won't panic?" His voice wavered with slight worry.

"What..." I repeated, this time slowly.