The Unseen

Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

I climbed up onto the bus, dreading each step I took, biting my lip in anxiety. Would Hunter talk to me? Confront me?

It turned out to be neither.

He ignored me.

He sat in the front, and I made sure to take a seat in the very back, like usual. Did I expect anything different? I didn't have the guts to say anything to him as I walked past. It was a struggle, of course, because what if he wanted to talk to me like normal people? No arguments, no embarrassing blunders?

But I had to do what I had to do to protect my identity.

What if I had a vision in front of him again? That seemed to happen way too much. I didn't need him thinking I was a total freak, if he didn't already.

Look on the bright side, I told myself, you can jump out the bus's emergency back door if you have a vision. It was a lame joke, and it seemed even lamer to be telling it to myself since I had no one to share it with.

It seemed that the simple moment we had shared earlier was just that; a moment. So he had learned my real name, that didn't mean anything. He probably knew the names of nearly everybody at our school. The fact that he spoke to me didn't mean he liked me, or that I was special in the way I wanted to be. It didn't mean that he'd ever speak to me again, either.

Hunter Landon was just nice, of course he would speak to the loners. He didn't have to like them to talk to them.

I could feel my heart sinking as the bus rolled on, and nobody else could even tell that I was on the verge of tears. I couldn't get emotional here, not in front of all these people. I needed to do something to get my mind off of the subject.

With this in mind, I opened my notebook. Today it was completely empty at the back of the bus and unnaturally quiet in the front, so I figured it was going to be a calm and silent ride. The perfect time for me to draw or write in my notebook. I could let my thoughts go free and wild, and there was nobody to interrupt me.

I flipped slowly through the pages of the spiral notebook. It was mostly a random notebook; I didn't label it a certain subject. There were short stories, poems, drawings, doodles. Things I thought about when I was bored and lonely. The pages were worn with use, rips and tears decorated nearly every page. It looked like a loved notebook should. Many thoughts had gone into it, and many tears had been shed on its pages, creating wrinkled stains. If anybody ever found it, they would discover many secrets about me and my heart.

Flipping the next page, I suddenly stopped, frozen in my seat, my heart thudding loudly in my chest.

There was my drawing of my costume.

Suddenly, my heart thumped off beat. An abrupt, heart-stopping memory entered my mind.

Hunter had seen this drawing, when the lurch of the bus had caused me to drop it. If I ever had to save him, would he remember?

The drawing was unmistakably of The Unseen. Nobody would ever doubt it, or forget it. Who else wore mask, hoodie, and boots? That wasn't something you saw every day.

Without hesitation, I ripped the page out, cringing at the sound of tearing paper in the quiet bus, then I wound it up into a ball and stuffed it into my junk pocket of my bag. I'd clean that pocket out tonight, and make sure I burned that certain paper to ashes. I didn't want to risk my mom picking it out of the trash.

A few people glanced back to see who had made the noise, but most of them had headphones in or were actually taking a nap. They must have had a long way until home.