Chapter 2: Her
Being invisible comes easily to me. I forget when I’m doing it, when I’m preventing you from perceiving me. Making you think you don’t see me when you stare in my direction. Don’t hear me when I speak near you. Don’t feel it if I touch you. So often and for so long do I use my shield that I don’t always remember to take it down when I’m supposed to.
That’s what happened the first time I talked to her.
I walked up to the girl that bright May afternoon, 6 months ago, smiling at her in a way that should make any normal 17-year-old girl’s knees weak. Her knees were anything but. In fact, she didn’t notice my approach.
And of course, she wasn’t a normal 17-year-old girl.
Belatedly, I realised I was still in hiding, maintaining a Christian-shaped blind-spot on the minds of everyone living in her hometown of Reading, Berkshire. I can stretch my shield and hide from everyone in the world.
I can be undetectable to every living thing with a mind.
How does it work? I don’t know, but I think of it as squirting ink on a lens. The lens is everything your mind perceives. The ink is the obstruction that blocks me out of your consciousness. So, I splash as much ink as necessary on each lens I need to block.
If I concentrate, I can make you forget that you even know me.
One day, digging a Christian-shaped hole in your memory will be as easy as being unseen. I know this because visual invisibility wasn’t a skill I was proficient in when I awoke as a newborn vampire a hundred years ago. I worked on it. Perfected it. Soon, I found myself capable of screening inanimate objects and other living beings from detection. I just need to throw a Christian-and-my-bike or a Christian-and-person-X shaped layer of ink on your lens.
Another century and I’ll master the art of mental invisibility too.
That day in May though, I needed to be visible to her, both physically and mentally, but not to her small group of friends as they conversed outside their college gates. Since I’d been watching her from afar for a few days, there was a thick coating of black ink on her lens and the lenses of everyone in town.
Carefully, I peeled away the dark glossy film from her perception so she could see me standing right next to her. Simultaneously, I applied a new covering of ink on the lenses of her friends so they’d no longer see her.
I made a mental note to scrape those smudges off later.
Most people would’ve jumped, but she just gasped quietly as she noticed my sudden presence. Surprise at the magical appearance of a stranger ebbed quickly, though her heart continued to race. Fast. My smile widened in triumph.
She was responding to me the way I hoped she would.
“You are no doubt the lovely Elisia?” I enquired just as she opened her mouth to speak. Her warm brown eyes sparkled in shock as I said her name. I kept my tone light as I continued, taking advantage of her bewilderment. “I can tell you’re Ellie because you’re the only one amongst your friends in possession of a Classic.” I nodded at the copy of Wuthering Heights she was holding to her chest.
“I’m sorry who did–”
“Selma told me all about you guys,” I shrugged. Ellie was going to ask who I was. I had no intentions of telling her that. “She talks about you all a lot. Where is she by the way?” I scanned the faces of her friends, supposedly trying to determine whether Selma was among them. None of them batted an eyelid at my inspection, carrying on with their conversation as though I wasn’t there. To them, I wasn’t there. Nor was Ellie. “She hasn’t gone home already, I hope?”
“She isn’t home,” Ellie murmured suspiciously. “If you’re such a good friend, you’d know she left for the States yesterday. She won’t be back until the exams.”
I squeezed my eyebrows together, confused and disappointed. Inside, I was gloating at how brilliantly my plan was working out. The way Ellie spoke of her friend’s trip to America, it was more than apparent that she believed the alibi I’d created: Selma had won a scholarship to study in the States and flew over there to make living arrangements.
Selma wasn’t in the US though.
She hadn’t even left the country.
I had her.
“That’s odd,” I finally mumbled, shaking my head. “I heard that her parents thought it would be too disruptive to her education to go before the exams, seen as they’re just weeks away.”
Surprised that I knew about this scholarship when hardly anyone at school did, Ellie scrunched her eyebrows together. Concluding that I must know Selma better than she initially believed, she shrugged and said, “Her folks must’ve come around because they’ve gone with her. Just for the first few days,” she assured me when my features grew more perplexed. “Selma’s going to try and study from there. Besides, most of the teaching has been done. We just need to finish our course-works and prepare for the exams now.”
“I suppose,” I agreed, sighing. “It would’ve been nice if she told me.” I rolled my eyes.
“It was very sudden actually. And she kept it quiet,” she explained informatively. “We didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
“At least I’m not the only one.”
Throughout our conversation, Ellie kept throwing nervous glances at her friends, trying to meet their gazes. Heart still beating rapidly, she seemed to be getting more and more confused. Why were her friends ignoring her, avoiding eye contact? Why was a stranger like me talking to her?
I had to keep talking to her. This was a chance I couldn’t afford to waste. She was never alone, always under surveillance, and since this was the first time I’d seen her hang around outside college instead of going straight home, I had to make the most of it.
Would she succumb to my charms? Would I succeed in luring her away from all the watchful eyes on her in my first attempt at gaining her trust? I didn’t know for sure but I knew the odds were in my favour.
“So, are you nervous about your exams?” I asked to drag her gaze back to me. She was still trying to claim her friends’ attention, scanning the immediate area as though she could feel the many eyes on her.
The watchful eyes of her protectors.
“A little bit,” she answered, finally turning to face me head-on. Now that she’d given up on her friends, she was appraising me curiously. My eyes in particular. Should’ve worn the sunglasses, I thought.
“Would you rather be in America like Selma?” Hopefully the topic of America would distract her from scrutinising my red eyes masked by blue-coloured contact lenses, making them a dark purplish brown.
It didn’t work. “Are you wearing purple contacts?” she enquired, staring intently at my eyes.
“I am wearing contacts, yes.”
“You know, coloured contacts went out of fashion in the nineties,” she joked.
“Maybe I’ll bring them back in fashion. Do you think I have what it takes to set trends?”
Blushing, she suddenly remembered something. “Aren’t you a little old to be friends with Selma? We’re all 17 and 18. You must be at least five years older.”
“I’m 20,” I lied. Well, it wasn’t a lie if we were talking about how many human years I’d lived before I became a vampire.
“So why are you hanging outside a sixth form?” she queried, shaking her head, a crease between her eyes. “Shouldn’t you be chasing Uni girls?” When she said that, her heart skipped a beat, blood rushed to her cheeks.
“Do you think I’m chasing you?” I asked, trying to be charming. It was working.
“No,” she answered quietly, glancing at her feet. Heartbeat faster than when I’d miraculously appeared next to her, her body began emitting more heat. “I don’t think you’re chasing me.”
Clearly, she was thinking about me chasing her, just as I couldn’t dislodge the chase scenes running through my head. In her case, it was all figurative. I, on the other hand, was picturing myself chasing her literally.
And catching up with her easily.
“What if I was to chase you???
? I wondered aloud. Is there a chance that she’d fare better than the rest of her friends? No, of course not. There was no way she’d outrun me.
Not on that day anyway.
It was easy to follow up my question with another, more flirtatious one. From the redness in her face, the further increase in her body temperature, the ragged edge to her breathing, it seemed she’d interpreted my first question as a flirty one anyway.
This was going better than I planned.
She was playing right into my hands.
I could almost hear the answer before I asked, “Would you run or let me catch you?”
Scrutinising my eyes as though she was contemplating the idea of letting me catch her, she said, “I have to go home.”
Because I was expecting a different answer, waiting for it as though it was a given, I didn’t realise what she said until I saw her turn and walk away. I should’ve gone after her. In the blink of an eye, I could have taken hold of her and ran us out of town.
In all honesty, I could’ve abducted her the moment I approached her this afternoon.
But I didn’t.
Why?
Later, I convinced myself that I didn’t want to come across too eager, too keen to follow her, just in case I failed to kidnap her. She might mention it to her friends and it would carry to her mother. It would’ve been a risk to shield her for too long, which in turn would’ve alerted the suspicions of her guardians.
Of course, I know now why I hesitated.
I wasn’t ready to kill her yet.