Sometimes life can be likened to a washing machine. Whichever path you choose leads to the same place, in the end. Everything just swirls around and around, dizzying you and filling your mind with a foamy confusion.
My life felt very much like that when I arrived at the Allens’ house. I was shaky with exhaustion from the sprint to the bus stop, the long ride in the crammed bus and the 3 km walk from the next bus stop to the house. Ace was fatigued too. She hadn’t handled that much power in a quarter of a century and was no longer accustomed to the toll it could take on her body. I had not left the prison in months; had barely walked in months! My legs ached and wobbled beneath me.
“Easy there, Daphne,” Ace soothed breathily, supporting me with her left arm and guiding me with her right.
“Just up the stairs. Come on,” she panted. I almost fainted at the sound that the doorbell made when she rang it, my ears tingling with unusual sensitivity and my eyes watering.
“Ace...”
“It’s alright, Daphne.”
“But, Ace, how did –“ I never got a chance to finish my question.
“Oh, by the sweet cacti!” An elegant woman swung the door in towards her and beckoned us in, handing Ace a glass of tonic water and me a mug of chocolate milk. I did not understand why she had mentioned cacti until I entered her lounge. Every wall was covered in them – thousands of spiky desert plants grew out of the very bricks and tiles! Her soft, fluffy couch welcomed me warmly, as did the kind nods and hellos of acknowledgment from the four others in the room. I did not manage to reply; it was all I could do not to spill the chocolate milk as I sat down.
“We were so worried,” the woman said, fetching her glass of tonic water from the high cacti-covered bar table at the far end of the room.
“Ah, you needn’t have worried, Maddie. It all went as well as it could have,” Ace said, clearly feeling energised after downing half the glass of tonic water in one go.
“Have you heard anything from Jacqueline?” Maddie enquired, her blue eyes narrowing as she said the name.
“No. Why should I have? The old witch would never tell me anything,” Ace replied nonchalantly before gulping down the rest of her tonic water. I took a small, tentative sip from my mug and tried to blend in with the couch, not sure who the people around me were or what they knew about me.
“You can’t disappear that easily,” a boy grinned, his kind grey eyes seemingly looking right through me. I looked him over nervously wondering if he had read my thoughts; if that was possible. He had a pleasant face; round but not quite a circle, with a delicately pointed chin and fair skin, slightly pink in the cheeks. His lips were well-proportioned to the rest of his face but did a curious thing when he smiled – the corners turned slightly down while the rest of his lips turned upwards. His eyebrows were long and oddly shaped, but the peculiar angles at which they formed only endeared you more to the attractive face. His hair was the same shade as mine and Ace’s. Ace and I looked like twins now – the only difference that remained in our looks was the colour of our eyes. I shook the thought from my head as soon as it entered. I did not want to be one of the Unseen.
“As I was saying,” he continued playfully, “it takes work to disappear.”
“Oh?” was all I could manage, taking a long draining sip from my mug. The chocolate was sweet and creamy, just the way I liked it.
“Leave her alone, Daemyn!” his sister hissed smilingly, whacking him harmlessly over his head of overgrown black waves.
“What did I do?” he spluttered in mock-anxiety as he swung at the pretty brunette with a notepad.
She laughed a delicate, reserved laugh and called him a mischievous pig. All the while her two unsettling, green eyes never left my face.
“A pig?! A pig my hat!” he coughed, making as if to wrestle her to the ground.
“You’re not even wearing a hat!” the girl giggled, pushing him gently to the side and eyeing me inquisitively. Daemyn turned back to me with a sigh.
“I’m sorry,” he said, somewhat reluctantly.
“Very sorry,” his sister assured me earnestly.
“This is Dahlia and I’m Daemyn, her brother.”
“My younger, very infuriating brother,” Dahlia cut in with a giggle. She strode gracefully towards me, allowing me to see her full body – fine figure dressed in a loose green sundress and a pair of glossy heels with bangles all along her finely-muscled arms and a belt done up tightly around her minute waist.
“Daphne,” I replied quietly.
“Oh, we know who you are, dear,” another young woman said, striding forward boldly, her thick blonde hair rustling against the taut maroon satin of her snugly-fitted evening gown. It was all I could do not to gape at the three Allen children; sitting so close together and all so very different but striking.
“Angela,” the fierce blonde one said, extending a perfectly manicured hand towards me. I shook it agitatedly and returned to my milk as she began to talk. Angela was the eldest – bold, aggressive, forthright and beautiful. Dahlia – gentle, reserved and elegant – was forever at her beck and call, while Daemyn – playful, cute and fearless – was somewhat hostile towards her. They were more of the Unseen. Mattie, their graceful mother, arrived on Earth along with Ace and Jacqueline and married Earnest, their father, after the passing of her other Earthly husbands. Her first husband was Christopher (654-688 AD), her second Carlos (670-720 AD), her third Geof (685-735), her fourth Luc (700-748) and… Well, after Luc I lost track. My mind wandered elsewhere as Angela kept talking. I admired her stance and crisp voice, her fine dress and the way it seemed to be molded to her hourglass figure. Her hair was thick but calm and tidy, her eyes vibrant and catlike. Then there were her siblings to think about. Dahlia was considerably taller and slimmer but not nearly as captivating; her hair was dull in comparison, her eyes small and inadequately made-up. The contest between Daemyn and Angela was much more fierce; every inch of his being seemed to discredit her, to mock her passionate tone and her perfect Kodak smile. He was so extraodinarily queer, with those eyecatching black brows and messy tumble of hair falling onto his shoulders.
“Could I use the bathroom?” I inquired, suddenly aware that I had interrupted the key point of one of Angela’s passionate tales. She reminded me of a plastic ruler bent too far – just about to snap.
Daemyn smiled his unusual smile smugly as he got up and walked towards me, peeking at his sister from the corner of his eye.
“Of course. Let me show you the way,” he offered. I stood up gratefully and followed him past his parents and Ace, down a long passageway.
“Thank goodness for you,” he muttered, guiding me down the passage.
“I can’t take another one of Angela’s ice-breakers!” he huffed. I wondered if I ought to confirm my agreement or not, so, feeling at a loss, merely shook my head and broke into a shy laugh.
“You don’t talk much,” he noted, raising one of his peculiar eyebrows until I almost couldn’t see it beneath the tangle of dark hair over his forehead. My attempts at stifling the embarrassingly raucous laugh, that was eagerly waiting for its freedom, failed. I felt the blood rush to my face as the loud bark of a laugh jumped out of my mouth, and looked quickly at the floor afterwards.
``Am I wrong?” he smiled daringly, trying to catch my humiliated eye.
“I am not without tongue. My opinions have to find a way out somehow,” I answered, striving for confidence but sounding like a shy little girl with not much more than a whisper of breath in her lungs.
“Alright. Care to spare me some of your wisdom then?”
“Wisdom?’
“Your opinions. I’d like to hear them.” He eyeballed me probingly like an investigator.
“What if I have nothing to say?” I trembled.
“Don’t let me scare you,” he beamed warmly.
“You don’t.”
“I can see this will take a while. Think about it, won’t you? I’m here to help. This is the bathroom,” he said, pulling the custard-coloured door towards him and gesturing for me to walk through.
“Thank you,” I said, gingerly placing my fingers on the door’s frame and leaning forward to close it. His fingers were still there though, just around the side of the door.
“Yes?” I gulped questioningly. He took a long silent look at me before shaking his head and leaving.
The next week was as blurred as the photographs I once took when trying to capture Laura in the air as she jumped on my trampoline... Daemyn was sent to go and sleep on the fluffy couch in the cactus room so that I could sleep in his room. Ace stayed upstairs in the room that she stayed in every time she visited the Allens.
For Unseens they sure acted very normal. Maddie looked around the age of forty, forty-three at the very oldest, younger than Earnest looked. I found that rather comical, seeing as Earnest was a newly-turned Unseen and was actually not much older than forty-three, while I figured she could well have been around at the time of Christ. Ace, Maddie’s junior by about thirty years or so, had been playing the role of her teenage niece for thousands and thousands of years. Every couple of centuries they would change their names, try to be a part of the community in a new place where people’s eyes had not yet become immune to them. The name Allen was Earnest’s by birth, Maddie’s by marriage, and Ace’s by magic and forgery. Ace had no relatives on Earth, but the Allens were the closest thing she had. Angela was twenty years old and had developed the properties of an Unseen during her teen years. Dahlia, just turned seventeen, was still in a kind of transition from power-bearing half-human to full on Unseen. The only member of the family lucky enough not to have started developing the dreaded characteristics of the Unseen was Daemyn. Angela jokingly called him a late-bloomer as both her change and her sister’s had begun when they were thirteen and Daemyn was fifteen, my age almost to the day, and was still more on the human side.
Angela attended university, even though no one could see her, answer her questions or test her. She went to every lecture that took her interest, watched all the university productions and went to dance at the parties. I thought how weird and sad she must have felt with no one seeing her, talking to her, dancing with her or even acknowledging her presence. Angela did not really seem to mind though. Maybe it was something you got used to. After varsity, she came home to cook supper – veggies, tender steak and pap were on the menu 90% of the time – and inform us of all the goings on at WITS. I was reminded of my old au pair, Kiara. She was also a student at WITS. I wondered how she was doing, what Don had told my parents and his parents and everyone else after I called him. Where they thought I was...
Then Dahlia would bounce into the dining room wearing a glamorous dress and stiletto heels and regale us with tales of high school and how some of her friends could still see her but others reckoned those who did were crazy – they didn’t even remember that she existed any more. At least Kurt still saw her and believed in her and talked to her even when the others told him he was talking to the air, she said. Maybe Kurt has the sight, she smiled hopefully. She and Kurt had been going out on and off since the end of grade 9, but now she was convinced that, as long as he had the sight, their relationship would be permanent. He would ask her to the Matric Dance next year, or maybe even a few months in advance, maybe tomorrow. It was the same story every day... How he kept dropping hints: giving her flowers and talking about music that they both liked and, and, and... I couldn’t keep track of all the alleged hints she spoke of day after day. I was worried that one day Kurt wouldn’t be able to see her any more, wouldn’t even remember her... But, that was not all that was on my mind... There was something far more selfish that worried me even more. I worried that he would be able to see. I worried that he would be able to see her for as long as he lived. The thought tortured my mind because I knew that only one person could have the sight at a time and if it belonged to Kurt then that meant that what Ace had told me was true. I was really an Unseen and it was only a matter of time before the people of my old life - my friends and family – would not be able to see me or even remember that I had ever existed. That made me think of Roberto and how I had given him the sight. If I became an Unseen would that change? He wasn’t supposed to have the sight and he only possessed it because of me, so if I no longer had the sight – was no longer human – would that mean that things would go back to the norm of only one human having the sight? Would Roberto also forget my existence?
Life was difficult with the Allens. They were all kind and concerned and generous and it sure beat the old prison cell, but being with them forced me to think about the sight, the Unseen, Jacqueline and Vusi. I kept dreaming of Vusi appearing seemingly out of nowhere, as he always used to, and threatening me or hurting me and then me killing him again and again. Each time I awoke the guilt of his death coursed through me; renewed and stronger than the last time. I tried to focus on other things, keep myself busy. I read a lot and spent every Saturday night watching chic-flicks with Angela, Dahlia and Ace but memories of my old life were never far off; they stayed in the corner of my mind, just out of sight, nagging at me like a child tugging at his mother’s skirt.
Everyone tried to make me feel at home. After my first day at school with Daemyn and Dahlia I felt a lot better because everyone could see me, but when a very kind girl called Jamie invited me to her house, I was reminded of Don’s Jamie and Don and Roberto and Newspaper and my good friends Laura and Tiva. I walked into my new bedroom to find a glitter-covered shoebox filled with little gifts from the Allens and kind notes of welcome. Dahlia had contributed a whole lot of make-up – garish Barbie-pink lipstick, tubes of sparkly lip gloss, waterproof mascara, a box of pink and purple eye-shadow and some tubes of different coloured eyeliner –Angela a set of neatly folded clothes – a bedazzled belt to go with a tight silver-sequined dress and two glittery mini skirts – and Maddie and Earnest a string of sequins and glittery beads with a tight clasp at the end which fitted around my neck as a perfect choker. I felt bad that I felt the way I did about the many gifts – horrified. It was really too kind of them to have gone to all that trouble for me, but I was beginning to think that they may have had the wrong impression of me. Bright pink make-up and sparkly clothes and accessories? Maybe all the other teenage girls they knew were keen on them... I felt like hurling at the thought of me dressed like a Barbie doll. The only person who seemed to have realised that was Daemyn. Next to the shoebox I found his contribution; a spanking new copy of Eragon.
I was lying on top of my bed, reading Eragon, when Ace walked in. We had been staying with the Allen’s for just over two weeks.
“Look, I realise that although we were both in prison for a long time and we used to talk every day, I don’t really know you all that well,” she began, fiddling with the drapes at the window as she spoke.
“Still, I know enough about you to tell that something’s amiss. We escaped, you know. You’re free. No one is chaining you to this room; no one is chaining you to this house.”
“I know,” I said simply, trying to go back to my reading.
“Nobody is coming after you, Daphne. You’re safe here! The Allens care about you and they want to help – as do I.”
“I know,” I repeated, barely looking up.
“Please, Daphne! You’re not listening to me!” Ace shouted, smacking the book out of my hands and practically growling in my face.
“Dammit, Ace! What the hell did you do that for?!” I snapped, leaning of the side of the bed to retrieve my book.
“Stop!” Ace hissed, her bony fingers firm on my arm, preventing me from picking up my novel.
“What is wrong with you?!”
‘Nothing’s wrong with me,” she said seriously, forcing me to look into her unnerving eyes.
“Yeah, right...”
“Enough of this, Daphne! If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I’ll –“
“You’ll what? Blast me into oblivion like you could’ve, maybe should’ve, done to Jacqueline ages ago?” I interjected acidly.
“Why are you so angry with me?” she moaned. I half felt sorry for her, but the fury heated my mind and overpowered the pity like a hot stew bubbling over the sides of a pot.
“I’m not angry with you! I’m angry that I can never see my friends or family again, never go back to my old school, never play the stupid little games I used to play, or eat Kiara’s predictable meals, or sing carelessly in the shower, or watch horror movies and truly believe that nothing that happens in them can happen to me!!!”
I was on the verge of tears, my voice hoarse from strain.
“Oh, Daphne,” Ace murmured, her eyes softening as she settled down on my bed and embraced me. Hot tears flooded down my face and nestled in her night-sky-shaded hair.
“It will get better, I promise. The first move is always the hardest, but don’t you worry. You will make new friends and you have a new family and soon you will be very happy. You just need patience. You need to let go of your old life. Think of this as a kind of reincarnation. You are no longer Daphne Fauls,” she whispered soothingly, stroking my hair.
“You don’t understand,” I croaked, gently pushing her away.
“I don’t want to be Daphne Fauls, I need to!”
Ace shook her head sadly and said, “No. This is psychological. You can overcome this.”
She kept talking, telling me things that made me feel sick to the stomach, but which she thought would make me feel better. After almost ten minutes of that, I couldn’t take it any more. I pulled my book up from the floor, slammed it on the bedside cabinet and fled the room, slamming the door behind me. I marched heatedly through the house, out the front door and into the street. Clouds loomed threateningly overhead and far off thunder sounded. I kept walking briskly -fists clenched, head down, shoulders hunched – until I found people getting into a taxi. I hopped in after them and paid the skinny, tobacco-scented driver R100 upfront – as I was never without emergency cash in my jeans pocket those days– and instructed him on where to take me curtly. I sat in between a buxom Sotho woman with her knitting and a scrawny girl in school clothes, with a chubby baby on her lap who cried throughout the journey.
When the taxi finally stopped, I was the last passenger left. The clouds had multiplied and darkened and the air was fiercely hot in anticipation of a storm. My hair was static, every strand stretched to its full, going further outwards and upwards. I looked like one of those crazy scientists who enjoyed tampering with electricity. My palms were very sweaty as I walked along the street with my hair wild around my head and the wind howling eerily through the street trees. A street lamp flickered on, then its light wavered a while making a noise that made my skin crawl as much as squeaking chalk on a blackboard. The same began to happen to the other street lamps and my ears twitched uncomfortably, my stomach reeling. Something inside me seemed to be whispering intensely: something is wrong, something is horribly wrong.
Lightning, I thought, spitting on my hand and trying to smooth out my hair with my damp fingers to no avail. People’s hair goes static if there is impending lightning. Despite the almost unbearable heat, I shivered. Lightning was dangerous. If I was close enough to it to be going all crazy-scientist, then I had a problem – a grave problem!
I picked up the pace, walking as briskly as my jittery legs would allow; until the first bolt of lightning came. It struck a tree on the opposite side of the road, knocking it over so that it barricaded part of the quick path to my destination. The flames spread along the scorching tree trunk and fed off it, growing higher and higher as thunder roared like a lion amplified by a megaphone. I ran away from the tall trees, right into the middle of the road and towards the fiery barrier with my head bowed and palms pressed flat against my ears. I reached the fallen tree and began to panic. Most of it was already scorched and gnawed by the electrical flames but not all; the fire had not died down and I was not sure if I would be able to jump over it unharmed. On the other hand, I was safer there than in between all the other trees; any one of them could be the next to be struck. Standing around in the middle of the road in a sweaty confusion, I prayed for some inspiration or great miracle. Suddenly a street lamp was struck by lightning sending waves of static charge into a ripple and trailing white hot electricity along the nearby telephone wires. The whole street seemed alight and ferociously hot and menacing. There was no time to think. I leapt over blazing tree trunk, burning nothing more than the soles of my shoes, and dived across the road just in time to miss being hit by a falling telephone wire. I raced up to the driveway of my destination and then pressed my back against the small wall in between the garage door and the visitors’ entrance – a small wooden door with an intercom-style doorbell beside it – panting harder than a bulldog after a run in the park. My heart was hammering beneath my ribs, blood thumping loudly in my ears, perspiration slipping into my static eyebrows.
I could not risk ringing the doorbell, not with all the wild electricity, so I slid down against the wall and felt under the door mat for the key which was always there. My eyes never left the noisy, bright catastrophe that was the street. Street lamps overheated and exploded, shattering glass was all over the show. Birds cawed worriedly as they flew away. I heard a cat yowling spookily as rain began to fall. Another bolt of lightning hit a tree not more than a few metres from where I was. The light was blinding and the heat suffocating. I thanked my lucky stars that the tree fell away from me, and I felt a cold piece of danger touch my finger – the key: a pure metal, lightning-attracting object. I clasped it between my fingers and pushed myself up off my hunches numbly, my arms turning to gooseflesh. I turned around and fiddled with the key in the keyhole, but my hands were too sweaty to unlock the door. Breathing hard and trying not to react to the rain which was slowly soaking through my cotton T-shirt and plastering it to my tense body, I left the key in the hole and wiped trembling hands onto my jeans – which were not yet as wet as my top – in an attempt to get rid of the slipperiness.
“Come on... Come on!!!” I cried, twisting my hand as hard as I could but not managing to move the key an inch. My hands were still too slippery. I rubbed them frantically against the wall, but it also felt as though it had been perspiring and it was no use rubbing them on my jeans again – they were sopping wet now. Thunder and lightning continued and the rain turned into quite the downpour, but still the key failed to turn. I began pounding the door with my fist, screaming as loudly as I could, “Help!!! Help!!!! Open up!!! Please!!! Help!!!” Either my screaming was too soft compared to the thunder, or no one was anywhere near the door. Whatever the reason, nobody heard my desperate pleas.
Lightning struck the electric fence atop the roof of the garage, sending it tumbling towards me in a wave of blue flames. I screamed ear-splittingly. There was no where for me to run to, nothing that I could do. The smouldering electric fence was going to hit me and it would hurt more than anything I had ever known. At least that’s what I thought. By some incredible chance, the key clicked as I rattled my hand frenziedly after the lightning struck and I was able to twist the knob of the door as the fence came hurtling down. Still screaming, I pushed the door open. The fence was falling. There was no time. My body started through the door, everything happening in slow-motion. The fence was falling; my head was through, now my chest, my waist, pain!!! I dived through the door howling in pain and rolling around on the grass to put out the flames. I was alive and had escaped the electric fence but not entirely. The flames had licked my jeans as i walked through and now my legs were on fire. Not for long though. I rolled about until the fire was out and all that was left was a sting and a pair of singed jeans as a souvenir. I still wasn’t safe though. I had to reach the house, the short house that had not many trees around it, before it was too late. I went as fast as my stinging legs would let me and beat my fists against the front door. Nobody heard; not even when I started yelling and kicking the door too. The thunder was too loud. I began to cry as I ran around the side of the house. I dived through a small, low to the ground window, shattering glass around me but managing not to get cut, and ran down the passageway.
I could hear rain falling much nearer than I would have thought possible. My senses seemed heightened. I could hear the faint sound of singing, singing muffled by rain. Somehow I could feel it. I could feel the deafness of the person – deafness to the outside world because his ears were filled with water – and I could smell the rain on him. I sniffed curiously and approached the person singing in the great storm. The smell grew stronger. There was no time to ponder why I could sense the things I could; only time to act. The rain was indoors – unnatural. I wondered if perhaps there was a hole in the roof. The boy didn’t seem concerned though. I could feel his emotions – carefree and calm. Another queer thing was the scent of the rain. It wasn’t salty but chemical, chlorinated and mixed in with something else... I pressed my nose against the wall to listen and smell. The rain was louder there and the aroma stronger.
Wait a second. That’s the bathroom. And that smell... It’s soap! Someone is having a shower in the middle of a very dangerous thunder shower and they are completely oblivious to it all!
Panicked, I flung open the bathroom door and ran in, sliding back the steamed up shower door and pulling a very embarrassed boy out of the shower – sending him rolling on the floor. Suddenly I saw it. A great white beam of light came straight through the skylight above the shower, turning the water coming out of the rose all number of different colours and blasting me right to the core. I was in the shower. I had saved the boy and I was being struck by lightning. The pain was immense, hotter than the fire that had singed my jeans and brighter than the sun’s rays. Then, as quickly as it had come about, it stopped and everything around me was black.
I sat up slowly. There was nothing wrong with me, no burned skin or destroyed clothes or tenderness. I was sitting on a shiny, black floor with shiny, black walls all around me. It was difficult to tell wall from floor, almost as if I was in some kind of optical illusion. The shower was gone, as was the entire bathroom, the boy and the storm. I leaned forward and saw my reflection in a small puddle. My hair was mud-brown as it had been before I met Ace, my face its old pre-Unseen self, my body fuller and longer than Ace’s, with a bigger contrast between my waist and hip bones. I was my old self; my old weekly casual wear, my unruly hair and my grey-blue eyes filled with confused tears.
“Daphne,” a familiar voice said. I had been aching to hear that voice for so long.
“It’s alright,” another voice said, “Daphne.”
I looked up to see the two of them standing there, side by side.
“D-Don? Roberto?” I stammered, slowly getting to my feet. I thought I would feel dizzy and weak but instead I was strangely energised. I felt like I had just awoken from a refreshing afternoon nap.
“It’s really you! And you’re really alive... You got struck by lightning and, and...” It did not seem likely that Don would be able to express himself all too clearly. He looked confused and shocked but elated.
“Don!!!” I gasped, hugging him so tightly that he barely seemed able to breathe. Still he didn’t stop me; his arms were around me like a protective barrier against the strange world that had held me hostage for the past months.
“You just appeared out of nowhere, according to Roberto. I think you saved his life but then again, how the hell did you survive?!” Don gasped once I had released him.
“I – umm... That’s going to take some explaining,” I replied slowly, thinking of Ace and the question I had never gotten around to asking her.
How did you make Newspaper see you? You are Unseen!!! How did you do that? How did you create that explosion? How? How does being Unseen work???
“Don, maybe you should get Daphne some water and I’ll see what I can figure out so far,” Roberto said quietly. Don seemed initially reluctant to leave but no words escaped his mouth and eventually he nodded his head and left the room.
Roberto’s hair was still wet but he was now dressed in a blue T-shirt and a pair of striped pyjama pants. I walked towards him slowly, wondering what to say, but I needn’t have worried. He spoke first.
“Thank you.”
“What for?”
“The lightning... I never even knew there was lightning and I know I wouldn’t have survived that,” he said slowly.
“Then you know how I did?” I asked; my voice high with curiosity.
“I know it must have something to do with the Unseen...” He was coming closer now and I could smell that same soapy smell that had drawn me towards the room. I could feel his emotions again.
“You can’t believe it’s really me,” I murmured, smiling when I felt him wonder if I was a mind reader.
“Of sorts,” I answered his unspoken question, “but you’re mind is not really made up of words. I can only catch onto general emotions.”
There was a moment of silence before he spoke again.
“That is so awesome!”
I laughed, “Not quite what I was expecting you to say from what your thoughts were.”
“Hey, stop prying through my thoughts!! It’s not fair that you can do that and I can’t.”
I smiled, “Sorry, Roberto.”
“Can you read my thoughts now?” he asked, his eyes sparkling. I couldn’t really. They seemed all jumbled and confused, so I closed my eyes and tried to focus on them. The soapy smell got stronger and the thoughts more powerful but there were still too many emotions wrapped together for me to identify a single thought. Then suddenly, I felt my feet leave the ground. I would have screamed but felt all screamed-out and I was still trying to figure out Roberto’s thoughts and I was all too aware of the soapy smell so strong that it almost knocked me out.
“You can stop thinking, Daphne,” Roberto laughed. I opened my eyes and found my arms had floated to a position around his neck and his arms were around my waist, lifting me off the ground.
“You’re taller,” I said.
“Are you sure you aren’t just shorter?” he teased, slowly placing my feet back down on the ground but not letting go of me.
“So where have you been?” he asked as I marvelled at how large his eyes seemed up close.
“In prison of a sort... Ambrose was trying to get information out of me about Jacqueline’s whereabouts,” I answered thoughtfully.
Before Roberto could answer, Don was back with Aunt Ilsa and a glass of water and his friend was letting go of me just as quickly as I felt my hands drop to my sides and my body turn to face the door.
“Daphne,” Don said. Sadness pulsed through my mind but I knew instinctively that it was his.
I walked forward slowly and tentatively stretched out my hand, lightly stroking my aunt’s shoulder. She shuddered slightly and asked Don what he was on about, then turned and left.
“She can’t see me,” I whispered, tears welling in my eyes.
“Not only that,” Roberto began slowly, “but she can’t remember you.”
“Most people can’t,” Don said, “and I don’t understand why. I know this sounds crazy, but are you dead? Are you a ghost, Daphne? Why can we see you when others can’t?”
“You didn’t -?” I left the question hanging, my teary eyes searching Roberto’s for an answer.
“I couldn’t, Daphne... Everything was getting so weird and confusing and I was trying to send you letters via a bird! I thought I had lost my mind. I thought you were gone and I didn’t know why or how,” he whispered.
“I got those letters,” I replied, tears trickling down my face.
“Would someone please tell me what’s going on?!?!” Don almost screamed.
“Daphne, this is not your place. You cannot live a mortal life any more,” a new voice said. I spun around sharply to find Daemyn behind me.
“I know that I can’t forever but I want to just for as long as I can,” I answered almost inaudibly as my vision began to blur.
“Who are you?!” Don yelled, anger clear on his face, though he was still writhing with puzzlement.
“I am Daemyn and I need you to listen to me. Daphne must come with me now,” the boy answered clearly, his voice authoritarian.
“She doesn’t want to go with you,” Roberto said coldly. He and Don had Daemyn cornered, with his back up against the wall.
“You don’t understand,” Daemyn said fiercely.
“Daemyn!!!” I screamed before anyone could argue with him.
“You know nothing of what I’m going through. You don’t have to give up your family when you become Unseen but I do! Can’t you just let me spend what time I have left as someone they can see with them? Don’t you understand? That’s all I want,” I cried. Daemyn seemed to flinch inwardly. I could read the hurt in his mind but his face did little to give that away.
“Ace never told you, did she?” he said tonelessly.
“Told me what?” I replied, the acid in my voice slowly fading.
“She wasn’t shaving her legs in the cell. She was preparing herself for a Revealing. It is one of the most dangerous acts that an Unseen can commit – letting those without the sight see you. That’s why Newspaper saw her. Most people die in such an attempt and Ace knew that. She was prepared to die in order to let you escape and you tell me that you can’t be with us – with her? We are your family Daphne. We care about you and we would risk our lives for you – as Ace did. We can give you protection, the likes of which you two,” and here he looked coldly at the two faces on either side of him, “could never hope to provide. I know this is hard for you. Don’t think I’ve had it easy. You know nothing of my life. You need to listen to me, Daphne, and leave this place behind.”
“I can’t,” was all I managed to choke out. Daemyn was suddenly gone and I could feel the combined bewilderment of Roberto and Don as they stared at the space which his body had filled only seconds before.
“You have some explaining to do,” Don muttered as he walked out of the bathroom. I followed him and Roberto followed me, his hand gentle on my back and his footsteps only slightly after my own. The three of us sat on Don’s top bunk and I began to talk.
Though some things were as clear as cut glass in my mind, the foamy washing machine of confusion did not leave altogether. No matter how much you know, there is always more that you do not know, more that you can only guess about. As I drifted off to sleep on the spare mattress Don had pulled into his bedroom and placed on the floor, my mind was awash with new ideas and possibilities of truths and an either thicker froth of perplexity. People say that if you are unsure about something you should sleep on it. As I drifted off with the strong smell of soap and the tug of two other people’s dreams surrounding me and my newly heightened senses I began to wonder if in the morning I would know what it meant to be Unseen.
(6709 Words)
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