Translucent (12 page)

“We were some of the last people to see her alive. What else did it say?”

“Don’t know,” said Megan.

“Huh.” I gazed out the window, feeling unsettled.

“So basically . . . I don’t think it was the dark matter,” Megan said firmly, as if that settled the matter. She nodded to herself, staring straight ahead. “I think it’s safe.”

“I thought she was poisoned?”

“Not by dark matter.”

“No, yesterday you said she was poisoned.”

“I don’t know everything, Leona. I’m just going by what my sister tells me, okay?” She accelerated up the onramp onto 101 South.

“Turn around,” I said suddenly. “We need to go see her.”

“Her grave?”

“Your sister. We need to see the note.”

Megan gave me a sideways glance. “
Why?
”

“Because she was happy,” I said. “The last time we saw her, she was happy. She was excited. She was talking about a Nobel prize.”

“Who cares, Leona? It wasn’t us.”

“I’m not saying it was us,” I said hotly. “I’m just saying it’s weird.”

“Isn’t that what guilty people do?” said Megan. “They get obsessed with the victim. Isn’t that what you’ve been saying this whole time?”

“Megan,
turn around
,” I ordered. “We’re not running away from this too.”

She slammed the steering wheel. “Fine!”

So we exited the freeway and got back on heading north, toward UCSB and her sister’s apartment in Isla Vista.

“What is dark matter, anyway?” said Megan.

“Here, I’ll look it up on Wikipedia . . .” I pulled out my phone, navigated to the page, and started reading. “Dark matter is one of the greatest mysteries in modern astrophysics. It cannot be seen directly with telescopes; evidently it neither emits nor absorbs light or other electromagnetic radiation at any significant level . . . yada yada yada . . . dark matter is estimated to constitute 84.5% of the total matter in the Universe.”

“Wow. That told me absolutely nothing,” said Megan.

“That’s because they don’t know what it is,” I said defensively.

“How can they know about it and not know what it is?”

“Look, there’s the elements, right?” I said, trying to explain it to her. “Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen. Everything on earth is made out of elements, which are made out of protons and neutrons and electrons. Everything that we see on earth that has mass is made out of those things. But dark matter, it has mass, but it’s
not
made out of those things. No one knows what it’s made out of, or if it’s even made out of anything. That’s why it’s so weird.”

“Huh,” she said.

“Look, it says here . . .” I scanned the article for the line I’d read earlier. “Here—‘According to consensus among cosmologists, dark matter is composed primarily of a not yet characterized type of subatomic particle. The search for this particle, by a variety of means, is one of the major efforts in particle physics today.’ See, no one knows what it is.”

“Apparently, you do,” she said mockingly.

“I’m just saying it fits the bill, okay?” I said wearily. “It’s invisible, and it’s made out of something no one has seen before. That’s what Sarah said, remember? She said it was brand new physics.”

“Yeah, whatever,” said Megan.

The rest of the fifteen minute drive passed in tense silence.

Isabelle Barker met us at the door to a dilapidated two-bedroom apartment overlooking crashing waves, which she shared with seven other girls—two bunk beds in each room.

Isabelle accepted her sister’s hug gratefully. “Hi Meg . . . Leona.” She rubbed her puffy eyes and waved us inside, and I felt a pang of guilt.

Would it be like me losing Megan?

I couldn’t fathom the thought.

Inside, trash bags and red cups littered the stained carpet, which reeked of day-old alcohol.

“Leona has a question for you,” Megan said rudely, nodding to me with crossed arms. “Leona?”

Her insensitivity earned her a glare. “Uh, yeah . . .” I coughed, and cleared my throat. “When did you hear about it?” 

Isabelle sniffled. “Yesterday. I . . . I still can’t believe it. She’s, she’s . . . she’s
gone
.”

I swallowed hard. “How did she . . . you know . . . how did she kill herself?”

Real tactful.

“They found Zolpidem in her stomach,” she said. “Sleeping pills. She swallowed a whole bottle. I went to the hospital, but she . . . she was already . . .” She turned away, wincing against tears as she shook her head.

Behind her, Megan gave me an
I-told-you-so
look, which I did my best to ignore, pressing on. “Do you have any idea why she did it?”

Isabelle nodded. “I should have known, I should have helped her . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence, and I was starting to think we should probably just go—

“Leona wants to see the note,” Megan butted in, not a bit of discretion in her bored tone.

Isabelle flinched at her bluntness, but then nodded and shuffled back to her bedroom.

I took the opportunity to glare daggers at Megan. “She’s
grieving
,” I hissed.

She shrugged. “You were the one who wanted to come.”

“Would it kill you to be polite—?”

Isabelle emerged from her bedroom, cutting me off. She carried a piece of printer paper, which she studied for a moment, as if unsure what she was doing with it. Then she sniffled again and handed it to me, muttering something about it being gibberish.

I recognized the Xeroxed outline of a lined sheet of notebook paper, and my heart began beating fast. The police probably still had the original in evidence.

I skipped the references to loved ones and scanned the rest of the letter, honing in on her reason for doing it. I read her explanation slowly, refusing to acknowledge it . . . until finally I did.

Some kind of entity has gotten inside me, something strange and not of this world that I can only describe as a parasite. Now it’s showing me things that I can’t get out of my head. I promise I’m not giving up. It’s just there’s no other way out.

I handed the paper to Megan, hands trembling.

Chapter 12

“Salamander’s still alive,”
Megan said, pulling her hand out of the terrarium that evening, after we’d spent the afternoon avoiding the topic of Sarah’s suicide note. “I think I just woke her up—yeah, look, she’s moving around. I’m going to feed her.”

Sure enough, the wood chips up against the glass began to shift and roll on their own, as if being shoved aside by something.

“Close the top,” I stammered, backing away. “She’s going to escape.”

“Shh, I have to feed her,” she said, picking up the sealed bag of crickets she’d bought from the pet store, leaving the terrarium unattended.

“Hurry . . .” I whimpered.

Any moment the snake could climb out, and we would never know.

Megan dumped the insects into the terrarium. They hopped around like crazy, bounced off the glass, and scuttled under the rocks. At last she slid the lid shut, sealing them inside with the invisible snake.

What a way to die.

My morbid curiosity got the better of me, and I inched closer. The crickets jumped around. Nothing happened. So I tiptoed even closer, as close as I dared. So close I could see the crickets’ quivering antennae. My breath misted on the glass. Megan watched next to me.

“I don’t see any movement,” I whispered. “Megan, I don’t see movement . . . what if she got out?”

“She didn’t get out.”

“But I don’t see any movement—”

“Just wait,” she hissed.

A curious cricket wandered over to a hollow under a rock.

“Bad idea, buddy,” I muttered, “bad idea . . .”

“Shh—”

Woodchips and bark went flying. The cricket vanished into thin air. The others scattered like fleas. I flinched.

“Look,” said Megan, pointing to the cricket’s still-spasming hind leg as it was carried through the air by the invisible snake. Then it too, vanished. Swallowed.

“Weird question,” I said. “Would it’s babies be invisible?”

“Salamander’s?” Megan thought about it, eyebrows drawn together. “I . . . I don’t know.”

“They would be, right?” I said. “I mean, once it gets on something . . .” The horror of it finally dawned on me. A million invisible baby snakes. “Okay, seriously, you
really
need to make sure this lid stays on. If this thing gets out, it’s going to be the most effective hunter on Earth, it’s going to kill everything and reproduce like mad and get on other animals . . . I think we should kill it right now.”

Megan gasped and threw her arms protectively over the terrarium. “No!”

“Or peel the stuff off it, at least.”

“Okay. But this is an experiment, remember? Just one more day.”

“Fine. Then we take it off.
You
take it off. Because I’m not touching that thing.”

“Leona, it’s a garden snake.”

“Is that supposed to reassure me? Why do you keep saying that?”

“Oh, shut up.” She gave me a shove.

With the snake no longer distracting us, we fell into silence. I sat on the floor and peered around her bedroom, yanking absently at the fibers of her carpet. She huffed and collapsed on her bed, where she glared at the ceiling. “Are you spending the night tonight?” she asked.

“Yeah, I just have to text my parents.”

“Cool, what do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. Just hang out.”

More silence.

Someone had to bring it up. As usual, it was going to be me.

“What do you think she meant by that?” I said slowly. “A parasite . . . she called it a parasite.”

“Salamander’s doing fine,” said Megan.

“Yeah, because a snake can’t kill itself.”

“It could if it stopped eating,” she said, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. “Which it didn’t. Clearly.”

“So you really think her killing herself has nothing to do with this?”

“Sarah was just scared,” she said softly. “I wore the stuff—I put it on—and I’m fine.”

I peered at her. “Are you?”

“
Yes
,” she snapped.

I nodded slowly, working saliva around inside my mouth. “Then I want to try it too.”

“You can’t be serious,” she said.

But I was. And that was what bothered me. I could feel her staring at me. “You got to try it, I should get to try it too, and . . . and I just want to see what it’s like.”

“Even if it makes you kill yourself?” she said. “Make up your mind, girl.”

I chewed my lip. Why
did
I want to try it—besides the obvious appeal of being invisible? Ever since I’d gone down into that crater to fetch the meteorite, dark matter had creeped me out. Now it had driven a girl to suicide.

Maybe that was why.

It was my morbid curiosity again. “She said it showed her things,” I said.

“Yeah, I’m sure you want to see those things,” she scoffed.

“But it’s like you said, we’ve been around that stuff for much longer than her, and we’re fine, right? But Sarah was studying it. Maybe she discovered something . . . something that really bothered her.”

“So?”

“Wouldn’t you want to know what she found?”

Wear it, Leona . . . and you’ll see too.

“Hey, I just wanted to prank you,” she said. “That’s the only reason I did it.”

“Emory thought they might’ve been collecting it . . .” I muttered.

“Please tell me you haven’t been talking to him again.”

“She had a journal,” I said, sitting forward. “In the physics lab, she was writing stuff in a journal . . . about dark matter.”

Megan stared at me. “You think she wrote something down?”

Adrenaline pulsed under my skin. “We could check. It’s Friday night. No one’s going to be in the lab.”

“Okay, now you’re scaring me,” said Megan.

“You want to?” I said, my voice daring.

“It’s a crime scene, it’s probably swarming with police. Besides, how are we going to get into the lab without a key, let alone the building?”

I smiled. “By being invisible.”

I stood naked
in front of the mirror in Megan’s bathroom, my gaunt reflection haunting my periphery like a ghost. Soon . . . soon I would be able to stare straight at myself.

And see nothing.

Breathing heavily, I peered down into the contact lens case, the right slot. Mine. Megan’s slot was on the left. 

Put it on, Leona.

“Is it on your finger?” came Megan’s muffled voice through the bathroom door.

“Hang on,” I said. “Just give me a second.”

I filled my lungs again, exhaled slowly. I was really doing this. If Megan could do this, then I could do this. I had texted my parents I was spending the night, so I had plenty of time to take this slow.

I touched the dark matter.

Like a drop of water, it leapt to my fingertip, suctioning itself through surface tension.
It’s on my finger.
My heart gave an extra loud thump.

“It’s on my finger,” I called, my voice raspy. “Do I rub it in or what?”

“It’s not like lotion. You stretch it, almost like you’re rolling it on.”

Stretch it.

With my other hand, I started stretching it out, pulling it and stretching it over my finger like rubber cement, down to the first joint. The tip of my finger shrank away, down to the meat and bone, like a time lapse movie of rotting flesh. A nervous pressure climbed my throat, but I kept going, hurrying now to get it over with. Down to the second joint, then the knuckle. It elongated, but never broke. Like pulling on a thin sheen of honey.

The skin tingled.

Raspy breaths tore from my chest. My hands shook violently, and I had to stop and brace myself against the counter.
Breathe in . . . breathe out . . . in . . . out . . .
 

I could do this.

I held up my hand, and felt the urge to puke. Before my eyes, my flesh eroded into nothing. It was spreading on its own now, crawling across my palm, up my other fingers, taking a huge bite out of my hand. It reached my wrist, and visible in the gruesome cross section, the veins pulsed with my racing heartbeat. The sight of the quivering muscle, a sickly grayish purple, sent bile churning up my throat.

I clawed at my forearm, scratched the skin with my fingernails, trying to get under it, peel it up. But there was no edge, no place where my skin ended and it began. They merged together seamlessly, like it
was
my skin. “I can’t . . . I can’t stop it,” I gasped.

“Just let it go,” she soothed. “Don’t fight it.”

“It’s
eating
me!”

“You’re fine,” she said.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck . . .”

It reached my elbow and kept climbing, and I could only stare as my arm receded. Electricity crackled up and down the invisible arm. The only sign it was still there. The rest of my body broke out in prickly sweat. And despite my burning nausea, despite the terror clamping down on my throat, despite it all, I still made the dumb observation that my invisible arm was sweating too, that I could feel air on it evaporating the sweat in chilly waves.

It was like a second skin . . . porous.

It permitted the passage of moisture, of air.

My arm had completely vanished, and now my shoulder blade receded into meaty flesh. I averted my eyes, panicky breaths coming in shallow gasps.

“Heads up,” said Megan. “When it gets to your face it’s kind of freaky.”

Before I could process what she’d said, the tingling crept across my collar bone and climbed my neck, then closed like a fist around my throat, inching up into my scalp and my jaw and over my chin.

Instinctively, I pressed my lips together to stop it from getting in my mouth. My lips stung a little, and it oozed toward my nostrils next. Alarmed, I reached in with my still-visible hand and squeezed my nose shut. Couldn’t let the stuff get inside me.

It rose up my cheeks like a hot flush. My eyes. It was going to get in my eyes! I squeezed them shut, and it tickled my eyelids harmlessly and continued up into my hair. I could almost imagine I was being slowly dunked in a vat of honey. With a soft whoosh, it filled my ears. My torso was completely submerged.

But how was I supposed to breathe? My lungs bristled, suddenly craving air. All at once, my pulse took off sprinting, and my lips parted against my will. But the sticky substance formed a sheen, blocking my mouth, my nostrils.

I fought my gag reflex and blew out hard, trying to pop it like a bubble. It didn’t pop. The effort left my lungs empty, and when I gasped for air, the membrane filled my mouth, coated my tongue, and was sucked down my throat. Panic hit me like a thousand volts. I hacked and hacked, desperate to expel it, but without air, the coughs petered out to tiny wheezes.

I inhaled again, and only sucked the dark matter deeper. I felt it seeping down my air tube until the tingle spread out in my lungs. My throat made a pathetic choking sound.

And then, when I thought I would die like this, it soaked in and seemed to merge with my insides. I felt my lungs expand, followed by the wash of cool air deep in my chest, and I gasped, relief buzzing to my fingertips. I opened my eyes a crack, and the film coated my eyes like a contact lens.

Now you will finally see, Leona.

Lightheaded from lack of oxygen, I leaned against the counter, panting like I’d just run a marathon.

“So . . . some advice,” said Megan, “don’t look down.”

I looked down.

Big mistake.

The rest of my body stood below me, severed right through my stomach, providing me a clear view of knotted gray intestines, pinkish kidneys, a white coating of subcutaneous fat.

And then I
did
lose my dinner. Right into the sink, I blew chunks. The vomit came out in a frothy pool, and as I stared down at the basin through a queasy fog, it turned invisible before my eyes and slipped down the drain.

“What the fuck?” I gasped, spitting invisible spit.

Below me stood two stumps of legs, severed at the thigh, then the knee, then the ankle.

Then all traces of me were gone. Five and a half feet down to the floor, nothing in between. I appeared to hover in space. I held up my arms.

Nothing. Not even a hint.

I raised my gaze to the mirror, and for the first time in two and a half months, I didn’t flinch away.

I had no reflection.

“Stop bumping me,”
Megan hissed next to me, her voice a disembodied whisper as we crossed the sleepy UCSB campus toward Broida Hall, both of us invisible. After I’d gone, she’d done it too.

“Don’t . . . don’t want to lose you,” I whispered back through chattering teeth.

I was invisible.

And naked. I knew no one could see me, but the damp, salty air slipping over every inch of my skin
made me intensely self-conscious. Even as I shivered, heat lingered in my cheeks. At two a.m. on Friday night—Saturday morning actually—a thick fog swam through the deserted campus and formed orange halos around lamps spaced every hundred feet. Toes numb as ice, my bare feet padded on the cement.

I didn’t hear Megan’s footsteps.

Suddenly, I panicked and veered into her again, nearly running her into the grass alongside the footpath.

“Will you
stop?
” she said, shoving me back onto the path. “Are you trying to grope me or something?”

“I thought you d-d-ditched me,” I stammered.

“I’m not going to ditch you,” she said. “You want to hold hands? Let’s hold hands.”

So we held hands.

At least now she couldn’t pull a prank on me.

“Someone’s coming,” she said, elbowing me in the ribs.

We fell silent.

A figure materialized out of the fog, coming straight at us. A guy. A cute guy. A college student, backpack slung over his shoulders, hands jammed in the front of a fraternity hoodie.

And here I was, butt naked.

Blushing hotly, I edged closer to Megan to let him pass us, which he did without a glance our way. Not five feet from me, so close I heard the hip hop blaring in his ear buds. Not a glance back, either.

“Watch this,” Megan whispered, releasing my hand. A moment later, a discarded Gatorade bottle levitated in front of me. 

“Wait, what are you—?”

Without warning, the Gatorade bottle sailed past the guy and clattered on the path in front of him. He halted, stared at the bottle, then yanked out his ear buds and spun around.

“Are you
crazy?
” I hissed, pushing Megan up the path.

But the guy didn’t follow us. He gave the campus another scan and continued on his way, his gait more anxious than before.

Megan giggled.

“You can’t do that,” I scolded, feeling around for her hand again. “We’re not going to be like that.”

“Come on, it’s funny.”

“It’s
mean
,” I said. “And if we get found out . . .” I let the sentence hang unfinished.

We reached the physics building, and Megan pulled away from me.

The door gave an ominous rattle, but didn’t open.

Locked.

A lobby inside lurked in semidarkness, dim hallways leading to the elevators. Blinking red LEDs gave away the locations of a pair of security cameras. Seeing them gave me satisfaction.