The girl reached out and took Kat’s hand even though it hadn’t been offered. Her touch felt electric, like it had always been missing from Kat’s life. Before she could stop herself she lurched forward and pulled the girl into a hug.
‘You can see me.’
Laughing into Kat’s shoulder, the girl squeezed her tight. ‘And I can feel you.’
Kat numbly pulled away. Witnessing the fade in somebody else gave her a sense of vertigo, as if the world was spinning off its axis. She wasn’t alone, and she had never felt so relieved.
‘I hope you washed your hands after whatever you did in there.’ The girl was shorter than Kat, but she held herself like she was much larger, hands on hips and elbows wide. It was like she thought there was too much space in the universe and wanted to claim as much of it for herself as she could. ‘I’m Safa.’
‘Kat.’
‘That I already knew. I still can’t believe it’s actually happened to somebody else at the same time. It’s true what they say about buses.’
‘I still don’t really know what’s happened to me,’ Kat said shyly.
‘You must have some idea. A fade like that,’ said Safa, arching a bushy eyebrow, ‘is brought on by something.’
Kat forced herself to remember that she hadn’t done anything wrong, that she wasn’t being accused of anything. ‘You left me that note.’
‘I’m the only person who can see you now, remember? I spotted you sneaking past Miss Jalloh. Figured I might be able to help. Tell me how it happened.’
It was still humiliating to tell the story of being chased off the Internet, that it could cause something like this, but Safa listened with rapt attention, nodding along seriously like it was a story she’d heard before.
‘I still thought it could all be in my head,’ Kat finished. ‘Until I saw you.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, when I first heard about the fade I thought it was a stupid rumour, or an urban legend,’ said Safa. ‘It had always happened to a friend’s boyfriend’s sister’s wet nurse or whatever. Too good to be true, you know? Then I found the blog, and that’s how I met somebody who swore down it happened to her ex-girlfriend after they broke up. I looked into it – nobody else remembered this girl at all, even people I know were her friends, unless I showed them pictures and made them remember. Even then, they just accepted that she was gone, no body or goodbye note, like it was the most normal thing in the world.’
Kat shivered, and decided to change the subject. ‘You don’t run the blog?’
‘I do now,’ said Safa. ‘It gets passed on to somebody new every time.’
‘If it’s happened to so many people, you must know what causes it.’
Safa moved away to lean against the sinks and Kat followed, worrying for a second that somebody could walk in before remembering it apparently wouldn’t matter. They could never have anything but total privacy.
‘It’s not like catching a cold,’ said Safa. ‘The nature of it means it’s difficult to pass along any concrete info. Best we know is that it seems to happen when somebody feels completely alienated by life. When they lose any tangible connection to themselves and the world. When they absolutely, positively don’t want to be here any more, at least as themselves. They just . . . break free. But not all at once. It’s like gravity stops applying to them, except instead of floating away they begin to fade.’
‘So the fade’s going to get worse?’ said Kat, voicing a fear she had before now tried to suppress. ‘Until I’m just gone?’
‘There’s more to it than that.’
Safa turned to study her reflection in the mirror. She looked at herself with relish, like she’d had a makeover and was admiring the results. It was enough to make Kat realise the truth.
‘You wanted this to happen. You’ve been trying to fade.’
‘I’ve been in the year below you for as long as I’ve been at this school. Safa Hargreaves. Did you know that?’
Kat wracked her brain, but she couldn’t ever remember noticing her. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter, I’m just proving my point. Fading into the background is what the Lonely People is all about.’ When Safa turned around, she was holding a tiny nesting doll locket that hung around her neck, rolling it gently between finger and thumb. ‘Let’s get out of here, it stinks.’
‘But—’
She took Kat’s hand again, and the ecstasy of being touched was too powerful to resist. ‘For the first time in your life you don’t need to hide.’
The corridor was quiet midway through final period, the only sound the muffled voices of orating teachers and unruly classes. As they passed a classroom Safa pushed open the door, hard enough for it to bash against the wall. Inside, the teacher frowned across but kept the rhythm of his ongoing lecture. Safa stuck her middle finger up at him and then laughed.
‘See?’
The school belonged to them, an alternative reality laid close over the one Kat thought she had known. It should have terrified her, but as Safa threw open another classroom door she felt – almost – in control. Almost safe.
Wesley was sure the equation in front of him was unsolvable, a jumble of numbers and letters selected specifically to make him feel like an idiot. He tried for a glimpse of his neighbour’s answers but found them similarly incomprehensible. Maths almost made him pine for that sad little candle flame of self worth that had flickered to life after waxing the car at the dealership, standing back to admire its shine.
His mind turned to Luke and Justin, no doubt sitting together in the upper-set classroom thanks to expensive tutoring and unexpected maths genius respectively. Whatever Tru was planning couldn’t be bigger than #SelloutSelena. They had to be exaggerating to impress him. If they weren’t—
The classroom door flew open and thudded into the wall loudly enough to make him jump. Nobody else did the same, or even looked up from their work. Peering across, there was nobody outside. A gust of wind, maybe.
The equation refused to give up its secret. Wesley growled in frustration under his breath. Most important now was finding Kat Waldgrave and proving that she hadn’t mysteriously disappeared. He could worry about Luke and Justin later.
‘How did you feel, when it happened?’ asked Safa as they strolled away from the maths classrooms.
‘Scared,’ said Kat, as if that did it justice. ‘Like I was coming apart.’
‘After everything that happened I thought you might be relieved.’
‘It’s hard to explain. It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve had abuse online – I was a girl in geek communities, for god’s sake.’ Kat didn’t quite manage to smile. ‘It’s always awful, but you only see how awful when you’re the target. You can’t ignore it when people are saying they want to punch you, kill you, rape you, even when it’s mostly coming from anonymous accounts you know don’t really mean it.’
‘That’s disgusting.’
‘I thought it would be bad for a while and then just fade—’ She pulled herself up at the poor choice of language. ‘Instead it followed me everywhere, even onto the Doctor Backwash forums. I guess my mistake was talking back, expecting other people to defend me. Like, some did, but these communities really just want to pretend everything is okay, that nothing like this happens on their platform. As soon as anything kicks off the good people go quiet so they won’t become targets too, while all the trolls are trying to one-up each other by getting nastier and nastier.’
They had reached the stairs now, their leisurely pace slowly taking them down towards the ground floor.
‘You’re not exactly selling the online experience,’ said Safa.
‘That’s the thing: a lot of the time it was brilliant,’ said Kat, finding it strange to talk in the past tense when only a day had passed since giving up her last online account. So much had changed. ‘I made real friends there, found people in these communities who were like me – who liked me – and I could actually be myself without worrying I was being judged for it. Well, I thought so, anyway. Now I’m not so sure any of it was real.’
‘It sounds like a lot to worry about,’ said Safa. ‘You can see why I asked if you were relieved when the fade started.’
‘Like this isn’t something to worry about,’ said Kat, holding up her hazy hands.
‘It doesn’t have to be.’ Safa had the mischievous grin of somebody used to causing trouble and getting away with it. They had reached the ground floor now, and Kat realised they had stopped outside Miss Jalloh’s office. Safa raised a fist to the door, ready to knock.
Kat froze. ‘You’re about to make a poor life decision.’
‘That’s never stopped me before.’ Safa rapped her knuckles against the foggy glass. From inside they heard Miss Jalloh grunt as she got to her feet. As the teacher’s silhouette filled the window, Kat tried to duck away. Safa caught her sleeve and bundled her into the room as the door opened. Behind them, Miss Jalloh peered blankly into the corridor, before cursing under her breath and shutting them all inside. As she returned to her desk she glowered at them both, and then went back to her paperwork.
‘Keep absolutely still,’ whispered Kat. ‘Her vision is based on movement.’
‘It’s okay, she can’t hear us,’ Safa said significantly louder than was necessary. ‘Can you, Miss Jalloh?’
The teacher pushed her glasses up her nose and began to hum, as if she was trying to drown them out.
‘Two years ago she gave me detention for talking in class when it wasn’t me,’ said Safa. ‘I swore I would have my revenge.’
Kat swallowed hard, remembering she hardly knew this girl or what she was capable of. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Something petty yet satisfying, of course.’
She snatched up a thick set of keys from the desk and threw them to the floor beside Miss Jalloh’s chair. The teacher eyed them accusingly before she bent to retrieve them, coming back up just in time to watch her pen roll off the desk where Safa had batted it like an impish cat.
‘This whole damn place is haunted,’ Miss Jalloh murmured darkly, bowing to pick it up.
That gave Safa the opportunity to scoop the paperwork from the desk, causing Miss Jalloh to cry out in alarm when she resurfaced and found it missing.
Kat couldn’t help but smile. ‘You weren’t joking when you said petty.’
‘Now you know never to cross me,’ said Safa, riffling through the papers.
‘We could take her glasses.’ The way the teacher haughtily looked over them had always rubbed Kat the wrong way.
‘That’s the spirit! But actually, we can’t.’
‘Not petty enough?’
‘Oh, it’s totally petty,’ said Safa, then nodded her chin towards Miss Jalloh. ‘See if you can touch her.’
Emboldened by watching Safa, Kat moved around the desk until she was beside the teacher. The glasses were loose on her nose, but secured by a metallic chain that hung behind her neck. Kat reached for it as gently as she could.
Before her fingers could touch Miss Jalloh’s skin, there was a spark. A sharp burst of energy that made her hand bounce away. The teacher slapped her neck, like a mosquito had bitten her.
Safa grinned at Kat’s outraged surprise. ‘Hate to say I told you so.’
‘What the hell was that?’ Kat rubbed her tingling fingers.
‘A symptom of the fade. There’s a sort of force field around us now. Means we can’t touch anybody who isn’t fading. So nobody, basically.’
Years of being held at arm’s length from other people should have prepared her for this. Seeing it become real was different. It left no possibility to ever break that barrier down.
‘Don’t sweat it, we can still have fun.’ Safa threw the papers she was holding into the air, lifted her arms as they fluttered to the carpet. Miss Jalloh immediately went after them. There was inarguable satisfaction in messing with the teacher who prided herself on being all-seeing, but it lacked the gratification of a fair fight.
‘Now for the coup de grâce,’ said Safa, pronouncing it as literally as possible. She moved around the desk and behind the unattended computer, rapidly clicking the mouse. Kat joined her, but she didn’t recognise the program onscreen.
‘I saw her checking it once,’ said Safa. ‘It controls the bell. There’s ten minutes left of final period, right?’
‘You can’t mess with the bell, you’ll give her an aneurysm.’
Safa clicked. The electronic pips started up. ‘Too late.’
Miss Jalloh shot upright and cried out as if the world was ending, before rushing out into the hallway. They followed, and doubled over with laughter as the teacher went haring towards the main office.
The end of the day always saw classroom doors thrown open immediately, the first wave of kids racing for the exits like rats from a fire, and the early reprieve only made them move faster. Miss Jalloh’s voice came over the loudspeakers, ordering everybody back to their rooms, but nobody was paying attention now.
Despite everything Kat had learned about the fade, or maybe because of it, the rapidly filling corridor made the panic inside her rattle the bars of its cage.
‘Hey,’ said Safa, seeing the expression on her face and taking both her hands. ‘You know the words to “Mr Pretzel’s Patriotic Pastry”?’
It was a song from the musical episode of Doctor Backwash, a rousing march renowned for its earworm chorus. Kat nodded as the crowd began to flow past them.
Safa met her eyes and smiled. ‘Sing it with me.’
‘Wha—?’
‘The US Army loves his pretzels,’ Safa sang at the top of her voice.
‘The working man he loves his pretzels,’ Kat responded without quite the same gusto.
‘The Illuminati loves his pretzels.’
They finished the verse together. ‘Now bow down and eat, eat, eat!’
The corridor was packed, a murmuration of people opening and closing around their invisible force. Kat’s confidence was growing, and as they reached the chorus they sang it together as loudly as they could.
‘Mr Pretzel, he makes lots of nice pretzels,
‘Mr Pretzel, they’re delicious, yum, yum, yum.
‘Mr Pretzel, surrender to his pretzels,
‘Mr Pretzel, you’ll soon be under his thumb.’
By the time the song was finished (neither quite feeling bold enough to a cappella the keyboard solo) the corridor was emptying out. They stood at its centre, clasping each other’s hands between them.
‘You didn’t tell me you were a Backwash fan,’ said Kat breathlessly.
Safa shrugged like a movie mobster, lip curled and shoulders rising to her ears. ‘That song always helps me stay calm when I’m having a little panic.’
More than that, it had been the first time since the fade took hold that Kat hadn’t been terrified of it, a perfect moment that couldn’t have happened without it.
‘Okay,’ said Safa, finally pulling her hands away. ‘So when I invited you to the Lonely People meeting today I kind of forgot they might not be able to see us any more. But we should totally go. There’s still loads you don’t know.’
Kat nodded. Right then she probably would have followed Safa anywhere.