Coalescence ➳ H.S.

Two: Desk Job

Clarine's POV

It's a universally known fact that if you're in the police force and can't fight crime, you end up fighting the copying machine when the toner runs low.

Quentin Sperling sat my sister and me on his lap every day before going to work and would tell us, "Clarine...Hyacinth, you're my little girls. Always will be." He was the only one that treated us equally special—as if both of us had something the other couldn't offer the world, and that made us different.

But let me be the first to tell you that being a fraternal twin to someone twice as talented and charismatic was absolute hell. The story of us was disgustingly cliche: what I lacked in talent, she made up for in everything else. I wasn't the ugly twin or the twin that got the bad genes—I had blonde hair while she had red hair, and we both shared brown eyes—but it was definitely Hyacinth that stood out in a crowd. My father was a man that could find qualities in me—sympathetic, sincere and underestimated—that were not present in my sister—and he never told her those qualities for my sake.

I would watch him every morning as he swirled his coffee with a teaspoon. It always struck me as curious, how he handled the little silver utensil with such care despite it being inanimate, but as I grew older I realized that because Felicity Sperling—maiden name Johnson; daughter, mother, wife, sister, aunt and human rights activist—had died while escorting a village of children to a refugee camp in Sierra Leone when I was only twelve, it made sense that he was trying to compensate for her loss for all us—himself included.

Three years ago I stood at the podium on my high school graduation day. My speech consisted of three simple sentences: "Being scared and not being ready are two different things. Though I may be scared, I know I'm ready. Thank you to everyone for helping me realize the importance of being earnest."

My father asked me what I had meant. While my sister flailed around her acceptance letter to a journalism internship in Toronto, I showed him my acceptance letter into the police force. He pursed his lips and cried, but the tears that fell from his eyes were not ones of pride.

I think he thought I'd end up like my mother.

Now, at 8:43 at night, I sat at a grey desk—fourth down from the vending machine and six left from the closest bathroom—with a picture of my sister and my father placed specifically in the left hand corner so that when I looked up, I'd be able to see them. At least I wasn't in the line of fire—the only thing I'd be fighting was the traffic to the coffee machine during breaks.

I sorted through the stack of case files left on my desk, all titled "Evans, Bria Abigail". It was a hefty pile that already made me want to beg Tomislav for another shot in the field. I knew he wouldn't allow it though; destroying a precinct car and two news stands, on top of calling in the wrong code for a crime (I called in a shooting instead of a break and enter, which landed me in a very sticky situation) and accidentally shooting a team mate in the foot, was more fault than could be tolerated.

Upon sifting through her information, I noticed that Bria was closely associated with a man named Harry Styles. The name rang a bell—I heard it on the radio in the afternoon. Something about prison break and nudity, if I recalled correctly. The picture in his file was that of a tired young man, spectacle-clad eyes encompassed by purple-tinged circles, with tattoos littered across his bony torso and a glare that scared even myself. His hair was straight, dark black, went down to his shoulders, and a thickening beard grew on his face. He looked so distinct that I wondered how he even managed to escape without being recognized by the authorities.

Bria and Harry were very much a dynamic duo, carrying out cons in disguises such as event planning, lottery tickets, and even Girl Guide cookies with fake names and card numbers. The list was quite impressive up until Harry was thrown in jail after being caught speeding down the Interstate 5* towards Washington. After that, Bria went off the grid with no trace of her or her known aliases. It was only logical to assume the two were going to meet up again now that he was out of jail.