How to be Alone

Chapter Seven: Trapped With Me

"How did you get in here? In this room? In this camp? You didn't open the door, did you?" Anna asks me. She feels like she's going crazy. Of course they saw me, a blob of smoke materializing into myself. She must feel crazy. Maybe she thinks she's gone delirious.

"I can't explain," I said. "You need to get out of here first."

I nearly tear off all of my clothes. It's so hot here. "Why?" Ryan asks. "I mean, are we in danger?"

I sigh. I don't know. Maybe. If they were willing to kill me, why wouldn't you two be off the table. Actually, why didn't they kill you to begin with?

"Your dad's waiting for you outside the camp," I say. That's all I could come up with. There's just no time.

I close my eyes instinctively and vanish. When I open them, my eyes adjust to the monotone gray light and a wave of chill washes over my body. I wipe the sweat of my brow and step back. The room is almost too small to jump through, but I leap again. My chest brush against the door because I hadn't jumped high enough to completely clear it, but all it ends up being is smoke lagging behind me. I reappear as soon as I land, and crouch.

It's loud again. People are nearly pushing me over. A man shoves me and he just keeps moving forward. A quiet alarm blares in my ear but it doesn't make the room sound any louder. Finding my bearings, I kneel and turn to the door, trying to open it, but it's locked. Dammit.

"Where did she go?" Ryan asks. "Did you see her, too?"

I can only very faintly hear them talking, but only because they've raised their voices in panic. I need to find a key... Maybe there's one on a jailer, if there is one there. I don't know how it works. I'm not in the military. I feel so stupid because I don't know how it works. I bet Ryan knows. I almost forget that I'm not vanished, that people are rushing past me. Soon enough, I get their attention. A woman calls me out, and the three people closest to her manage to hear her at all. Then, they call it out too, and eventually everyone who was still moving had left the building and there was just me and four other soldiers, staring at me, waiting for something to happen.

"Aren't you dead?" One of them musters the courage to ask. I almost couldn't conjure a plan over the sound of my own heart racing. Maybe I could scare them. Maybe I could take them all out at once. Maybe, actually, maybe I couldn't do anything at all. My hands tremble at my sides.

"Hey, you hear us?" Another one shouts. Sounds like they're getting confident. I need to do something, fake the confidence to do so if I have to. I need to do something.

So, I vanish and just stand there. I don't even know where to go, what to do. I slink around to where one of the soldiers was and stand behind them. I reappear, not sure what my plan really was. They'd all shifted slightly, stepped closer to the cell door.

"That did not just fucking happen."

"You all saw it, right?"

"I'm about to turn and leave. Screw this."

The fourth was silent. She was the one across from the soldier whom I stood behind. She could see me. She was staring. In just a matter of seconds, the others notice this and turn to look as well. I need to do something. I can just keep standing here, looking like an oaf. So I slack my jaw, open it as wide as I can, and give my best Grudge impression, a low bubbly growl.

"What the—" His voice cut off when I vanished again. I noticed that I was holding back a smile, so I covered my mouth and let my lips part in a grin. Maybe now, now that I've appeared behind them, maybe they'll now be facing away from the cell, or at least where I was before. I position myself besides the desk at the entrance to the building and reappear, quickly taking in where they all are. Nobody is looking at me. I scream a blood-curdling, shrill scream, and vanish, leaving them no time to see me. I fall into a fit of laughter again, just imagining what they're thinking, how much that scream must have scared them. Then, I reappear a few feet to my side, just laughing. I know that laughing is scary. Giggling.