The Extraordinaries

Chapter Twelve: Annie

I spend the first hour or so of the bus ride staring out the window. I haven't been on any sort of transportation since our last performance tour when I was Elise's age. I'd forgotten how relaxing it can be to watch everything go by outside. It's not much, just rows of trees and never-ending sky, but it's hypnotizing after a while of watching, and I can't make myself stop.

I don't really want to look away from it. The inside of the bus makes me nauseous, the sight of all that is my life. Elise, curled against the window, breath fogging up the glass. I think she's asleep. And then the old man, withering away with his torn hands turning the wheel.

Connor, behind him, won't stop looking at me. I'm used to it, of course. I'm used to people staring at me as if they can't quite believe that I'm real. I'm a Dancer; that's what I was born to do. But the way he looks at me is creepy, fixating, and I don't like it. He gnaws hungrily on his lip, and I wish Fiona would make him stop.

We've been driving for a long time when Fiona finally speaks. She swivels slightly in her seat so she can look at us, and says, "You girls doing all right?"

I want to pulverize her. She shouldn't be here, bribing us with tickets, ignoring her husband's eyes on me, her perky voice ringing in my ears like a scream.

Elise sits up. "I'm all right," she says. "Annie?" Her voice is timid. I think of earlier, what she told me. About how much pain I caused her, just by being there. I don't want her to be sad, but I don't want her to love me either.

"Fine," I say.

"So you're sisters, you said?" Fiona asks, her voice filled with far too much brightness. This is what I can't stand about ordinaries: small talk is so exciting to them, as if every tiny little thing actually matters. Because to them, these things are big.

They don't know what it means to feel something real.

"No," Elise says, and I heave a sigh. "Not related at all, actually," she says. She won't look at me; she knows I don't like this.

"Oh!" Fiona trills. "Well! I always thought you were sisters, living just the two of you. Just flatmates, then?"

I worry that Elise will make something up, telling Fiona the things she only wishes were true, but she doesn't dare. "Yes," she says. "Just ordinary flatmates."

I snort. Ordinary. Right.

"You look quite young to be on your own," Fiona comments. "Skipped university, did you?"

I roll my eyes. University. In another life, I could be in my last year of it right now, studying medicine or politics or economy like an ordinary Irish girl. My parents already had a fund for me when I left home to join the studio, but they must have gotten rid of it by now.

"We never needed it," Elise says. "We're performers."

I give her a look out of the corner of my eye, but she doesn't notice. I can't believe she's just giving our information to Fiona, as if there's nothing at all different about us.

"Performers!" Fiona cries out. "Connor, they're performers!"

"I heard," Connor says drily, giving me a tiny smile.

I don't know why, but I smile back.

"What do you do?" Fiona asks. "Sing? Dance? Acrobatics?"

"We do everything," Elise says. "We're all-kinds performers." I can hear something in her voice, an edge of humor, which is how I know she's playing with Fiona a little. There's no such thing as all-kinds performers, obviously, but from the elated expression on Fiona's face, I can tell our cheery neighbor doesn't know this.