it.
Her surname placed her near the foot of the register. Mr Delaney reeled off the names in a near-continuous drawl, punctuated by tired acknowledgements and the beeps of the electronic register.
Finally, he called, ‘Kat Waldgrave.’
‘Here, sir,’ she said.
Mr Delaney waited a beat, and then flicked his eyes up to the class. ‘Kat Waldgrave?’
He spoke the name like it offended him. Kat took a steadying breath and walked towards him, but he aimed his frown right past her.
‘I’m sure I saw her earlier,’ he muttered to himself, and marked her as present.
She might never need another mandatory attendance meeting if she was automatically considered here. It should be a blessing, a superpower she could twist to her advantage. Yet when the bell rang and everybody carefully avoided her while simultaneously not seeing her on their way out, she begged for somebody to concede to her presence.
The usual crowd was heading to English, and she tagged along behind. While the rest of the class took their seats, Kat remained standing at the front of the room. The lesson began regardless, Miss Ellis enthusiastically reciting Shakespeare as if she was on stage. Every time Kat blocked her path the teacher threw her an irritated glance, and then stepped aside to find herself more space.
It wasn’t that she was invisible, Kat was learning. Not quite. Everybody could see her, they just forgot her as soon as they looked. She had become an absence, a void that nobody could tolerate to stare into for even the most fleeting moment.
‘Come on!’ she shouted. ‘I’m right here!’
The Shakespeare didn’t stop. It felt like Kat’s lungs had faded too, the air escaping before she could breathe it, and she ran out into the empty corridor, rushing back to the toilets where this had all started. She slammed into a cubicle and locked the door.
She had thought that being outside and forcing people to see her would snap the fade like an over-stretched elastic band, leave it no choice but to loosen its grip and return her to the world. Seeing its power, its stubborn totality, felt like receiving a death sentence, or worse, being doomed to walk in limbo for the rest of her days.
Home. She wanted to go home, and she knew nobody would stop her. Anxiety begged her to run for it. It was only the thought of meeting the Lonely People that kept her there. One of them had seen her. They might have answers. They might be able to stop this fade.
The door to the toilets creaked open, and Kat listened to a single set of footsteps pace deliberately to her stall.
‘Occupied,’ she said timidly, knowing they wouldn’t hear.
‘My dude, I know you’re in there.’ A girl’s voice Kat didn’t recognise. ‘Open up.’
It was such a wonder to have somebody speaking directly to her that she didn’t think twice, and pulled the door open.
The doorway framed a smaller girl with wavy brown hair and unruly eyebrows, grinning like they shared a secret. Unlike Kat, she wore a skirt with no leggings and shirt sleeves rolled proudly to the elbow. Every inch of her bare, pale skin looked cut from paper, pasted onto reality with too much glue so that the room shone through her.
This girl was fading too.
7
Eurydice
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