her always played the victim, even when they got exactly what they deserved.
Luke and Justin were already collecting their things. Ten minutes remained of the period but there was no obligation to stay. Buttercliff wouldn’t stop them. They had their victory, and now they were fleeing the scene of the crime.
‘Where you guys heading now?’ asked Wesley.
‘We’ll report this to Tru and catch you later,’ said Luke, shouldering his bag. ‘Drop us a message when you’re finished at your new job or whatever.’
‘We could—’
They turned their backs on him and left, as if Wesley had ceased to exist.
At the back of the room, Kat’s convulsions had turned violent, her breathing sharpened into high-pitched rasps. Other people in the room could no longer pretend they didn’t notice, tearing their eyes away from the photograph preserved on their screens to watch the real thing.
‘Live demonstration!’ crowed one of the boys.
Buttercliff saw what was on their screen and gasped, fumbling for the mouse to close it.
Finally, Kat’s head jerked up, and she stared at her hands gripping the desk, like she didn’t recognise them. Her knuckles had bleached so white it was almost as if Wesley could see right through them.
A lump caught in his throat, and he made to stand up. It was different, seeing a victim in real life and not inside a computer screen. Before he could move, Kat swept everything off the desk into her bag and stood up sharply enough for her chair to clatter over.
‘Who is responsible for this?’ shouted Buttercliff.
Kat ignored him, everyone, and rushed for the door. As she passed Wesley, something about her changed that sent goosebumps skittering across his skin. The light from the windows seemed to consume her entirely, shining through her body as if it was made of glass. By the time he had blinked, trying to blot the illusion, she was out of the door and out of sight.
The room fell quiet around him. Buttercliff glanced around in bewilderment, and then returned to his seat at the front of the class to resume his game. Everybody at a computer closed the website, the email, and returned to whatever they had been doing before as if nothing had happened at all.
2
Nothing and Nobody
The world spun around Kat’s head as she fell to her knees in the toilets. Every atom in her body seemed to be in open rebellion, trying to shake loose its bonds. The smell of bleach scorched her nose, stinging eyes already raw with tears. The contents of her bag had spilled across the grimy tiles.
‘Stop crying,’ she whispered, forcing herself back onto her feet.
Before she could catch sight of herself in the mirror above the sinks she clenched her eyes shut. For a bizarre moment back in the classroom she had thought herself to be disappearing. She was sure she had seen through her hands, through skin and flesh and bone, and had gripped the desk in a last-ditch attempt to anchor herself to the world. A trick of the light, surely, caused by tears blurring her vision.
So why was she so frightened to face herself now?
Kat wiped her face with trembling fingers, and she could feel them, solid matter against her skin. It gave her the courage she needed to open her eyes.
A ghost looked back. Her reflection was exactly where it should be, but it was spectral; a sunblind afterimage. Her body had faded, just a little. Haltingly, she turned her head side-to-side, and the reflection mimicked her as it should. Through herself she could see the toilet stalls behind and the crinkled cleaning notices fixed on their doors, but she retained enough substance to render their words indecipherable.
The panic caged inside her chest was a feral creature, and now it threw its body against the bars. Whenever it tried to claw its way out Kat tried to imagine her breathing as a moustachioed tamer jabbing at it with a kitchen chair. Now the beast caught it in its jaws and splintered the wood into matchsticks.
Irrationally, she spun around, expecting to find her body splayed on the tiles. She had died and become a wayward spirit. It was the only rational – ha! – explanation. But there was nothing there.
‘That was Backwash season one, episode five,’ she told herself, trying to keep calm. ‘“Zenon’s Temporary Demise”.’
A sob split her open. Despair and horror poured out in a scream, long and dreadful, resounding around the toilet walls.
It only stopped when a boy pushed through the door.
Wesley tried