Chaos (Lanie Bross) - Lanie Bross Page 0,20

She remembered: black water glittering in the moonlight, boats silhouetted against a sky sprinkled with stars.

The next thing she remembered was waking up in her bed Sunday morning.

How could an entire weekend just … disappear like that?

She felt someone approach. When she opened her eyes, she saw that a middle-aged woman had sat down next to her. Her hair was long and black. She looked vaguely familiar, but Jas couldn’t place her. When the woman caught Jasmine staring, she smiled. There was a gap between her front teeth.

“It’s going to take awhile to clean up this time,” she said, nodding toward the streets outside the window.

Jasmine glanced out and saw a crew with a bulldozer pushing a pile of brick and concrete out of the intersection. The building at the corner was missing its entire facade. Twisted wires and metal stuck out at odd angles from where the bricks had been.

“You probably weren’t even born yet when the last big one hit in ’89 …,” the woman said.

When she stared a little too long, like a peddler waiting for a handout, Jasmine gestured to the earbuds in her ears, universal sign for sorry, I can’t hear you—even though she could hear perfectly. The woman smiled and made a gesture of understanding. The feeling was still there, and the déjà vu of the situation unnerved her. It was important, but why? There was something there, behind the woman’s eyes, that reminded Jas of someone. But the association remained out of reach.

When the bus stopped at the Richmond playground, Jas disembarked. She was still wondering about the woman, trying to place her. She turned left and started across the street. She’d stop at home. Maybe Luc had finished his mysterious business and decided to crash.

The noise of the city closed in around her: construction trucks lifting and moving big chunks of fallen buildings, jackhammers, sirens wailing in the distance. She turned up her old MP3 player, despite the fact that she hadn’t used it since a horrible pop phase when she was twelve. Since then, she’d gotten into live music and old records. But the music drowned out the noise, and her sunglasses helped with the glare.

Too bad there was nothing she could do about the smells. She’d never noticed how much the city reeked: scorched wires from a partially burnt storefront, the sharp bite of gasoline, and fresh-baked bread. At least it felt good to be walking. Her body felt lighter, full of energy, like she’d gulped down multiple cups of coffee.

She turned up Lake Street and climbed the steep hill, practically without feeling it. Luc left in pursuit of her attackers. That meant he knew them, or at least why they’d gone after Jasmine.

We’re only doing what we must.

Haven’t they taken enough already?

The exchange made no sense to her. Okay, so if they were doing what they must, it meant they were acting on someone’s orders. Had someone set up a hit or something on her?

She shook her head reflexively. That kind of thing happened in Mafia movies, not in real life. Besides, she hadn’t hurt anyone and didn’t owe anyone money.

Then she thought of T.J., but she quickly dismissed that thought. Yeah, he’d been a little pissed when she dumped him. But he wasn’t dangerous, even if he was kind of a dick.

There was something she was missing. And she was sure it had to do with what had happened over the weekend, the huge black fog in her memory.

She jogged up the stairs to their apartment building and looked around once before she slipped inside, in case she was being followed. Then she scolded herself for being melodramatic. There had to be a rational explanation for everything that had happened. The holes in her memory. Luc’s urgent mission. The change in her mind, the sharpness of her hearing.

Because if there wasn’t a rational explanation, it probably meant she was going crazy.

“Luc?” Inside the apartment, she took out her earbuds. It was very quiet. She could tell immediately he wasn’t home.

But someone had been here. The certainty swept over her like a wave. Things looked out of place, rearranged. But maybe that was another aftereffect of the earthquake? She hadn’t paid too much attention yesterday.

Still, she double-checked that the door was locked behind her and all the windows were secured. The door to her room was open, and she peeked her head in before pushing it all the way open, as though she expected someone to jump out at