Page 27 of Hunt

Her frown deepened. “What do you mean?”

“Ah, okay, so can you say…get me a,” someone coughed on the other side of the shelves, and I clammed up. “Don’t worry.”

Her eyes flicked to the students nearby, then leaned forward to whisper, “Do you want me to get something that’s not legal?”

I placed a finger over my lips to hush her, then ripped a corner off my lined writing pad and wrote,handgun?I held it up, and once she read it, I stuffed it into my mouth, chewed, and swallowed.

“For protection,” I whispered, and she nodded.

“I can organize something,” she mouthed.

“How much?” I rubbed my fingers together to indicate cash.

“I’m not sure. “ I’ll get back to you,” she said quietly, glancing again at the students behind the shelves. “Protection from who?”

“Everyone,” I stated as I pushed my chair back and stood. She looked at me as if I were about to pack my things and leave. Instead, I stepped to the end of the bookshelf and peered down the aisle to see who was lingering.

As I suspected, it wasn’t anyone to worry about, but it annoyed me that they were nearby.

When I sat back down, “After work, when it’s dark at the bus stop.” She nodded in understanding, but remained quiet, so I added, “It can take a while to show sometimes, and weird people hang about in the shadows.”

She nodded slowly as she grew distant, which made me a little nervous, so I kept talking.

“Sometimes I walk through the college gardens at night for a shortcut back to my dorm,” I added.

Finally, she spoke, “Do you have a locker to hide it in at work?”

I nodded. “Yep.”

Silence fell as she flipped the page in her book and started perusing the text and diagrams, and I assumed the conversation had ended. Someone laughed nearby as a student walked by, scanning the book titles before pausing and sliding out a book.

As soon as they walked away, Cheetos pointed out, “You’d need protections from the,” her face creased into disgust, “Kaisers.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, sighing heavily, wondering if I looked that way when I wrinkled my nose, cringing. “Maybe.”

When I first met Cheetos, I thought she superficially resembled me, and it gave me insight into what other people saw when they observed me in disguise. But the more I got to know her, the less of me I saw in her.

She was a genuine, socially awkward geek girl with a touch of enochlophobia and an odd little tic. Probably spent her spare time alone reading books or spying on people from a distance, wishing she were normal.

She was a genuine geek girl, whereas geeking out was my costume. We weren’t the same people, but she was the perfect person to draw ideas on how Riley should behave.

“Are your grades good?” I asked her. “You don’t go to class, so you’d miss out on some things.”

“I go to some classes. Not many. And my grades are good,” she replied again. There’s a lack of detail. “Straight A’s.”

“Oh, great,” I replied awkwardly. I liked Cheetos, but I still struggled to relax in her company. However, that’s because it took me a while to trust people.

“Is that your natural hair color?” she posed, out of nowhere.

“Um, yes,” I said, my cheeks burning. I was good at keeping my hair appointments and touching up the sliver of blond that came through at the roots. I’d been to the hair salon recently, so I knew it was fine, but it still concerned me.

“Huh,” she sighed strangely.

What did she mean by “huh”? Did the hairstylist miss some blond hair? She seemed thorough, but sometimes it was hard to tell. Or perhaps some of the hair color had faded. Shit. I hadn’t noticed brown hair dye in the shower water. “Why?”

“Oh, just wondering,” she stated, freaking me out.

I couldn’t take it anymore. “I need to use the bathroom,” I told her, and I quickly left the table, practically running to the nearest bathroom.

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