The Invisible Read Online Free PDF Page A

organization. To ending them for good.
    Hours later, he wakes to her getting dressed. He pretends he’s asleep, watches her precise movements through slitted eyes, her small hands buttoning the white blouse of her school uniform, her body blotting out the dim winter light coming through the window, leaning over him, his vision bleary and shot through with stars, light coming in around the edges. That’s how tired he is.
    The smell of coffee and he sits up. She’s filled a blue aluminum camping mug with it for him. “Morning,” she says and grins. The light spills through her tangled white-blond hair, and he cannot recall her ever looking more beautiful.
    “Thanks.” He sits up, takes a sip. Black and sweet, three sugars.
    She leans down and fingers a fresh cut above his eyebrow, careful to hold the coffee away from him, not to spill it on the bed. “You okay?”
    “Just a scratch,” he says. “Shallow.”
    Her big blue eyes are playful, capable of detecting people’s bullshit a mile away. Especially his. “Put some disinfectant on it.”
    He nods. “You’re up early.”
    “I have to go,” she sighs. “Math test.”
    “Where do they think you were last night?” Her parents, he means. He’s terrified they’ll find out. Hire a private investigator, then a bodyguard just for her, and a hit man for him. Or more likely, they’ll lock her up at home. Hire private tutors. Keep her forever in that gilded cage of an apartment.
    “At Aaron’s.” She shrugs. “They’re so wrapped up in work, they barely care where I am.”
    She sighs and her breath blows dust motes through the chilly air of the squat. The rattling space heater in the corner does all it can to warm the place, but it’s still cold.
    “Brought you something.” She unbuttons the top two buttons of her cloak, pulls a zippered leather case from her inside pocket and hands it to him. It’s heavy. The stack of bills inside is two inches thick.
    “I can’t keep—” His voice is hoarse now, embarrassing him. In his chest, his heart stutters. A swell of gratitude smacks up against a wall of pride.
    “Don’t. It’s nothing to me. To us,” she interrupts him. “You know that.” She shrugs as if to emphasize how little the money matters, her expression faraway as she walks to the window, checking, he assumes, to make sure she wasn’t trailed.
    His belly rumbles, thinking about eggs in a pan. Butter sizzling. The thought moves him to nod, to tuck the pouch of cash underneath his mattress. He has to take her money. He can’t get by without it. “I’ll pay you back.”
    She doesn’t bother responding. Never does, when he says this.
    “When this is over,” he says, “we’ll go somewhere far away.”
    “Maybe we won’t have to.” She leaves the window and re-buttons her cloak. “The city’s changing. You’re changing it.”
    He nods, humoring her. Knowing there will be a price on his head for eternity here. “Maybe.”
    If he stays here much longer, it won’t end well. No matter how much moving around he does, from apartment to squat, residing farther and farther from the center of the city, their network is vast. The reward for him is substantial. How many South Side kids would rat him out to get enough to buy their families food for a year? “I hope you’re right.”
    Her eyelashes are blond at the tips. He never noticed it before. There are so many things to know about a person. Especially when it’s the person. The one you can’t get enough of. Most people, he doesn’t want to know a thing about. But with her, he catalogues everything. Each factoid given its own drawer in his mind, labeled specially for her.
    How he wound up this hooked on her, of all people, is still a mystery to him. Since he was a little boy he knew what he was meant to do. After his father was killed in front of him, he suspected it would fall to him to do what the police would not.
    A girl, especially someone like her, was never part of the plan. But