Page 11 of The Invisible Roommate
Gerard believed the world to be a study in opposites. Hot had cold. Day had night. Saints had sinners. If fame had made Gerard Wells hypervisible, then by that same line of thought, invisibility should’ve been possible.
It was possible.
Proof—as fantastical as it might be—levitated before him.
“Who are you?” Gerard asked, unwilling to waste time cycling through the stages of denial. For too many years, he’d fought against his own brain. This time, he trusted his unique intelligence.
The robe danced backward before the voice rang out again, throwing itself around the room like a well-practiced ventriloquist. “Don’t concern yourself with that. Just pack your things and get out.”
Gerard noticed the notebook he’d tucked away in the desk was pulled out again and splayed open. FROM THE DESK OF EMORY GRIFFIN.
“Emory?” he asked.
“I said don’t concern yourself with that!” The sleeve swung in apparent frustration and knocked the tea mug over into the sink, shattering it.
Better the mug than Gerard’s face.
“So it is you.” The robe went very still when Gerard said this, which made clear that the mug breaking had been an accident. The invisible man was transparently scared. Gerard asked softly, “What did you do to yourself?”
“Nothing nearly as bad as what I’m going to do to you if you don’t keep your mouth shut about this,” he said. The unseeable threat hung in the air, but the careless words were devoid of malice. Like Emory Griffin couldn’t even hurt a mouse if offered a million dollars.
“Regina said you weren’t mean.” Gerard appealed to the scientist’s humanity.
“Mean? Why shouldn’t I be mean?” Emory asked, voice caught a bit at the end. That slight hitch in breath was an audible crack in Emory’s forced bravado. Gerard sought to wedge his fingers into that crack and break through to this unbelievable person.
“Look, I don’t know what all went down before I got here,” Gerard said, gaining some confidence, “but clearly something has happened to you, and now you’re scared and taking it out on me.” He paused for a moment, waiting for a reaction he wouldn’t be able to see. “I get it. I’m scared, too, but you don’t need to threaten me.”
“I wouldn’t have to threaten you if you’d just do as I say and leave,” he said. There was something about Emory’s voice that didn’t match his words, that made Gerard want to open his arms and invite the invisible man in. But he restrained himself.
“I’m the one who should leave?” Gerard asked. “Where do you expect me to go?”
“Anywhere else but here,” Emory said.
Gerard sputtered. “I have nowhere else to go.”
“I know that’s not true,” Emory rasped.
Gerard crinkled his brow. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Yes, I do,” Emory said, “Gerard Wells.”
The sound of his real name from this disembodied man made his skin crawl, his heart race, and his pits sweat.
“I’m not him, but I get that all the time,” Gerard said, playing it off as he often did when he got stopped in coffee shops or stores. Sometimes people would press and frighten him. Other times people would let it go, yet still, it would take him hours to decompress afterward.
Incorporeal Emory did not let it go. “I found this.” Emory pulled a book out from under the lumpy mattress. It was Gerard’s journal. There was no denying that.
Emory reading the journal meant that he didn’t just know Gerard’s real name.
It meant that he knew Gerard’s secrets, too.
6
ONE WEEK EARLIER
Gerard Wells stood behind a microphone stand with a guitar around his neck on a light-festooned stage before a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden.
The roar of the audience broke the barrier created by his in-ear monitor, and he suffered through the discomfort. Any second, the stage elevator underfoot should’ve descended into a cloud of smoke, allowing him to disappear from the ardent gazes of his fans for one final time. The encore was done. The final night of brother-band We the Wells’s tour was complete. Hiatus was reachable on the horizon.
