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Present day
I tail her. The best friend. I call absolute bullshit that she’s not seen or heard from Malia, even though we interviewed her and wiped her memory afterwards – which is my speciality. I don’t trust her.
It’s what allowed me to keep an eye on Malia before she vanished. She has no recollection of kissing or even meeting me. Because I like to operate in the shadows. After we met and she ran off, I caught up with her one more time, and then wiped our interaction from her memory, even as it pained me to do so.
Which is both a blessing and a curse. Yes, there are some clues that point to Malia being the Star, but there’s also evidence that we’re the killers on campus, and that’s a load of shit. So I know not to believe or jump on every little fragment of ‘proof’ that falls into our laps.
I’m just not convinced. But there’s something going on, some mystery surrounding Malia, and I can’t shake the feeling in my gut that she’s tied to all of this, to all of us, somehow. So I’m playing hooky from my duties by taking time off to spy on her so-called bestie.
It sucks that none of us have the ability to read minds or extract the truth from people, but those are skills only our elders possess. I suspect that if we come through with this assignment, we’ll be heavily rewarded with additional gifts though. Vance especially. He has the makings to become an elder – right down to the patronising, assholeish persona at times.
Still, the memory wiping does come in handy, even on a campus where a large percentage of the population are aware of the supernatural world. How else could any university stay open with so many suspicious disappearances, deaths and murders, let alone one which caters to both supes and humans?
The best friend, Summer, catches the ferry to the mainland, which isn’t unusual. Plenty of students at SCU go to the mainland to party on the weekends, especially once they’ve exhausted the island’s somewhat limited nightlife. But she’s not dressed to party, and with the late hour approaching, I highly doubt she’s going shopping.
When we hit the dock in downtown Long Beach an hour later, it’s easy enough to tail her through the city. She takes off on foot, and she never once looks over her shoulder. Why would she? She doesn’t know we’re looking for Malia, and I get the feeling she’s going to lead me straight to her.
At long last.
Malia’s been gone two weeks now and one of us has been tailing Summer at virtually all times. So far she’s given us no leads. Nothing. It’s why Vance insisted we pull back and move on to other leads. As if we have any besides Summer.
Today feels different though. I just had this urge to check in on Summer one last time, and I’m sure it’s going to pay off. She moves with too much purpose to be someone out just to enjoy an evening stroll.
I follow her for about ten minutes towards East Village, stopping when she enters a hospital I’m unfamiliar with. There are close to twenty hospitals in the city so I certainly don’t know them all, but a quick search on my phone tells me that the St. Mary Medical Centre specialises in mental health treatment.
Malia’s in there, I just know it. She has to be. Where else could she be and why else would Summer – the girl with the seemingly picture-perfect life – be visiting here?
I don’t have long to wait to have my hunch confirmed. I remove my earbuds and switch off the music on my phone, cutting off the closing beats of ‘River Run’, to better concentrate.
Within twenty minutes, Summer exits the main hospital entrance with Malia in tow. Well, I guess it’s Malia. She looks nothing like the girl I met on the beach at the party, and my excitement at having found her is quickly doused by concern. Her hair is tied back, lank and greasy, and the once beautiful vibrant ombré is now faded to dull muted tones. She’s wearing oversized sweats which have to be hospital issued on account of the way they hang off her tiny frame. She looks slimmer than I remembered her; scrawny now. And she’s moving with sluggish, jerky, unnatural movements.
My pulse races as the pair of them pass me by without sparing me a glance, though of course neither of them should remember me even if they did happen to look my way.
It’s her eyes which scare me.
They’re completely lifeless and empty – the total opposite of what I remember from our one and only close interaction on the beach.
Summer says something to Malia which I don’t hear, and when Malia doesn’t respond, Summer shakes her head in exasperation. Hooking her arm through Malia’s, she takes off at a brisk pace, practically tugging her down the back streets returning toward the docks.
They’re hurrying to catch the next ferry which leaves in around twenty minutes. I guess they’re going back to Santa Catalina. Home. Which means I could stop following them and just pass the information back to the others, but curiosity gets the best of me. I want to be on that ferry. An hour with nothing to do but talk to each other? I’m bound to find some answers to the questions that are racing through my mind. Like, has Malia really been in a mental institution all this time? And if so, why?
I watch as they take their seats on the ferry, and to begin with I keep a casual distance, looking out over the water towards our destination. I’m close enough to eavesdrop on their conversation…if they were having one.
When we set sail, I causally select a seat on the row behind them so that I can continue to observe and listen in, but not a word passes their lips for the entire journey. It’s odd. Especially for the best friend; she’s always talking.
I can’t help but wonder what the hell happened to put Malia in the hospital in the first place, and what the fuck have they done to our supposed Star?
* * *
“How did it go?” Cove calls as soon as I step through the door, the sound of Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets’ blasting from the speakers in welcome. I shake my head. This song isn’t too bad, but generally speaking, Bhodi has horrible taste in music. Still, it’s not their best song.
I have to shove aside my pang of disappointment at his question. It went well. I found her. I guess. It doesn’t matter that she sat beside her best – seemingly only – friend in the world for an entire hour and didn’t speak one word. Not a single word on the walk from the harbour, up the steep hill back to campus, or a word as they entered her dorm. She didn’t even listen to her music which Bhodi told me she almost always did before she vanished.
The only signs of life I saw were from the way she twitched and constantly looked over her shoulder, like she could sense someone or something following her.
“I found her,” I say, walking past them all sitting on the couch to grab myself a bottle of water from the fridge. Personally, I think the water that comes out of the tap is absolutely fine, but Vance is an entitled asshole who insists we all drink his special bottled shit, and it’s sort of become a habit now.
I twist off the cap, down more than half the contents of the bottle and walk to the lounge area where they’re all waiting, not so patiently, for me. I can see they all want to pounce and start firing questions at me, but they don’t. Their agitation shows clearly in their body language though.
