12. Myles
MYLES
“Aren’t you bored?” Echo asks.
“Nope,” I answer.
“But aren’t you literally the only person in your dorm right now?”
“Other than the staff, yeah.”
“How does that even work? Is the entire house staff there to wait on you hand and foot?” She snort-laughs. “I guess that’s not so far-fetched when you go to a school that has house staff. I probably wouldn’t have dropped out if I had cleaners and chefs at my disposal.”
“Yeah, you would have,” I say with a grin. “But you woulda waited until the end of the semester so you could get your money’s worth first.”
“Yeah, probably,” she agrees. “But I don’t understand how you’re not bored. I’d go crazy if I was in a giant dorm all by myself.”
“That’s because you’re an extrovert who likes people. I’m an introvert who hates most people, so this is pretty much my dream come true. And it’s only been a day since I got back. I have lots of time to worry about being bored. Right now I’m still decompressing from being home.”
“Speaking of being home,” I can practically hear Echo making a face. “I gotta go in a few minutes.”
“Your cousin’s wedding reception is tonight, right?”
“Yup.” She sighs.
“Isn’t this the cousin who’s been married twice already?”
“Three times,” she corrects. “This is number four, but to groom number two. So we’re at four weddings and three grooms.”
“She’s really taking the recycling thing to the next level if she’s reusing grooms.”
Echo snickers. “Thank fuck I didn’t have to go to the actual wedding this time and only have to worry about the reception tonight.
But seriously, what kind of person doesn’t invite their extended family to the actual wedding and dinner but expects us to show up with gifts in hand for the last few hours of the party? And there’s no open bar.”
“Did you end up getting her something?” I ask, remembering her rants from a few weeks ago about having to buy another gift for a duplicate wedding that she wasn’t even invited to.
“I did,” she says with a laugh. “I printed one of their wedding photos from their first ceremony and stuck it in a frame. She’s done this three times already, so that’s all she gets.”
“She’s going to be pissed.”
“Good. Maybe she won’t bother inviting me to wedding number five.” She huffs out a sigh. “And my family says I’m the one ruining the sanctity of marriage by wanting a wife and not a husband. But enough about that because we both know I won’t stop if I start.”
“Maybe one of the bridesmaids will be looking for a little sapphic fun,” I say. “Didn’t you hook up with one of them at her last reception?”
“Yup.” I can hear her grin. “And she’s going to be there again tonight. Hopefully she’s looking for another walk on the wild side.”
“Here’s hoping.”
“Have you heard from Cipher?” she asks.
“Not really.”
“Yeah, me either. Last time I talked to him, he said he’s having some issues with one of his roommates.”
“He is?”
“Yeah, he didn’t tell me too much, just that the guy hasn’t paid his share of the rent for the last few months, and he’s also refusing to move out, so they’re basically dealing with a squatter while they have to come up with extra cash to make sure they don’t all get evicted.”
“Damn, I hope they get it sorted out soon.”
“Yeah, me too. I’m so glad I live alone.” She lets out a disgruntled-sounding sigh. “Ugh. I really have to go.”
“Have fun, and good luck.”
“Thanks, and I plan to. Chat soon.”
“Soon.”
The line goes dead, and I pull my headphones off and put them on the charging stand on my desk. Leaning back in my chair, I absently reach for my shadow cube.
I’m just closing my hand around it when I pause, a metaphorical light bulb going off over my head.
I’ve spent the last two days trying to figure out why he solved the cube and what any of his actions mean. I’ve analyzed which colors were facing out, the angle it was placed at, anything I could to try and make sense of the message.
What if the cube wasn’t the message? What if it was just showing me the real message, and it was a clue of sorts?
Letting go of the cube, I take a closer look at the statue it was moved next to. The character is dressed all in black with a billowing cape. The cube is all black when it isn’t heated. Could that be the connection?
I pick up the statue, and a tiny flash of light reflects off something under the cape.
“What the fuck?” I mutter and tilt the statue to angle the cape and body toward the light.
My jaw actually drops when I see the small black square tucked up under the cape. Is that a camera?
Distracted, I dig through my desk drawer with my free hand and fish out a small flashlight. I click it on, then shine it in the space between the cape and the body of the statue.
“Holy shit.”
It is a camera. I don’t know a ton about surveillance equipment, but this one is exceptionally small, and the little wire dangling off the end of it and wrapped around the hilt of one of the swords looks like an antenna.
A heavy feeling settles in my gut, and I dig a magnifying glass out of my desk drawer. Carefully, I lay the statue on its side and hold the magnifying glass over the camera, shining my flashlight on it.
It looks like there’s some writing on the underside of it, like a series of raised numbers on the black plastic casing. Is that a serial number? Or maybe it’s a product number?
A smart person would rip the camera out and destroy it to make sure their stalker can’t see into their room anymore. But for a smart guy, I tend to do a lot of dumb shit, and that includes not touching the camera and leaving it where it is.
I do, however, set the statue down and face it toward the wall. I have no clue if he’s watching me right now, but I need a few minutes to think before I decide what I’m going to do.
Still reeling from my discovery, I open the web browser on my computer and type in the numbers I saw on the camera to see if it’ll give me more information.
It’s a product code, and the image it brings up is identical to the camera in my statue. I click on the link so I can read the specs.
Unsurprisingly, the camera is a top-of-the-line model with a crap ton of features.
The signal range is huge, easily covering the whole campus, so that doesn’t really help narrow down who my stalker is or where he lives.
It also has a two-year battery life, automatic night vision, a seventy-two-hour internal memory, a thirty-day cloud memory, a two-way speaker, and a two-way microphone.
The fact that he’s been watching me through the camera doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it should.
In fact, it’s a bit vindicating because it proves that I’m not crazy, and the feeling of being watched I’ve been having while in my room alone is real.
He has been watching me, and he’s probably listening to me too.
That should terrify me, or at least piss me off, but it doesn’t. For reasons I’m not ready or willing to explore, it actually makes me feel safe.
I might not know who he is or why he’s watching me, but he’s proven more than once that he doesn’t want to hurt me.
At least not yet. He stopped those guys when they attacked me while I was on my run, and he could have done literally anything to me in the woods, and no one would have ever known, but he didn’t hurt me.
I’m not fooling myself into thinking he’s doing this for altruistic reasons or that he’s not at least a little off his rocker if he’s getting his jollies watching me live my boring life, but my instincts are telling me he’s not the one I need to worry about.
That could change, but right now, he’s not a threat compared to the multiple people who seem hell-bent on deleting me from the census. And knowing he’s watching me so closely is weirdly comforting.
Even if he’s not the good guy my brain seems to want him to be, he’s had plenty of chances to hurt me, and he hasn’t. And he stepped in and helped me once. Maybe that was a fluke and he’ll just sit by next time and let the Kings or whoever is after me finish the job, but maybe he won’t.
And if I’m being honest with myself, the fact that he’s put so much effort into watching me is more than a little thrilling.
No one has ever really paid attention to me. I’m that guy who can blend into the background without trying, and no one ever looks at me twice, especially not here.
When I was still in public school, things were different. I wasn’t the invisible guy there. I wasn’t popular or anything, but I had friends.
Then I was forced to go to boarding school, and I went from a small fish in a small pond to a tadpole in the ocean.
No one at boarding school would talk to me, not even my roommates, because I was new money.
My humble upbringing was considered a mark against my character, and my classmates weren’t shy about telling me exactly what they thought of my family and our jump from barely middle class to the 0.
1 percent. In any other scenario, we would be success stories.
At boarding school, we were interlopers who didn’t belong in their world.
Things are pretty much the same here at Silvercrest, except instead of everyone knowing how I haven’t always been part of the privilege club that everyone except us first gens were born into, no one has any idea who I am or what my story is.
I don’t talk to people unless I have to, and I don’t offer any information about myself unless directly asked.
It’s kept me off the radar, and while it’s preferable to how it was, the outcome is the same.
I’m invisible to everyone except those in my immediate vicinity, and even then, I imagine most of my dorm and classmates would have trouble picking me out of a lineup if asked.