Encounter on the Bus Part II

Previously on Encounter on the Bus Part I:

“I’m done playing this silly little game where you pretend not to know, and I pretend not to notice." His hand clamped down on her shoulder. “So I’ll make you a deal: I’ll get off at this next stop. You have three hours from then to turn yourself in. After 19:00, there will be consequences to face.”

With that, the bus pulled up to the curb, he snatched up his bag, and was gone just as quickly as he’d appeared. She cursed quietly under her breath, and felt her face grow flushed. How hadn’t she figured it out before? Porcelain skin and icy blue eyes could only mean one thing—a mind reader.

The bus passed the stop at Canada Waters, then New Cross, then New Cross Gate. Men stinking of sweat and substance abuse boarded and left. A young couple with matching frown lines and blotchy red skin doze off a couple of seats back. She rocked back and forth in her seat, clenching her damp rain jacket, listening to them argue. One of them had gotten the wrong can of cat food at the store. She snorted. Dug her fingernails into the flesh of her upper thigh. Chewed at her lip until she drew blood.

When she’s had enough, she hustled off the bus and onto the congested streets one stop too early. Everything was moving, blurring, hazy. She was surrounded by familiar shops and restaurants and pubs, but she recognized nothing in her haste. The smell of wet, molded fruit and fresh pizza clashed together and clouded her nostrils. She collided briefly with a man who smelled of piss and alcohol who begged for rehab money just outside her flat. He flashed his rotting teeth at her and tried to grab her waist, but she shoved him off.

Good God, her neighborhood was shit.

The flat door bolted shut behind her, but the blinds were open.

"Damn." The manila folders on her desk were in disarray and her books were out of order on the shelf. Her hidden stash of weed was no longer hidden. There had to be at least half a gram missing. A picture frame was face down at the foot of her bed in a pile of shattered glass. The lower left-hand dresser drawer—the smallest one—it was cracked open. She reached for the knob on the small drawer and found it sticky with a substance that stank of rotting oranges. Mind readers had been here. She couldn’t remember the name of the chemical, but that stickiness was used to trace fingerprints.

She counted the moments in her head. There were still a couple of hours to sort this all out. It had only been thirty, maybe forty-five minutes since the encounter on the bus? His steely blue eyes and skin whiter than a piece of printer paper. His breath at the nape of her neck. She shuddered. At least she still had a couple of hours to sort everything out. Took a seat on her bed and unfolded a thin, tattered receipt from a few months ago. She kept it tucked in the back pocket of a pair of jeans she seldom washed. Letters were scrawled across the back, but she’d gotten rained on so many times that it was no longer legible. With a sigh, she hung her head.

She shouldn’t have been mixed up in any of this.

But there’d been no choice that night.