Grounding

Cynthia was surprised that no one seemed to notice her. Nobody glanced into her face and saw a thousand others. Or perhaps they did, and that was why she was so well hidden in broad daylight.

People see what they want to see. It should have concerned Cynthia that the voice in her head sounded like Dr.Kane.

Justin led her onto the subway, and away from the facility and his usual haunts. When they disembarked, in a neighbourhood she did not recognize, he stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled boyishly. “We can go to Starbucks first, if you want.”

Cynthia shrugged, but Justin was already crossing the street, weaving around cars.

When they left Starbucks, coffees in hand, he took her down a system of side streets into a wealthy neighbourhood. They passed a billboard, and though Cynthia’s head turned, Justin’s didn’t. She wondered how many times he had seen her face suspended on a high rise.

Cynthia brushed her finger over her brow, down her nose, over the bow of her lips. It was something she did in times of stress, to trace the face she really has beneath layers of make up and spray paint, and never in front of anyone. (Somewhere alone the line, Justin stopped counting as someone.)

“Number twenty three,” Justin said, and stopped.

It was more than the series of boarded up windows that presented the house as out of place. The brick was unwashed, the bushes uncut.

Justin pulled the address from his pocket.

“It’s dated a while back,” he said, passing it to Cynthia.

Though she stared at the address, the letters refused to resolve into words.

Above, the sky split into a thousand sunset colours that arced and swooped like the paths of birds.

Text by Lucie MacAulay