Page 6 of Hidden

"It wasn't, and we’re identical twins, you idiot.”

I'm already scrolling, not particularly looking for anything specific, just looking. The faces and names move past under my thumb, the new intake sorting itself into types the way people always do when you see enough of them. The ones who came here to disappear. The ones who came here to be found.

Then I stop scrolling.

I don't decide to stop. My thumb just, stops.

The photo is a registration shot, the ones nobody looks good in, flat lighting, a plain background and the mild expression of someone who didn't know what to do with their face when the camera pointed at them. It should be unremarkable. Every photo on this list is unremarkable.

This one isn't.

She's not doing anything. She's just looking at the camera. But there's something in her face, some quality I don't have an immediate word for that makes me feel like she is looking back at me.

Sadie.

I stare at her name for longer than I should, clicking on her profile to see which course she is taking, her hometown, everything the college has for her.

I read all of it, and I remember it all.

I look at the photo again.

She's a freshman. She doesn't know this campus yet, doesn't know where anything is, is probably right now in a dormitory room working out which way is north. She doesn't know my name; she doesn't even know I exist.

By the end of the week, I'll know everything about her.

I lock my phone.

"You've gone quiet," Mason says.

"I'm always quiet."

"A different quiet." He glances at me sideways. "Find something interesting?"

I pocket my phone.

"No," I say.

And that is the first lie I tell him about Sadie. I know it won't be the last.

Two

Sadie

The door closes behind the last of the moving helpers. Then it's just me standing in the middle of the room, as I turn slowly, taking it all in.

This is mine.

This whole small, slightly-smells-of-fresh-paint, wardrobe-door-that-doesn't-quite-close room is mine. There’s nobody else's stuff in it. No one else's schedule on the wall, or dishes in the small sink, or noise coming through from the next room. Well, there is noise coming through from the next room, someone's music with just enough bass to be felt rather than heard, but that's different. That's just the building being alive around me.

Oh, I’m going to love it here.

I drop onto the edge of the bed, and it creaks loudly, which makes me think of things I shouldn’t. Things like how many people have had sex on this bed, I make a mental note to give the bed a deep clean, because I don’t know who’s been sleeping in here.

I reach for my camera. It's the first thing I unpacked. Before clothes, before toiletries, before the small, framed photo I brought from home, the camera came out of the bag and went around my neck.

I brought myself a card reader which I can use if I ever take a picture with my camera and want to send it to a friend. I can connect the SD card to my phone, and my laptop.

I start taking pictures of the room and then walk to the window. It's not a big window, but the evening light is coming through it at an angle that turns the dust motes golden and makes the whole room look like something from a film about someone whose life is just beginning.