Page 1 of The Invisible Roommate

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What happens when a pop star and a scientist are forced to be roommates?

1Gerard

Running away was easy if you’d fantasized about it for as long as Gerard Wells had.

A year and a half he had spent longing for a life unexamined, asking himself, Where would I go? What would I do? Who would I be?

In the dimly lit, sparsely filled cabin of an overnight, long-haul bus rattling through Maryland, he contemplated those questions again. Four hours deep without a phone, what else was he to do?

He used the fold-down tray to organize all the cash he’d withdrawn from the bank over the course of many months and stowed in his trusty fanny pack. He had no wallet. He’d left that behind in the lavish hotel suite. All he had was a single, stuffed-to-the-brim suitcase of clothes tucked in the bus’s cargo hold, and his favorite guitar—which he called Pascal because of the lifelike chameleon painted on the body—strapped into the seat beside him. A nondescript baseball hat was pulled snug over his head of short dark brown wavy hair, and sunglasses covered his hazel eyes, even though it was dark out.

From a second pocket in the fanny pack, he produced a fifth-generation iPod Touch with a partially cracked screen and a pair of wired earbuds. Going off the grid required esoteric technology. Untrackable technology. He scrolled through his music library until he came upon the one song that always quieted his racing thoughts: “Island State of Mind” by Hallowitz & Hart, a one-hit-wonder folk duo from the 1970s that quit the rat race long before their fame fully set in.

Boats and houses built on beams,

Slowly sinking into streams,

Scraping crabs and scraping by,

Beneath the pearly Chesapeake sky

The finger pluck of the guitar and the light drumbeat lulled Gerard into a state of calm. He put their entire debut album on loop and rested his head against the window. Pilled seat fabric scratched at the back of his exposed neck as he closed his eyes and dreamed of what lay ahead.

Eventually, the intense overhead lights rudely ripped him from sweet dreams. The bus pulled into a parking lot somewhere in Salisbury, Maryland. Sunshine struggled to break through on the horizon as he scuttled off the bus and hauled his belongings toward the taxi stand. A soccer field faintly glimmered with morning dew in the distance. A shopping mall sat dormant at his back.

“Where to?” the cabbie asked him once he was settled in the back seat with cushion stuffing poking out of concerning tears by his thighs.

Gerard hadn’t spoken since boarding the bus in Port Authority over six hours ago when the world was still dark, so his words came out in dry, croaking puffs. “Crisfield harbor, please.”

The car jolted into jerky motion. He was used to limos, town cars, tour buses, private jets, and helicopters. Standard modes of transport were rockier than he remembered.

Maryland blinked by out the window. An auto shop, a post office, every fast-food chain Gerard hadn’t been allowed to eat at on his trainer-created meal plan. Even a music store called to him like a siren.

“What’s waiting for you in Crisfield?” the cabbie asked. He had a thick accent that Gerard guessed was German.

“The ferry,” said Gerard, not meeting the cabbie’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He slipped his iPod back out of his bag. A loud plunk came from behind. He hoped Pascal in the trunk would survive the trek unscathed.

“Ferry to…?” the cabbie asked.

“Iping Island,” Gerard said. The Hallowitz & Hart melody floated back through his mind.

The freshest catch, the longest line,

Romance sans a drop of wine,

Bike rides to the ice-cream shop,

Past the graves with stones on top