FICTION / Thrillers / Psychological

The hallway between third and fourth period was, by Delaney Quinn's estimation, approximately forty-seven people too loud.

She pressed herself against the cold bank of lockers and counted. She did not count people, she was not that strange, but she counted the items on her checklist, running her pen down the laminated card she had made at home. Water purification tablets: check. Insect repellent rated for tropical climates, DEET concentration above thirty percent: check. Secondary insect repellent, citronella-based, for skin areas too sensitive for the first: check. She had a system. She had always had a system.

Around her, the corridor moved like a single organism made of backpacks and laughter and the squeak of trainers on linoleum. Carmen Davies was performing in the centre of it, the way she always performed, arms thrown wide as she recounted something to a semicircle of girls who leaned in and laughed on cue. Delaney watched the laugh travel, mouth to mouth, like a wave. She had never been part of a wave.

Antimalarial tablets, she wrote in the margin beside item twelve, confirm dosage schedule with Dr. Coleman. She had already confirmed it twice. A third confirmation felt prudent.

“The Amazon,” her mother had said when Delaney first mentioned the trip, back in September, the permission slip not yet signed. “That's very far.” As though Delaney did not know how far it was. As though Delaney had not already spent three evenings reading about tropical disease vectors, emergency extraction procedures, and the seventeen species of tree frog whose brilliant colouring indicated highly effective toxins. She knew exactly how far it was. Distance was quantifiable. Distance was the kind of danger she could plan for.

It was the other kinds of danger that kept her up.

She moved through a gap in the corridor traffic, angling toward the water fountain. Item nineteen, hydration habits: set up early— and almost made it.

“Hey—”

The collision was brief. Delaney's shoulder met something solid, her folder went sideways, and thirty-two pages of research notes—laminated research notes, because humidity—fanned across the hallway floor in a slow, humiliating bloom.

She was on her knees before the apology had fully left her mouth. “I'm so sorry. I wasn't looking, I'm sorry—” She gathered pages with both hands, not looking up, cataloguing by instinct. Amazon river system overview, page one through six. Species identification quick reference. First aid for envenomation. Hospital nearest to base camp coordinates.

A pair of pristine trainers stood at the edge of her scattered papers. They did not move to help.

“It's fine,” said a voice above her, slightly impatient.

Delaney looked up.

Jade Mercer looked down with an expression that was entirely genuine in its unbotheredness. 

“Sorry,” Delaney said again, to Jade's back, because Jade had already turned and rejoined the wave and had been absorbed by it. Within seconds she was laughing at something unrelated to Delaney.

Delaney sat back on her heels with her folder and her pages and the quiet, familiar feeling of having been a minor inconvenience in someone else's day. The linoleum was cold through her uniform trousers. Around her, feet changed direction to avoid her. She was a thing to route around. She was furniture.

She put her checklist in order. Alphabetical would not work, try categorical.

The Amazon trip had been Mr. Newman's idea. Extra-credit fieldwork, he had called it, for students with proven academic commitment and a capacity for independent observation. Twelve students, two weeks, a research station outside Manaus with running water and a generator and, according to the brochure, an unparalleled opportunity to see biodiversity at the frontier of scientific understanding. The brochure used the word unparalleled four times. Delaney had counted.

She had signed up because she was exactly the kind of student the invitation described and she knew it, and because some small part of her, the part that made laminated checklists and confirmed dosages three times and had never once been part of a wave, thought that maybe a place where she did not know anyone's name might feel less like being invisible and more like choosing to be alone. The difference was important. She had been telling herself it was important for years.

As she stood, she tucked the folder under her arm and moved toward fourth period, because fourth period started in four minutes and she was never late.

At the bottom of her checklist, below hospital coordinates and above emergency contact numbers (memorize, do not rely solely on phone), she had written one item with no checkbox beside it, the only item on the list she had not been able to bring herself to formally cross off. Come back different.

She had not let herself think too hard about what that meant. Plans had to be specific to be useful, and she did not know yet what different looked like. She only knew that every morning she walked this hallway and every morning the hallway did not notice, and she was so tired of being the kind of person who noticed everything and was noticed by no one.

Four days until departure. Sixty-three items on her checklist, fifty-one of them already ticked.