So the passengers on one New Hampshire bound train didn’t think that in one day’s time they would be seeing the face of Iris Hopper everywhere and her person nowhere; people aren’t that negative.

The soon-to-be missing person was a teenage girl just like they all are, one of the six billion that no one will ever notice unless they should fall to the center of something horrible, like a missing person’s case. Just another passenger on another train, sitting alone and riding to who-cares, god-knows-where.

At four PM, she sat quietly on the train, listening to her CD player.

Part of the reason that most people’s eyes skipped over her was that much of her outward appearance seemed to be one big pathetic attempt. Her hair was an obviously fake red, which faded into mousy brown near the roots, her clothes were fairly trendy and just as fairly cheap, she wore black eyeliner and pink lipgloss and carried a purse embroidered with a blue letter “I” that had a lot of dust on it from where she’d set it on the ground one time too many. She never took much care of her things.

But, she was a decent girl and quiet enough and didn’t do anything rude and she had been very polite to everyone else so far, and right now as if to prove this she was patiently staring out the window.

There, beyond the glass, was the world that was going to swallow her up in a few hours’ time.

”

Four PM, and Iris was sort of heading to college.

The “sort of” part came from the fact that she wasn’t actually going to school there, per se, she was going for the weekend to visit her sister, Rowan. Her parents were headed out on a short vacation, and they had come to the enlightened decision that as long as they were going to be abandoning Iris, they had might as well abandon her with Rowan, and give their daughters some nice classic sisterly bonding time. Which wasn’t very kind of them, considering that most of the time the two hated each other.

However, since the enlightened folks in question didn’t believe that there could be any rift between two family members that a little forced time alone together wouldn’t close up, this fact didn’t hold too much sway over them. The Hoppers were a perfect family, as far as appearances went. And besides, ever since Rowan had left for college, when she came back home there had been an uneasy peace between the sisters that Mama Hopper had mistakenly decided obviously proved the phrase “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. Actually, the peace was more like mutual ignoring, born of an unspoken agreement between the two that if they left each other alone it would be OK for both, no loss of limb or anything.

Still, Iris was worried. They would be spending a few days entirely in each other’s company (the folks had forbidden Rowan to do much hanging out with her friends, and NO parties) which was a little like going to prison, and spending your days locked in a cell with a dangerous convict as a roommate at that.

Well, all right then, she probably wasn’t going to be actually screaming for help at any time during her lovely weekend stay, but she still wasn’t banishing the sinking feeling that once she got there her suffering would be legendary even in hell. No fun at all, Iris. You’re a doomed woman.

In an hour’s time, the train came to a halt in the station at Concord, New Hampshire.

Iris, who had fallen into a doze in that hour, was awakened. She greeted her destination very groggily, and also very stiffly. No matter what anyone did to try to make it so, train seats were not comfortable places to sleep.

“Rowan time!” her mental clock announced perkily. Iris stood up, stretching as she did, picked up purse, which had again fallen to the floor, brushed this off and removed her backpack from the overhead luggage compartment (it took some doing, but she managed it! Hurray).

Rowan was waiting for her in her car, a beat-up little thing that she had managed to buy with what money she could save from working (her philosophy was that since she was a college student, she was allowed to drive a crappy car, since she would so obviously wind up buying a quality one later).

“Hey, Iris,” greeted Rowan with unusual cheerfulness. “How was the trip?”

“Um, OK,” said Iris, throwing her backpack into the car’s backseat. “It went quicker than I expected.”

“That’s cool. Did mom have, like, a nervous breakdown or something when you left?” Rowan started pulling out of the train station parking lot.

“Well, not really, but she did go over all the safety rules and stuff about twenty times,” said Iris, starting to feel a little less nervous. Rowan seemed in splendidly good humor. She was also, Iris noted, dressed a little differently than normal. She was wearing a lot of black- black dress pants, black shirt, and a gold necklace with a black stone pendant.

Going punk-goth, Rowan? wondered Iris briefly, in amusement.

“Why are you wearing all black, just out of curiosity?” she ventured.

“I just came from work. These are my work clothes,” Rowan explained.

(---------------)

It went well from there. Actually, remarkably well. The conversation was a rare good-natured, cheerful one, with a lot of laughing. It was the kind of conversation that stupid people thought sisters were supposed to have.

They wound up sitting around Rowan’s dorm room, Rowan playing music on her computer and Iris listening. Eventually, Rowan brought up the idea of going to see some friends of hers.

“Maybe you can meet them,” she suggested, which totally thrilled Iris. This was truly and deeply cool; her sister was saying that she could meet her friends- her college-age friends.

So they headed up another flight of stairs, up to the highest floor of the building. Iris was nervous; she had no one here that she knew any better than Rowan, no real social security blanket. She was pretty much going to fend for herself. God knew how weird Rowan’s friends would be.

As it happened, she and Rowan found them sitting around studying for an upcoming exam that they all had. Not too threatening. These ‘friends’ that Rowan had spoken of consisted of about four girls of Rowan’s own age, all friendly looking.

“Hey!” greeted one.

“Rowan!” exclaimed another, grinning and waving. “Is this your sister?’

“Yes,” said Rowan, sounding equally cheerful. “This is Iris.”

“Hi, Iris,” said a pretty blonde girl who was sitting primly on top of one of the twin beds.

“How much younger are you than Rowan?” asked another girl, clearly trying to be polite and friendly.

“Oh, about four years,” said Iris.

“That’s cool,” said the girl. Iris noticed, with great surprise, that she was wearing the exact same necklace as Rowan, with the same black stone pendant. Friendship thing, maybe? She hadn’t thought you still did stuff like that at Rowan’s age.

“Do you want us to introduce ourselves, Rowan?” said another blonde girl, who, Iris realized, looked identical to the one sitting on the bed, and spoke and even seemed to carry herself in the same way. Clearly, the two were twins.

“Yeah, sure,” said Rowan. “Um-”

“Iris, my name’s Flora,” she said, smiling, nodding once, and looking very directly at Iris. Her eyes were a startlingly pale ice blue.

“And I’m Fauna,” added her twin. “Funny names, I know.”

“Oh, well-” said Iris, who did kind of think so herself.

“And my name’s Lauren, and this is Kate,” said the girl wearing the friendship necklace, gesturing to her friend, a tall girl with reddish brown hair.

“Well, uh,” said Iris, wondering how it was best to reply “...hi!” she gestured around at all of them. There were a few friendly laughs.

“Hey, guys, I told Iris you guys would show her something cool,” said Rowan, sitting down on the floor and gesturing for Iris to sit next to her.

“No, you didn’t,” pointed out Iris, and there were a few more laughs.

“Rowan, are you making stuff up again?” asked Kate, grinning.

“Well, I’m telling you now, OK?” Rowan addressed Iris, with mock viciousness. “Yeah, Lauren, show Iris what you can do,” and then, turning to Iris “it’s really weird.”

Rowan and Lauren exchanged brief looks.

“OK,” said Lauren. “But don’t be scared, OK?”

“Um, alright,” said Iris, who of course was scared now she had said this.

There was a moment of great, heavy, still anticipation throughout the room. Then Lauren, who Iris was watching steadily, closed her eyes, seemed to concentrate deeply, and then pointed a finger at the a nearby piece of paper.

Fire shot out of her pointed finger.

Iris jumped and gave a little gasp, her heart jolting.

Everyone applauded. Except for Iris.

“Wasn’t that cool?” asked Rowan. “She didn’t use anything for it. It’s a natural ability.”

“Wow,” said Iris breathlessly. Undoubtedly cool.

“And now,” said Fauna “we can show you something else, if you want.”

“Something else?” asked Iris, shocked. She hadn’t even started to get her head around the fire thing.

“Yes,” said Fauna simply. “Rowan, do you want to show her...?”

Rowan looked actually hesitant, before giving Iris a fleeting look that was very unreadable, moving over to the window, opening it and sticking her head out it.

“What’s going on?” Iris couldn’t help saying, feeling very nervous again. What was going on all of a sudden?

Her answer came with a crash.

Well, more like a rumble.

It had just thundered. On a perfectly sunny day. Only it wasn’t so sunny anymore, because in an instant, the room had gone dim with overhead clouds.

Iris couldn’t deal with all this. She screamed.

All around her, once she did this, she could see looks being given...I told you so...only she didn’t understand why.

“Iris,” said Rowan, sitting back down, the weather remaining dark. “I’m sorry. I was actually trying to tell you something with all this.”

Absurdly, the only thought she could manage through the stifling shock was “did my sister actually just apologize to me?”

“Yeah,” said Rowan. “Now, this is the really cool part- seriously Iris, you shouldn’t be scared because I think you might be very interested in it.”

There was a pause.

“I’m in this society- Iris, do you notice these necklaces we’re all wearing?”

Iris shivered. Oh, those black necklaces. Why had she ever thought they were friendship necklaces? More importantly, why hadn’t she noticed that...everyone was wearing them?

“Yeah,” she said.

“It’s just like in a fantasy book, Iris. It’s really cool,” Rowan leaned forward conspiratorially, laughing a little. “I feel so weird saying this but- we all have honest to god powers.”

“Mine’s invisibility,” interjected Kate, and Iris looked up to see her disappear- then reappear- momentarily “cool, huh?”.

This was suddenly quite enough.

“NO!” screamed Iris, leaping to her feet and startling everybody else. “NO!”

“Iris, I didn’t think you’d-”

“NO!” screamed Iris again. This was horrible, grotesquely horrible. She had actually had daydreams that alluded to things like this; daydreams of fantastic, supernatural adventure, just like the fantasy novels Rowan had brought up. But this was reality, and it was a crazy thing.

“Rowan, I’m so scared.” She started crying and shaking, backing away a little. “Rowan, seriously, can’t you see I’m really, really freaked out by all this? You can’t just show this to me like that. Please, let me go, I wanna call mom.”

“Iris, I’m sorry,” said Rowan “but you’d better just stay here for now.”

“Knock her out,” suggested Lauren, to Iris’ horror.

Iris could hear something heavy being picked up. She up and ran toward the door.

It shut and locked on it’s own.

She gave a fleeting, hunted glance toward the two people standing firmly behind her.

Flora and Fauna, blonde and perfect-looking and both staring icily at her.

“You can’t go now, Iris,” said Rowan, speaking for them. “Not right now.”

But Iris had just had a flash of some totally new kind of inspiration, an inspiration that had never in her life hit her until now.

“OK,” she said, climbing onto the bed, trying to look submissive until she was at least a few feet away from all of these freaks.

And then, when she was, she kept going. Toward the window, rapidly, clutching at the sill and thrusting her neck outside, her heart pounding, her insides squirming chaos, but in her head one clear adamant thought.

I’m leaving through the window.

“GET HER!” screamed Flora and Fauna in a unison that was eerie.

“IRIS!” yelled Rowan. “BAD IDEA! COME ON, STAY-“

At the same time, someone reached out and grabbed the back of her jacket. Iris wriggled out of it.

“SHIT!” screamed one of the twins “DAMNIT!”

Iris maneuvered herself so that she was sitting on the windowsill, ready to drop. How had she done that? She didn’t know, didn’t even notice the scratches that she had gotten or the bumps or even how far below the ground was, she just bent backward, then dropped out of the window.

A second of terror, and of plummeting, then she landed.

And what was more, she didn’t land on the ground.

There was breathing right next to her, and no pain, just dizziness. In fact, even her shock and her fear and all that were gone; they too were replaced by dizziness.

She thought she heard herself mutter a thoughtless thanks to the person who had caught her, before she blacked out altogether.