An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #1)(66)

My first thought was that someone had thrown a rock at it, but from eight stories below that would have to be some arm. Things had been getting heated with the Defenders; the messages were sometimes mean, sometimes threatening, and sometimes deeply fucking disturbing. I grabbed my phone as I got out of bed and slid it into my pajama bottoms. I flipped on the light, and as my heart rate slowly returned to normal, I went to look out the window.

At the base of the drapes, which hung all the way to the floor, if I had looked, I would have seen some little specks of glass mixed in with the PopTart crumbs and dust. But I didn’t look. I just drew back the drapes to see what may have made the noise.

Looking back on this behavior, it’s depressingly dumb. Something has hit my window, and what’s my plan of action? I’ve got it! I’ll turn on the light and pull back the drapes in front of a glass door! SLOWLY!

Even with all the threats, it was still somehow inconceivable to me that someone would actually try to kill me. Harass me? Sure. Threaten me? Yeah. Sue me? If they could find a reason! But murder? That shit’s for the movies. People don’t kill people! I mean, they do, obviously, I’ve seen a newspaper. It says something, maybe, about how my mind works that I had received literal death threats but never considered that someone would try to kill me.

But now I was thinking about it, and two things happened simultaneously.

Something big (at the time, I thought it must have been a person) slammed painfully into my shoulder, knocking me away from the door.



The glass in my double-paned sliding glass door erupted out, spraying into the room and leaving a two-inch-wide hole.





I hit the floor hard, and the thing that had shoved me was gone before I could regain my wits. Little shards of glass lay all around the room. Having, by this point, figured out at least half of what was going on, I crumpled myself against the wall of my bedroom, too scared to cry. Someone had just tried to shoot me. Not, like, scare me, but actually put a bullet in my chest so that I could lie on the floor of my lonely apartment to die all by myself. And who the hell had shoved me? They had saved me, but they were also in my apartment!

And then I was no longer too scared to cry, and I cried. My blinds were still open a crack, and I was afraid that, at any moment, bullets would come flying through my window like a true war zone and if I was not backed against a brick wall I would be torn apart. But after about ten minutes of gasping for air between sobs, I convinced myself that I could sneak out of my bedroom and into the living room, where the windows faced a narrow alley, not the street.

So I half crawled, half ran out of the room. Once in my living room, I had access to a bathroom, a carpet, and the kitchen. Everything a girl needs! I did a cursory search, which uncovered nothing out of the ordinary. Clothes, carry-out containers, dirty napkins, maybe a damp towel or two. No sign of an intruder.

Should I call the cops? I thought. I mean, I definitely should call the cops. Someone was very probably trying to hurt me and maybe also there was literally a stranger hiding in my apartment right now?

But for some reason I really, really, really didn’t want to tell anyone. Maybe I was being silly. There is probably some reason for all of this that isn’t attempted murder, my mind was telling me. So far attempted murder has never happened to me, so it seems like there must be some other explanation.

And if it was real, other things were real too. Dealing with a police investigation and the reality that I could never sleep safely in this apartment again. And, oh god, my parents would have to know. And Maya. I knew she’d never say it, but inside there would be that part of her thinking, If only April had listened to me, this wouldn’t have happened. And I couldn’t live with that. I couldn’t live with any of those scenarios.

So, instead of the police, I called Robin.

“April,” he said after one ring. Now . . . he never sounded put out (though I’d never before called him at 4 A.M.), but he seemed to positively have been expecting my call, which threw me.

“Were you expecting me to call?”

“Not expecting, but it is not surprising given the reports.” Remember I had been dealing with my own crisis. By this point the S?o Paulo and St. Petersburg attacks were already being reported on American news. Someone must have called Robin from a less ridiculous time zone.

“What reports?”

“Oh, my.”

“Oh, your what?” This was not how I was expecting the phone call to go.

“You should tell me why you are calling. I think that would simplify this conversation.”

“I think someone’s maybe just tried to hurt me. There is something very strange going on.”

“Have you called the police?” His voice was at a pitch I had never heard before.

“That doesn’t seem necessary,” I half complained, half ordered.

“It does, though.”

“Let’s just . . . not have them involved yet.”

“Would you be all right with me sending up the doorman?”

“Yes, I suppose that’s fine.”

“I will call you back momentarily.” He hung up before I did.

In that moment, I had a thought. Whoever or whatever had hit me had to still be in my apartment. It wasn’t in my bedroom, and I wasn’t going to check the second bedroom . . . That room had a window overlooking the street and I didn’t even know if the blinds were drawn. But it wasn’t a huge place, and I hadn’t actually looked very hard. So I looked under the couch and the chairs. Nothing. So I turned them all upside down. There was this weird black, meshy fabric covering the bottom of one of the chairs. It had been carefully and exactly cut along one side.