Page 80 of To Have and to Stalk
“What?” I asked.
“How long have you known this book series isn’t getting finished?” Olly slapped a paperback on the standard-issue hotel table. “Did you know when you suggested I read it? Are you secretly a psychopath?”
“Oh.” I blinked, shaking my head. “Right.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What did you think I was talking about?”
My mind drifted back to just a few nights ago.
Who did this to me? Void or Calder?
Calder had been about to respond when there was a knock on the door, followed by someone sternly reminding us that it was aone-person bathroom.
And that was the last time I’d spoken to him.
Daysago.
Luckily I didn’t have too much time to dwell on it before I had to go to the conference. I was a thousand miles away fromUtah, from stalkers, from dangerous men I should leave alone but couldn’t.
“Uh…just this presentation,” I said.
It wasn’t a total lie. It was the day of my presentation, and I sat at the small, cramped table, going over my slides. Double-checking equations to make sure they were legible and that there wouldn’t be anything embarrassing—like outdated references or incorrect equations.
As expected, nothing about the presentation needed changing. I did change the font on one page, then changed it back after thirty minutes.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No, it’s fine.” I shut the laptop.
She gave me another look, but let it go. “Let’s go get you your favorite preconference meal.”
“Hotel oranges?”
She smiled. “And shitty English breakfast tea.”
Together we walked to pick up our shitty tea and badges. From there, we wouldn’t see each other for a while. She would go to one half of the speeches, I’d go to others, and we’d compare notes.
I slipped into the back of my first talk on non-minimal dark sectors, already half knowing I wouldn’t understand all of it. I rubbed my thumb into the center of my palm, trying to focus on the talk.
Failing.
I opened the app to see nothing from Calder or his alter ego, Void, for like the hundredth time.
That was a good thing, right? It was good when your stalker stopped, well, stalking. But there was a small, potentially chaotic ball part of me that wanted it to continue.
Lunch was typical buffet-style conference food. A tray of cold sandwiches with no vegetarian options. Some kind of hot salad—potato? A sad salad of mostly arugula and iceberg, with the occasional shredded carrot.
I sighed and loaded up on salad, then sat next to Olly and four other people I vaguely recognized from past conferences. Our relationship was the weird kind of conference-friendly. Where we could talk like the best of friends, but never see each other again outside of a three-day window in some random month.
I opened the app.
Still nothing.
“Shay?” Olly asked.
I glanced up, realizing they’d been waiting for me to say something.
“Sorry, what?”
