Hydropower Chapter 4
In which something strange is happening to Jasmine
Last time on Hydropower: Evie and Ash faced the reality that she can control time and he can read minds, and they rushed to see a doctor over the loss of his voice.
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Chapter 4
Jasmine carefully arranged her hair in front of the mirror, patting it down just so, eliminating any flyaways to ensure that every strand was exactly in its place. That done, she stepped back slightly to examine the overall effect of her hair, her oversized glasses, and the pale grey skirt suit she had picked out for work.
Everything was as it should be. She was never going to be beautiful, or even pretty, but she could at least flatter herself that she did not look repulsive today. She was a professional, and she looked so. That was good.
Jasmine stepped outside and locked the door of her apartment, then made her way downstairs in the elevator and out to the street. A young man almost walked right into her as she took her first step into the thoroughfare, as if she was not there.
After forty-five years of life, Jasmine understood well that she was not the kind of woman that men stepped out of the way for, or held doors for, or stood aside to let her onto the bus first. That was fine. She had grown used to it. It only fell to her to make her own way into the world, and that was something she could well do.
She had had enough practice. Forty-five years, and no husband, no children to call her own. For the large part of her adult life, she had been solo – and solo was what she was used to. It suited her fine. She was a creature of habit, now; who would fit into her life alongside her various crochet and knitting projects, her cat with his delicate stomach and requirements for special foods and daily medicines, and the weekly copies of an interior design and architecture magazine she enjoyed reading in front of the latest reality television shows?
As Jasmine stepped onto the platform at the train station, she glanced up to see that her train was running on time, as it often did. She always took the early train, knowing that there was one more to catch if hers was cancelled, to avoid the risk of being late for work. Others were not so conscientious, and of course, she had never been thanked for this diligence.
As she attempted to board the train, not one but two young professionals shoved past her, getting on first. Jasmine’s mouth narrowed to a thin line of lipstick, matched almost to her natural lip color. There was being in a rush, and then there was plain rudeness.
It was a twenty-nine-minute train ride to the office, and it passed without further incident. Jasmine walked through the double doors, swiped her pass at the entrance, and settled down behind her desk.
Her first task was to check for any overnight messages, of which there were none. She then nestled deeper into her chair and waited, keen to be alert and responsive when her boss, the never-first-named Mr. Arlington, came in.
Mr. Arlington was slightly less than punctual, arriving into the office at one minute past his appointed time, according to the clock on the wall. He brushed right by Jasmine without a word, even to enquire after any messages. Well, she thought. He probably knows that, should there be any, I would have spoken up.
But when Mr. Arlington came out half an hour later, frowned at her in her seat as if he was looking at something on the underside of his shoe, and then marched away without a word, Jasmine felt her heart sinking.
Was there something going on? Something she wasn’t aware of?
Mr. Arlington returned just a few minutes later, marching down the hall back toward his office with a young woman in tow – Jasmine recognized her as one of the many receptionists who came in and out of the company’s employ. They insisted on hiring the young and beautiful, rather than the older and mature, and thus it was no surprise at all to her that they were often fired – for slacking off, for not passing messages, for reading magazines or watching videos on their phones at the desk, for flirting with executives who were not high enough up the pole to protect their jobs.
“Yes, I’m sorry about this,” he was saying, his head half over his shoulder as he spoke. “I’ll need you to cover Jasmine’s desk for the rest of the day, at least, and we’ll see from there.”
Jasmine shot to her feet. Cover her desk? What did he mean? Was she being pushed aside?
“What happened to her, anyway?” the young woman – Jasmine had not bothered to learn her name – asked.
“I don’t know,” Mr. Arlington replied, with more annoyance than curiosity. “She just didn’t show up today, for some reason. Between you and me, I’d like to replace her, anyway. This is just another push in that direction.”
Replace her?
How could he say it – and right in front of her face, too, while acting as though she wasn’t there?
He had barely given her a chance to start her work – how could he say she hadn’t shown up, as if she hadn’t done a single thing since arriving so much earlier than him!
Jasmine stepped to the side, only just managing to scramble out of the way before the young woman took her chair. Such rudeness! Such brazen behavior! Jasmine almost stumbled as she extricated herself from behind the desk without being hit by the young woman’s ostentatious swirl in the chair, as if she was claiming ownership of it.
“Well, I won’t let you down, Mr. Arlington,” she said, with a red-lipped smile that made Jasmine’s skin crawl. “I’ll cover everything you need.”
Today, Jasmine thought. Just today.
She opened her mouth to ask Mr. Arlington just what he meant by all this – whether she had a job still, whether she could expect to return tomorrow – but the door to his office closed behind him before she’d even had a chance to get a single word out, leaving her alone with the new girl.
She looked down at her, but there was no chance that Jasmine would ask her what was going on. That would be demeaning – embarrassing to an unacceptable degree. She caught sight of her own reflection in the glass window behind the desk: she had a pale face and two spots of bright red color high in her cheeks, as if she had been slapped once on each side.
Now, Jasmine, she told herself, the only thing to do is to hold your head high and bear it as if you couldn’t give a damn.
She shouldered her purse, lifted her chin, and walked out of the office, mustering as much of her remaining pride as she could, wearing it like a tattered shawl around her shoulders.
On the street, some hooligan on a skateboard almost bowled her over, leaving her feeling at last on the verge of tears.
Suddenly, it overwhelmed her: Jasmine ran to the nearest fast food restaurant, a place she would normally never enter, and rushed her way into the bathroom, where she locked herself into a stall and covered her face with her hands.
Tears came then – copious tears, streaming down her face. She gave herself over to sobs. She’d been working at the company for the best part of twenty-five years – five of those with Mr. Arlington specifically. Could he really just cast her aside without a word? And she didn’t even know what she had done…
She ran every recent event she could think of through her head. She’d passed on every message, intercepted every visitor, arranged every meeting, prepared and printed every briefing. She’d booked his lunch reservations and purchased gifts for his wife’s birthday. She’d even wrapped them herself.
Was that it? Had she chosen the wrong gift?
But, no: even there, she knew she had chosen perfectly. That was her job. She had spent twenty-five years perfecting it. And yes, she had never progressed – never been given the opportunity to move up to work with a higher executive or even the CEO – but things moved slowly when executives liked to pick their own personal secretaries and move up with them, and Mr. Arlington hadn’t covered himself in glory, either. And was it her fault if her executives, when promoted, preferred to choose some young, pretty thing to impress the others?
Her whole adult life, she had dedicated to that place. And this was how they treated her.
Jasmine sniffled into a tissue and wiped her face, horrified to think that she now had to walk all the way home with the obvious traces of tears on her face – her makeup wiped away.
She emerged from the stall cautiously, checking there was no one else around. She was dabbing at her face with water, trying her best to clean it up, when another woman walked in – the banging of the door an abrupt introduction with no warning. She had a companion just behind her, the two of them deep in conversation. Jasmine flinched. At her most vulnerable, she did not wish to be seen by these strangers.
One of them looked her way, looked through her, looked at the sink. She tsked, shaking her head. “I hate it when people just leave the taps running,” she said, reaching over, past Jasmine, to turn it off.
Jasmine just stared at her.
She’d been using the water.
The two women disappeared into stalls, talking all the while, as if Jasmine hadn’t been there at all.
Dazed, Jasmine dried herself off with a paper towel and left the bathroom, stepping out of the busy restaurant and into the street. As she passed through the door, someone walked right into her – looked up – looked through her – and walked right by her as if she did not deserve so much as a word of apology.
Jasmine’s mouth hung open. She was sure she looked a real shock: her makeup cleared away in patches, her eyes red-rimmed, her lower lip trembling, standing right in the middle of the street with a look of distress.
But, it was curious: not a single person gave her a moment of thought as they passed by. None asked if she was alright. None hesitated on looking at her face.
Three people walked into her, shoving her roughly with their shoulders or brushing their bags against her sides, before a feeling that something deeper was terribly wrong settled over her.
There was a homeless man nestled into a doorway on the other side of the road. Jasmine approached him with trepidation – she would never normally linger too close to one like him, in case she would be robbed or catch some awful disease. But this time, necessity forced her hand: she needed someone of little societal value, someone whose mockery would not count if he was about to laugh in her face.
“Excuse me,” she said.
The man blinked at her, looking taken aback. She was sure he had seen her approach, but now he was staring at her like she was a ghost. “Where did you come from?” he asked.
Jasmine’s mouth formed a question of her own that she couldn’t put to words – she hadn’t expected that greeting. She gestured loosely across the road.
The homeless man squinted at her as if trying to work out a mystery, then seemed to shrug and give up. He held out a battered polystyrene cup. “Spare some change?” he asked.
Jasmine shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t have anything on me,” she said. “It’s just…”
He lost interest, looking past her to see if there were any more marks on their way. “I don’t drink coffee,” he said. Jasmine supposed people usually offered to buy him something to eat or drink, rather than giving him money that he might spend on drugs.
Someone from the office caught Jasmine’s eye on the other side of the street as she looked around for inspiration, and she shrank back. Oh, god, if they saw that she’d left the building and started talking to a homeless man…
She looked back at the man, hiding her face under a hand that shaded her from the side.
But he wasn’t even looking at her anymore.
He was looking around and through her, as if she wasn’t there at all.
“Um,” she began, and once again he blinked in surprise, his eyes refocusing on her.
“How are you doing that?” he demanded, his voice rising in anger. “Are you trying to trick me or what?”
Jasmine blinked back. “What? I…”
“You were gone, and you came back,” the homeless man snapped at her. “What was that?”
Jasmine backed away, wishing she hadn’t approached him at all.
And then she saw it happen.
In the space of a second or so, he was staring at her with belligerent anger – then his forehead smoothed – his eyes unfocused – he looked through her.
Just like all the others.
It was as though she wasn’t there.
You were gone, and you came back.
She just didn’t show up today, for some reason.
The way everyone had walked into her all day, disregarded her, acted and spoken as though she wasn’t there.
Something was happening, and now that she had begun to grasp it, it filled her with horror.
She, Jasmine Hatheway, had fulfilled the prophecy her whole life appeared to have been building up to.
She had finally, inevitably, become invisible.
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