Hidden In Plain Sight

The alarm buzzed blinking 10:30pm in neon green waking Artemis from a light sleep. She rolled out of bed, covered an unconscious Biscuit’s back up with the comforter, and headed to the bathroom. She turned on the shower to let the water warm up and grabbed a towel off the floor. Sniffing it, she deemed it worthy of another use and hung it up on the bathroom door knob, an easy reach from the shower. Artemis turned on her “Shower” playlist that consisted mostly of girl power anthems and stepped into the pleasantly warm water letting it, and some off key singing, work it’s magic on her fuzzy sleep deprived brain. Four songs later a much more alive Artemis stepped out of the shower. She dried off with the fresh enough towel and quickly blow dried her shoulder length dark hair before pulling it up and tucking into a wig cap. She left the bathroom and dressed in the horrendous pea green maintenance jumpsuit she was required to wear at work. After hastily brushing the long brown wig sitting on top of her dresser, Artemis pulled it on and made sure it was straight before donning her plastic lensed black rimmed glasses and winking at the mirror. Nobody would ever guess that night custodian Stephanie was also pretend college student Artemis.

“You stay here and guard the flat, I’m going to go make sure we get to keep it.” She patted the snoring Biscuits on the belly and grabbed her adventure bag before putting on her rain jacket and black leather boots and heading out into the dark and misty night.

Artemis walked towards Kersand Hall which housed the performing arts department and dance department of the college as she was scheduled to wash and wax the floors of the dance studios this week. She pulled up her hood and quickened her steps as the wind whipped around her, the light misty rain making the night that much more miserable. Kersand was only a few blocks away, but in this weather walking next door would have been a daunting ordeal. Artemis thought about how impossible it would be to climb the side of the Kincaid in this weather and smiled pleased with her herself. At least she wouldn’t have to do that tonight. Before approaching the front door of the Kersand building she walked around the block and tossed her bag behind the bushes lining the building.

When she arrived at the front entrance of Kersand a short plump woman in a yellow raincoat was holding the door for her. “Hello Stephanie, wonderful night for a walk huh?” Said the woman with a wink and a little girlish giggle.

“Ya, maybe if you’re a duck.” Replied Artemis, bringing on another round of the giggles from the kind woman. “Always so clever.” She said with a smile only proud mother’s were capable of giving. “I finished the north side floors and got started on the west just before I clocked out for the night.”

“Ok, I’ll get the floors on the west side done tonight and we can move on to the basement tomorrow. Have a nice night Gretchen. Try to stay warm.” Artemis smiled at the old woman and waved as she bustled to the parking lot.

Gretchen had hired Artemis for this position over three years ago now and had served as her supervisor ever since. While Artemis tended to keep to herself, Gretchen must have caught on that she was on her own and would sometimes bring Artemis leftovers. The old woman was hopelessly trusting and good natured, but Artemis liked her anyway. And, although it pained her to admit it, she loved Gretchen’s cooking.

Artemis left her sopping wet jacket by the door and dried her boots off the best she could. Shoes squeaking annoyingly, she walked down the deserted tile hallway towards the west side of the building and found the room Gretchen had left the mop and bucket in and began cleaning where the old woman had stopped. While it wasn’t the most exciting or well paying job, Artemis appreciated the silence and simplicity. The monotonous tasks of wiping, mopping, and emptying gave her mind time to explore what had been discussed in her lectures that day, or contemplate what she knew would be discussed next. In one of the woman’s irksome attempts to get to know Artemis better, Gretchen had told her that nobody else had ever worked this shift for more than a few months before quitting or requesting a transfer. While Gretchen worried that Artemis was scared working alone, Artemis always assured her that she preferred to work this shift. Working late at night gave her a quiet time to think, and the ability to wander the buildings unmolested. But most of all, this shift made it possible for her to attend lectures while still working forty hours a week. Her father wouldn’t have approved. “If you’re so smart what are you doing scrubbing floors at midnight for ten dollars an hour? Shouldn’t you be some rich doctor curing cancer? You’re nothing but a stuck up little know it all.”

Artemis shook her head as if this would remove her father’s voice from the back of her mind. She wasn’t really sure what she was trying to accomplish by sneaking into these lectures, but if it ended up giving her the cure for cancer she would be happy to share it with the world. She just loved to learn. She wanted to know how everything worked. Not just how everything worked, but why it worked that way. She spent her nights at work contemplating the logic of Aristotle, and trying to wrap her mind around processes like thermodynamics. Artemis was hooked on learning, and she was damn good at it. She always had been good at it. When she was six years old her mother had come home to a made from scratch cherry pie in the oven. Artemis had made it after watching a chef on the food network. At seven she was competing with teenagers at gymnastics competitions after participating for less than a year. By twelve she was reading at the level of a college Freshman and had taught herself to speak Spanish and Japanese. Gifted was not strong enough a term for the young Artemis. While onlookers, teachers, coaches, and her father, thought she would grow up to be an Olympian, Nobel prize winner, or the President. Artemis had never wanted any of those things, the future was one thing Artemis had never put any thought towards. All of the actual paying students on campus, who were incredibly gifted themselves, had their intentions firmly set in the future. They were there to graduate and get degrees, so that they could get good jobs, have families, and die happy, and that’s why they didn’t learn anything. Artemis wasn’t going to class to prepare for a test, or get ready to have some job that would pay her more money than what her neighbor was making so she could buy a fancy car and rub it in their face. The anxiety brought on by these social and self induced stressors crippled these brilliant minds, like track stars carrying cinder blocks. They had the potential to take great strides in whatever direction they chose to go, if only they would set their burdens aside and run.

Artemis was brought back to reality when her watch buzzed, 12:03, time to get to work. Artemis took the mop and bucket on wheels out to change the water and headed to the bathroom. Looking out of the corner of her eye she saw the black globe on the hallway ceiling that was the security camera. All of campus had these cameras up in the hallways and down the outside walkways. They were mostly used to catch drunk students vandalizing school property, but Artemis was sure they would be equally capable of catching little burglars if she wasn’t careful. Good news, there were no cameras in offices or bathrooms. When she made it to the bathroom she locked the door and started the stopwatch on her wrist. Pulling a small knife out of her pocket she used it to pop the lock on the bathroom window. Artemis pulled in her now soaked duffle bag and removed the black jumpsuit, sneakers, stocking cap and rope from inside. She hurriedly changed into her burglar garb leaving the wig and glasses neatly on top of her work clothes and scurried out the open window back into the miserably dreary night. The Kincaid building was only a block east from where she was now on the backside of Kersand. As long as she stayed out of the direct light of the street lamps she should be nearly invisible to the almost antique cameras she knew were situated on the buildings looking each way down the walk. She moved silently as a shadow across the sleepy campus no longer feeling the bite of the chilly night air. Crouching behind the dumpster at the Kincaid she checked her watch. From the bathroom to the building in just under ninety seconds- not bad. She took a deep settling breath before scaling the dumpster that was just under Ms. kissy kissy’s window. She put her right foot on top of the stone window frame from the first floor window and her left hand on the top of the frame next to it. She levered herself up pushing with her right foot and keeping her left arm straight to the point that she was able to put her left foot on top of the window her left hand was on. Artemis stood up balancing on the tips of her toes with all the worry of a wire haired stray cat standing atop a wooden fence. She grabbed the stone ledge to the second story office window above her and swung right to left hooking her left heel on the window ledge next to her. With her heel secure, Artemis pulled herself up and used her left hand to slide open the office window. She pulled herself up and in and landed in the room without a sound. Moving behind the desk she woke the secretary's computer. With practiced ease she logged in with President Smith’s credentials, found her address, and made the necessary keystrokes to once again have her flat inhabited by Dr. S. Trange. Logging out of the College’s housing network, Artemis remembered her eavesdropping today and opened the woman’s email which, of course, was already open as a tab in her browser. Searching the name “Santino” she found numerous emails to professor Santino Escobar, clicking on the first one she read some of the sweet nothings inside decided it was plenty incriminating to get her a favor if she ever needed it. Pulling a USB drive from her zippered chest pocket Artemis copied and exported the blackmail before clearing the search history and closing the browser. Checking her watch Artemis frowned as it read six minutes. “Have to get moving” she thought to herself as she crossed back to the window and climbed out. Closing the window behind her Artemis pulled a microfiber towel out of her jumpsuit and wiped down the outside of the window. leaving handprints on the outside of office windows was just asking for people to start looking around, and she absolutely did not need that. Like all good thieves, she preferred her targets to not know they had been robbed. She climbed back down to the dumpster and without missing a beat disappeared back into the shadows making her way back to Kersand and the open bathroom window. Slipping back inside she changed back into her custodian attire including wig and glasses, tossed the bag back out the window before re-securing it, and left the bathroom to continue mopping the dance floors exactly nine minutes and forty seven seconds after entering with a blank expression on her face, but a satisfied smile on her heart. She would have a comfortable place to live for the next three months.

At 6am with the first rays of sunshine breaking through the rain soaked clouds of the night before, Artemis opened the door to the flat at 3714 College Way to the rumbling snores of Biscuits. Dropping her rain soaked bag and work clothes in the kitchen, she walked to the bedroom in her underwear and changed into her favorite fuzzy sweats before collapsing on the couch next to him. “Three hours until class,” she said to the comatose dog. “Just enough time for a nap.”