The Invisible Boy

by Alyssa Hollingsworth

  The master bedroom is open—I can see a neatly made bed with a white quilt folded over the white comforter. There’s another door, also open: a bathroom. I turn away from that. Two more rooms on this hall. Neither has a light shining under the door.

  I go for the nearer door first. I ease the doorknob until the latch clicks. Inside, streetlights shine through a window. It’s a guest bedroom. The bed is frilly, with flowery covers and lots of lace—something no boy (or kid of any sort) would be caught dead sleeping in. On the wall is a canvas painting of a deeply boring white rose.

  This is not the Invisible Boy’s room.

  I dart to check the next room. Inside, there’s a white desk with a Mac computer and papers stacked neatly on one side. A white bookshelf with color-organized books rests against the wall. Nowhere to sleep. An office, not a bedroom.

  Carefully, I close the door, playing the layout of the house through my head. Downstairs: formal living room, kitchen, bigger living room, bathroom. Upstairs: two bedrooms, an office, another bathroom. But nowhere a kid superhero might live …

  The basement! Possibly the most obvious place in the whole house, and I almost missed it!

  Feeling kind of dumb, I slip back down the stairs. Paddle Boy is in the big living room, his back to me, and adults are still chitchatting away. In the kitchen there’s a second door next to the bathroom. I hope it’s the basement.

  I pull the door open. Stairs lead down into darkness. Bingo!

  I fumble for a light switch but change my mind. Light might attract attention. Straightening my shoulders, I take the first step and shut the door softly behind me. I dig around in the hoodie pocket for the little flashlight, and I hold it in my left hand with my notepad in my right. I feel for the first step with the toe of my shoe before I move. My footsteps are quiet and perfectly stealthy. But I don’t want to startle the Invisible Boy. It’s not a good idea to sneak up on superheroes.

  I click on the flashlight and move down the next few steps quickly. Into the silence, I whisper, “Hey, um—” I can’t exactly call him by his superhero name, because he doesn’t know it yet. “Um—anyone down here?”

  No response.

  “Hey, I have your picture.” I jostle the hoodie, draped over my left arm, so the stuff in the pockets knock together. “And your hoodie.”

  In the beam of light, I can see the general shape of random objects. A chair. Some boxes. A table beneath the windows. But no person. I can’t hear anyone else even breathing down here.

  I put my foot on the floor of the basement. Light explodes behind me.

  Blinded and surprised, I drop the Invisible Boy’s hoodie and flashlight and only barely manage to keep ahold of my notepad. I whirl around and blink, eyes watering. Two shadows stand at the top of the stairs.

  Paddle Boy.

  And my mom.

  Flake-flipping snow fairies…!

  “Nadia?” Mom asks. Her face colors. “This isn’t—Nadia, come up here right now.”

  I climb the stairs slowly. My thoughts spin in circles. The basement was my last option. This can’t be the Invisible Boy’s hideout. Even if he is being invisible right now, he’s got to have somewhere to sleep.

  Paddle Boy moves back to make room for me in the hallway. I channel all my frustration into my face as I look at him. If I had laser vision, he’d be toast. He shakes his head at me and shrugs.

  “Thank you, Kenny,” Mom says.

  My jaw all but drops on the floor. “Mom!”

  Mom waves Paddle Boy back toward his mother. He pauses long enough to give me a slight smirk and then goes.

  Before I can remind my mom not to thank known supervillains, Candace comes down the hall. “Everything all right here?”

  “Yes, my daughter just got lost trying to find the bathroom,” Mom says with a pointed look.

  “Ah. Well, it’s certainly not in the basement!” Candace laughs and reaches around me to close the door. When she leans close, a faint scent of cigarette smoke wafts under her perfume. Before she lets go of the door handle, she gives it a push, like to make sure it’s firmly shut. To me, she adds, “You’re one door off.”

  “I think we should be heading out anyway,” Mom says, a blush still coloring her face. “Thank you so much for the invitation to your home. It’s lovely.”

  While they exchange goodbyes, and while my mom gets Dad and Aunt Lexie, and while we walk back to my house, and while my parents lecture me about not sneaking around other people’s houses, my thoughts zip right back to the Invisible Boy. It’s not until I get up to my room that I realize I left the hoodie in Candace’s basement. Other than the original photo of his mom at the purple house, my primary evidence of the Invisible Boy’s existence is gone. And I’m no closer to finding out where—or who—he is.

  Chapter 6

  SECRETS SPREAD TO NEW TERRITORIES

  The weekend passes without much happening, mostly because I’m grounded, banned from walking Wonder (Dad does it) or hanging out with Aunt Lexie (even though she’s here until Sunday night). My parents believe that snooping around a neighbor’s house during a party is not an “appropriate” way to investigate. They don’t offer any useful suggestions for how else I might go about it, so I think that their input lacks some practicality. I use the opportunity to throw myself into my work—jotting down floor plans in my notepad, recording every last detail I can remember about the Invisible Boy, and trying to train Wonder Dog to crawl silently beside me for future stealth missions. Mostly Wonder just ends up nibbling at my hair instead.

  On Monday, newly freed and more determined than ever to get to the bottom of this story, I take Wonder Dog on her usual afternoon walk. The street is quiet—like usual. I keep my gaze on the whitewashed corner house as we move down the street. Maybe the Invisible Boy doesn’t live—or, at least, sleep—there. But he left his hoodie, which means he must be nearby. My research confirms a superhero would return for such an iconic piece of their costume.

  Wonder Dog yanks on her leash, trying to get at something in the center of the dried-out drainage ditch in the median.

  “Heel,” I command, tugging her back beside me. She huffs and stops pulling so hard, but still stares down there at a scrap of chicken. It’s on top of a brick.

  A corner of paper peeks out from beneath the brick.

  I tie Wonder’s leash around a tree trunk, so she won’t eat the chicken. It could be another Paddle Boy–concocted human-food trap. Once she’s secured, I slip and slide down the edge of the ditch, rocks and leaves falling away under my feet. At the bottom, I kneel, nudge the chicken off, and lift the brick. The piece of paper is crisp and folded. It hasn’t been out here long.

  I open the paper with one hand. Something is scribbled on it—the handwriting is almost unreadable. I squint.

  My heart just about stops. The Invisible Boy.

  I look back at the brick. One side is painted white. A side that could be faced out, if it was part of a wall. The whitewashed house is almost directly behind me. Did he come from there?

  I have a thousand—no, a million questions.

  But one thing’s for sure: I’m not leaving his photo for just anyone to come and grab. He should know better, with Paddle Boy living right there. This sort of sensitive evidence could be used against the Invisible Boy if it fell into the wrong hands.

  I fish a pen out of my backpack and rip the paper in half. The half with his request, I stick in my notepad. I smooth the rest out on the ground and write across the top.

  I fold this over and stick it under the brick. Then I scramble up to Wonder. Last time I was hiding out here, Wonder gave me away—so I need to make sure that doesn’t happen again. If I hurry home and back, I can stand watch until the Invisible Boy shows up. And then I can get an interview for my Junior Journalists contest exposé.

  I run back home, Wonder loping at my side. I open the door and unhook her leash, toss it on the front porch, close the door, and rush back to the median. I’m out of breath and sweaty by t
he time I arrive. I check the bottom of the ditch.

  The brick has moved.

  I left it white side up. Now it’s white side down.

  He was here.

  Before I’ve even caught my breath, I’m pulling the brick off and unfolding the torn paper.

  Under my question, he’s written two lines:

  He must be nearby, since I was only gone for a few minutes. I glance up at the whitewashed house, but the curtains are drawn and everything is still.

  The hairs on my arms stand up. Could he be here? Right now? Invisible? I glance around out of the corner of my eye, but of course I can’t make out any sign of him. Clearly he doesn’t want to meet, but that would never stop Lois Lane, and it won’t stop me.

  I clear my throat and speak to the air. “Um, hello? I have your picture, and I’d love to hand it to you. So, ah, come on out!”

  No response.

  Okay. I need another way to lure him into the open.

  I pull my notepad out of my backpack and flip to the end, where I’ve stashed the photo. I pull it free and take a good long look at it. Woman with frizzy hair outside a purple town house, somewhere in DC. The same woman who’s in the other picture the Invisible Boy keeps in his hoodie pocket.

  I carefully fold some of my own notepad paper around the photo, so it won’t get scratched. Then I position it on the ground and lay the brick down white side up.

  Once the photo is safe, I casually climb out of the ditch and begin to stroll away from it, in the opposite direction from my house. I go over the cross street and check to see if anyone’s around.

  No one in sight.

  I go down this street’s ditch, which is connected to mine by the big concrete pipes. I hunch and enter, hands outstretched on both sides of the tunnel for balance. The first time I met the Invisible Boy, storm water was rushing through here, but now it’s almost completely dry. There’s just a bit of slime in the very bottom center, and I can waddle through at a crouch without getting my mermaid-scale leggings dirty.

  I slip under the street but stop at the other end, while I’m still in the shadows. From here, I can see the brick clearly, but no one will be able to see me until they’re already in the ditch.

  The perfect spot.

  I can’t really sit down (because: slime) but I also can’t stand up straight. My legs start getting tired. Maybe I could have found a more comfortable place. After all, who knows how long—

  A boy in a green T-shirt skids down into the ditch. I catapult from the pipe and run.

  My legs are cramped and clumsy. But even so, the boy doesn’t notice me—he’s nudging the brick over. I dive and tackle him to the ground.

  “Ah!” he shrieks.

  “I’ve got you!”

  I lean back, victorious—and then reel away in disgust.

  I haven’t caught the Invisible Boy. Instead, the kid staring up at me is Paddle Boy.

  “You!” I gasp. “What are you doing here?”

  Paddle Boy sits up. “Me? Where did you even come from? You could have cracked my head open!”

  “I asked you first!” I point a finger in his face. “Answers. Now.”

  He glares. “I saw you messing around down here and wanted to know what you were doing.”

  “This is none of your business.” I turn back to the brick. The photo is still there, so I pick it up and tuck it into the safety of my notepad.

  “Well you didn’t need to try to kill me over it. Jeez, Nadia.” He brushes the dirt out of his hair. “What is wrong with you?”

  My nostrils flare but I just say, “There’s nothing wrong with me,” and turn on my heel.

  Under his breath, he mutters, “That’s not what the commenters say.”

  My muscles tighten. My veins are wired by electricity and lava. I turn slowly. “Excuse me?”

  He pushes himself to his feet and brushes off his shorts. “You know, my mom wanted to send over more snacks for your family. She still wants your mom to tell her whatever the big secret is before it’s announced. But I told her I wouldn’t go near your house for anything.”

  I lift my chin. “Just as well—I only have one paddle left for you to smash.”

  “Yeah, harp on that some more.” He folds his arms over his chest. I’m a little taller than him, but he moves a step up the ditch so he’s got a few inches on me. “Do you really have no idea about the big announcement? Don’t you call yourself a reporter or something?”

  “So what?” I put my notepad and the photo in my backpack, just in case he tries to grab for them.

  “If you were any good, wouldn’t you know what your own mom is hyping up all over the internet?”

  My words come out in a hiss. “I don’t care about my mom’s blog.”

  “But this is something about your family.” He shrugs, lifting that one infuriating eyebrow. “I’d just think you would have figured it out by now. Funny that the whole world’s going to hear about it before you do.”

  My face flames. “You don’t know anything!”

  “Sure.” He rolls his eyes and pushes past me, toward his house. “Do us all a favor—if you’re going to crawl around in the sewage, take a bath.”

  “I wasn’t crawling in the sewage!” I yell at his back. “That’s just rainwater!”

  Over his shoulder, he shouts, “Well, either way, you stink!”

  I want to pinch him, or kick his shin, or smash a paddle on his face. Instead, I hitch my backpack up on my shoulders and march with as much dignity as I can to my house. Evidently, today I won’t be seeing the Invisible Boy. But it appears I’ve got another scoop closer to home.

  Mom’s blog is pretty cool in a lot of ways, I guess—she helps military spouses and she gets enough money from promoting sponsors that she can work from home. I didn’t really care about it until last year, when she wrote the now-infamous article, “10 Tips for Raising Tweens in a Military Family.” Which included an entire paragraph about how certain tweens have a hard time keeping friends, with all the moves, and instead those special tweens start obsessing over something odd (like, for instance, comic books), which could make friendships harder … It went on from there.

  Basically, it was a nightmare.

  Almost one thousand words in that entry, all analyzing me. The comments flooded in with suggestions and critiques, and a few weirdos even got into a fight about girls “being brainwashed by the patriarchal narrative” and also whether girls “actually like comics” or just pretend to get boys’ attention. Then some moms at school showed it to their kids and those kids showed it to their friends. I got called “blog girl” for a month, a nickname that required so little effort it was almost more insulting because it was so lazy.

  Ever since then, we have an unspoken understanding: Mom doesn’t directly reference me in her articles (though she can use me for “inspiration”), and I pretend like her blog doesn’t exist.

  Which apparently means I’ve missed out on some sort of impending news.

  I come into the house and pause to take a deep breath of cool air-conditioned air. It rushes over me like an ice blanket, and some of the heat from my conversation with Paddle Boy seeps away.

  Mom calls from upstairs, “That you, Dia?”

  “Yes.” Wonder Dog dances around me, and I give her a pat as I trudge up toward Mom’s voice. There is not something wrong with me, no matter what Paddle Boy or random internet people might think. I am a good journalist. And I’ll get the story before it goes public.

  I reach the top of the stairs just in time to see Mom closing the guest bedroom door. She has her hair up in a messy bun and is wearing paint-splattered jeans and a T-shirt.

  She smiles. “I thought you came home when Wonder showed up, but then I couldn’t find you. Off hunting a story?”

  “It didn’t really work out.” I shrug, then lean to look around her at the closed door. “What are you doing?”

  “Oh—I wanted to talk to you about that!” Mom grins, rubbing her hands with a washcloth. “
I decided to start doing podcasts! The room up here will have perfect acoustics for a studio, I think. But while I’m renovating, it’s off-limits. I want the final product to be a big surprise.”

  She rocks a little on her feet, excited. I try to look excited, too, but I almost can’t believe it was that easy. A podcast studio? That’s the big announcement? I guess she has been talking about this for a long time, but I doubt anyone besides her biggest fans will be as pumped about it as she is. A harder investigation would have been more fun to rub in Paddle Boy’s face. I can’t really even call this an investigation, it was so easy.

  Too easy?

  “Man, I’m hungry.” Mom checks the time on her phone. “What do you say to a little midafternoon popcorn and iced tea?”

  “Sounds good. I’m just going to—um—put my stuff in my room.” I head down the hall.

  “See you in a sec, then.” Mom goes back downstairs.

  I wait in my doorway until she’s out of sight, and a little longer until I hear the microwave start. Then I sneak back to the guest bedroom door. Even if it is just a new office, I could still get the scoop before the rest of the world. Snap a few pictures. And that would prove that I’m a good journalist. And show Paddle Boy he is wrong.

  I put my hand on the cold doorknob and give it a turn.

  It doesn’t move.

  Frowning, I try again. It’s locked.

  I bend down for a better look. The doors in our house lock from the inside, but even though this doorknob looks the same as the rest—a silver handle—I can instantly tell that Mom’s replaced it. Because this doorknob has a keyhole on the outside.

  Why would she think a studio needed a special lock? I get that she’s excited about her new space, but this is a bit much.

  Too much?

  From downstairs, Mom calls, “Nadia! Popcorn’s ready!”

  I give the door one last frown, then head to the living room. Mom has set out two bowls of popcorn and two tall glasses of iced tea. She’s scrolling on her phone and doesn’t look up until I’ve sat down, cross-legged, with my bowl in my lap.