The Invisible Girl

by Laura Ruby

  Mrs Terwiliger pursed her lips, freakishly large now that she’d had them plumped with collagen. “Then you’ll have to forgo this week’s visit with your friend.”

  “What?” said Gurl. “But I’ve been doing everything you asked!”

  “I asked for two dozen jars, not one. If you’re going to hold out on me, dear, then I’m going to hold out on you,” she said sweetly. “This is a two-way street. We have to learn to trust each other.” She looked past Gurl, fluffing her hair in her full-length mirror.

  But Gurl saw nothing two-way about it. She twisted her wrist in Mrs Terwiliger’s hand. “No,” she said, so quietly that even she could barely hear it.

  “Excuse me? Did you say something?”

  Gurl looked into Mrs Terwiliger’s surgery-enhanced face and wondered where her courage was coming from. “I said no. If you don’t let me see Noodle now, I’m not doing anything else for you.”

  “Don’t be silly, dear. Now, I was eyeing this gorgeous little antique shop the other day and I saw an exquisite vase that would look perfect in my office. When visiting dignitaries come to see Hope House, it will make them feel welcome. Here, I have a photo—”

  “I said I’m not doing it.”

  Mrs Terwiliger pushed Gurl back into the chair and snapped the handcuffs on her. “I don’t see why you have to be so stubborn.”

  In response, Gurl vanished, blending in neatly with the chair behind her.

  “Stop that,” said Mrs Terwiliger. “I’ll leave you here, I mean it. I’ll lock you where no one will ever find you!” She stamped her foot.

  “Then I guess you won’t be getting that perfect vase you want so badly.” Gurl was glad that Mrs Terwiliger couldn’t see her trembling. She had never in her life spoken this way. But her travels outside had begun to change her inside. She felt stronger somehow. Braver. And more than that, she was angry. Angrier than she’d ever been. All Gurl had ever tried to do was get along, to stay out of everyone’s way, and not call attention to herself. And the only reward she’d got for it was one tiny cat who chose to be her friend. And this woman had turned her into a thief! It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t right!

  Mrs Terwiliger looked at the photograph she held and then at the chair, longing and rage etched on her face. “All right,” she said. “If you are going to be so difficult about it, I suppose I could appease you this once. But don’t expect me to do this all the time! You’ve been getting snippier and snippier ever since you got that haircut, if you’ll pardon the pun. I expect to be rewarded for my generosity.” She flicked the handcuff with a fingertip and said, “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

  Gurl sat in the chair, waiting for her to return with Noodle. The fez-wearing monkey still perched on the desk where it had been the first time Mrs Terwiliger dragged her to this office. “Hey, monkey,” she said. “Did you hear? The matron’s doing an errand for me. What do you think about that?”

  The monkey clapped its cymbals twice and then stopped, its eyes seeming to stare right back at her. So? its eyes said. That’s no secret. Tell me something I don’t know. Gurl picked it up to examine it more closely. It was cheap, like something a street vendor would sell for a few bucks. She fingered the little waistcoat and saw the gold velvet was worn and threadbare, the fur sparse and thin. Idly, she flipped the monkey over. On a white sticker pasted to the monkey’s butt was a name: GURL.

  “What?” said Gurl out loud. The monkey’s cymbals clapped weakly and Gurl threw the thing back up on the desk.

  Why did a stupid mechanical monkey have her name on its butt? What did it mean? She glanced around at the other monkeys. Did they all have names? Forgetting the handcuffs, she got up and shuffled to the closest shelf, dragging the chair along with her. She snatched up a yellow monkey with a red chapeau and searched its backside for a sticker. JESSAMYN JACOBSON. She put that monkey down and plucked up the one next to it. MICHAEL O’KEEBLE. The next said SHERMAN PERLMUTTER. Who were these people? Why were their names on the monkeys?

  What was going on here?

  Just then Gurl heard the familiar creak of Noodle’s birdcage. She put down the monkey she was holding and dragged the chair to its original position in front of the desk. Mrs Terwiliger pushed open the door. “What were you doing?” she said. “I heard noises.”

  “Not much,” Gurl told her. “Looking at the monkeys.”

  “Were you now?” said Mrs Terwiliger, placing the birdcage on the desk next to the fez-wearing monkey. Noodle thrust her nose between the bars of the cage and meowed.

  “Can’t you take her out?” Gurl pleaded, barely able to get a little finger inside the cage to pet the cat. “It’s so small in there.”

  “No, I can’t take her out,” said Mrs Terwiliger. “She gets bathroom breaks twice a day and that’s quite enough trouble. Strange little animal. Refused to use a litterbox.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” said Gurl.

  Mrs Terwiliger harrumphed but didn’t comment further. And she let Gurl have five minutes more than she normally did, enough time for Noodle’s purr to get so loud that it filled Mrs Terwiliger’s head and made her sleepy, made her peaceful, made her wonder about trees falling in the woods and the sounds that they made when they did.

  Mrs Terwiliger didn’t know how long she had been napping, but when she came to, Gurl was still petting the cat, a dazed and dreamy expression on her face. “Snap out of it!” Mrs Terwiliger shouted, more for her own sake than Gurl’s.

  Gurl blinked and said, “What is it? What’s going on?” The fez-wearing monkey clapped its cymbals until the cat mewled.

  “What’s going on is that we’re going to talk about your next errand,” said Mrs Terwiliger, pulling the birdcage off the desk and putting it on the floor.

  Gurl felt another surge of anger—how long could this possibly go on?—but she swallowed it. “The vase. I remember.”

  “No, I’ve changed my mind. Forget the vase. I want you to do something bigger and more important.”

  Gurl, suddenly worried that Mrs Terwiliger wanted to branch out into bank robbery, said, “What could be more important than a vase?”

  “I’ll tell you what’s more important,” said Mrs Terwiliger. “What’s important to any girl. My face.”

  “Your face,” repeated Gurl.

  “You might be surprised to hear this,” Mrs Terwiliger told her, “but I’ve had a few things done to…er…spruce up a bit. A few minor surgical procedures.”

  “Really?” said Gurl, trying to keep the sarcasm from her voice.

  “I am the face of Hope House,” Mrs Terwiliger said. “And if I don’t look good, then the orphanage doesn’t either. I’m scheduled for a few more procedures, but there’s a bit of a problem with my credit card. And until I get it straightened out, my doctor has refused to do them.”

  “Can’t you just pay your bills?” said Gurl.

  “Well, yes. I plan to do that as soon as I can. But I need the procedures now. Some things can’t wait.”

  Gurl was confused. “What can I do about your bills?”

  “The bills are generated at the doctor’s office by the computer.” She handed Gurl a slip of paper with an address. “You’ll go uptown. Sneak into the building, boot up the computer and mark the balance as paid. I trust that you’ve had enough experience in computer class?”

  “Uh…sure, I can do that,” said Gurl. “Can I pet Noodle again, just for a few more minutes?”

  “Not so fast, dear. You should know one more thing. In the daytime that office has more staff and more patients going in and out of it than Grand Central Station. Even if you’re invisible, I don’t see how you can get to the computers then. You’ll have to go at night.”

  “I’ve gone out at night before,” Gurl said. “Can I please pet Noodle?”

  “But at night,” Mrs Terwiliger continued, “there’s a rather elaborate alarm system. You’ll have to find a way to get past it.”

  “What?” said Gurl. “How? I don’t know anything about ala
rms!”

  “Oh, you’ll manage. I have complete faith in you. And Noodle does too.” Mrs Terwiliger sighed, her face a mask of sadness. “I don’t really know what’s going to happen to her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at her. She’s obviously an old cat. I don’t know how many days she has left.”

  Noodle didn’t seem that old, but Gurl couldn’t tell a young cat from an old one. “Noodle’s fine.”

  “Now she’s fine. But what happens if I forget to feed her?”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I’m very busy, Gurl. I have a lot of people depending on me. One day I could forget.” She smiled at Gurl. “You wouldn’t want me to forget, would you?”

  Mrs Terwiliger wouldn’t do anything to Noodle, thought Gurl after a sleepless night spent tossing and turning, she couldn’t do anything. But then maybe she would. Maybe Mrs Terwiliger already had enough scarves and hats and perfume to last her a lifetime. Maybe Gurl had pushed her too far.

  It seemed that she was pushing everyone too far. On her way back from the cafeteria line, she bumped someone with her shoulder. “Sorry,” she said.

  “Hey!” Bug said, the front of his shirt dripping with orange juice she’d made him spill, his huge wide eyes darkening with anger. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”

  She barely glanced his way. “Whatever.”

  Dillydally whistled. “Far out! The leadfoot’s getting a bit of a ’tude, bro!”

  Bug looked as if he wanted to say something more, but Gurl swept past him and sat in her usual place in the cafeteria, stirring her eggs but unable to eat a bite. She was so preoccupied that she didn’t hear Digger until Digger was right up in her face.

  “Whatcha eating, Freak?” Digger took Gurl’s carton of milk and downed the contents.

  Milk for the cow, Gurl thought. Eggs for the chicken. How was she going to get past an alarm? It was impossible!

  “I’m talking to you,” said Digger, her little finger flirting with her nostril.

  “Mmm-hmmm,” said Gurl absently. Maybe the alarm was one of those kinds with a card key. If she could steal one, that might work. Or if there was some sort of code, she could sneak up behind some people and see what numbers they punched in.

  “Hey!” snarled Digger, furious that her mere bulky, blocky presence wasn’t enough to set Gurl trembling as usual. But Gurl was tired and anxious, so much so that she was impatient.

  “Oh, sorry,” said Gurl, “did you want something?” She picked up her breakfast plate and offered it to Digger. “Go ahead. Get it over with.”

  “Huh?” said Digger.

  “No, wait, on second thought I’ll do it for you.”

  Two hundred orphans’ mouths grew slack and round with shock as Gurl threw her own plate to the floor, where it smashed into a million pieces.

  Chapter 10

  Two Little Mice

  WHISTLING A NONSENSE TUNE, BUG sidled over to the door to the main building, the unbent paper clip hidden behind his back. When he thought no one was looking, he jiggled the clip in the doorknob until he felt the lock give and the knob turn. Then he opened the door and slid inside.

  Finally, he thought. Elvis is in the building. He started to take a step when he heard a beeping sound and noticed something hinky: faint red laser beams crosshatching the hallway. An alarm system! Motion detectors! The moronic matron strikes again! Well, he could take care of that.

  He turned and scanned the wall for the alarm panel. He pulled the cover off the panel and inspected the wiring: blue, red, yellow, white. No problem. Snip the red wire, splice together the blue and white, tie the yellow in a knot, put back the cover. The beeping stopped and the lasers disappeared.

  Bug crept down the darkened hallway, peeking in offices, bathrooms and broom closets, exploring every nook and cranny. When he got to Mrs Terwiliger’s office, he smiled at the five locks. So paranoid, he thought. Then he thought: for good reason. He pulled out the handy paper clip and a few more from his pockets and soon he had all five locks picked and the door open. Cruising the office, he sneered back at the monkeys who sneered at him from their perches on the shelves. Geez, he thought. Look at them all. What kind of wacko would collect stuff like this?

  A wacko who stole people’s cats, that’s who.

  Frustrated, he punched the wall. Wham! That stupid Gurl. Wham! Lost his cat. Wham! He’d been having flying dreams again, ones where he’d been so high he’d cleared the top of the Empire State and then doubled back to dart around the needle on the roof. Strange sounds interrupted the dream and he’d woken up, at first just disoriented, then so disappointed he nearly cried (but he did not cry). He’d punched his pillow a few times, then got up and crept to the window. Gurl stood outside, lurking by the door of the main building. Soon Mrs Terwiliger floated across the yard. He’d watched them go inside and decided he would follow. He’d heard the whole thing, or at least the last part of the whole thing, while eavesdropping outside Mrs Terwiliger’s door. Gurl was going out at night, doing stuff for the matron, some kind of secret stuff because the matron was keeping the cat prisoner to make her do it.

  And here he’d searched every inch of this place for the last couple of weeks and the cat—his toilet-flushing genius cat!—was nowhere to be found. And if Gurl didn’t go to that doctor’s office and do something about Mrs Terwiliger’s bills, well, he didn’t want to think about it.

  Why he didn’t want to think about it is another story. The truth was, he’d only seen the cat once, and while it was a cool cat, and cats were rare and everything, it was still just an animal. All he knew was that the idea of not seeing the cat again, the idea that Mrs Terwiliger was keeping it in some cage somewhere and it couldn’t get out, made him, well, want to punch the walls.

  Wham!

  If only he had something to blackmail Mrs Terwiliger with, something that would force her to give him the cat. He started searching the desk. He found disciplinary files on Digger (fighting), disciplinary files on Lunchmeat (loafing), disciplinary files on Dillydally (dillydallying). In his opinion there should have been a disciplinary folder on Gurl, for showing up one day with movie star hair like she’d had it her whole dumb life, for spilling orange juice all over him and barely saying she was sorry, for throwing her plate on the floor and freaking out the whole orphanage, and for generally acting like a whole different person than the weepy dishwater pasty face he thought she was.

  He kicked the chair. It slid backwards and bumped the shelf behind it, and a monkey—a shoddy-looking thing with a waistcoat, maracas and a stupid grin—fell to the floor. He remembered that monkey. It was on Mrs Terwiliger’s desk the first time he came to see her. She said it was…? He had to try hard to remember. His friend. She said it was his friend. He nudged the toy with his sneaker. There was something on the bottom of the monkey, a white sticker with writing. Bug picked it up to see. WHAT’S IT TO YOU? Well, no clues there, but if this monkey was Bug’s friend, then Bug was just going to keep ole What’s It To You? for a while. He slid the small monkey into his pocket.

  Apart from all the monkeys, there was nothing weird on Mrs Terwiliger’s desk, say a letter that admitted to holding a cat hostage to force a minor to commit fraud. Bug sat down behind the desk with his head in his hands, wondering what he should do now. Well, there was a computer. He could boot it up and see what’s what. And if there wasn’t anything on it, well, he could still surf the Net. When he pulled his hands away from his eyes, however, he saw the business card taped to the computer, the one with a surgeon’s name and address.

  He pulled the monkey from his pocket. “What do you think?” he said, turning to the mirror on the wall next to the desk. “Could I use a couple of emergency cheek implants or what?”

  The monkey kept on grinning.

  “That’s what I thought. I better get to the doctor.”

  Wham!

  Bug waited until after lights-out before throwing off the covers and slipping from his be
d. All around him, orphans sighed and orphans snored, orphans wheezed and orphans whistled. Now that was the good thing about boys, he thought, they could sleep through fireworks. He tiptoed across the dormitory, even though he didn’t have to, and slipped from the room. It took him just a few minutes to pick the lock to the door that let him outside.

  It was dark, of course, but not that dark; the city napped, but it was never out cold. Bug skipped down the long avenues, occasionally trying to fly. After finding that he couldn’t fly any better outside the orphanage than inside, he mostly ran the dozens of blocks until he was close to Central Park. He found the building he was looking for and through the glass door saw Gurl standing in the darkened, deserted lobby, staring at the keypad of some sort of alarm system. Her face was crumpled up like a napkin and he knew she was about to cry any second.

  That, he didn’t need. Quickly, he picked the flimsy lock on the door and let himself inside. “What are you doing here?” he said.

  She gasped, whirling around to stare at him. “How did you get in?”

  “I picked the lock. How did you get in?” he said, figuring that she just followed someone inside.

  “Me?” she stammered. “I’m just…um…visiting. A friend.” “Really,” he said. “A friend.” He pointed to the list of the building’s occupants. “Is your friend with the insurance agency? Or the day spa? Or maybe with the chiropodist’s office?”

  He thought that she might start babbling again, but her grey eyes got a flinty look. “The chiropodist. I have bad feet. They have this awful tendency to kick nosy, stupid people in the head.”

  Snap! He was impressed. “That’s a problem.”

  “For the nosy people,” she said. “OK, it was nice to see you. You can go now. To wherever you’re supposed to be.” She was looking at him in the same way she looked at him in the cafeteria after she spilled juice all over him. The way that told him that on a scale of important things she had to worry about, Bug rated a minus 40. Her eyes were on the keypad of the alarm. It wasn’t very high-tech for a nice building, just a plain old numerical code that you had to punch in. Easy stuff.