The Invisible Girl

by Laura Ruby

  Stunned, Bug and Gurl stared at the monkey. “Did it say ‘Wall’?” Bug asked.

  “Yes, I said The Wall,” chattered the monkey. “Every century or whatever, a Wall is born. One who can disappear. A long time ago, when she was just a baby, she was kidnapped, but then the stupid goons who were supposed to watch her lost her.”

  “Kidnapped?” said Gurl. “I was kidnapped?” The thought astonished her. For years she thought that she was nothing, no one, invisible to the world, given up because she was unwanted—nothing more than a burden. What if she had family somewhere? Family looking for her?

  “For the last three years, you have travelled through every orphanage in the city, looking for her. But you’re tired of this. You don’t even want to find her. You hope she ran away to Toledo so that you can get out of Hope House. It’s the worst place you’ve ever been.”

  “I can’t believe this,” cried Bug. “The monkeys have been keeping all our thoughts. That’s why she has one for each of us. Our memories are in them!”

  “You’ve only been at Hope House for a little while and you hate it already. Mrs Terwiliger has had so much plastic surgery that she looks like a cartoon, the food tastes like monkey chow and you’re so bored you feel like punching the walls.”

  “Monkey chow?” said Gurl, turning to look at Bug. “Punching the walls?”

  Bug’s face was drained of colour, and his eyes looked cloudy and troubled. He said nothing, as if his silence would keep her from saying what he knew she was going to say, what she did say.

  “When this monkey says ‘you’ it means you. This monkey has your thoughts. You were sent to find me.” Her eyes widened to nearly the size of Bug’s. “You’re the son of a thief! That’s why you can pick all the door locks and fix the alarms! You’re supposed to bring me to your father! This Sweetmeats guy! You’re the scary man!” She sprang out of her chair.

  “Sit down!” barked a man sitting a few rows behind them.

  “Wait,” said Bug. “Please! I don’t remember any of this stuff, OK? It’s not me!”

  But it wasn’t true. Not really. As soon as the monkey began to speak, the memories had begun to flood back: his goldenhaired, black-hearted father, the lock-pick set for his ninth birthday, the endless nannies, Odd John, the armour in the round meeting room, his first taste of foie gras and caviar, loneliness, loneliness, loneliness.

  And though he tried to keep the recognition off his face, Gurl could see it plain as his huge blue eyes: it was him. It was him!

  Suddenly, the doors burst open and light flooded the theatre. Gurl heard Jules’s fussy voice yelling, “Wait! Tickets! You don’t have tickets! We’re sold out of that one! Try the romantic comedy! It’s hilarious, I swear!”

  With Noodle cradled in her arms, Gurl whirled to run towards the exit. But she was too late. An enormous man with a zipper running across his face flew like a bat across the theatre. Just as she vanished, he grabbed her, grinning with his yellow niblet teeth.

  Chapter 20

  Ups and Downs

  GURL KICKED AND THRASHED, BUT the man’s grip didn’t loosen and a bite on the hand only served to make him giggle. What was with all the giggling creeps around this city!

  A yellow-haired man strode down the length of the theatre, followed by a dozen others—bushy-browed, heavymuscled, scowling-faced men—a few floating, most walking.

  “Son!” said the yellow-haired man, when he reached Bug.

  “Shhh!” said the people all around them.

  “Pardon moi,” said Sweetcheeks Grabowski smoothly. “Let’s be on our way so that these lovely folks can watch their strange little movie.”

  “I’m not going!” yelled Gurl, struggling with all her strength.

  “Neither am I,” Bug said, scowling as his father put an arm around his shoulders.

  “Really, Sylvester,” said Sweetcheeks, exasperated. “Was this a good time to find yourself a girlfriend?”

  “I’m not his girlfriend,” Gurl yelled between bites and punches.

  “No, and that’s a good thing too,” Sweetcheeks said,

  “because you’re not going to have time for any of that. I’ve got lots of stuff planned for us all.” He ruffled Bug’s hair. “Isn’t that nice?”

  Bug knocked his father’s hand away. “I don’t know you.”

  “What are you going on about? Are you feeling well?”

  “Leave us alone!” shouted Bug, looking around wildly for a wall on which to bloody his knuckles.

  “Will you people please be quiet!” another man in the audience said. Odd John turned and smiled at the man in a sweet and terrifying way sure to turn his guts to water.

  “John, my son is delirious,” Sweetcheeks said. “It must have been the shock of getting his memory back.” Sweetcheeks hugged his son, ignoring the fact that the boy was frantically kicking him in the skins. “That terrible, greedy woman! Stealing memories with these absurd toys! And her face! Even John was terrified.”

  “Let me go!”

  “But don’t worry. John taught her a valuable lesson that we all should learn: acceptance. We need to accept ourselves the way we are. One doesn’t fool with Mother Nature. One ages with grace, blah blah blah. Once John undid most of those nips and tucks, that woman was a brand-new person, wouldn’t you say, John? She told me to tell you that she was sorry and that she wouldn’t ever ever ever do it again.”

  “Get off me!”

  Sweetcheeks rolled his eyes at the other theatre patrons—who were now staring in disbelief—as if to say, Children! What can you do? “Sylvester, I promise I will make it up to you,” said Sweetcheeks. “But right now we must be on our way.” He looked around the theatre. “My sincerest apologies. My son isn’t well and his friend is obviously having hysterical fits. So sorry to interrupt. Au revoir! Tant pis! Crème brûlée! Let’s go, boys.”

  The enormous scarred man scooped up Gurl as if she were no more than a toy herself and flew out of the theatre, past the ticket booth and into their getaway vehicle: a city tour bus. The scarred man strapped Gurl into a seat on the open roof of the bus and sat down next to her to make sure she didn’t go anywhere. Bug followed, dragged by his father and several of his henchmen. Gurl reappeared, squealing and slapping at the scarred man, trying to get Jules’s attention. But Jules was no longer in the ticket booth; Jules was nowhere to be seen. Gurl kept slapping and squealing anyway, hoping that someone, somewhere, might see or hear her and call the police. Noodle growled like a dog in her lap.

  Sweetcheeks thrust his face in Gurl’s. “Stop that flailing around or John will take your kitty and turn her into a nice hat.”

  Gurl stopped struggling and vanished. “Oooh!” said Sweetcheeks. “That is impressive! But even though we can’t see you, we still have you. And that is the important thing.” Sweetcheeks stomped on the floor and yelled, “Driver!”

  The old stinking bus lurched forward like a lumbering apatosaurus. The group drove in near silence for several blocks before Sweetcheeks spoke again, pointing up at the sky. “Do you see that?”

  Despite themselves, Bug and Gurl both looked up. All around them, winking skyscrapers rose like columns that held up the heavens. “Amazing, this city. Most people see all these buildings and forget that we are surrounded by a moat of water. We can’t grow out, so we grow up. It doesn’t matter that no one can fly more than five or ten storeys. Higher, says the city! Taller, says the city! More, says the city! We’ll catch up! And so up and up and up they go, like concrete beanstalks.”

  Gurl said nothing, glancing at Bug. He looked angry enough to launch himself at his father, but why, she had no idea. Wasn’t this the reason he came to Hope House? To find her and then get back to his father? She stroked Noodle’s invisible fur, the taste of Bug’s betrayal like metal in her mouth.

  “Well, at least some of us went up,” Sweetcheeks was saying. “Some of us, however, stayed down.” He moved from his seat at the front of the bus to a seat just in front of Gurl. As he couldn’
t see her, his gaze settled on where he thought her face might be. “There are the people who fly and the ones who crawl. The butterflies and the cockroaches, if you will. Butterflies are beautiful, of course, and everyone loves them, but what happens to butterflies? They live for a few weeks and then they die. But the roaches? Chop their heads off and they walk! Spray them with insecticides and they laugh! Bomb them and they thrive! I,” said Sweetcheeks, “am a roach.” He reached out for Gurl. “And so are you.”

  Gurl smacked his hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t care what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you do. Roaches can’t fly all flitter flutter like the butterfly. But they live right under the noses of everyone else. They slip through the cracks unnoticed. They take what they need and what they want. Like you, like me.”

  Gurl thought of all the things she had stolen for Mrs Terwiliger—and for herself—and for a moment felt ashamed.

  “Yes,” said Sweetcheeks, nodding thoughtfully. “You understand what I’m saying.”

  “I’m not a roach,” said Bug.

  Sweetcheeks sighed. “Sylvester, Daddy’s busy right now.”

  “I said, I am not a roach!” Bug punched the side of the bus. Wham!

  “You know that everything I do, I do for you,” Sweetcheeks said.

  “You don’t do anything for me.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Bug folded his arms across his chest. “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “No!”

  “You’re trying my patience,” said Sweetcheeks, in a sing-songy sort of voice.

  “You’re making me nauseous,” said Bug, in the same sing-song.

  Sweetcheeks turned to Odd John, throwing up his hands, and John shrugged. The yellow-haired man said no more; neither did his son nor any of the heavy-browed, broken-nosed men who picked at their fingernails in boredom. Gurl wondered where they were being taken and why.

  The bus chugged down the wide avenues until it crossed into the downtown area, where the neat grid of streets collapsed into a haphazard pile—darker, narrower, shorter and every which way—just like wood for a campfire. The buildings were still high, but not nearly so tall as they were in midtown. Gurl recognised the cheerful awnings of Little Italy, which blended into the crowded markets of Chinatown. Cramped restaurants with glazed ducks hanging in the windows stood side by side with trinket shops displaying silk slippers, fans and tanks filled with tiny turtles sold as pets. Though it was late, people swarmed in and out of the shops, stopping only to glare at the great stinking bus as it ploughed through the choked streets like an egg swallowed by a snake.

  “We’re here,” said Sweetcheeks as the bus finally lurched and died. “Everybody out!”

  Before Gurl could make a move, Odd John deftly unlocked her restraints and carried her from the bus into the nearest trinket shop. Instead of flying, he walked all the way to the back of the shop, to a door marked with some Chinese characters and an English translation: “Employees Only”. John opened the door and went inside. It seemed to Gurl that they walked for a very long time down a long sloping hallway, though it didn’t seem possible that this building could go back (or down) so far. She could hear the footsteps and grunts of the rest of Sweetcheeks’s men as they followed, and imagined that she saw Bug’s eyes gleaming like a cat’s in the dark.

  Finally, they reached yet another door, this one with a red, hand-shaped panel on it. Sweetcheeks shoved aside his minions and pressed his hand on the panel. The door slid open, revealing a shimmering corridor of marble and tapestry that outdid even the Palace Hotel. Gurl gasped.

  “Yes, it is wonderful, isn’t it? I personally stole each and every one of these tapestries from museums all over Europe,” Sweetcheeks said. “Everyone into the Armoury. Wait till you see that one, you’re just going to die. Oh, but not literally.”

  The group fanned out from the corridor into the Armoury, a round room with a glass table and creepy suits of armour all around the perimeter. What was worse, far worse than the creepy suits of armour, was the thing sitting at the table. The rat man with the red eyes and filed teeth. The thing that said “Kitty” and began to sniff the air.

  “Kitty! Yes, absolutely. Kitty it is!” Sweetcheeks grabbed for the cat he knew Gurl carried.

  “What are you doing?” said Bug.

  “No!” Gurl tried to shrink away, but Odd John just gripped her tighter, holding her still. Sweetcheeks felt along her shoulders, then down her arms, until he found Noodle in her sling.

  “No!” Gurl cried again, tears springing to her eyes as Sweetcheeks pulled Noodle away.

  “Stop it!” Bug yelled.

  The cat, once free of Gurl’s touch, became visible, which sent the rat man into spasms. “Kittykittykittykitty!” he gibbered. Gurl thought if John wasn’t holding her up, she might faint.

  “Don’t!” screamed Bug, leaping after his father.

  Sweetcheeks motioned for one of his men. “Help him get control of himself, will you, Lefty?”

  Lefty grabbed Bug, holding him easily, as the boy punched and spit. “Don’t give it the cat!”

  “I have to,” said Sweetcheeks, holding Noodle out by her armpits in front of him, as if she were a baby with a dirty diaper. “I promised Mr Sewer Rat and I do keep my word. We never really got along before, The Sewer Rats and my gang. Turf wars, blah blah blah. They can never seem to stay put in the sewers, where they belong. But as you can see, they have some sort of…thing for cats. It has to do with a wool coat The Sewer Rats stole more than 150 years ago. Remind me to tell you that story; it’s my favourite. Anyway, they found a cat in the pocket of this wool coat and they’ve been gaga about cats ever since, believe me. And one day not too long ago, this guy shows up yelling about a kitty and a girl who vanished into thin air. He wanted the kitty and I wanted the girl who vanished into thin air. So we made a little bargain and here we are. Friends.”

  Sweetcheeks walked around the table, dangling the squirming cat in front of the rat like a worm in front of a bird, and Gurl squeezed her eyes shut.

  The Sewer Rat took Noodle and cradled her as gently as a mother cradles a child, cooing nonsense at her. Gurl opened her eyes to see Noodle blink at the rat man, then bat playfully at his whiskers.

  “See?” said Sweetcheeks, taking a seat at the glass table. “It’s love.”

  Chapter 21

  The Black Box

  GURL HADN’T REALISED SHE’D BEEN holding her breath until she let it out in a whoosh. If Noodle thought that the rat man was harmless, well then, he must be, mustn’t he? At least it gave Gurl time to figure out a way to get her back and get both of them out of there.

  Odd John thrust Gurl into a chair, keeping one iron hand clamped around her wrist. Up close, in the light, she saw that the scar wasn’t really a scar: it was a zipper. She thought of the lions at the library, how they turned out to be actors in lion suits, and wondered what was underneath Odd John’s Odd John suit.

  She decided she did not want to find out.

  A young man hobbled into the room, one foot bandaged up. “Sweetcheeks? The pizzas are here.”

  “Bobby! Good to hear it! How’s the foot?”

  “Uh, better. Thanks.”

  Sweetcheeks smiled in Gurl’s general direction. “Bobby The Boy lost all his toes. It happens.”

  Gurl looked at Bobby, trying to figure out how, exactly, a person loses their toes. Bobby frowned, trying to figure out why, exactly, his boss appeared to be talking to an empty chair.

  “Bobby,” said Sweetcheeks.

  “What?”

  “You said something about pizzas?”

  “Uh…yeah,” said Bobby The Boy, “I’ll go get them.” He hobbled from the room.

  Pizzas? Gurl decided that she was sick of Sweetcheeks Grabowski, sick of rat men, sick of Odd John, sick of this whole freak show. “What do you want?” she said.

  Sweetcheeks looked startled, as if he’d forgotten she was there. “I thought that we
could discuss that over dinner.”

  “I don’t want dinner. I just want to get away from all of you.” At this, she glared at Bug, then remembered that she was still invisible.

  “Away? You just got here,” said Sweetcheeks. “Have a little something to eat.”

  “I’m not going to eat.”

  “Well, I’m going to eat,” said Sweetcheeks as Bobby the Boy limped in with a stack of pizza boxes. He opened them one at a time. “I thought I told you half escargot and half aubergine?”

  “Oh!” said Bobby The Boy, his face turning a sickly shade of grey. “I thought you said half escarole—as in salad, not snail! I’m sorry, Boss. It won’t happen again! I swear!”

  “It’s all right, it’s all right,” said Sweetcheeks. “Don’t worry about it. You’re lucky I like escarole.”

  In Gurl’s opinion, a man who lost all his toes didn’t have any luck, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Sylvester, your favourite. Come on, have a slice.”

  “No!” said Bug. He tried to get up from his seat, but Lefty shoved him right back down.

  “I really don’t know what’s gotten into you,” said Sweetcheeks, folding his pizza in half and finishing it off in three large bites. “That girl must have rubbed off. You never gave me problems before.”

  “Maybe I’m not the same as before,” said Bug. “Maybe I’m nothing like I was before.” His huge eyes searched for Gurl as he spoke. “I remember everything about myself, and even about you, but it’s like I’m remembering someone else.”

  “It’ll pass,” said Sweetcheeks. “Have some pizza.”

  Bug turned away and Sweetcheeks took another piece. “So, I hear that my son calls you Gurl. Is this actually your name?”

  “It’s better than ‘Sweetcheeks’,” said Gurl.

  Sweetcheeks chuckled. “You could be right. Listen, Gurl. Have you ever heard of The Richest Man in the Universe?”