The Invisible Girl

by Laura Ruby

  “Is there one?”

  “Sure there is. And wouldn’t you know, he’s right here in the city. As a matter of fact, he and his wife will be judging this year’s Flyfest.”

  Bug’s head shot up at the mention of the Flyfest, and Gurl wished that she could march over and punch him. “That’s nice,” said Gurl.

  “We’re all going to be going to the Flyfest and introducing ourselves to this man. You see, he has something that I want. Something better than a magic wool coat. Better than a kitty cat. Better than a monkey. Better than flying. Better than invisibility.” Sweetcheeks’ eyes, not so large as his son’s but the same deep blue, got all dreamy.

  “I’m not going to steal from this guy, if that’s what you have in mind.”

  “Oh, but just this once,” said Sweetcheeks. “And then I will let you go. I promise.”

  “You’re never going to let me go. But it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to steal. I don’t steal.”

  “Sure you do,” Sweetcheeks said. “Everyone does. This whole city was founded on it. Haven’t you ever heard of the twenty-four-dollar deal?”

  “No,” said Gurl.

  “European settlers supposedly bought this island from the Indians for twenty-four dollars’ worth of beads back in the 1600s. Of course, the Indians had no understanding of the concept of ownership, so they probably thought that the Europeans just had a couple of extra beads and were being extra friendly. They had no idea that they would be kicked off the land. But hey, that’s the way of the world.”

  “Not my world.”

  “Especially your world. How many shoes did you steal for Mrs Terwiliger anyway? That was some slick work.”

  “That was different!” said Gurl.

  “Oh? Why? Because she had your cat?”

  “Yes!”

  “You could have refused anyway. You could have called the police. You could have sacrificed what you love for the greater good. For your principles.” Sweetcheeks patted his lips with his napkin. “But you didn’t. No, you did what she wanted to get what you wanted. How is that different from anyone else?”

  Confused, Gurl struggled for an answer. She was different, wasn’t she? “I’m not going to steal again. You can’t make me.”

  “I can’t?” said Sweetcheeks.

  “You can’t,” said Gurl as firmly as she could. And she meant it. Now that Noodle seemed OK, there was nothing they could do to change her mind.

  “Wow,” said Sweetcheeks. “That sounds like a challenge. I love a challenge. John, if you please?”

  Again Gurl was lifted and hauled around like a sack of onions. Instead of the opulent room that Gurl expected, however, Sweetcheeks opened the door of a room so dark that she could not see a foot beyond the doorway. “What’s in there?” she managed to say before John dumped her on the floor.

  “Nothing but black, black and more pitch black,” said Sweetcheeks. “This is The Black Box. We can’t see you, so it’s only fair that you can’t see us. After a few days here, I’m sure you’ll start to see things my way.”

  “Never,” said Gurl.

  “Then you won’t see anyone or anything ever again.”

  He shut the door, closing Gurl up in a world of blackness, blackness so black that it seemed almost thick, like the room had been stuffed with wool. She crawled along the cold cement floor, feeling for the walls. The room was small, little more than a closet, but it didn’t mean anything to her. So what? She had broken and entered, stolen and pilfered, flown and crashed. She had been chased by rat men and Punks and cops. They meant to drive her crazy by leaving her alone in the dark, but it wasn’t going to work. Didn’t they know she was an expert at being alone? Didn’t they realise she’d been alone her whole life?

  This, she thought, would be a piece of cake.

  At first she slept a deep and dreamless sleep. Hours later—or, at least, what felt like hours—she awoke, expecting at least a little light. But The Black Box was as dark as it had been the night before and she still couldn’t see a thing. And she had to go to the bathroom. She crawled around the perimeter of the room until she bumped into a toilet in the corner. Well, that was one problem taken care of.

  She figured that since she was a prisoner, she should keep herself occupied like prisoners do, so she did sit-ups until it hurt. Then she sang songs to herself—pop songs and nursery rhymes and made-up songs about cats and roaches and rat men with umbrellas. That afternoon, or what she thought was afternoon, she dozed, half asleep, half awake, her fingers and nose numb from the chill. Her body began to ache from sitting and from lying on the hard floor. She got bored, then hungry, then bored again.

  She flipped through her file of daydreams, trying to use them to comfort herself, but her bland, pleasant scenarios of report cards and family vacations were invaded by albino alligators and screaming Punks. She remembered being a baby, looking up at a yellow budgie twittering in a cage, but that couldn’t be right because who could remember being a baby? Then she was in a court room. A whole bunch of Indians were there, pointing at her. “Judge,” they said, “there she is. She’s the one who stole our island. She’s a liar and a thief.”

  There was a period where she thought she dreamed that someone was screaming, someone very far away, but she woke up the next day (or the day after that?) with a sore throat. She was sleeping so much, her own thoughts come slowly and sluggishly. Was she blending into the blackness, she wondered? Was she becoming like the black around her, or was the black around her becoming more her?

  On the third (fourth?) day, curled in the corner of The Black Box, she started to count to pass the time. She’d reached 5,692 when she heard her name.

  Gurl.

  She smiled in the dark. It was nice to hear her name, even if she was just imagining it. Gurl, Gurl, Gurl. It wasn’t her real name, she knew that now. She’d surely been named as a baby and must have another name. She supposed she could be anybody. Cornelia. Beatrice. Stephanie. Trixie. And there would be a last name too, the name of her parents. Wasn’t it so interesting that people had first and last names?

  “Psst, Gurl! Can you hear me?”

  Now that sounded like a real voice, right outside the door. Feeling her way, she crawled along the wall until she found the door hinges under her fingertips. Her tongue was too thick and dry to speak; she could only moan a little. The inside of her stomach felt tight and scrapey.

  “Gurl? Are you all right? They’ve been watching me like hawks. I couldn’t get here till now. Hey, are you there?”

  It was Bug.

  She hadn’t cried when they put her in this box because she thought she was an expert at being alone. But in reality, she hadn’t always been alone. She had Noodle. And then she had Bug. He was her friend.

  Now Noodle was gone and Bug was a traitor. She huddled by the door of The Black Box and cried, just a little bit, for all the things that she had lost: her name, her family, her dreams, and the only friends she had in the world. She cried, but her body couldn’t produce any tears from her dry ducts.

  “Gurl! Listen, Gurl. I know you’re in there. I’m sorry, OK? I’m so sorry. I didn’t know who I was. I told you that and it was the truth. I really didn’t know. I was sent to find you, but that monkey took my memories and I was just like everyone else. Just like you.”

  He paused and Gurl could hear him breathing under the door. “Sweetcheeks is my father, but he’s not my dad. My mother ran off when I was three years old. My father pretended I didn’t exist. Until he came up with the plan to find you. Then he paid attention. He taught me how to pick locks and do all that stuff with the alarms and the key cards. I learned it to make him happy, but I never wanted to do it. The only thing I ever wanted to do was become a Wing and get out of here.”

  She listened hard, searching for the lies and the tricks, but heard only Bug. The Bug she knew, the one she trusted.

  “We’re leadfeet,” he was saying. Bug laughed then, a bitter laugh. “Sweetcheeks was right about the roaches becaus
e no one in my family has ever been able to fly. We’re a bunch of roaches crawling in the walls and under the floor.” He punched the door: wham! “The only time I could fly was when I didn’t know who I was. Now that I know again, I’m grounded. Probably for ever.”

  She believed that he hadn’t known who he was; he had looked as surprised as she was when the monkey spilled its guts. And she knew something that he didn’t, something that she needed to tell him. But that something could wait.

  She scratched at the door with her fingertips.

  “Gurl? I hear you. What is it?”

  Gurl tried to moisten her beef jerky tongue. “Bug,” she rasped.

  “What?”

  “Bug!” she said, clearer now.

  “Yeah?”

  “Pick the stupid lock and get me out of here.”

  Chapter 22

  The Tower

  BUG PICKED THE LOCK AND opened The Black Box. Gurl was so weak with thirst and hunger that she couldn’t get to her feet. He took hold of her wrists, pulled her out of the darkness and rested her on the floor of the hallway. She blinked and tried to focus, but her eyes were unused to the light, and Bug’s face was a blur. Bug pressed a cup of water to her lips. She tried to gulp it back, but he slowed her down. “Just take sips or you’ll make yourself sick.”

  After she’d got her fill of the water, she found her voice again. “What took you so long?”

  “I wanted to explain,” he said. “I thought if I let you out before I told you the truth, you’d just punch me and run off if you could.”

  Gurl nodded. “You’re probably right,” she croaked. “You can see me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wondered. Wasn’t sure if I was invisible or not in there. I couldn’t figure out where I ended and the black began.”

  Bug nodded grimly. “Yeah, I know.”

  “You know? What do you mean, you know?”

  “How many times do you think I’ve been stuck in there?”

  “What? He put his own son in The Black Box?”

  “You met the guy. I don’t know why you sound surprised,” Bug said. “Though he never left me in there as long as he left you. Do you think you can stand up?”

  She nodded and he pulled her to her feet, grabbing her tightly when she wobbled. “Where’s Noodle?”

  Bug looked away. “With the rat man. He took her. I couldn’t stop him. I tried, but Odd John and Lefty held me down.” His hands balled up in fists.

  Gurl sighed. “All right, we’ll have to find her later.”

  “How?”

  She had no idea, but she thought that they had much bigger worries at the moment. “We’ll figure it out, OK? Right now I have to get out of here.”

  “You mean we have to get out of here.”

  She was going to ask him if he really meant it, if he really wanted to leave his father, but something in his eyes said that telling her once had been painful enough. “Right,” Gurl said. “Sorry. We have to get out of here.”

  “Well!” said Sweetcheeks Grabowski, striding down the hallway. “We do actually have to get out of here, but I’m not sure if it’s the ‘we’ you two are talking about.”

  Gurl and Bug turned to run in the other direction, but Odd John blocked their way. He slapped something on her head and strapped it on tight. A hat? A helmet? She tried to turn herself invisible, but found that she couldn’t. Was the hat stopping it?

  Sweetcheeks tightened the belt on his silk robe. “I see my son remembered his lock-picking lessons well enough. I suppose that’s something a father can be proud of. Still, Sylvester, I do wish you would try to remember who your family is.”

  Bug jerked his chin in Gurl’s direction. “She’s the closest thing I’ve got.”

  Sweetcheeks’s lip curled in disgust. “You’ve turned into some kind of sap. Fine. I’ll take you back to Hope House, and you can empty your mind back into one of those monkeys and live happily ever after.”

  “Better than staying here and listening to you babble about butterflies and roaches,” said Bug.

  “After I gave you everything I had!”

  “You didn’t give me anything until I could be useful. And then you gave me a set of lock picks.”

  “I loved you like a son!”

  “I am your son. But I hardly ever saw you except when you wanted something from me. And the last time was to send me off to find The Wall.”

  Sweetcheeks thought about this. “True,” he said. “But I don’t see why you’re so grumpy about it. My father treated me far worse. I would have been grateful to have been spared his company.”

  “He should have treated you better.”

  “Somebody’s been watching too many talk shows,” said Sweetcheeks.

  Gurl struggled with the hat, trying to unstrap it. “What is this thing?”

  “If you really must know, it’s a spaghetti strainer. With a few minor modifications,” said Sweetcheeks. “Anti-invisibility modifications. I got it from eBay. Lots of interesting stuff on eBay. Anyway, I’d love to continue this illuminating discussion, but I’ve got work to do. Gurl, you’re coming with me. I was hoping that The Black Box would make you a little more pliant, but it doesn’t matter. You’ll do what I say.”

  Gurl tried to appear strong and defiant, though she still felt as weak as a baby bird. “No way.”

  “Way,” said Sweetcheeks cheerfully, taking hold of her arm. His grip was even stronger than his henchman’s, although Gurl hadn’t thought that could be possible. “John. My son needs to learn a little respect. I don’t think that a couple of toes will be enough to prove my point. What to do, what to do?” He considered Bug. “Oh, well. Take an ear.”

  “What?” said Gurl. “What do you mean, ‘take an ear’? What are you talking about?”

  Bug swallowed hard. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “He isn’t serious.”

  To Gurl, Sweetcheeks looked extremely serious. “Don’t worry about you? Did you see the guy hobbling around the Armoury trying to serve pizza?”

  “Oh, but he’s right,” said Sweetcheeks. “You shouldn’t worry. Just one itty-bitty little ear. I swear he won’t even miss it. And John is quick. When he wants to be.” Odd John smiled and took a huge pair of scissors from his back pocket, scissors that looked sharp enough to cut through a telephone pole. He held the scissors against Bug’s head, Bug’s pink ear between the glinting silver blades.

  “Wait!” said Gurl. “Will you leave him alone if I help you?”

  “I’ll consider it,” said Sweetcheeks sweetly.

  A bead of sweat formed on Bug’s upper lip. “Gurl, don’t believe anything he says. That’s just what he wants!”

  “The girl isn’t dumb, boy,” Sweetcheeks said. “She can see that on her own.”

  “I’ll help you,” said Gurl. “I’ll help you do whatever you want to do. Let him go.”

  “You heard the young lady, John. Let him go.” Odd John pulled the scissors away from Bug’s head. “But we don’t want him going too far, so I think it’s The Tower for my dear son.”

  “What’s The Tower?” Gurl demanded.

  “Nothing like The Black Box,” Sweetcheeks told her. “And, trust me, no one will bother him there.”

  Gurl didn’t like the sound of The Tower. “I want him to come with us,” she said. “So that I know he’s OK.”

  “Won’t be possible,” Sweetcheeks said impatiently. “Now, he can stay the way he is or he can be clipped down to size. Your choice.”

  Gurl thought about Bug’s skill with locks and couldn’t imagine a room that could hold him if he didn’t want to be held. “Fine. I’ll come. He stays here. With all his body parts.”

  “Deal,” Sweetcheeks said. “John?”

  John grabbed Bug around the waist and lifted him as easily as other people lift gallons of milk. She looked at Bug, his face red and furious, and she remembered what she wanted to tell him when she was locked in The Black Box. “One second,” she said, “I want to say something to Bu
g. In private.”

  “Fine, fine,” said Sweetcheeks, hauling her over to Bug. “Whisper.”

  Gurl put her lips to Bug’s—thankfully still attached—ear. “You told me that you can’t fly, but you can. You have to remember that.”

  “Fly? He can’t fly!” said Sweetcheeks.

  “You weren’t supposed to listen!” said Gurl.

  “There are no secrets in my lair. And there’s no one in my family that can fly.”

  “He can,” she told Sweetcheeks. “He can fly higher than anyone.” She turned to Bug. “Don’t forget it. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t.”

  “Honey, you should write a self-help book and make a million dollars. In the mean time, we’ve got to get going.”

  “Wait!” said Bug.

  “Oh, what now?” said Sweetcheeks.

  “I just want to give her something. To remember me.” Bug reached into his pocket and pulled out Mrs Terwiliger’s monkey, handing it to Gurl.

  “Ironic,” Sweetcheeks said dryly. “Lefty!”

  Lefty came down the hallway. “What is it, Boss?”

  Sweetcheeks thrust Gurl at the moustached man. “Hang on to this for a minute.”

  A note about Sweetcheeks’ lair: it was a small city unto itself. Besides the Armoury and The Black Box, the lair boasted a restaurant-sized kitchen, a billiard room, a banquet hall, a movie theatre, a gym (Pilates classes on Wednesdays), a recording studio (Sweetcheeks was recording a CD of jazz favourites), several dozen bedrooms (with maid and laundry service), and, last but not least, The Tower.

  Unlike most towers, Sweetcheeks’s tower was a concrete column with most of its considerable height hidden underground. As a matter of fact, if you were lost in Chinatown and happened to stumble upon its one dingy window, you would think that you were looking into the basement of a noodle shop, not down a long vertical shaft burrowing seven storeys beneath your feet.

  “I wasn’t really going to have John cut off your ear,” said Sweetcheeks after Bug had been sealed inside The Tower by a barred mechanical door (no pickable locks). “I would never do something like that to you. I just needed to convince that girl to do what I wanted. You know that.”