“He’s our son. Helping your child is never a waste. We’ll send Roni too.”
Wide-eyed and angry, Ravinder said, “Girls don’t fight!”
Tansey stared at him until he looked away. She said, “Boys fight because they want to. Girls fight because they need to. You’re always complaining because they don’t play sports.” Disdainfully, she said, “Consider this a sport.”
Hax glanced at Roni. Her expression showed a mixture of relief and surprise. He wondered if his clumsiness would really just go away some day. His mother certainly seemed confident, but he had the discouraging feeling that the fact it’d happened for other people in his family didn’t necessarily mean it was going to happen for him.
***
Walking toward school, Roni pondered how to fulfill her resolution to learn about her strange ability. When she’d thought about it, she’d reasoned that she just needed to do some experiments. She’d figure out when it worked and when it didn’t. She wanted to know whether it worked on everyone, or just some people. Would it work in bright sunlight, or only in shady alleys like it had yesterday?
But now, as she took time to think about it during her walk, she wondered if such experiments would be as easy as she’d envisioned. If she was in fact actually able to make herself disappear from view and she did it in front of someone, would they even notice? Even if they did see her disappear and wondered about it, they wouldn’t necessarily react visibly. If they didn’t say or do anything that’d tell her she’d in fact disappeared from view, she wouldn’t know it’d happened.
She’d presumably vanished many times before, but her arms and legs didn’t fade out of her own sight so she hadn’t noticed her own invisibility.
And, what if people did react, and reacted with alarm? If they shouted or made some kind of fuss, calling other people to them, and it turned out those other people could see Roni because her disappearing trick only worked on some people, or only on a few people at a time?
That could be pretty awkward.
Or perhaps much worse than embarrassing if people started asking questions or called the authorities.
She considered and quickly discarded the possibility of testing it on some of her friends. She didn’t really want anyone to know she could do… whatever this was. Besides, in her experience, friends could be fickle.
She decided she’d have to experiment with Hax. That wouldn’t tell her whether it worked on everyone, or on crowds, but at least Hax already knew about it.
She hoped she didn’t have to hide from Nick again before she had time to better understand what the limits of her abilities were.
***
Having hurried, Roni reached their usual path home before Hax. She’d been worried that Nick would follow her home again today, but to her great relief so far she hadn’t seen him. She stopped behind the corner of one of several little garages that protruded out into the alley. Peering out, she waited to see Hax coming and wondered what she would do if Nick appeared instead.
Just when she was about to give up, she recognized Hax’s ungainly stride in the distance. Time to start testing, she thought. Mentally thinking about how she didn’t want anyone to see her, she stepped out of the recess she’d been hiding in.
Hax didn’t react, so Roni gave him a little wave. Still no response, so she gave him a bigger wave, working up to wildly jumping up and down while slashing the air with both arms.
Hax kept coming. If he actually saw her and was pretending not to, he was a better actor than she’d imagined. He was getting pretty close, so she decided to make it impossible for him to ignore her. She stepped directly into his path.
He still didn’t appear to notice. At the last moment, suddenly not wanting him to run into her, Roni stepped to the side but left a foot out to trip him.
When Hax, rather than merely stumbling over her foot, fell full length onto his hands, Roni felt terrible for not considering what would happen when she tripped her clumsy brother. With a squeak, she reached down to help him back up, “Hax, oh, I’m so sorry!”
A stunned look on his face, Hax stared up at her in confusion. He said, “What… what just happened?”
Roni pulled him to his feet, “I was trying to learn about my… whatever it is that lets me hide, you know?” At a puzzled nod from her brother, she continued, “So I was hiding right there on the path in front of you. I thought… I thought that surely when you got really close you’d notice me, but it seemed like you were about to run into me. At the last moment I stepped aside but,” suddenly she didn’t want him to know she’d done it on purpose, “you tripped over my foot.”
Hax saw through her immediately. “You tripped me on purpose?” he asked incredulously.
“Um, sorry. It didn’t seem like it could possibly work,” she shrugged.
Lifting an eyebrow, Hax said, “So yesterday, I saved you from that jerk Nick Castano, and this is how you pay me back?”
“Really I’m sorry! I only meant to make you stumble a little bit. I…” Roni broke off before she said, “… didn’t think you’d fall down,” which might imply she couldn’t believe he was really that clumsy.
Hax didn’t seem to be listening. He’d turned around and gazed at the spot where Roni’d tripped him. “Where were you hiding?” he said, obviously puzzled about the fact that there was absolutely nothing to hide behind there in the middle of the path.
“Um, I don’t seem to have to have something to hide behind. Uh, I just have to… want you to not see me.”
His eyes turned slowly back to stare at her. After a moment he blinked slowly, “You mean that… all those times you’ve hidden… it really wasn’t because you’re just good at finding hiding places, but because you can hide in plain sight?!”
“Um, yeah, I guess.”
“But, but… How can you even do that?”
“I don’t know! I didn’t even realize it was happening until you pointed it out yesterday.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?!”
Roni only shrugged.
Sounding exasperated, Hax said, “Well then, how do you do it? Wiggle your ears and say a magic spell?”
“No,” Roni said, sounding a little sullen, even to herself. She stumbled through an explanation of sorts. “I just… just think about how I… don’t want people to see me… I guess.”
Hax stared at her for a second, then said, “So, if you just started thinking about how you didn’t want me to see you right now, you’d just disappear from sight?”
“I don’t know. I can see myself just fine when I’m… hiding or whatever. That’s why I’ve been waiting for you. I wanted you to help me do some experiments so I would know what happens.”
“Okay then, disappear.”
Somehow Roni hadn’t been expecting such a command. Her instinctive response was to protest and say no, she couldn’t do it, but then she realized that it was, after all, what she’d been planning to do. Instinctively she stepped back, then thought to herself that she didn’t want Hax to be able to see her.
Astonishment blossomed across her brother’s face. He stared agape directly at her. “I c-can’t see you,” he stammered, “b-but I can’t see the stuff behind you either. It’s like… I just don’t see anything there… Like I’m blind in that spot.” He leaned to the side as if looking around her. When he straightened back up, his eyes widened. “Now I can see behind you!” he said in a whispery voice.
Roni turned to look behind her. There was a bit of fence and hedge, nothing particularly remarkable. “So you’re seeing right through me?” she asked.
Hax didn’t say anything in response. He just kept staring where Roni had been, tilting his head slightly from side to side, blinking and looking puzzled. “Hax?” she said, but he didn’t react. Frowning, she stepped to the side and turned to look back in the direction Hax was staring.
Hax said, “Oh! Now I see better. What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Roni said, “I just moved.”
&nb
sp; “Roni?” Hax said.
Suddenly Roni realized that Hax not only wasn’t seeing her, he wasn’t hearing her either. A chill rushed over her with a sudden fear that she might somehow become permanently trapped—a ghost destined to forever roam the world undetected by the rest of mankind. A craving to be noticed by her brother welled up and with a jerk Hax turned on her, staring. “Roni! How’d you get over there? Even if I couldn’t see you, I should have heard your feet move.” To prove this he moved his feet on the dirt and dry grass which made a rustling, crunching sound.
Greatly relieved to be back in the land of the living, Roni said, “You couldn’t seem to hear me when I was hiding either. I was talking to you but you didn’t answer.”
“If you really were talking to me, I…” he trailed off, shaking his head in bewilderment.
Roni glanced back to where she’d been standing, “You said it was like you were blind when you looked at me. What was it like? Was there just a black spot there or something?”
“No, not black… just like… nothingness.” He knit his brow, “I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Then you leaned to the side, and looked around me, and said now you could see. Um, what’d you mean by that?”
Hax shook his head, “Once I looked past you, or, at least leaned to the side to look around the spot where I thought you were, then I could see the hedge and the fence again. They didn’t seem quite right, but they weren’t… like the nothing that had been there before.”
“Then I moved,” Roni said, “and you said, ‘Now I see better.’ What did you mean by that?”
“Like I said the fence and hedge had seemed… Not quite right. They still looked, I don’t know, fuzzy? Or something like… maybe, out of focus. Then, I guess when you moved, it suddenly came completely clear and sharp. Like that area had been a little confused, but now it looked normal.”
Roni rubbed her forehead. She didn’t have a headache, but felt like she should. “This is all so confusing. I have no idea what’s really going on.”
“I think,” Hax said slowly, “it’s kind of like you… hypnotized me. Like you’d told me not to see you, but didn’t give my brain anything to put in your place.” He squinted his eyes shut hard, then opened them again. “I think when I looked around you, it’s like my brain saw what was behind you and used that to fill in what should be there… at least until you moved and I could actually see what was there.” He turned to look at Roni, “You should hide again. But this time, as soon as you hide, move to the side so that my eyes don’t notice there’s a place where they don’t see anything.”
With a shrug, Roni thought about not being seen again and immediately stepped to the side.
A big grin spread across to Hax’s face, “This time you’re gone without leaving a blind spot!” He got a look of concentration on his face and slowly turned as if to make a circle. Suddenly he stopped and pointed directly toward her. “You’re there, aren’t you? I can see… I don’t know, a little area that’s not quite right, I guess.”
Roni started moving again, slowly walking around Hax. He said, “Wait,” he frowned, “I guess it looks okay. Maybe that isn’t where you’re standing?
Roni had an idea, rather than completely stopping hiding, she just decided she wanted Hax to be able to hear her. Then she said, “Yeah, it was, you were pointing right at me. When you did, I started moving again, and then you said it looked okay, I guess because then I wasn’t actually blocking you.”
Hax startled, wide-eyed, “Holy crap! That’s so weird! I hear your voice, but I’m not really sure where it’s coming from.”
“Really?” Roni said, letting go of her “hide” as she’d begun to think of it. She glanced toward home, thinking about how Ravinder was probably starting to wonder where they were. “We’d better be going.” She said, starting towards home, “Can you tell where my voice is coming from now?”
“Yes, of course… But when you were gone, it seemed like your voice was coming from… I don’t know… Like from all around, or maybe from the inside of my head… or, or, something like that.”
Uncomfortably, Roni said, “Don’t say I was ‘gone.’ Say ‘hidden’ or something like that.”
“But it really does seem like you’re gone.”
Roni shook her head, “It’s creepy enough as it is. It makes me feel like a ghost or something. You saying ‘gone’ sounds like a euphemism for dead.”
“What’s a ‘euphemism’?”
The question made Roni think of how young her brother was. “It’s a nice word for something ugly.”
“Oh,” Hax said thoughtfully. Then he got a twinkle in his eye, “Like… ‘Roni?’”
Roni gave him a shove.
This time she was glad when he fell down.
***
Roni walked beside Hax on their way through the crowded part of the town to the martial arts studio. Bored, in her mind Roni started reviewing what she’d learned about her talent so far. It seemed like what she was able to do was like hypnotism as Hax had suggested. Somehow she could make people ignore her. They didn’t see her or hear her unless she wanted them to.
Well, at least Hax could be induced to ignore her. Also, apparently, so could at least some of her playmates when she was younger. And Nick. She still worried about whether she could actually hide from everybody, or just some people. She also wondered whether she could muddle other senses beyond sight and hearing. And whether she could cause a large crowd to ignore her, or only a few people at a time.
They entered a crowded square and Roni realized that this location might provide a perfect opportunity to do some testing. Thinking that she didn’t want Hax to notice it, she reached out and touched his ear. He didn’t react, but he’d learned to pretend he didn’t notice many of the little things she did to annoy him. It was a kind of self-defense mechanism for him. “Hax?” she said. He didn’t respond to that either, leaving her wondering whether he was purposefully ignoring her or whether she’d unintentionally done one of her hides.
Thinking that she wanted Hax to hear her, she said, “Hax?”
With a start, Hax lifted his eyes from the street in front of him and looked around. Quietly, he said, “You’re doing your hide thing here in the middle of a busy street?!”
“Yeah, I’m wanting to know if I can hide from a crowd. I touched your ear, did you feel it?”
“No,” Hax said reaching up to finger his ear himself. Looking annoyed, he said, “Stop hiding. It’s annoying.”
And you’re jealous because you can’t do it, Roni thought with a mixture of self-satisfaction and regret for her brother. “I need to learn more about it if I’m going to be able to use it to protect myself from Nick.”
Hax rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything. Roni felt a little dismayed by how quickly his concern for her had faded. It’d warmed her soul that he cared enough for her that he’d attack Nick and that he’d been worried about her afterward. Now sibling rivalry seemed to be rearing its ugly head again.
She wondered if she could answer some of her questions about her talent without his help. She wanted to examine more whether she could hide her touch, but, in the mood he was in, even if she touched him and he felt it, he might not let her know. If she shoved him so hard he fell down, he’d certainly know what’d happened, so that wouldn’t be much of a test. Besides it’d probably destroy the rest of the fragile truce they’d established.
She’d been walking slightly behind him and looking him up and down. Suddenly her eyes focused on the bulge in his back pocket. Reminding herself of how she wanted to be unnoticed, she reached out, tucked a couple of fingers into his back pocket and plucked out the wallet hidden there.
Hax kept walking. Since she was pretty sure he would’ve reacted violently if he knew she’d picked his pocket, she suspected that was pretty good supporting evidence that she could hide her touch as well. Wondering if she was just a skilled pickpocket, something that seemed unlikely, she was a little bit more force
ful when she put the wallet back in his pocket. In fact, she shoved it in vigorously enough that she felt certain that he’d have reacted unless he’d known it was coming and had resolved to hide his response from her.
Hax just kept walking.
Roni reflected that she already knew he’d react to something like being tripped. But how much could she make him ignore? She popped the back of his earlobe with a flick of her fingernail. His ear turned a little red. He unconsciously reached up to rub it but kept on walking.
Roni felt certain that if he’d known she’d flicked his ear, he’d have yelled at her. Guiltily feeling like she really shouldn’t have done something painful to her brother, Roni began wondering how she could use this big crowd to see how many people she could hide from at once. All of them at one time? Many of them? If Hax’s idea that she was doing something like hypnotism was correct, she’d read that some people weren’t susceptible to hypnotism. If so, it seemed doubtful that she could hide from everyone.
She began by singing. Somehow doing something audibly embarrassing and having people notice it seemed less humiliating than doing something they would see. She’d been told she had a nice voice, but normally she was too shy to sing in public. She began by singing quietly, her eyes darting around at the passersby to see if anyone was looking at her.
No one even glanced at her, so she began singing louder and louder. She enjoyed singing, though she seldom sang very loud for fear someone would say something rude. She had the same issue here today, worrying that someone would hear and be offended or dislike it. Perhaps they’d even make fun of her. But as she gradually increased her volume and watched the crowd around her, no one evinced any sign that they’d noticed.
Having sung as loudly as she could, she tried a piercing scream.
The crowd went on about its business, completely unmoved.
Emboldened, she reached out and touched a few people as she walked by. She used little taps on the shoulder like you might use to get someone’s attention, feeling like people would normally react to them by turning to look back over a shoulder.
The Girl They Couldn’t See (Blind Spot #1) (Blind Spot Series) Page 3