What Not to Do If You Turn Invisible

by Ross Welford

  ‘A lawyer? That’s pretty cool. What sort of law?’

  But he doesn’t answer. Instead, he stands up, and his voice loses a bit of its London accent, as if he’s addressing a court.

  ‘All right then. “Trespass” as defined in English common law – as opposed to statutory law – is an offence known as a “tort”, which is a wrongful act, but is not subject to criminal proceedings and therefore—’

  ‘OK, OK, I believe you.’

  ‘Promise you won’t tell anyone?’

  ‘What? That your dad’s a lawyer? Is it a secret?’

  ‘No, dummy. About the light – my plan. It has to be kept quiet till the time is right.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Oh, and, erm … back in London my friends used to call me Boydy.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, so … you know, if you, like … erm … wanted …’

  He lets it hang in the warm air between us.

  Boydy. A friend?

  I hadn’t realised I was quite that desperate.

  INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT LIGHTHOUSES

  By Elliot Boyd

  With thanks to Ethel Leatherhead for allowing me space to say why lighthouses are awesome.

  (I did this list for a talk I did at school in Mr Parker’s class. He said people really liked it, which makes me think lighthouses are not such a strange interest after all.)

  Humans have been building lighthouses to warn ships about dangerous rocks ever since humans had ships. The first ones were basically just massive bonfires on cliffs!

  Now there are 17,000 worldwide, and about 300 in the UK.

  The lighthouse on the island of Pharos near Alexandria in Egypt was one of the wonders of the ancient world and was built in 270 BC. It stood for 1,500 years and then collapsed in an earthquake. In 1994 pieces of it were found at the bottom of the ocean!

  In many languages, the word for ‘lighthouse’ comes from ‘Pharos’. Phare (French), Faro (Spanish and Italian). Farol (Portuguese), Far (Romanian), fáros (Greek)!

  The brightness of a lighthouse is measured in candelas – that is, the brightness of a single candle. Modern lighthouses have beams that are between 10,000 and 1 million candelas bright!

  One of the brightest lighthouses in the world is Oak Island Lighthouse in the USA: 2.5 million candelas!!!

  In 1822 a Frenchman physicist called Augustin-Jean Fresnel developed a lens that multiplied the brightness of the light inside, meaning it could be seen much further. Almost all lighthouses now use the Fresnel Lens!

  Long after the invention of electricity, most lighthouses continued to be powered by oil. St Mary’s Lighthouse in Whitley Bay did not convert to electricity until 1977. It has not been active since 1984, which I think is a real shame!

  Mr Parker wrote on my presentation: 9/10. Well researched and confidently delivered. Well done. Easy on the exclamation marks.

  One of the windows in the lantern room is really a little glass door that leads to an outside platform encircling the top of the lighthouse. An official-looking sign says, Danger: no admittance.

  ‘Come on,’ says Elliot Boyd, who I’m trying to get used to thinking of as Boydy. ‘You gotta see this.’

  I follow him through the opening.

  We stand on the narrow platform, gripping the iron handrail, and stare over the north-east coast, looking south towards another lighthouse that stands at the mouth of the Tyne river about two miles away. A seagull is stretched out in front of us, hanging motionless in the wind.

  Boydy has removed his stupid baseball cap, and the breeze blowing his hair back from his forehead makes him almost handsome, and I smile inside my stupid clown mask. Boyd? Handsome? Ha!

  I’m still boiling hot inside my two layers, gloves, hoodie and mask, and I decide to risk pushing the hood of my jacket back, exposing the glittery wig.

  Bad move.

  The wind changes for a few seconds from a breeze to a violent gust, whipping the wig from my head. I catch it just before it flies over the side of the iron barrier. I’m fumbling with the hood, desperately trying to pull it back over my head, when Boydy turns to me to say something and instead just yells.

  ‘Wha … ah … ah … aaah! What? Oh my God. Ohhhh.’

  Oh well. I suppose someone had to find out somehow.

  Boydy has backed away and is just staring, blinking, his mouth opening and shutting like a fish, and he’s making little moaning noises in his throat.

  Poor lad, he really is terrified. The seagull squawks and swoops away.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I try to reassure him. ‘It’s just me. I’m all right.’

  ‘But … but … you … the … your head … Ethel?’

  Where to start?

  After ten minutes, I think I have convinced him that I am neither a ghost nor an alien from outer space. I have answered his questions, including:

  Am I in pain? (No, apart from a slight tingling that could be sunburn from the sunbed, but I cannot see my skin to tell.)

  Does anyone else know? (No. He is the first. He’s massively flattered, that much I can tell.)

  Is it permanent? (No idea yet.)

  What am I going to do about it? (No idea again. Initial approaches to the hospital didn’t go as planned, and he agrees with me that an approach to the police might be equally unproductive.)

  I say this as if it all happened like a sensible conversation anyone would have out on a lighthouse balcony. You know:

  ‘Oh, so you’re invisible? Cool. So tell me, are you experiencing any pain or discomfort due to this unusual condition, Ethel?’

  No, it wasn’t like that at all. Boydy was nervous, puzzled, stumbling over his words and reaching out again and again to touch my invisible head and hand. At one point I removed my mask and he shut up for, like, a whole minute, just gawping and shaking his head, then looking away and turning back and starting the whole gawping, touching thing again.

  I have to say, though: now I’ve told him, the relief is immense. I’ve been lugging this secret around for hours, and it was exhausting. Even if there’s nothing that Boydy can actually do, just sharing my problem with him makes me feel happier.

  Slightly.

  Why is it, then, that I start crying? Sorry, make that crying again. I am not much of a blubber, to be honest. I think I leave that to the more sensitive souls, but the hugeness of what I face would, I’m certain, bring tears from anyone and that now makes it twice in a day that I have cried.

  He hears me crying and he doesn’t know what to do, poor Boydy.

  ‘Hey, Eff. It’ll be OK,’ he says, and he sort of awkwardly puts his arm round me, but I can tell he’s not totally comfortable. He probably hasn’t done it much. Then he looks at me.

  ‘I can see your tears.’ He points at my cheeks. ‘That’s one bit of you that’s visible.’

  I wipe my cheek with my fingers and look down. Sure enough, my fingertips are glistening. I force a smile (why? No one can see me) and replace the mask, pulling up my hoodie as far as it’ll go. I sniff and smile weakly.

  ‘How do I look?’

  Boydy checks the angles. ‘So long as you don’t look too closely, it’s OK. There’s a sort of invisible gap at the top there, but it’s in shadow so you don’t really notice it that much. Just keep your head down.’

  I nod and turn to go back through the glass opening, when he says, ‘So, Effel, the clown outfit wasn’t really to, you know …’

  ‘What? Raise money? Ah, sorry, Boydy. No.’ I see his face and chest fall with a sigh so I add, ‘But I do like lighthouses. Well, this one anyway. And I’m sure the others are cool as well. I’ll help you with Light The Light. Promise.’

  He smiles at that, but then his attention is caught by something on the ground. He’s looking beyond me, towards the beach. I turn to follow his gaze. There, at the end of the causeway, on the beach, is a black Labrador and I can tell from the way it walks that it is Lady.

  She is not alone either. Walking with her are two ident
ical figures.

  We have trouble, and it’s twins-shaped.

  I haven’t told you much about the twins, but now seems like a good time – if there is ever a good time to talk about the twins, that is.

  Jesmond and Jarrow Knight are notorious at school, and they seem to revel in their sinister fame while managing – just – to avoid being suspended.

  One or other of them is almost permanently on a written warning. It’s Jesmond, the boy, at the moment. He swore at Miss Swan the music teacher when she smelt tobacco smoke on him. (I won’t say exactly what he said, but imagine the worst thing you can say to a teacher, and then shout it at the top of your lungs. Actually, don’t. But that’s what he did in the foyer.)

  I guarantee, after his written warning expires at the end of term, it’ll be his sister Jarrow’s turn to do something bad. Last year she was sent home for setting fire to Tara Lockhart’s hair with a Bunsen burner, and then their dad had to come in to see Mrs Khan and the head of the school governors.

  Most people steer well clear of the Twins, which is easy enough if you spot them coming. They both have this shock of shoulder-length white-blond hair. From the back they’re pretty much identical and even from the front they’re pretty alike, only Jarrow wears glasses and Jesmond doesn’t.

  Tommy Knight, their dad, looks exactly like them, except he’s going bald. I’ve only met him once, when he bought something off a stall I was running at the school Christmas bazaar. He seemed shy and hardly ever looked up. It was a box of scented soaps he bought, with pictures of dogs on them, and when he took his change and said ‘thank you’ his voice was gentle and well spoken, which was the opposite of what I had expected.

  I’ve never seen their mum. I don’t even know if they have one.

  Their house is round the corner at the end of our street, overlooking the wide sweep of grass called the Links that leads down to the promenade and the beach. It’s large: a detached two-storey villa, painted white with pillars supporting the front porch and an overgrown front garden. It’s as if a footballer has died inside it and no one’s noticed. I pass the house most days on the way to and from school.

  So that’s the Knights – my neighbours, more or less – and here they are: Jarrow and Jesmond at the end of the beach where the sand gives way to rocks and pools.

  With Lady, my dog.

  Which means I’m going to have to go down there and confront them, while wearing a clown mask and a sparkly wig.

  I tell myself, It’ll be fine, Ethel.

  Sometimes, I think the lies we tell ourselves are the biggest lies of all.

  Three other people are inside the lantern room when we step back inside and one of them gives us a funny look, like, How come you’ve been out there when you’re not allowed? Or it could just be our outfits. Either way, we’re off and down the stairs.

  Running back over the causeway, I see that the tide has come in quickly, filling the rock pools and lapping the lower edges of the concrete path. It’s a good job we left when we did. All the tide times are posted on notices at either end of the causeway, but still people get caught out, and kids in Whitley Bay have all grown up with scare stories of people who have risked a crossing and been swept away.

  When we get to the beach, Lady bounds up to me, apparently less freaked out by my clown mask than by the total absence of a head that she saw before – and who can blame her? I can’t see the twins for the moment, but my vision is restricted by the mask – they could be right here, just behind a rock or something.

  No time to worry about that now.

  Lady sniffs around my feet, satisfies herself that it’s me, and rolls on her back for a tickle of her tummy, which I’m happy to provide although it feels weird through the gloves.

  ‘You daft thing, Lady. What happened to you?’ I’m trying to reassure her, but I’m scared that she might freak out again.

  I go to grip her by her collar, but it isn’t there. Instead, I make a loop with the spare lead I’ve brought and slip it round her neck. At the same time, I peer out of the eyeholes of the clown mask to find out where the twins are, hoping of course that they have decided to walk away. I’m hoping, too, that Boydy is close by.

  I’m out of luck on both counts.

  The twins are standing in front of me.

  Jarrow, the girl twin, speaks first, blinking hard behind her glasses.

  ‘Is this your dog, like? We found it. We was bringin’ it … What the hell?’

  I’ve looked up from Lady, and Jarrow is staring at my clown mask.

  ‘Oh, it’s, erm … a charity thing,’ I say. ‘I’ve got to keep it on to raise money.’

  ‘Ha’d on. I know your voice,’ says Jesmond, the boy twin. ‘You’re, erm … what’s ’er name in our class, aren’t you?’

  I hesitate before replying, and it’s enough space for Jarrow to chip in. ‘Yer right, Jez! It’s Pizza Face! That’s a canny mask ye’ve gorron there!’

  The two of them chuckle. They both speak in broad Geordie. It’s the accent of the north-east, and it’s usually got an up-and-down musical sound that’s funny and friendly. Except sometimes, in some people, it can sound harsh and aggressive – and that’s how the twins speak, as if they’re clenching their teeth and tensing their mouths.

  Jarrow turns and says something I don’t hear to her brother and they both cackle.

  Now if it was me on my own, I’d have turned round and walked away with Lady. That’s the only thing you can do with people like that, in my experience. But by now, Boydy is next to us.

  ‘You all right, Eff?’ is all he says, but it’s enough to change the twins’ mood into something more challenging.

  ‘Hey! It’s Fat Lad! How are yuh, Smelliot?’ says Jesmond.

  Boydy ignores the insult as if he simply hasn’t heard it. ‘All right, thanks, Jes. Just out looking for the dog. And now we’ve found her.’

  ‘Aye. Thanks to us. We found it. We was bringing it back, weren’t we, Jarrow?’

  I interrupt. ‘Where’s her collar?’

  Jarrow looks straight at me and blinks hard. ‘It didn’t have one on. We thought it was a stray.’

  ‘But you said you were bringing her back?’ I say. ‘Where were you bringing her back to? You were walking in the other direction!’

  ‘Wait on,’ says Jarrow. ‘Are wuz really having a discussion about this dog with Ronald flamin’ McDonald here? Take yer mask off and we’ll discuss this properly.’ She reaches forward to my face and I flinch away quickly.

  ‘No! It’s … like I say, it’s a charity thing.’

  ‘Well, we’re a charity too, aren’t we, Jez?’ In one swift movement, Jarrow has snatched Lady’s lead from my hand and given it to her brother, who wraps it round his fist.

  Jesmond nods.

  Jarrow continues, a note of true menace in her reedy voice. ‘Y’see, I don’t know for certain that this is your dog, do I? We might just have to take it to the police as a stray, and you know what they do with strays, don’t you?’

  I feel a tiny bit victorious. Even though I am scared and vulnerable, I can still tell an empty threat when I hear one. I would probably have laughed in other circumstances.

  ‘Go ahead, then,’ I say, and I probably even sound a bit cocky. ‘She’s microchipped. You’ll probably get done for stealing a dog.’

  Do the Knight twins crumble in the face of this defiance? Not a chance.

  ‘Microchipped?’ says Jarrow, bending down to Lady. ‘You mean, like, just about here?’ She puts her hand on the back of Lady’s neck, exactly where dogs’ microchips are implanted. ‘Just under the skin, like? I don’t think that’ll pose too much of a problem for us, do you, Jez?’

  Jesmond shakes his head. ‘Last one healed up pretty quick.’

  They do an about-turn and start marching away from us, pulling Lady along by her lead, leaving me gawping with a sick feeling in my stomach.

  Did I understand right? Surely not.

  ‘Wait!’ I say.

 
They stop and turn, smirking.

  I decide to try to appeal to their better side, if they have one. ‘Just give us the dog back. Please.’

  ‘Your nan’ll be dead happy to see it again, won’t she?’ says Jesmond, and I nod.

  He goes on: ‘She’ll probably think a reward is in order. You know – “reward for lost dog”, like you see on lamp posts. It’s usually at least fifty quid.’

  Jarrow steps closer to us. ‘We’ll take it now, eh? Save yer nan the trouble. How much have you got? Ha’way, let’s see.’

  Reluctantly, I go to retrieve the ten-pound note from my jeans pocket that Gram makes me carry for emergencies. I wonder if this qualifies?

  Problem: my gloved hand won’t fit into my jeans pocket. Not at first, anyway. Under normal circumstances, you’d just take your glove off to get your hand in your pocket but I cannot do that without revealing my invisibility. Awkwardly (and probably strangely, to look at anyway) I work my hand and glove into the pocket where my money is. I grab the note and then tug hard to pull my hand out.

  It comes out all right – straight out of my glove, which is left trapped in my tight jeans pocket.

  My apparently handless arm is left waving for a couple of seconds before I turn away. It looks exactly as if I have just pulled my hand off.

  I hear a little gasp from Jarrow, and Jesmond whispers, ‘What the …?’

  But in just a moment I’ve fixed it, and I’m turning back to them, offering the money with a hand that has a glove on and looks perfectly normal.

  Jarrow snatches it from me. She is about to turn away when her brother stops her. He’s still gawping at my hand.

  ‘Did you see …? What was …?’

  He just cannot put words to his thoughts, and who can blame him? What I suppose he really wants to say is: ‘Did you just see that her hand was suddenly not where it should be? Her sleeve just ended? Her glove was left in her pocket, but there was no hand?’ But he is too confused to string the words together.

  Besides, Jarrow is talking.