by Robin Benway
How was this even my life?
The car apparently had been busy collecting rust and clunky engine noises. “Hi!” June cried to her friend, hugging her over the front seat while I curled up in the corner and silently cursed April. I already knew that June couldn’t read my mind when I was invisible, which was lucky for both of us at this point.
“Hi, Blake,” June added, but Blake just nodded at her and continued to smoke his cigarette as he pulled out of our driveway and careened down the street.
I was 97 percent sure that Blake had been stoned when he took his driving test. That’s just an educated guess.
Mariah and June buzzed about something. Well, June blabbered on for a while. Mariah wasn’t exactly a chatterbox, but it was obvious she liked having someone like June around, someone who thought she could do no wrong. “Yeah,” Mariah said every so often, but as soon as we got to the first red light, Blake leaned over and kissed her, interrupting June’s manic chatterings. Well, he didn’t really kiss her so much as attempt to give her a tonsillectomy with his tongue. I haven’t kissed a guy, so I’m not a romantic virtuoso or anything, but that just didn’t look sexy. Or even comfortable.
I glanced over at June, almost not wanting to see her face. She looked a little awkward and really young, even though we’re only thirteen months apart. Why couldn’t she have been a nerd like April, or a loser loner like me? Why did she want to be like these people? I know I’m not cool, but at least I don’t have moronic friends.
Mariah turned around to look at June. “You wanna stop and get food first?” she asked. “We’re gonna go to Del Taco.”
“Cool, yeah,” June said, happy to be included once more. “Hey, Blake, did you take the GED today?”
“Nope.”
I was pretty sure we had just hit the creative apex of Blake’s vocabulary.
Mariah put her hand on his arm, but he ignored her. “He was passed out this morning,” she said affectionately. “He even slept through me calling him.”
By now, I was convinced that Blake had been dropped on his head as a child, and that this was possibly the best thing that would ever happen to him.
“Oh,” June said. “So when are you taking the test?”
Blake shrugged and hit the gas as the light turned yellow. “Whenever. Nothing’s set in stone.”
“Yeah, no kidding, Blake,” she replied. “No freaking kidding.”
I have to say, I’m pretty amazed that Blake didn’t drop out of school sooner than he did. When we got to the Del Taco drive-thru, he tried to count out exact change, and it practically gave me a migraine to listen to him mutter. I could tell June was annoyed, too, and I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have to hear Blake’s thoughts. It was probably like being put under heavy sedation or hit in the head with a billy club.
“Here,” June finally said, thrusting a five-dollar bill over the front seat. “It’s on me. Keep the change.”
Blake didn’t even say thank you.
I lowered my invisible head against the front seat and banged it against the cracked pleather interior. There were a bunch of Road & Track magazines under my invisible feet, along with another magazine that had a girl in a red bikini on the cover. I wasn’t expecting Popular Science or the Wall Street Journal, but this was ridiculous.
As soon as we got to the party and June opened the door, I scrambled out the door past her, grateful to be out of the car. That relief only lasted for about ten seconds, though, as I realized that I was actually at a party where I didn’t know anyone.
I was invisible, of course, but there are few things worse than being all alone in a crowd of people. Not only that, but from what I could see of the party, it looked like the red-cup, beer-swilling, idiots-attending party of my nightmares.
Next to me, though, June beamed. “Awesome,” I heard her whisper.
Kill me now, I thought miserably.
It was packed inside the small house, and it smelled like beer and sweat and girls’ hair-styling products. The music was playing really loud, some top-40 song that I hated and would probably never get out of my head, and I watched as June and Mariah held hands and went into the kitchen. I followed because I literally had nothing better to do at this party.
The house was pretty nice, I had to admit. It wasn’t like MTV Cribs, but it had an upstairs and a downstairs and a kitchen big enough to fit all of my stupid-ass classmates. Most of them were in there now, but I didn’t know anyone’s names. They all looked sort of familiar, but not in a friend way, more like the way commercial actors seem familiar. Just because you recognize people doesn’t mean you know them.
There was a china cabinet near the living room, holding a bunch of Hummel figurines and some crystal swan sculptures. It was safe here, as out of the way as an invisible person could get, and I absentmindedly chewed on a cuticle as I watched June make her way outside, hot on Mariah’s heels. This isn’t so bad, I thought to myself. It’s just a party. Who cares about these people, anyway?
Thirty minutes later, I was ready to go drown myself in the keg.
June was fine, of course, just like I knew she would be. She had a beer, and I watched to see if she was gonna puke or maybe climb onto the roof and proclaim that she could fly. But she was just giggly on the couch, talking to a boy that I didn’t recognize. When she got up to leave, she took her cup with her, and I was pretty sure that April had drilled her on never leaving her drink unattended. April had given me the same lecture last year, but it wasn’t like anyone was inviting me to parties back then.
Or now.
What did look especially inviting was the beer June had. I’m not a huge beer person, but I was so tired of watching everyone else have fun that I wanted some for myself. Someone had put the music on repeat so the same annoying song kept blasting out, and I finally made the executive decision that June would be fine.
Then I went to get my beer.
I managed to snag a cup before anyone noticed, then I crept upstairs to the part of the house where no one could see me drink it. It was much quieter and cooler up there, and I took a few sips of my warm beer and let out a sigh as my body came back to earth.
This was way better.
I wandered around, washing my hands in the bathroom before going across the hall and into an empty bedroom. It was dark, and I reached for the lights before realizing that there were people in the room. Two people in fact.
Two people. In a room. With the lights off. You do the math.
I almost started to stammer apologies before I realized that I had gone invisible once again, surprised right out of my skin. There was a rumbling male voice, coaxing and dangerous at the same time, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. “C’mon,” he was saying. “C’mon, it’s fine. She’s downstairs.”
It was Blake.
I stood in the doorway, my eyes probably ready to fall right out of their sockets.
“No, wait, I can’t,” the girl was saying. And the girl was definitely not Mariah. Whoever she was, she already sounded pretty trashed. And I didn’t know what was happening, but something told me that it wasn’t good. Not at all.
I slammed my fist into the lightswitch before disappearing again, both literally and figuratively. I knew there was no way anyone could see me, but I still ducked back into the hallway, listening to the confused voices in the room. “What the fuck?” Blake muttered, and a few seconds later, Avery came out of the room, pulling her shirt up on her shoulder and her black hair all tangled. Her eyes were big and drunk, and Blake came storming out of the room past her, pounding down the stairs, unhappy that someone had thrown the light on his little game.
Asshole.
I wandered into another room, still hanging onto my plastic cup. This was way better, I realized. There was no one in here so I just left the lights off, and I could see June through the window—she was sitting outside on the grass with Mariah and another girl, talking fast about something. Or someone, more likely. June looked happy, but it wasn’t the happy f
ace that she gets when she sees kittens or new shoes. This was the happy face she put on when our dad said he was moving to Houston, when June said, “Oh my God, can we have horses?” with a huge smile on her face, a smile big enough for everyone else to share.
It was sort of weird how her happy face just made me sad.
Before I could start to feel bad for my sister, though, the light suddenly turned on and I whirled around.
It was Henry.
“What the hell?” we both yelled at the same time.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“Me?” I cried. “What are you doing here? Is this even your kind of scene?”
“Well, yeah,” he said, “considering this is my bedroom.”
Whoa, Nellie.
I glanced around and saw numerous Stanford pennants on the wall and a crimson comforter on the bed. There was a neatly organized desk with some pencils in a Stanford mug by the light and all of his textbooks stacked into a neat pile.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “This is your house?”
He nodded tersely.
“Oh my God, Mariah’s your sister?” I clapped my hand over my mouth. “How is that possible? Are you even biologically related or is this a step-kid thing?”
Henry let out a huge sigh and came into the room. “You know, I think I have more questions than you do,” he said. “Like, why are you in my room?”
“Oh, that. Well, that’s, um, that’s pretty funny.” I was starting to walk away from the window in case June saw me, but I tripped over a shoe and sloshed a little beer on the floor and a stack of—
“My National Geographics!” Henry cried. “Oh my God, what are you doing?”
“Oops, sorry,” I said, then giggled. I never giggle, though. It must have been the beer. There were so many yellow magazines in a stack along the floor against the wall that it looked like a small skyline. “Yeah, you can never have too many of those, can you?”
“It’s a subscription,” Henry said, bending to blot the beer off one of them with a tissue. “Now can you get out?”
Instead, I just sat down on the bed. Again, it must have been the beer. “No,” I said. “I’m sorry, I just followed my little sister to this party because our older sister made me and it sucks. No offense, of course. So wow, Mariah’s your sister, huh? What’s that like?”
“Like being in hell with someone you hate,” Henry replied.
“Henry!” I gasped. “Did you just make a non-Stanford-related joke?” I pretended to be shocked as I drained the last of my beer. Thank God at least one of these clowns knew how to pump a keg. “That was a great effort!”
I saw a small smile toy at the edge of Henry’s mouth. “Do you want another one?” he asked.
“Another joke?”
“No, another beer.”
I guess I must have been tipping the cup a little too far back into my mouth, trying to get the last drop.
“I do,” I said, “but I can’t go back downstairs. My sister doesn’t know I’m here. I’m spying on her. Ssshh.” I put my finger to my lips. “It’s a secret.”
This time, Henry actually smiled, and he came back a minute later with two red cups. “Wow, two of them?” I said. “Henry, you spoil me!”
“One’s for me,” he said. “Don’t get greedy.”
“I’m just grateful,” I said, then took a long sip. This one was ice cold, which was nice considering that his room was starting to feel really warm. I realized I’d never actually been in a boy’s bedroom before. “So. You and Mariah are brother and sister. You never even said anything.”
Henry sat down in his desk chair and shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”
“Well, it wasn’t a question about European history, so I wasn’t sure if it was allowed.”
“You can ask me about Stanford, too,” he said, and this time we laughed together.
I wondered if April had seen this happening, me and Henry drinking beer and actually getting along.
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s a question. What’s so great about Stanford?”
“It’s somewhere new,” he replied. “It’s somewhere not here.”
“Well, I mean, I’m not the biggest fan of your sister”—words couldn’t describe how much I disliked Mariah—“but are your parents lame or something?”
And miracle of miracles, Henry started talking. He told me about his parents, how his dad got remarried and moved up to San Francisco and had twins with his new wife. “Mariah hates them,” he said. “She won’t go visit. She just hangs out with Blake.”
“It’s hard when it’s your sister,” I agreed. “I mean, my sisters make me crazy and everything… .” It took a few extra seconds to get the words out. “… But they’re my sisters.”
“Yeah,” Henry said with a sigh in agreement.
And somewhere in my heart, I missed my dad.
There was a sudden commotion downstairs, people laughing and screaming about something, and I remembered what I was supposed to be doing. “Oh, um, hey, not to jet on you, but I should probably go check on my sister. But will you be … around? Later?”
Henry shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded. “Probably. Considering I live here.”
I smiled despite myself and ran downstairs to check on June, making sure that Henry wasn’t following me as I hit the stairs. By the time I got into the kitchen, I was invisible again. Thank God I was learning how to control this. Not that it mattered at a party full of drunk people, though. They would probably just think I was hired entertainment as I came and went at random.
There was a huge crowd of people in the kitchen, and I figured out pretty quickly that it was a drunken game of Truth or Dare, with Blake and Mariah towards the middle of the crowd. Yeah, because that relationship was gonna end well. I was feeling sort of fuzzy around the edges, but I was definitely sober enough to stay away from that game. It would only lead to trouble.
Instead I scanned for June, but I didn’t see her. Maybe she was outside. I was just about to go looking for her when I heard Mariah yell, “Henrrryyyyy!” and start giggling hysterically. “Henry! It’s my brother! Henry, truth or dare!”
I whirled around and saw Henry trying to throw away our red cups from upstairs. Of course he was recycling them. God forbid if any trash gets left in his neatnik room. He looked half-annoyed and half-pained at his sister’s screech, and he tossed the cups in the bag so hard that I thought they would bounce back.
“Truth or dare?” Mariah cried again. “I’ll choose for you! Truth!” She took a huge sip of something that was definitely not beer, then hiccupped and wiped her mouth with her hand.
She is really just a class act.
“Truth!” she said again. “That girl you’re always tutoring. Do you want to fuck her?” She giggled hysterically at her question, and suddenly everyone was staring at Henry.
Myself included.
I could feel my heart starting to do flippy things, and I wasn’t sure if it was the beer or just good old-fashioned adrenaline that made me want to throw up. I kind of wished I wasn’t there, but at the same time, I didn’t want to leave. I was standing right next to Henry now, so close that I could practically count his eyelashes, and he had no clue that I was there.
Nobody did.
“Tell the truth!” Mariah screamed.
Henry swallowed hard, and then his eyes got sharp and steely. “Hell no,” he said. “Not her.” And then he disappeared back upstairs.
I was suddenly glad I was invisible. If I hadn’t been, then I probably would have started crying. Then again, if Henry had been able to see me, I wouldn’t have known what an asshole he really was. But now I knew.
After all, he had said it right to my face.
I mean, it wasn’t like I was planning on makin’ babies with the guy, but did he have to say it like that? Like the mere idea of me made him ill?
There were a couple of guys in the dining room setting up vodka shots, and I headed in that direction. June came flying pa
st me, having no clue that I was right there, yelling, “What’d I miss? What’d I miss?” at Mariah. I just stalked right past her and made myself visible as I went through the doorway. Just like I thought: people were so drunk and the house was so crowded that even when they could see me?
No one saw me at all.
chapter 15
“You have got to be kidding me.” june
You know, I have to say, not that the party wasn’t exciting, but I kept waiting for it to be different.
Don’t get me wrong, though. It was definitely awesome, just not quite what I was expecting. I guess every time you see a party scene in a movie, there’s always something happening, like an impromptu dance party or someone so drunk that they agree to shave their head. You can always tell that it’s a party that will change! their! lives! and I wanted that.
Then again, those people in the movies aren’t also mindreaders. I guess that’s sort of a bummer for me.
“You smoke?” Lillian asked me. She was one of Mariah’s friends, but she didn’t go to our school. I would say half of the people didn’t go to our school, and I would know this because I’m observant. Lillian had pale skin and a hard face, like her hobbies included boxing and looking menacing, and I shook my head at the Camel Lights she offered.
“No, thanks,” I said. I know smoking kills and all that, but also, you get these really weird pucker lines around your mouth. And I haven’t been using moisturizer every night since I was ten for no reason. “But go ahead,” I added. “I don’t care.”
It was sort of stressful to keep a conversation going with people I didn’t really know. If you weren’t talking to someone, you were standing there looking like a moron, so I kept trying to keep the conversation going. Somehow I ended up standing near this bucktoothed guy named Derek I recognized from homeroom. I had now heard about Derek’s mom’s prizewinning rabbits for twenty minutes, even though I hate rabbits and Derek sort of spits when he talks.