“About coincidence?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said. “I’ve decided it’s stupid. There is no such thing as coincidence.”
“What?” asked Mum. “You’ve spent the last three million years working on it, and now you’ve decided there’s no such thing?”
“Yep. There is no such thing as coincidence. Think about it. All these guys who’ve studied it. Jung, Pauli, Kammerer, the others. They tied themselves up in knots trying to show that coincidences have some hidden meaning; secret connections that bring the two things together, yes?”
“Yes, and…?”
“And they’re deluding themselves. It’s apophenia. Take Pauli and his number. 137. It wasn’t even 137! It was 136 point something something something. No one’s ever worked it out exactly. But he got obsessed with it the same way Jung and Kammerer and Koestler got obsessed with coincidence.”
“Yes,” I said. “So?”
“So, think about it. There’s only two possible explanations. Either something is total chance. Complete fluke. Just utter randomness that brings things together. Or, on the other hand, one thing has caused the other thing to pop up. In which case, it’s not coincidence at all, because there is a reason why it happened. A reason founded on causality, right?”
“Er, yes, right,” I said. “Maybe.”
“So all these men said there was no causality behind coincidences, and then spent years trying to find some other explanation. But that other explanation was just another form of causality. So there! That’s it. Coincidence does not exist.”
We were all silent for a while and then Benjamin said, “If co-inky-dinks don’t exist, then why is Michael’s school called number 354?”
“What?” said Dad.
So we told Dad all about Michael. About how the book practically fell on his head, from the train window, as the criminals threw away things they thought were worthless. About how Michael’s school was Public School number 354.
“Really?” said Dad. “That’s weird…”
His voice trailed off into silence.
“A coincidence, you might say?” said Mum.
“Nope, just chance,” said Dad, coming out fighting. “Just a very freaky chance.”
I still wasn’t sure.
“But what about those pages at the back of your book? That stuff about a death cult, about the secret meaning of coincidence. What was all that about?”
“That?” said Dad. “That was the beginning of my book. The Hound of Heaven.”
“It was weird,” I said.
“It was a nightmare,” Dad said. “Did you notice anything about it?”
“It was strange. Odd. Not like the way you usually write.”
“It was 354,” Dad said. “Each word in turn is three letters long, then five, then four. Over and over again. I was going to write the whole book that way.”
“354? The whole book?”
“Uh-huh,” said Dad. “To make things more fun, each chapter was also going to be exactly 354 words long. Guess what? I gave up. It took me a whole day to write a page and a half. Slowest bit of writing I’ve ever done in my life.”
Mum laughed.
“So then, genius,” she said. “What’s this great idea of yours? The one that’s worth millions in diamonds and pearls?”
I heard him slide the envelope across the table and he put my hands on it.
“You open it,” he said. “And Benjamin can read it.”
I did, and held the piece of paper up for Benjamin to see.
“That’s it?” he said. He sounded disappointed. “Three words?”
“Uh-huh,” said Dad.
“What does it say?” I said. “Tell me.”
“‘Boy Meets Girl,’” said Benjamin.
“That’s it?” wailed Mum. “That’s your great idea?”
Dad laughed.
“I only needed to write that down to remember,” he said. “The rest is up here.”
“He’s tapping the side of his head with his finger,” whispered Benjamin to me.
“That can have two meanings,” I said, and Dad pretended to be hurt.
“Hey!” he said. “I’ll have you know this is the finest idea I’ve ever had! I’ve been thinking. About how Mum and I met. Remember, Jane? It was quite a crazy story, wasn’t it? So I’m going to write a book.”
“You are?” said Mum. She sounded amazed.
“Yes,” said Dad. “I’m going to write a book. A funny one.”
* * *
We spent two more days in the city before we came home. Dad told Mum not to worry about the expense. Not since he’d come up with his great idea. When she’d arrived Mum had been pretty cross about the suite Dad was staying in, and told him we couldn’t afford it, but Dad said that he was only paying for the cost of a normal room; that they’d given him a free upgrade.
“But it’s room 354,” she said.
“So?” said Dad.
“You expect me to believe they upgraded you to room 354?”
There was a long silence then. It was a bit tense. In the middle of the silence, Benjamin suddenly said, “Oh, yeah! That’s weird,” and I told him to be quiet.
“Yes,” said Dad gently to Mum, “I do expect you to believe me, Jane.”
And then there was another pause, and then Mum said quietly, “Of course I do, darling. Of course I do.”
I heard Dad kiss Mum, who giggled like she was young, and Dad told her not to worry about money anymore.
“Diamonds and pearls,” he kept saying. “Gold dust and fairies’ wings.”
* * *
Despite what Dad said, we couldn’t stay in New York for long, but there were a couple of things we had to do.
On Monday, we took Mum and Dad to meet Mr. Michael Walker. Dad and Michael got on really well, and I felt happy, and later on, we took Benjamin to the comic shop he’d seen and Dad bought him a stack of old comics. While we were in the shop, I thought about Sam, on the plane, and wished for a second I’d taken his number, but only for a second.
Mum was holding my hand as we waited for Benjamin to choose what he wanted. She was describing things in the shop for me, but I suppose my mind was elsewhere.
“You okay?” she said.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Yes, Mum. Just thinking about the future.”
“The future? Your future?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Have faith, Laureth,” Mum said. “Have faith in yourself.”
“Faith? Have faith in myself?”
There was something to think about.
“Yes, why not? We do. I know I get cross with you sometimes, but it’s only because I worry about you. But you know, I’ve decided to stop worrying about you so much.”
You have? I thought.
“Trust me,” she said. “You’re going to be a little star.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because you already are, love. You already are.”
That was something else to think about. I smiled to myself, and for once I didn’t worry about the smiling thing.
* * *
We wandered on through the store and Mum told me about the weird items they had on display, and the titles of some of the more ridiculous comics, and we started giggling.
Benjamin grabbed me.
“Laureth!”
He was so excited he was practically hyperventilating. “Dad’s going to get me all of these. There’s Green Lantern, and this really old copy of Batman, and The Invisible Man. He’s so cool!”
“That’s great,” I said.
“Wouldn’t that be amazing? To be invisible? Wow!”
Dad dragged him away to pay for the comics and I thought to myself; invisible? No, no one should want to be invisible. To have no one notice you, or speak to you. That would be really lonely, in the end.
* * *
The weirdest thing before we flew home was that we had to give a few interviews to some journalists. We’d made the news on both sides of t
he Atlantic, apparently. People wanted to know why I’d done it, and how, and I told them some of the truth, but not all of it. Maybe I’m learning something from Dad, after all. It was fun, in a way, and though I’m glad we were soon forgotten about, for a while there I felt more visible than I had been in my whole life.
* * *
From time to time, Mum would squeeze my hand, and whisper “thank you” in my ear, and I didn’t understand why at first, but as time went by, it began to dawn on me. I think I’d scared Mum and Dad so much that they’d remembered something, something important, something about who we all are, and what matters the most.
They’d both changed.
I could hear it in the things they did, and the way they were with each other, and the way they called each other “honey.”
* * *
But if Dad was done with coincidence, I wasn’t.
Maybe he’s right, that coincidences don’t exist; that they only seem to, that often perhaps we find something amazing only because we forget what a small world this actually is, and how interconnected we are with one another, and with everything in that small world of ours.
But it didn’t seem that way to me. I kept thinking about it, about all the crazy links that had to have connected up for this whole thing to have happened, and it freaked me out.
It freaked me out so much, because even if it was just chance as Dad said, and nothing more, the odds of it happening were astronomically tiny.
Maybe something like that will happen to you, one day. Some people would say that the chances are that it will. Think of all those coincidences that almost happened, but didn’t quite; all those near misses. Think about all the weird coincidences that must actually have happened, but no one knew about them.
* * *
Maybe something will happen to you.
Something so weird it makes you stop and think.
As weird as if you picked up a book, maybe even the book you’re holding now, looked at the first word of every chapter, and you put them all together, and found a hidden message. Something to make you think, yes.
Yes, that’s what we all need.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
One weird idea: to combine two obsessions—coincidence and the number 354—and turn them into a book. It seems to me that everyone loves coincidences, feels a shiver of pleasure when they happen, and yet they’re hard to talk about, even harder to study. Arthur Koestler wrote a famous book on the subject, but The Roots of Coincidence strays a bit too far into the New Age for me. Carl Jung is responsible for the most serious study of the subject; his book Synchronicity renamed this curious concept in an attempt to establish the idea of the meaningful coincidence. This led him to try to apply statistical analysis to astrology, with disputed results, but the book remains a classic work.
It’s almost impossible to make someone else feel something of the excitement you experience from even the most extraordinary coincidence, and, for that matter, the most extraordinary coincidences seem too crazy to be true, they seem, in short, to be fictional. I certainly found that to be the case when something unlikely happened to me—no one I told about it believed it had happened. So I wrote a book about it instead, and She is Not Invisible is the result.
I’d like to take the chance to thank a few people, especially the staff and students of New College Worcester, which is a genuinely inspiring place to visit. I feel very lucky to have spent some time there, and want to thank Cathy Wright for her endless help; a more professional, friendly, and expert librarian you could not hope to meet. I spoke to many students there on my visits, all of them welcoming and delightful company, and I want to thank Beth, Elin, Jasmine, Jenny, and Richard in particular—excellent people, one and all. Thanks also to Ellie Wallwork and her father, Simon, for the time they spent with me. Finally, thanks as always to Orion and especially to my editor and publisher, Fiona Kennedy.
And as for my obsession with 354, it seemed only right to work the number into the book in as many ways as possible …
Marcus Sedgwick
The black shed
One sunny morn
May sixth, 2013
ALSO BY MARCUS SEDGWICK:
Revolver
White Crow
Midwinterblood
Text copyright © 2013 by Marcus Sedgwick
Published by Roaring Brook Press
Roaring Brook Press is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
macteenbooks.com
First published in the United Kingdom in 2013 by Orion Children’s Books, London
All rights reserved
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sedgwick, Marcus.
She is not invisible / Marcus Sedgwick. — First American edition.
pages cm
Originally published in Great Britain by Indigo, an imprint of Orion Children’s, 2013.
Summary: A London teenager who is blind teams up with her younger brother and travels to New York to find their missing father, using clues from his notebook.
ISBN 978-1-59643-801-9 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-59643-803-3 (ebook)
[1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Missing persons—Fiction. 3. Fathers—Fiction. 4. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 5. Blind—Fiction. 6. People with disabilities—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S4484Sh 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2013029561
eISBN 9781596438033
First hardcover edition, 2014
eBook edition, April 2014
She Is Not Invisible Page 16