The Invisible Day

by Marthe Jocelyn

  “Let me ask you something while Hubert’s not here to protest,” I said. “I need a teeny-tiny bit of the vanishing powder.”

  Jody looked at me with her skimpy eyebrows scrunched low over her eyes.

  “I swear, I will not use it on any living thing,” I vowed, “but I need it to perform an urgent act of revenge.”

  “Revenge?” That hooked her.

  “If it works, I’ll call you and tell you all about it. I still need to figure out the details, but I promise you it is entirely deserved.”

  A grown-up would have insisted on hearing a specific plan, but Jody was cool.

  “You take over here,” said Jody, handing me the hair dryer. She lurched upstairs just as Hubert was coming down. Pepper went crazy for a minute, scrambling after Jody and then doubling back to make sure Hubert made it safely. By the time Jody was back, so were my hands. I turned off the hair dryer. I pulled my socks on over my half feet. I tied my sneakers.

  Jody handed me a film canister, which I slid into the zipper pocket of my pack.

  I gave her a hug.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You saved me.”

  “Thank you,” said Jody, “for being my first human subject.”

  No need to linger or get mushy. Hubert and I had a serious deadline.

  21 • Deep Doo-doo

  Even though we were way late for school, we’d been uptown for less than two hours. And so much had happened.

  It made me think of Ms. McPhee’s introduction to history this year. She said that time has a way of stretching and shrinking, depending on how you’re using it. If you’re eating ice cream, five minutes can fly by. But if you’re holding your finger over a candle, five minutes is longer than you can bear.

  What I hadn’t figured out yet was whether the trip had been blissful or unbearable. Just extraordinary, I guess.

  Hubert and I jogged to the subway.

  At the top of the stairs, there was a raggedy old woman doing a shuffling dance step and tapping a tambourine. Her hat lay upside down on the ground, holding a dollar bill. I reached into my pocket to pull out my money, and the lady’s face went all happy and crinkly.

  “Oh, bless you, honey, bless you.” She had a whistle on her s’s.

  “Wait a minute, Big Spender,” said Hubert, “you’re not invisible anymore. You have to pay to get on the train.”

  The old dancer lady was watching me carefully. I counted the money in my pocket. I was short by forty-five cents.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said. My voice got small. “I don’t even have enough to get home.”

  She bent over and took the dollar bill out of her hat.

  “You go on home, honey,” she said, handing it to me.

  I bought my token and put it in the slot. Hubert waved his pass. We stood close together on the platform. It felt different this time, now that people could see me. But there were also a lot of other kids and teenagers on the platform. That was good for camouflage, but it also meant that school was already out.

  When the train came, we stood up and held on to the pole nearest the door. It felt more like we were going somewhere.

  “My mother is going to be nuts,” said Hubert at the Fifty-ninth Street station.

  “My mother is going to be double nuts,” I said. I checked my watch. Fiftieth Street. Forty-second Street. Hubert checked his watch.

  Nobody knew that I’d been invisible an hour ago. Nobody knew that my mother was probably faint with distress at that very moment. We were all just riding along, minding our own business.

  Thirty-fourth Street. We were members of a tribe of anonymous New Yorkers, chugging along together. We didn’t have to explain ourselves to anybody. Hubert checked his watch again. Twenty-third Street. Fourteenth Street.

  “Maybe we better think of an explanation,” I said. “Don’t you think we need a story?” But Hubert was past rational thought.

  We got off the train at West Fourth Street and hurtled up the stairway to the sidewalk above.

  When we turned the corner onto Bleecker Street, my feet stopped moving before my body, so I stumbled in shock at what I saw.

  Police! There was a police car parked at an odd angle next to the curb in front of the school. I could see my mother talking to an officer on the steps, and another one was interviewing Hubert’s father.

  “We are in deep doo-doo, Hubert.”

  22 • The Story

  We ducked back into the entrance of the Banana Republic clothing store and tried to spy through the display window. There was a crowd of kids leaning against the wall of the school, pretending not to notice what was going on but with their ears flapping from so much eavesdropping. I spotted Renée and Charley and Josh from our class. And Alyssa, of course, whispering to Sarah behind her hand.

  My watch said twenty minutes to four. We were twenty-five minutes late. I wondered when my mother had figured out I wasn’t there.

  “What are we going to do?” moaned Hubert. He was really upset.

  “I think we’ll have to rely on mother-love to get us out of this one. Leave it to me.” I galloped out of the store and across the street.

  “Mom!” I waved and hollered as I ran. “Mom! Mom! It’s okay! We’re okay!”

  Jane saw me first. She was standing on the steps, and she heard me and started to shriek. Nobody could figure out why she was shrieking until she pointed, and by then I was right there.

  Jane threw herself at me from the top step and I staggered, but I held on to her. Hubert came toddling along, and his dad grabbed him. My mother burst into tears and fell on me. Jane got trapped in the middle, and we were all a big, huggy lump for a few minutes. When my mother’s sobbing got quieter, the police officer interrupted.

  “Er, excuse me; I’m very happy to see that the children are safe. We just need some information for our report. Would you tell me where you’ve been?”

  I could tell from the way he looked at me that he was a father and probably a nosy one. He held his pencil over his notebook and he held his eyebrow arched over his eye at the same time.

  I took a slow breath.

  “Hubert is really the hero,” I started. I thought maybe the ideas would catch up if I could stretch out the words a bit. “Yep, it was Hubert who really saved the day.”

  Hubert was staring at me with wide, horrified eyes.

  “Just before the last class, um, just before science, Hubert noticed that my backpack was, um, that my backpack had disappeared.” I might as well start with the truth.

  “And then from the window, he saw someone wearing it and leaving the school.”

  “Would this person belong to the school community?” asked the officer.

  “Was it someone you recognized, Hubert?” asked my mother.

  “Uh, he wasn’t sure,” I said quickly. Hubert was responding too slowly.

  “That’s why he grabbed me and said we should follow the person.”

  “Why didn’t you inform an adult?” asked the officer.

  “You should have told Ms. McPhee immediately,” said my mother.

  “Ms. McPhee is sick today, Ms. Stoner,” said Hubert.

  “Oh, yes,” said my mother.

  “Yeah, and that dopey substitute probably wouldn’t have believed us,” I said. My mother glared at my disrespect, but she was still holding on to me with helpless gratitude, so I kept going.

  “There was no time to lose. We saw my backpack disappearing up Sixth Avenue so we just went after it. We knew we’d be okay because we were together, and we are both very responsible.” I thought I’d better slip that in.

  “How did you get your belongings back?” asked the officer.

  “Did you confront the thief? Did you know who it was?” asked my mother.

  Hubert’s eyes were now scrunched up with curiosity. He was waiting to hear what happened next. The policeman was making scratches in his pad, but he paused to wait for my answer.

  “Well, you know, it was the weirdest thing.” I played for time.
“At first we could see the person in front of us, and then, poof, like magic, we couldn’t see the person anymore. We thought maybe he’d gone into the subway and then, and then …”

  “And then, there was the backpack,” said Hubert helpfully. “It was just there, leaning against the front of the newsstand. The guy must have gone through it and realized it was totally worthless.”

  “Hey, thanks a lot,” I said.

  “Well, you certainly gave your parents and teachers a fright,” said the officer.

  “Next time, tell a grown-up,” said my mother. “No matter what.”

  Her eyes were getting wet again. I could tell she’d had a rough time. I thought about how much I’d missed her this afternoon, even though I was sitting in the library five feet away and just happened to be invisible. So for her, having me disappear and not knowing I was all right, well, no wonder she looked awful.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Sorry,” said Hubert.

  Jane kept squeezing me and patting me. I crouched down and gave her an Eskimo kiss, nose to nose.

  I couldn’t believe we were getting away so easily. We shook hands with both officers and waved when they drove off down Bleecker Street.

  Hubert and I didn’t have even a second alone. Our parents whisked us off in opposite directions.

  23 • Caught

  As soon as I could after we got home, I borrowed my mother’s hair dryer and went into the bathroom. I peeled off my socks and shoes and blew hot air on my feet. They looked normal pretty quickly except for the toes. The toes didn’t quite make it. I would have to keep my socks on for a couple of years.

  Then I had to style my hair and make it look all poofy, so my mother and Jane wouldn’t wonder what I’d been doing. Even though she didn’t say anything, my mother was watching me with serious interest.

  All through supper, my mother alternated between smothering me with kisses and scolding me over and over for behaving so thoughtlessly. I don’t know which was worse. I had to answer twelve thousand questions from Jane about the backpack thief. I told her he had a wart on his thumb and was wearing a rope bracelet.

  When I was finally lying in bed, my mother came in. She is just tall enough so that her face pokes through the slats of the guardrail on the upper bunk.

  “Billie,” she whispered, shining her lovely smile on me. “I just wanted to tell you again that I love you. I’m glad you got your backpack back today, even though you should have asked a grown-up for help. I’m proud that you and Hubert stuck together.”

  I lay there, letting her words lull me.

  “But there is still one thing I’m curious about___”

  I felt a warning prickle all over my body.

  “I’ve been wondering … I didn’t see you today … Mr. Belenky said you weren’t in chorus. Alyssa said you weren’t in class, even though I heard you shouting in the halls a couple of times. … What actually happened?”

  She looked at me with those smart eyes, and I knew I was caught.

  “Mom,” I said. I looked up at the ceiling for guidance.

  I decided to take a chance.

  “Mom, here’s what happened. I found a pot of magic powder, but I didn’t know it was magic. When I put it on, I disappeared. I called the person whose name was with the powder and she said to come over so she could cure me. Hubert came, too, as my gallant protector. And it’s a good thing he did because we needed chewed-up gum to make the potion. And you know how good Hubert is with gum, right?”

  I looked at my mother to make sure she was following me. She cleared her throat.

  “Billie, you have a fertile imagination.”

  “It’s the truth, Mom, but if you don’t believe me, I understand. It’s a bit of a wild story. The important thing is, I got home safely, and so did Hubert, and nobody got hurt and I was very responsible and I learned a lot about the world and I love you and I even love Jane, and you’ll never know how glad I am to be home.”

  I held my breath. Would telling the fantastic truth work? She gazed at me with soppy eyes and then tucked my duvet around my shoulders and said good night.

  24 • Revenge

  Hubert and I were famous for a couple of days at school. We told everyone the same dumb story, and then we said we didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

  On Tuesday, Ms. McPhee was back, with a red nose. She posted a schedule of our Small World presentations on the bulletin board. I was on the list for next Monday, so I had a whole extra weekend to finish. Hubert was supposed to do his on Friday. He was getting a little nervous about the talking-to-the-whole-class part, but I told him to practice in front of the mirror.

  It was Alyssa’s turn that I was interested in and, lucky for me, it was one of the first. On Thursday, Charley was doing Australia, and Alyssa was doing China.

  Phase One of my plan was that I had to be in the classroom before anyone else on Thursday. I gave Jane a piggyback ride most of the way to school so that we wouldn’t have to crawl at her pace. For once, my mother acted like a storybook mother and said good-bye conveniently quickly.

  My revenge was simple, and the plan was easily executed. I had decided not to tell Hubert because he might have stopped me.

  As the morning ticked by, I got giddy with anticipation. Finally, it was Small World time. Charley was first. His talk was pretty good. He spent a little too much time discussing the damage a dingo dog can do to a human limb, but aside from that, it was interesting.

  As he was finishing, I watched Alyssa. During question time, she went to her cubby to get her material. I clasped my hands together to stop myself from clapping with glee. She turned to Ms. McPhee and started to whine.

  “My folder’s not here. I put it here and it’s not here.”

  “Don’t fuss, Alyssa. It’s probably in some one else’s cubby by mistake.”

  Alyssa’s foot came up and stomped right down again. Hubert looked at me suspiciously. I looked out the window.

  Alyssa started to paw through other people’s cubbies. Sarah hopped up to help her. After about fifteen tense and delightful minutes, the folder was discovered right where I’d “misplaced” it, on Ms. McPhee’s desk, in the stack of homework files.

  Alyssa snatched it from Ms. McPhee and flounced to center stage.

  “My country is China,” she announced. “China has more people than any other country.” She flipped open her book.

  I had to sit on my hands.

  Her eyebrows pinched together. She scrambled through a few pages.

  (All I had to do was to find Alyssa’s work folder in her messy cubby and open it to the pages she had copied from the encyclopedia. I sprinkled the tiniest bit of powder over the writing, hardly even dust. Just enough to melt away the ink without affecting the paper or the binder. In fact, I could still see fragments of words here and there, but nowhere a complete sentence.)

  She looked up in complete disbelief.

  “My research is all ruined!” she cried, holding up the binder for everyone to see. “All my writing is gone!”

  “Well, then, Alyssa,” said Ms. McPhee soothingly, “try telling us what you know about your country, without your notes. What is the weather like, for instance? What sort of food do all those people eat? What are the conditions for women in Chinese culture?”

  Alyssa’s gray face, her bugging-out eyes, her violet neck, her look of complete stupidity … this was all I needed to feel that Hubert was avenged.

  I grinned at him. He slowly shook his head back and forth, and then he grinned, too.

  “Excuse me, Ms. McPhee?” he said. “I could talk about China. I could, um, tell you lots of things that I know from my mom and dad.”

  Ms. McPhee rose to the occasion.

  “Go ahead, Hubert. We’d love to hear your family’s story. Alyssa, why don’t you sit down and we’ll discuss your problem later.”

  Oh, happy day.

  Epilogue

  This is the part of the story where all the loose ends get tied toget
her into a neat little tassel.

  A few weeks after the invisible day, I turned eleven.

  One thing I got for my birthday was a diary. I’ve been keeping a record of setting everything right.

  First, when my mom took us into City Eden for an after-school snack, I pretended to find a dollar on the floor, and I gave it to the lady to pay for my banana and Doritos.

  Second, I taped a subway token to a piece of cardboard and sent it to the Metropolitan Transit Authority to pay for my first ride uptown.

  Third, I had to save a chunk of my allowance, which is only four dollars a week, before I could mail a ten-dollar bill to the newspaper kiosk on Columbus Avenue to pay for all the gum I stole. Who knows if mail gets delivered to a place like that, but I did my best.

  The next time we went to the Museum of Natural History for a Family Excursion, I looked for the old lady with the tambourine, but she wasn’t there, so she’s still on my list.

  When the movie starring Dana Clare was released, Hubert and I went, with our moms. The scene that I’m in is just before she finds out that the baker’s sister is her real-life mother, who she’s been searching for during the whole movie. I know it’s the scene that I’m in because her hair ruffles a little bit while she’s looking at the paper.

  “That’s me!” I whispered to Hubert. “That’s my screen debut!”

  “You deserve an Oscar,” he whispered back.

  And then Dana drops the paper on the ground beside her instead of tossing it onto the road. Hubert wouldn’t believe me except that I showed him the paper. I keep it in my top drawer alongside the film canister holding the dregs of the vanishing powder. You never know when such a thing might come in handy.

  Alyssa went crazy after her Small World big disaster. She even accused Sarah of sabotaging her project. Hubert and I rescued Sarah, and now she hangs out with us. She finally got some blue jeans.