by Paul Gamble
“Is this going to involve a lot of shouting?” Jack inquired.
“Do you think I’d look this unhappy if I was going to be shouting at you?” asked the Misery. “This is going to be the most unpleasant thing I’ll ever teach you to do.”
“Explain!” Trudy said.
“If you’re invisible it basically means that you’re transparent. Now, have you ever heard about anyone being completely transparent?”
Jack thought. “Well, yes, if a politician or a movie star or a businessperson tells the truth about something. Then the newspapers say they’re being transparent.”
Trudy nodded. “Yeah, but that’s just a phrase, isn’t it?”
“How many times do I have to explain this?” The Misery sighed. “People don’t just make up phrases. They all have a basis in fact. And it isn’t just phrases about being transparent. There are dozens of similar ones. Think about it. When you know the truth about someone, you talk about being able to ‘see right through them.’”
“How does that work?” asked Trudy. “I mean, being honest can’t make you just disappear, can it?”
“It has to do with the speed at which the molecules in your body vibrate,” the Misery said. “You see, molecules are very honest things. In science they always talk about how molecules follow laws. And molecules don’t just occasionally follow laws—they follow the laws all the time. People are a lot less honest than that and only follow laws occasionally. People breaking laws and lying make the molecules in our bodies confused—and when they are confused they vibrate slowly and sluggishly—because they are trying to stop you from telling lies.”
“So that changes when we’re honest?” asked Jack.
“Yes, the more honest you are the more excited your molecules get. And if you’re completely honest they vibrate so quickly that you begin to blur and then eventually fade from view entirely.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Jack shook his head as if trying to clear it. “I’m honest most of the time and I don’t disappear.”
“You think so?” The Misery laughed.
“Yes!” Jack snapped.
“I never … well, hardly ever lie,” Trudy agreed.
“You’re misunderstanding,” the Misery said slowly. “Not lying isn’t the same thing as being completely honest.” The Misery bit his tongue for a second before continuing. “It’s like this. Not lying isn’t the same as being a hundred percent truthful. Being a hundred percent truthful means that you have to tell your deepest, darkest secrets—about everything. Look, truth is more than an absence of lies. Truth means telling about everything. Every time you wet the bed when you were young. Every time you did something embarrassing. Who you have a crush on in school. Everything.”
Jack and Trudy looked at each other, slightly panicked. “I’m not sure I ever could be that honest,” Jack said.
“There’d be a risk of dying of embarrassment,” agreed Trudy.
The Misery continued explaining. “You know how when things vibrate they make a humming or a high-pitched noise? That’s where the phrase ‘ring of truth’ comes from. So, if you get this right, there’s a slight ping and you just vanish. But it only works if you’re one hundred percent honest about something that you never wanted to admit to anyone.”
Jack felt slightly awkward. He had a horrible feeling that pretty soon he was going to move from talking about turning invisible to having to tell about the most embarrassing incidents from his life. Which was something that he really, really didn’t want to do.
Trudy spoke quietly. “Is this the part where we practice telling the truth and turning invisible?”
“It isn’t that kind of training,” said the Misery. “The more you do something, the less exciting it gets. And the same is true of your molecules. Although they’ll be excited the first time you tell the complete truth, it won’t work quite as well the next time. So, this is something you don’t practice. And you only use it when you absolutely need to.”
“But how do we know that it actually works, then?”
“I knew you were going to ask that. I knew it.… I knew it.” The Misery broke eye contact with Jack and stared at the floor. There was a very uncomfortable silence. Then the Misery looked back up. “I cried when I read the end of the book Charlotte’s Web.”83
The idea that someone as tough as the Misery would have cried at a book made Jack want to laugh out loud. But he didn’t, because there was a pinging sound and then suddenly there was no one to laugh at. For a brief second the Misery had blurred at the edges, and then he disappeared entirely. Jack and Trudy looked at each other. In part because there was now no one else to look at.
“I can’t believe that the Misery turned invisible,” Trudy exclaimed.
“I can’t believe that the Misery cried at Charlotte’s Web,” said Jack, laughing.
Jack felt something slap the back of his head and a voice out of nowhere spoke. “Still here, remember? Just invisible.”
“Sorry,” Jack apologized to the empty space.
“Well, now that you know it works, get out of my room and stop bothering me.”
As Jack and Trudy got up, they heard footsteps walking away from them but couldn’t see anything. Even once they were outside, Jack couldn’t help looking over his shoulder to check that they were alone. “That’s kind of freaky. I don’t think I’m ever going to be sure I’m completely alone again.”
Trudy nodded and then asked a question. “Do you think you’ll be able to do that? Be so honest that you’ll turn invisible?”
Jack thought for a moment. “Not sure. Hopefully we won’t have to. I’m not sure that I ever want to be quite that honest. But maybe it isn’t that hard. I mean, confessing to crying at Charlotte’s Web—that isn’t really embarrassing, is it?”
“You’re missing the point,” Trudy argued. “For you it wouldn’t be that embarrassing, but the Misery pretends that he never gets emotional about anything. That was a big secret for him.”
“I suppose so,” Jack agreed, wondering what his own biggest secret was. “So, what do we do now?”
Trudy thought. “Well, hopefully my mother will have finished at the doctors by now.… I was thinking maybe we could both go home?”
* * *
They called a Ministry car to take them home. Jack insisted they drop Trudy off first as she wanted to see her mother and father back together again. It also gave him a chance to think about the clues they had so far.
They knew that they were up against Merlin, the scientist who had helped make Arthur king of the Britons. Merlin was a scientist, skilled in carpentry and herbalism and even able to genetically modify plants. It was obvious that in recent years he had been causing people to have allergic reactions to scare the public into buying “health foods.” By making people and animals eat these health foods, Merlin managed to control them somehow—but how?
They had also found Excalibur, but it didn’t seem to want to come free from the stone into which it was plunged. Which seemed odd: If a sword was sharp enough to cut its way into a stone, wouldn’t it be sharp enough to cut its way back out? On top of that, Jack couldn’t help wondering why the stone had been wired up to an electrical line from a pylon. Was Merlin trying to shock the sword out of the stone?
And then, of course, there was also the driverless car that had tried to kill him, and the suits of armor. Jack had wondered if the suits were some kind of animatronic robots like the giant and the dragon, but that didn’t make sense, because the armor had been completely empty when they broke it apart—there weren’t any mechanical innards.
Possibly the most worrying part of all was the fantasy movie that Merlin was pretending to make. It gave Merlin almost perfect cover. He was literally hiding in the open with a giant, a dragon, and as many suits of armor as he wanted. When Merlin had enough people under control he would no doubt equip them with shields and swords and take over the country.
But Jack suspected it wasn’t that simple. There was someth
ing more going on, something that he hadn’t quite figured out yet. Jack felt nervous that it was Wednesday night already—he really wanted to try to get everything figured out by Friday at the latest. His parents had recently bought him Lego Marvel Super Heroes, and he wanted to spend most of the weekend trying to complete it.
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
INVISIBILITY GARMENTS84
UNSUITABILITY
Although some people do not believe they exist, the world is full of cloaks of invisibility. After all, the cloaks would be incredibly useful, and they are an idea that people have had for many hundreds if not thousands of years. It would be ridiculous to suggest that if an idea had been around for that long, no one would ever have gotten around to inventing it.
You may ask, if this is the case, then why aren’t they in more common usage? The reason is simple. Although the idea of an invisibility cloak seems brilliant initially, it is highly impractical. Let us take an example—you use your invisibility cloak to sneak into a party to which you are not invited. It gets you past the person at the door checking the guest list. Then, once inside, you hang up your cloak and start to enjoy the party. At the end of the night you go to the cloakroom to try to find your invisibility cloak. Of course, what with it being invisible, it is basically impossible to find.
Statistical surveys have shown that the most common phrase used by owners of invisibility cloaks is “Now … where did I put it?”
Ancient legends are full of people losing their magic swords, magic rings, and even magic lamps. However, the magic item that is most frequently lost, without a doubt, is the invisibility cloak.85
This is why you should never, ever leave your car keys in the pocket of your invisibility cloak. Because if you do, you’re going to be cold while you’re walking home.
* * *
31
BECAUSE SOMETIMES EVEN PARENTS ARE HELPFUL
Jack’s parents were sitting at the table eating their dinner. Jack just drank a cup of tea.
“Are you sure you don’t want something to eat?”
Jack shook his head. “Thanks, Dad, but we got something to eat at Trudy’s after choir practice.” Jack wished this had been true. He was literally starving, but looking at the Mr. M’s Healthy Meals packages that sat on the kitchen counter made him lose his appetite. For that matter, watching his parents eating didn’t really help much either. Jack wondered if they would suddenly find themselves under Merlin’s control. And yet he couldn’t think of a way to stop them from eating it without explaining his work in the Ministry—and would they even believe that?
“Do you mind if I just go to my room? I have some homework to do,” Jack said. And for once he was telling the truth.
When he was in his room, Jack pulled a chair over in front of his mirror and sat down on it. He stared at his reflection in the mirror and thought to himself. The Misery had said not to practice, but being invisible was clearly going to be far too much fun not to try it at least once.
The question was, what embarrassing truth was he going to tell to himself? What did he have to be honest about? What would he hate having to admit, despite the fact that it was true? Jack focused at his own reflection in the mirror and then said something he certainly knew, but wouldn’t have admitted out loud. “Trudy’s a much better Ministry agent than I am. I’d be lost without her.” Jack noticed that his edges seemed to blur slightly.
“Okay, so that was true, but not quite true enough, obviously.” Jack thought about things that were both true and hard to admit. Then he realized that the hardest things to be completely honest about were the ones that involved not just saying something, but actually having to change your behavior once you’d admitted it.
Focusing on the mirror once more, he looked sternly at himself. “I take my parents for granted and I should be a lot nicer to them.” It was a very honest thing to say, and Jack could almost feel his molecules beginning to vibrate faster and faster. He watched in the mirror as his reflection blurred and then disappeared with a ping. Jack leapt up from the chair.86 “Brilliant! I’m invisible!”
Although Jack felt it was slightly anticlimactic to be invisible by yourself—because no one could actually see that they couldn’t see you—it still felt pretty amazing. He ran around the room, feeling smug and singing “I’m not looking at the man in the mirror!”
Which was great fun right up until the moment he ran straight into the mirror and fell over, banging his head on the side of the bed. It hurt a lot and he lay there for a minute feeling sorry for himself. “Okay, important safety tip there—it’s incredibly easy to run into a mirror when your reflection isn’t there as a warning.”
Jack put his hand up to his mouth to see if he was bleeding. Of course, he didn’t see any blood, but then again he didn’t see his hand either. He sat still and waited. After a few seconds his hand started fading back into view. The effect of telling the truth was wearing off. There was something loose in his mouth. He spat it out. A single tooth lay in the palm of his hand. He felt around in his mouth with his tongue and realized it was one from right at the back. He frowned at his face in the mirror. “Still, it could have been worse, I suppose. At least it isn’t one of the front ones.”
His mother appeared at the door of his room to find out what the crashing noise had been. He looked up at her from his sitting position and held out the tooth for her to see. His mother suggested they should go to the hospital if he had banged his head that badly, but Jack refused.
“It’s okay, Mum. No double vision or anything. I’m fine.”
“Well, all right,” she said, still not one hundred percent sure, “but if you feel ill or anything, let me know.”
Jack promised he would. His mother insisted on tucking him into bed to ensure that there were no more accidents. Once she had left the room, Jack looked at the tooth lying on top of the bedside cabinet. He got up, walked over to the window, and looked out the curtains. Like the last two nights, the driverless silver car was sitting outside his house again. Revving its engine. It would almost certainly try to get him on his way to the bus the next day. And his father had said that he wouldn’t give him another lift.
Jack needed to figure out a way to get to school without getting mowed down by a psychopathic car. He walked back over to his bed and tied his leg to the frame once more. He hadn’t eaten any of Mr. M’s food, but you couldn’t be too safe.
Then Jack had an idea. He reached out with one hand, lifted the loose tooth, and bunched his fist. Then he placed the fist, tooth and all, under his pillow.
* * *
MINISTRY OF S.U.I.T.S HANDBOOK
ANIMALS THAT ARE GOOD AT HIDING
CHAMELEONS
One of the creatures that is most effective at hiding in the world is the chameleon, which can change color at a moment’s notice. It is interesting that chameleons originally didn’t develop this ability as a defensive mechanism. If you have ever seen a chameleon, you will have noticed that it has swiveling eyes that can point in different directions. This is because chameleons are incredibly fashion conscious and want to make sure they are following the latest trends. They therefore developed a way to change the color of their skin to ensure that they were on trend and right up to date.
It is also why you will never see two chameleons at a party wearing the same dress.
Some people have asked what would happen if you put a chameleon in a box full of mirrors. The answer is simple. It would turn black, simply because it’s the most slimming color.
* * *
32
CAR CHASE
THURSDAY
When Jack woke the next morning, his room was bright. Which was surprising, because normally his curtains kept the morning brightness out of the room. In fact, that was the entire point of curtains. Their one job was to keep the brightness out—and yet they seemed to have rather dropped the ball this morning. Jack’s eyes opened slightly more; squinting at the light, he sat up and realize
d that someone had already opened the curtains.
Sitting at the bottom of his bed was an enormous man who would have been more threatening had it not been for the fact that he was wearing a pink tutu, two sizes too small. He had a shaggy brown beard and a scar on one side of his face. “You’re holding on to that tooth pretty tight.” The Tooth Fairy nodded at Jack’s fist, which was still clenched under the pillow.
Most people would have been surprised at this happening; however, Jack had met the Tooth Fairy before. In fact, given everything that had happened recently, Jack would not have been surprised if he had found Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and a dozen other fairy-tale characters hiding in his closet.
Although the Tooth Fairy looked like a dangerous criminal, he was in fact a businessman who sold people’s teeth to make the white keys on pianos. Jack pulled his fist out from under the pillow and tossed the tooth to the huge man, who caught it more nimbly than you would expect. “Cheers,” the Tooth Fairy said, standing up. “Going rate for these things is two quid.” He tossed Jack a silver and gold coin.
“Thanks,” said Jack. He completely failed to catch the coin, and it clattered against the wall, rolling under his bedside cabinet. “It used to be fifty pence.”
The Tooth Fairy shrugged his impressively hairy shoulders. “Inflation. Exchange rates. You’ve got to pay the market value.” The Tooth Fairy turned to leave and then stopped as if a thought had struck him. He held the tooth Jack had given him up to the light. “This is a second molar. Last of your baby teeth.”
Jack’s plan was working.… “Well, if this is going to be the last time we see each other, perhaps I could ask you a favor.”
The Tooth Fairy sneered at Jack. “You gave me the tooth and I gave you the money. That’s the deal. I owe you nothing. You are one of the most annoying boys I’ve ever met.”