Invisible

by Pete Hautman

  21

  MEATBALLS

  My parents think I’m socially backward because I don’t have a lot of friends. I don’t see it as a problem. Most kids are stupid. If I have a problem, it’s that I don’t like to talk about nothing. When I listen to other kids talking to each other, they mostly don’t actually say anything.

  For example, I am at my locker. Two girls are standing a few feet away. Here is what they say:

  GIRL 1: So I was like, no way! But my mom, you know, she was like gonna have a fit or something.

  GIRL 2: Yeah, and then, my mom, like … waita-minute … what is that anyways? Can I have one? What are they?

  GIRL 1: Tangerine Sours. Have you heard about Angela?

  GIRL 2: Omigod, yes, she’s got this thing on her foot, y’know? It is so disgusting. You know?

  GIRL 1: And that sweater she’s wearing, can you believe it?

  GIRL 2: She’s like this homeless person. Can I have another one?

  I have tried to talk like that, but it doesn’t work for me. Here is what would happen if I joined the conversation:

  GIRL 1: So I was like, no way! But my mom, you know, she was like gonna have a fit or something.

  ME: Does she have epilepsy?

  GIRL 1: No, stupid!

  GIRL 2: Yeah, and then, my mom, like … waita-minute … what is that anyways? Can I have one? What are they?

  GIRL 1: Tangerine Sours.

  ME: They put acid in the sugar to make it sour.

  GIRL 2: That is so rude!

  GIRL 1: Have you heard about Angela?

  GIRL 2: Omigod, yes, she’s got this thing on her foot, y’know? It is so disgusting. You know?

  ME: She must have plantar warts. I had plantar warts last year. The doctor had to burn them off. It smelled weird.

  GIRL 1: You are so disgusting. Get lost, worm.

  I’m just not very good at small talk.

  I don’t see Melissa Haverman in the lunchroom, which is just as well. I have a feeling she would not be happy to see me. I carry my tray to my usual table. Today’s lunch is spaghetti and meatballs, my favorite. As long as lunch is good, I don’t care that no one sits with me.

  I am on my thirteenth bite when something warm and wet slaps me across the forehead. Meatball chunks slide down my face on a river of red sauce. I see Freddie Perdue, one of the football goons, holding his spoon like a catapult and grinning at me. The rest of the goons are laughing.

  He says, “Oops.”

  I wipe my face clean.

  “You need another napkin, perv?” says Chuckles Gorman.

  Freddie is loading another meatball onto his spoon. “Hey, peeper, get a load of this!”

  He lets fly. I duck and the meatball goes sailing over my head. I hear an outraged screech from the beautiful girls’ table. An instant later a plate goes flying past my ear and hits Freddie in the chest, decorating him with spaghetti squiggles on a field of red—what Mrs. Felko would call abstract expressionism.

  “Food fight!” yells one of the football goons.

  I hit the deck.

  As the lunchroom erupts in a storm of meatballs, spaghetti, and screams, I am crawling wormlike for the door. I’ve got enough problems in my life. I don’t need to be blamed for this one too.

  The thing I don’t understand is, tomorrow all those kids who were throwing food at one another will still be friends. They’ll be laughing and making small talk and everything will be okay. But they won’t be laughing and making small talk with me.

  I don’t understand. I think there is something wrong with them.

  22

  KICKS

  I am running down the hall, looking for Andy to tell him about the food fight, when Mr. Dunphey, who teaches American literature, grabs me by the arm.

  “Whoa, slow down, son. What’s your hurry?”

  “I got hit by a meatball,” I say.

  He takes in my sauce-coated face, and his own face turns pink. He is pressing his lips together and shaking. I think at first that he is angry, but then I realize that he is trying not to laugh. He takes a few seconds to get himself under control, then asks me who meatballed me.

  “Everybody.”

  “Everybody?”

  “There’s a food fight in the cafeteria. I’m lucky they missed me with the spaghetti.”

  This time he can’t stop himself from laughing. He lets go of my arm and walks off, shaking his head and giggling. I think maybe Mr. Dunphey has a mental disorder.

  I hole up in one of the study halls and work on my sigil for the rest of the lunch period. The new version is quite exciting. It looks like a devil’s face, or two people burning.

  What I really like is that I am the only one who can find the letters in it. That is, until I show it to Andy, then he’ll be able to read it too.

  For the next couple of classes everybody is talking about the food fight. The teachers, of course, are angry. And the janitors are furious. Six kids got suspended for three days, and they have to come in after school to clean the cafeteria. One of the suspended kids was Freddie Perdue. That is what you call justice. The bad news is that there will be no ice cream or soft drink sales in the cafeteria until after the first of the year, more than seven weeks away. A lot of kids will be drinking milk or water.

  I wash my face three times, but I still smell like a meatball when school lets out. Maybe I will take a shower as soon as I get home. Or maybe I’ll work on my bridge for a while first.

  I am walking down Fourteenth Street, thinking about the bridge, when I hear running footsteps behind me. I step to the right side, giving them room to pass, when something smacks me hard on the back of my head. I pitch forward and hit the sidewalk with my palms. My backpack goes flying, books skidding down the sidewalk.

  “Where ya think yer goin’, perv?” Freddie Perdue’s voice. His size fourteen Nikes are a few inches in front of my face. I push myself up to my hands and knees; my palms are on fire and the back of my head is throbbing.

  “I asked you a question, perv.”

  I look up. Freddie is not alone. He is with Ty Bridger and Aron Metz, two of his football goon friends.

  “I’m going home,” I say.

  “You sure you aren’t going over to Woodland? Gonna do some more window peeping?”

  “No,” I say. “That wasn’t me.”

  “Liar!” Freddie draws back one enormous foot and kicks me hard in the ribs, I curl up and try to roll away, but they are on me, three of them, kicking at me from every side.

  “Asshole.” A boot slams into my back.

  “Pervert.” A tennis shoe smashes into my ear and I hear myself scream.

  “Goddamn peeper.” One of them stomps on my chest; air hisses from my lungs. I shape my mouth to call for Andy, but there is nothing there, no air to shout with, and then a shoe crashes into my temple, and they kick me again, and again, and I go to a place where there are no people and there is no pain, only the distant sound of rubber toes thudding into flesh and bone.

  23

  ROOM 317

  I remember every blow. I can count them. I have made a list:

  1. Hit on back of head (Freddie)

  2. Kick to ribs (Freddie)

  3. Kick to left leg (Aron or Ty)

  4. Kick to ribs (Freddie)

  5. Kick to left buttock (Aron or Ty)

  6. Kick to ear (Freddie)

  7. Stomp to chest (Aron)

  8. Kick to right knee (Ty)

  9. Kick to back (Aron or Ty)

  10. Kick to ribs (Freddie)

  11. Kick to back (Aron or Ty)

  12. Kick to thigh (Aron or Ty)

  13. Kick to temple (Freddie)

  The policeman who comes to see me in the hospital in room 317 is the same policeman who came to my house. I find this to be very significant. I give him a complete report of the incident, including the list above. He was very impressed.

  “You remember all that?” he says.

  “I have a very organized mind.”
<
br />   The policeman attaches the list to his clipboard.

  “Are you going to arrest them?”

  He ignores my question. “Do you know why you were attacked?”

  “No.”

  “Did it have anything to do with the food fight at school?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You have no idea why they beat you up?”

  “I think they were trying to kill me. You should arrest them for attempted murder.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “I might have a concussion. I could have internal bleeding.”

  “The doctor told me you were going to be fine, son.”

  “I have stitches in my ear.”

  “They’re just keeping you here overnight as a precaution. The doctor told me you’ll be going home first thing tomorrow morning.” The policeman stands up. “Believe me, son, we are taking this assault very seriously.”

  “I have bruised ribs.”

  “Don’t worry, son. Nobody is getting away with anything. I’ll talk to these three young men. And I’ll get that window peeper, too.” He smiles, winks, and walks out of the room.

  My mom stays with me the rest of the afternoon and evening, sitting by the side of my bed. She works on a new crossword puzzle while I lie there thinking of ways to get back at Freddie and his goons. One way would be to catch that rat that lives in the football stadium and put it in a steel box with a hole in it and strap it to Freddie with the hole against his body so that the only way for the rat to get out is to chew its way through Freddie’s stomach. Or I could soak his Nikes in gasoline and light them on fire while they are on his feet. Or I could just ask Andy to beat the crap out of him.

  Where is Andy, anyway? I figured he would come as soon as he heard I was in the hospital.

  Of course, since Freddie will be in jail, I probably won’t get a chance to do any of that, but thinking about it helps me forget about the pain in my chest, my head, and my ear.

  When visiting hours are over, Andy still hasn’t shown up. My mother packs up her pencils and graph paper.

  “Did you tell Andy I’m here?” I ask.

  She sighs. “No, dear, I did not.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m sorry, Douglas.” She smiles her weariest smile. “I must have forgotten.”

  I don’t sleep well in strange places, and the hospital is as strange as it gets, with all the weird noises and smells and the scratchy sheets, and it doesn’t help that I still ache all over my body. I am still not asleep at 10:30 when Andy strolls into the room.

  “I hear you got yourself a job as a punching bag for the football team,” he says.

  “How’d you get in? Visiting hours are over.”

  “I just walked in. Nobody said anything. I couldn’t come earlier because we had rehearsals for the new play.”

  “That’s okay.”

  Andy sits down next to the bed and looks closely at my torn ear. “Dougie, you’re a mess!”

  “It was Freddie and Ty and Aron.”

  “I heard. The cops picked up all three of them.”

  That news—and Andy’s presence—make me feel much better. “They say I can go home in the morning.”

  Andy reaches out and rests his warm hand on my arm. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he says. “But I have to tell you something: I told you so.”

  “Told me what?”

  “That you’d get in trouble for sneaking around Woodland Trails.”

  “Oh.”

  “You could have been hurt worse.”

  “I know. I tried to yell for you, but they stomped the air out of my chest.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t always be around to help you.”

  “I thought I was going to die.”

  “I won’t let you die.”

  “I won’t let you die either.”

  “I know.” I see the tears gathering in his blue eyes, and tides of joy wash over me. He cares. He really cares what happens to me. And he is the only one who understands.

  24

  NUMBER FIVE

  My parents keep me home from school for the rest of the week. That’s fine with me. I spend the time working on my bridge. My ribs hurt, my palms are scraped and sore, my stitched-up ear itches, and I have a headache that won’t go away—but it hurts just as much to do nothing at all. I’ve completed the towers, the anchors, and all the bridge deck segments. I’ve strung the main cables. I’ve dyed the thread I’m using for the suspender cables, or stringers. Now I’m hanging the bridge deck from the 162 pairs of vertical stringers. Each pair of stringers takes about fifteen minutes. On the actual Golden Gate Bridge the stringers had to be adjusted to a fraction of an inch. On my bridge, the leeway is hundredths of an inch. The work is intricate and precise.

  Late Thursday afternoon I am installing stringer pair number thirty-seven when the doorbell rings. I hear my mother, then another woman’s voice, then double footsteps. I hear my mother saying, “I’m so sorry! With Douglas injured, and everything else going on, we simply forgot to call you.”

  “That’s quite all right.” I recognize the voice now. It’s Dr. Ahlstrom. “I’ve been meaning to drop by in any case. Douglas has been talking so much about the little bridge he’s working on.”

  “Little?” My mother laughs. They are at the top of the stairs now, and she calls down, “Douglas, you have company, dear.”

  I don’t say anything right away. I hate being interrupted when I am doing precision work.

  “Douglas?”

  “I hear you.”

  “May we come down?”

  “Okay. I guess.”

  I watch their feet coming down the basement steps, one through thirteen, and then I see my mother’s face and then I see Dr. Ahlstrom’s face.

  “Good afternoon, Douglas,” she says. And then she sees the bridge and her chin drops and she says, “Good Lord. Douglas. Oh my God.”

  “I told you,” I said.

  “Douglas, I had no idea.” Dr. Ahlstrom is only the fifth living person ever to see my bridge. Me, Andy, and my parents are the four others.

  “It’s … it’s beautiful,” Dr. Ahlstrom says, and I feel my blood bubbling with oxygen.

  “It’s not done yet,” I say.

  “Yes, but, my goodness, Douglas.” She approaches the bridge and looks at the details, at each carefully shaped and fitted matchstick, at the perfect joints and precise alignment of the parts. For a moment I see it through her eyes. It seems impossible that anything made by hand could be so precise and flawless.

  She reaches out a hand to touch it.

  “Don’t!” I slap her hand back.

  “Douglas!” my mother says.

  Dr. Ahlstrom clutches her slapped hand and looks at me with wide eyes.

  “I’m in the middle of hanging the suspender cables,” I say. “Nothing can move.”

  “It’s all right,” says Dr. Ahlstrom. She gives me her professional smile. “It’s a remarkable model, Douglas. What inspired you to build it?”

  “Bridges are important. They connect things. You need them to get from one side to the other.”

  “That’s very interesting.”

  That’s what she says when she’s trying to get me to talk. I am not in the mood.

  I say, “Are you going to charge my parents for coming here today?”

  “Douglas!” my mother says, horrified. Anything to do with money embarrasses my parents. I don’t know why.

  “It’s all right,” Dr. Ahlstrom says to my mother. “Douglas and I are often quite honest and direct with each other.” She turns back to me. “As you know, I bill 50 percent of my consultation fee for missed appointments, Douglas. I’m not charging any additional fee for my visit here, as it was something I decided to do on my own.”

  “Okay then,” I say.

  Nobody says anything for three or four seconds.

  “I have to get back to work,” I say.

  25

  RESCHEDULED

  Whe
n I go back to school on Monday, everything is different. As soon as I walk in the door I can feel it. Everybody is looking at me. People who never knew I was alive before are staring at me like I’m a freak. I pretend not to notice. I go straight to my locker and drop off my backpack. People slow down as they walk past, staring at the stitches in my ear. I ignore them.

  When I get to calculus, before I sit down at my desk, Mr. Kesselbaum tells me to report to Principal Janssen. Everyone (including Melissa Haverman) watches me walk out of the classroom. The kid who got beat up. The kid with stitches in his ear.

  In the front office I sit on the bench and wait until the secretary calls me into the principal’s office. Inside, Principal Janssen and Ms. Neidermeyer, the school counselor, are waiting for me, wearing two of the phoniest smiles I’ve ever seen.

  “Good morning, Douglas. We’re glad to see you up and around again,” says Principal Janssen. Janssen is big, fat, small featured, and soft voiced. He always wears corduroys, colorful sweaters, and slip-on shoes. His eyes are the color of mud.

  Ms. Neidermeyer is the exact opposite of Principal Janssen: skinny, shrill, wide mouthed, big nosed, sharp chinned, red nailed, and wearing a crisp navy blue outfit.

  “How are you?” she asks. They are the first three words she has ever spoken to me. Why is she acting like we’re old friends?

  “Have a seat,” says Principal Janssen.

  I sit in one of the plastic chairs in front of his desk.

  “I guess you had a pretty rough week,” he says.

  “I got beat up,” I say.

  “Yes, and you had that little run-in with the police.”

  I shrug. “They thought I was somebody else.”

  Nobody speaks for what seems like five minutes, but it was probably only a few seconds.

  Principal Janssen clears his throat. “Yes, well, I know you’ve been having some problems with some of the other students. …”