Henry! Come up to dinner! Lights out on your way.” Mom was always going on about the electric bill.
“Two minutes, Mom.” I crossed out what I had just written and tried again.
I watched you wipe a tear away And smile, when
“Wipe” was wrong. And “watched” and “when.” I changed them all, then hurriedly scrawled the rest of the lines that had formed in my head on the school bus and during a snack break in the middle of my math homework. I didn’t want to forget them.
What I wanted to say was, “I’m a football player, not a popsicle.” What I said was, “This is what you want us to wear to the Homecoming dance?”
School had been out for half an hour, when Haylee pulled me into a short, dead-end hallway to talk about formal wear. I stared at her phone in my hand. The disaster she was planning filled the screen.
“This is what I’m wearing,” she said, “and because you’re my boyfriend and we’re probably going to be Homecoming King and Queen, we should coordinate.”
The models on the website had coordinated. His tux was as pink as her dress.
“It’s not just the color,” Haylee explained. “It’s the style and the fabrics too. My gown and your tux were made to go together. Wait till you see everything in person.”
I returned her phone, shaking my head.
“Is there a problem, Ty?” she asked semi-sweetly. The color rising in her cheeks contrasted starkly with her blonde, very very blonde hair.
“Yeah, there’s a problem. I’m not wearing a pink tux. Especially not for $228.”
Her big, sad, brown eyes didn’t affect me like they usually did. I may have been in shock from all the pink. Besides, lately Haylee was just too … Haylee. Maybe that was the real problem.
I can be invisible.
No, really. I have proof. We’ll get to that.
I can see myself in the mirror, and other people can see me if they want. You probably could if you wanted to. So I don’t think my invisibility is supernatural. It’s more like out of mind, out of sight.
It hasn’t always been this way, and I don’t just mean that people ignore me at school, though they mostly do. In the halls that’s a good thing. Even as a seventh grader, I’m too tall for ninth graders to stuff me into a locker, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t try.
Mostly it’s my sister, Joanie, and her best friend, Charlotte. They’re both three years older than me, so they’re sophomores. They go to high school.
Joanie’s friends get to call her Jo. As for Charlotte, everyone calls her Shar – except me, because I like her real name.
I’m Stefan, but Stef is fine too. I’m an artist.
