Invisible

 

 

“And if you show up tomorrow in one of these outfits, your social standing is going to skyrocket,” Corey enthused. “Just don't forget about us when you're hobnobbing with the Notables.”

I snorted. “
Hobnobbing?
Yeah, right. Chelsea Halloway and I are going to become lunch buddies. Get real.”

“Well, my work here is done.” He flapped a hand in the direction of the mirror. “Go admire yourself some more.”

It was strange feeling like I was at the part in a movie when the camera zooms in to capture the expression that says it all: a mixture of doe-eyed innocence, confusion, amazement, and nerves on the plucky heroine's face. That's kind of how I looked—a little panicky, but pretty nonetheless. And “pretty” is not a word that ever gets applied to me. Unless I put a lot of work into it and hit “cute,” I usually land squarely in the “all right” category.

But the girl staring back at me in the mirror looked more like the leading lady instead of the trusty sidekick.

One thing was obvious: I wasn't going to be Invisible anymore.

More by Marni Bates

 

 

 

 

 

 

Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

No author is an island. At the very least, we're ships that bounce around a heavily populated archipelago that includes best friends and bloggers, reviewers and readers, and friendly neighborhood baristas who keep the coffee coming.

I love you all so freaking much.

I'm especially grateful to have superagent Laurie McLean captaining my ship. She has nobly prevented me from going overboard on multiple occasions. You're the best, Laurie!

A big thank-you to my KTeen editors extraordinaire: Megan Records and Alicia Condon. Without these ladies . . . well, I'd be tied to the mast by people who appreciate it when a story actually, y'know,
ends
.

Karen Bates, Abigail Dock, and Marina Adair have all saved my ship on multiple occasions. They've helped me bail out water when I was sinking faster than the
Titanic
's twenty-five-mile-per-hour descent to the ocean floor.

Lastly, I'd like to thank my big sister, Shayna. I know it's not always easy to have an author in the family, especially when everyone assumes she's recounting more fact than fiction. So for the record, I'd like to state that this particular ship quite likes having an anchor in her life. I'd be lost without you.

N
obody notices the best friend of an overnight Internet sensation.

Which in a lot of ways is a
really
good thing. Thousands of people around the world don't rate the hotness of
my
every outfit. No magazines pass judgment about what Smith High School nobody Jane Smith wears on a daily basis. At most, I get a handful of puns tossed my way because of the unfortunate coincidence that leaves me sharing a last name with my school. Best of all, I don't have to deal with unfounded rumors that I'm cheating on my hockey-captain boyfriend.

Not that I have a boyfriend.

But that's why I was perfectly happy leaving the title of America's Most Awkward Girl to Mackenzie Wellesley, aka my best friend since elementary school.

And I was thrilled that my other best friend, Corey O'Neal, was now dating the lead singer from the rock band ReadySet. Sure, I had my doubts about how long his secret long-distance relationship with Timothy Goff would last . . . but I was still excited for Corey.

Psyched for them both.

Really.

But even though I was happy for them, that didn't mean it wasn't a huge adjustment for me—one that came with absolutely no warning. After all,
nobody
at Smith High School could have anticipated my two geeky best friends going from Invisible to
famous
in under a week. They had somehow managed to even out-Notable the Notables—the effortlessly popular kids that every school has but which every guidance counselor assures incoming students don't really exist. You know the type: girls with short skirts and big, erm,
pompoms,
and athletic guys who drool over the aforementioned girls' skirts.

Kenzie's overnight-sensation status skyrocketed her well beyond their level of popularity, making her a regular geek superhero: going where no Invisible had gone before.

Which was great for her. But for me?

Not so much.

The whole time Kenzie and Corey were going to parties and traveling with rock stars and appearing on
The Ellen DeGeneres Show—
I was doing my homework. It's not that my two best friends ditched me . . . though it was hard not to see it that way—it's just that they were busier now. That's why they had less time for me. Correction: why they had
no
time for me. Because their new relationships required both care and attention.

Which left me . . . alone.

That's when my Invisibility started to annoy me. Back when we were a band of geeks, everything was fine. I didn't care if nobody at Smith High School could pick me out of a lineup, because my best friends were in the exact same position. That's what made it fun. We could revel in our geekdom, secure in the knowledge that no matter what high school threw at us, our friendship would remain intact.

Until Mackenzie became famous for attempting some seriously unnecessary CPR on a football player who just wanted the crazy girl to stop trying to jump-start his heart. And I was left as the last nerd standing.

That's why I decided to try getting a little attention for a change.

Only . . . well, I never expected it to happen the way that it did.

To be fair: Nobody warned me about how easy it is to get in over your head when your best friends have backstage passes and unrestricted access to all things Hollywood. Probably because . . . well, almost nobody has that problem. And I really should have figured it out myself.
Of course,
when you piss off (even accidentally) the rich, powerful, and famous, they'll come at you with everything in their arsenal.

I just didn't consider that part of the equation until it was too late.

Not until I experienced firsthand just how easy it was to go from a newspaper byline to a headline . . . and how fully one story could blast my well-ordered, well-regulated, well-planned life to hell.

“A
re you sure you're ready for this, Jane?”

“Um . . . yes?”

“But you don't confront people. Ever. So maybe telling Mr. Elliot your idea for changing the school paper isn't such a good plan.”

I sat up straighter against the vinyl seat coverings of the school bus. “Gee, thanks for that vote of confidence, Isobel. I feel so much better.”

My friend Isobel, who had been nervously pushing her glasses higher up on her nose, paused mid-gesture.

“I'm sorry, Jane. I didn't mean—”

Great, not only was I almost trembling with nerves, but I had managed to upset my only friend who
hadn't
recently become famous. I wished Kenzie were still riding the bus with me. She would have instantly recognized my sarcasm as poorly disguised panic talking. But ever since she'd started dating the captain of Smith High School's hockey team, Logan Beckett, he picked her up in his car. I tried not to take this change personally, but I still missed her. Don't get me wrong: Isobel's great. It's just that we didn't have a shared history. No inside jokes. No meaningful glances that communicate everything we're thinking.

And that meant I had to apologize.

“No, I'm sorry. I don't mean to sound snippy. It's just . . . nerves,” I explained. “This
really
matters to me so . . . please tell me this isn't a huge mistake.”

Isobel looked at me owlishly, her natural expression behind thick horn-rimmed glasses that she probably thought helped her blend with the hipster crowd. They didn't. “It
might
not be a disaster,” she hedged.

“So you think I can get Mr. Elliot to add a fiction page to the school newspaper?”

She paused thoughtfully, and I knew that she would thoroughly analyze the situation before shelling out advice. That's why she was the first person I told about my plan to be more involved with
The Smithsonian
. Plus, I trusted her to be painfully honest with me—even if I didn't want to hear it. Isobel couldn't lie convincingly unless her life depended on it . . . and maybe not even then.

She sighed and looked up at me, concern evident in her eyes. “We're talking about
Mr. Elliot,
here! He chews out people all the time. Didn't you tell me he made a girl cry last week? How are
you
going to persuade him to do anything? Bad idea. Really bad.”

She was absolutely right. Unfortunately, it was also my only plan. Well, my only feasible one, unless time travel became possible. In which case, I would just rewind about a month and prevent Kenzie from ever becoming an overnight YouTube sensation.

That would have solved everything.

I let my head fall forward and land with a low
whump
against the vinyl-covered bus seat in front of me.

“Sorry, Jane. You know I love you, but . . . you're the biggest pushover Smith High School has ever seen.”

“Hey!”

“Well, it's true. Take that group project for your English class you were complaining about last week. You practically wrote and researched all of Shake's section as well as your own.”

I stared at her—not because she had botched one of the nicknames for the Notable Evil Trio: Chelsea, Fake, and Bake—but because I'd never heard Isobel call me a pushover before. I didn't think she was in the best position to criticize me, given the way she quivers in terror whenever a Notable comes within fifteen feet of her, but apparently that didn't stop her.

“Fake. Not Shake,” I corrected, mentally conceding that Isobel's nickname worked too. The girl definitely puts some shimmy into her, ahem,
assets
whenever she's around a Notable guy. But since everything about Steffani Larson, from the tips of her plastic fingernails to the roots of her blond hair, is capital-letter FAKE, I wanted her original nickname to stick. I had no doubt, given the frequency with which Ashley visited tanning salons, that “Bake” would describe her perfectly for years to come. Especially because nothing rhymes with “orange.”

Not that I would ever use either nickname around anyone but my closest friends.

“And what was I supposed to do?” I continued defensively. “If I hadn't researched her part, the grade for our whole presentation would've tanked.”

“Maybe if she hadn't expected you to pick up the slack, she would've done it herself.”

I rolled my eyes. Fake would do her part of an assignment on the same day zombies descended upon our high school and ate everyone's brains. Even then, she'd probably find a way to flirt a zombie into eating the geeks first. But at that particular moment what I needed wasn't an in-depth analysis of Fake; I needed a partner in crime. But I no longer knew who to ask for good advice. Logan, Kenzie, and Corey would all tell me that there was no reason for me to worry about being entirely alone. That I was making a big deal out of nothing. Then again, it's easy for the hockey player, the Internet sensation, and the boyfriend of a rock star to shrug and say
No big deal
. I was the only one most commonly referred to as
Mackenzie's little friend.

I'd had enough of that to last a lifetime.

Especially since I'd only just started to emerge from under my sister's shadow. Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, because it's not like I'd done anything to separate myself from former Notable queen Elle Smith's legacy—except avoid everything that she listed on her college application sheets. And since my sister was involved in
everything,
my options for social expansion were pretty limited. Not unless I wanted to go back to being known as
Elle Smith's dorky kid sister
, and that held absolutely no appeal for me.

None at all.

So I couldn't go anywhere near the dance squad. Or the cheerleaders. Or the drama club. Or the yearbook committee. And I was going to stay far, far away from the Miss Portland Pageant. Which left me with only a handful of viable options if my newspaper plan didn't work out: Speech and Debate (which would require public speaking . . . yeah, not in this lifetime) or the chess club (which would probably only further cement my geeky reputation).

If I wasn't careful, I could easily slip into some kind of nerd vortex and disappear right in plain sight.

And then I really would be Invisible.

So I kept sorting through potential plans. Maybe I should wait for the next issue to be released before I asked about including a fiction page. Maybe I should discuss it with Mr. Elliot outside of class. Maybe I should follow the chain of command and ask our editor-in-charge-of-everything, Lisa Anne. Maybe . . . I couldn't decide on anything.

Even making eye contact with Mr. Elliot seemed risky.

“So what do you suggest, Isobel? That I just keep correcting grammar on the paper forever?”

Isobel pushed up her glasses again. She could have gotten them fixed so that they wouldn't slide down her nose, but I doubt the idea had ever occurred to her.

“I think you
should
discuss it with him. I just don't think you will.” The bus lurched to a stop at Smith High School, but that didn't slow Isobel down. “Are you honestly going to assert yourself this time?”

Well, when she put it
that
way. “I . . . hope so.”

“Good luck, then. Put your game face on. Show no mercy. All that good stuff.”

I stared at her and then burst out laughing. “You sound completely insane.”

Isobel smiled. “I don't do pep talks. So . . . just, go get 'em or something.”

“Will do, chief.”

Isobel swung her backpack, bulging to the point of explosion, across her shoulders. Then she tugged at her mousy brown hair until long strands dislodged from her ponytail and swung down to frame her round face.

“Don't wimp out then.”

For someone who hated pep talks, Isobel wasn't doing half bad. She also had a point. As much as I didn't want to admit it, I've got a tendency to postpone important conversations. But nothing would ever change if I continued silently adding semicolons to other people's newspaper stories instead of writing my own.

My days of being a pushover were over.

Except when I entered the journalism classroom to find Mr. Elliot already mid-rant . . . I kept my mouth firmly shut.

The yelling wasn't exactly an infrequent occurrence, since even on his best days Mr. Elliot was unpredictable. He believed that his yelling would prove to us that he cared. And according to that rationale, he successfully demonstrated that he cared. A lot.

It's always best to let him get the ranting out of his system before doing anything controversial—you know, like
breathing
too loudly.

Although I sincerely doubted that any of his long-winded speeches about “stepping up our game” had ever made a difference. Our class was split between the kids who were using their work on the school paper to impress colleges and the ones who thought it would be easy to ditch and go smoke behind the gym. The handful of us who actually cared about the quality of
The Smithsonian
fell under the jurisdiction of Lisa Anne Montgomery: senior editor of the school paper, future Yale or Harvard graduate, and all-around Most Likely to Succeed shoe-in. I had no trouble imagining her golden future, which would probably include hosting an Emmy-winning political talk show.

She'd be a media darling. I predicted that within the next ten years, Smith High School would start begging for Lisa Anne to give the convocation speech at graduation . . . which she'd probably have to decline in order to interview wounded soldiers or angry jihadists or something.

Not that I'm jealous of her.

Much.

“Smith!” My head jerked up from my notebook, where I had been doodling little gravestones with my name on them. I'm not overly superstitious, but that didn't seem like a good omen. Although as far as evil portents go, being singled out in the middle of a Mr. Elliot tirade was significantly more damning than a series of morbid scribbles.

I just hoped that nobody noticed the way my hand instantly started trembling.

“Um . . . yes?”

Mr. Elliot waved his arms in a brilliant imitation of a windmill. “For the past year, Smith has done a great job with the copyediting and . . . other things like, erm, layout. That side of journalism is important too! More of you should get involved.
It's time to step up your game!
”

It's possible I would've felt honored if he hadn't been completely off base. And if he had taken the time to address me by my first name, which I wasn't entirely sure he knew. I really hated the way he called everyone (except Lisa Anne) solely by their last names, as if we were soldiers in the military waiting for our marching orders.

It always made me hyperaware of the fact that I'm the geekier of the two Smith girls.

So I took a deep breath and said, “Uh, actually, Mr. Elliot—” before I lost the ability to speak. Formulating a complete sentence seemed impossible with all eyes in my journalism class staring at me.

“What, Smith?” he snapped impatiently. I definitely should have kept my mouth shut.

Too late now.

“It's just . . . this is my
third
year copyediting. And I was wondering if maybe I could . . . well, do something else?”

A frown furrowed his brow, and my stomach clenched. He was going to say no. He was going to insist that my copyediting was a vital part of the paper. I would graduate from Smith High School next year having contributed nothing more to
The Smithsonian
than a handful of punctuation marks.

And I'd continue being universally ignored while my two best friends flitted off to Hollywood without me.

“Listen up, everyone,” Mr. Elliot barked, panning the room. “This is what I'm talking about! Smith is
finally
stepping up to the plate, and we're going to run with it.” He skewered me with one of his intense looks. “You've got the front page, Smith. Talk to Lisa Anne.”

My mouth fell open in shock, but before I could say,
I don't
want
the front page! I want to write fiction,
he held up a hand to stop me.

“Make it work, Smith. Now where was I? Right, we really need to improve our advertising. . . .”

He went off on an entirely different tirade, leaving me reeling in his wake.

The front page? I had never wanted the front page. If my fiction plan didn't work out, I had been hoping he might promote me to the cafeteria beat. Maybe let me write an article about the chocolate chip muffins—something small so that I could get my bearings on the actual writing side of things. I never meant for Mr. Elliot to send me from copy editor to front-page reporter overnight. It sounded like a Cinderella, rags-to-riches type deal, only this particular pauper didn't know how to dance at a grand ball.

And she wanted time to learn the steps so that she wouldn't trip over her stilettos and land flat on her face.

I had no ideas. I had no plans. I had no experience.

What I did have was an impulsive order given by an unstable teacher—and an irate Lisa Anne, who marched over as soon as Mr. Elliot finished ranting.

“What the hell is this?” she demanded. “Amateur hour! Okay, let me put this simply, Grammar Girl: Mr. Elliot might be the teacher, but you answer to me. Now, if you don't deliver the steamiest, sexiest, most groundbreaking cover story I've ever seen, I will personally ensure that proofreading will be the closest you ever get to journalism. Are we clear?”