Invisible (7 page)

Today Melissa is wearing a white sweater made out of some fuzzy material. She looks like she is covered with a shirt made of snow. I try to imagine the snow melting. What do her breasts look like? I happen to know that girls' nipples come in different sizes and colors. I imagine Melissa's being of the small, pink variety. I must be imagining quite hard, because suddenly I notice that Melissa is looking right at me, and so are the five other beauties. She stands up and marches over to my table, which I happen to have all to myself.

For one insane moment I think she is going to sit down with me, but instead her lip curls in a nasty sort of way and she says in a loud voice, “WHAT are YOU staring at?”

Have I mentioned that Melissa's teeth are perfect?

I say something like, “Huh?”

“Quit STARING at me,” she says in a voice even louder than before.

Everybody in the lunchroom is looking at us now. I see Mr. Timmer, the lunchroom monitor, coming toward us.

“I don't LIKE it when people STARE at me.”

“I wasn't—”

“What seems to be the problem here?” Mr. Timmer interrupts.

“Mr. Timmer, Dougie won't stop staring at me. He's staring at my chest.”

“Douglas—”

“I wasn't—”

“He stares at me all the time!”

“Melissa, please return to your table. Douglas, maybe you should finish your lunch facing the other way.”

“But I—”

“Please, Douglas, I do not wish to debate what you were or were not doing with your eyes. Just move around to the other side of the table, and it won't be an issue. Okay?”

“Yes, sir.” I walk around the table and sit with my back to the six beauties. Now I am looking at the football players' table, a collection of oversize goons, and they are all smirking at me. I wish Andy was there. He would stop the smirking. But Andy is in the second lunch period.

I eat quickly, my ears straining to pick words out of the chirping and twittering going on behind me. Are they talking about me? Do they despise me? Do they find me disgusting? I hope so. I hope I spoil their birdlike appetites.

O
ne thing my parents have been quite clear about is that I am not to miss any more sessions with Dr. Ahlstrom. I can understand their position, as they have to pay her for the meetings I miss. Of course they could save a lot of money by not sending me at all, but they just can't seem to comprehend the logic of that.

Dr. Eleanor Ahlstrom is an aging female with a ragged, cigarette voice. I know she smokes, because I can smell it on her. Her office is in the Fairview Medical Center. Our meetings always start out exactly the same way. I walk into her consultation room. She is sitting in her complicated-looking chair with a manila folder
spread across her lap, reading. After about six seconds she closes the folder, looks up, and smiles. Her teeth are blindingly white. I do not think they are real.

“Good afternoon, Douglas.”

“Hi.”

“Would you care to sit down?”

I sit. She looks me over. Looking for what, I do not know.

“And how are you today?” she always asks.

“I'm fine,” I always say.

“And how are things at home?” she asks for the thirtieth time.

“Fine,” I say, again and again.

All of this at $95 per hour, or $1.58 per minute.

“Have you been taking your medication?”

“Yes,” I say. But it's not true. This is why I do not like visiting Dr. Ahlstrom. Every week I have to lie. I
hate
telling lies, even necessary ones.

“I understand your bridge is nearly completed. Remarkable!”

Apparently, she has been in contact with one of my parents.

“It's not so remarkable,” I say.

“Really? A replica of the Golden Gate Bridge? It sounds quite ambitious.”

I shrug. In fact, I think my bridge is beyond remarkable. It should win a prize—except that there are no prizes for model bridges.

“I plan to finish it by November seventeenth. You should come and see it sometime.”

“I'd like that.”

“Me and—” I catch myself just in time.

She leans forward like a cat about to pounce. “You and …?”

“Nothing.” I have made a pact with myself never to mention Andy in this office ever again. Dr. Ahlstrom has a weird aversion to Andy. She thinks that he is the source of all my problems. According to her, Andy's accomplishments undermine my own sense of self-esteem, or something like that. Also, every time I get in trouble, Andy is somehow involved. That might be true, but it is only a coincidence. Actually, Andy and I keep each other out of more trouble than we get each other into. But there is no explaining that to Dr. Ahlstrom.

“You and …?” she says again, costing my parents another 65 cents.

“Me and … my parents are going to … Disney World.” I'm lying again.

“Oh? That sounds like fun.”

“Actually I'm not sure we're going. But I'd like to.” That's only half a lie.

“I see.”

We stare at each other for about $1.40.

“And how are things going at school?”

“Okay. Except my art teacher is mad at me for drawing the same thing all the time.”

“Really? What have you been drawing?”

“I can show you.”

She gets me a piece of paper and a pencil and, at $95 an hour, she watches as I sketch my latest version of the sigil. Believe it or not, I've actually been taking Mrs. Felko's advice and trying to “loosen up” a little. My new
sigil is quite arty, don't you think?

Dr. Ahlstrom examines my effort, frowning in a puzzled sort of way.

“Very interesting, Douglas. Would you like to tell me about it?”

Fat chance. I say, “It's just an interesting shape.”

“What does it represent?”

“Nothing.”
Liar!

“Really? It looks like flames.”

“I don't know what it is. I copied it out of a magazine.” Lie number four.

She takes the paper from me. “May I keep this?”

“Sure.”

She slides the paper into her manila folder.

I wonder what else she has in there.

Y
ou are probably wondering about the pills.

I am supposed to take one pill every night before I go to bed. They are small, greenish blue, and triangle shaped, and if you chew them (which you are not supposed to do), they taste like bitter vanilla. The name of the drug is Proloftin.

A couple of years ago, shortly after the incident at the Tuttle place (which I still do not want to talk about), Dr. Ahlstrom prescribed the Proloftin for my anxiety. I was going through a hard time back then. My parents were keeping me in the house as punishment for the Tuttle thing. They would not let me see Andy at all. Then
Andy's parents took him on a long vacation, and I became extremely bored. In fact, it was boredom that got me started on the bridge. I had nothing else to do, so I started gluing matchsticks together. At first I used the partially burnt wooden matches that my mother used to light candles. My mother is quite fond of candles. But eventually I had to start scraping the heads off of fresh matches.

The pills helped for a while, mostly by making me sleepy. I was sleeping fourteen hours a day. Even when I was awake, I was sleepy. But they helped me cope with being locked up at home and not being able to see Andy. I didn't mind taking them. Eventually the Morrows returned from their vacation, and school started again, and my parents let me go out on my own, and I didn't see any reason to keep popping those little blue-green pills.

So I stopped taking them. The next morning, everything changed. I got As on every test at school, I stayed awake eighteen hours a day, and I got serious about building that bridge. The pills had been holding me back. I remember sitting in my window telling this to Andy.

“It's like the air cleared up,” I told Andy. “School is easier, and my bridge is going great, and now I'm not sleepy all the time.”

“Do your parents know you quit taking them?”

“No.”

“They'll find out.”

“Not if I don't tell them.”

Anyway, I feel bad that my parents have to pay for pills I don't take and for therapy I don't need. But there is no way I am going back into sleepyland. For one
thing, if I were taking the pills, I would never be awake enough for my late night missions to Woodland Trails.

Melissa Haverman's room is completely dark when I arrive at my post. It is 10:17. It is possible she went to bed early, or she could be watching TV, or she might not be home. Some nights she will stay out as late as 11:30. I turn up the collar of my jacket and settle into the crotch of the old oak and begin my wait. I can be very patient.

I wonder what happened to her night-light. She usually has her night-light on, even when she is asleep. Maybe it burned out.

I think about her face in the lunchroom, yelling at me, little droplets of spit flying from her mouth. What would it be like to touch those pink lips?

I wonder what she does every night after she closes her blinds.

I imagine myself crouching on the deck outside her room. How hard would it be to climb up there? Would I be able to see past the blinds?

Suddenly the branches are starkly lit by a bright yellow light from below.

A man's voice shouts,
“All right, you sick pervert, come on down!”

I turn my face away from the light and duck behind a thick branch.

“Climb on down now!”

I climb, keeping the big branches between me and the light. My heart is pounding so hard, I can't breathe.

“There's no place for you to go!”

He's wrong about that. I scramble along a branch quick as a squirrel, away from the light. I hear the crunch of big feet on leaves. There's only one guy. I think it's Melissa's father. He's lost me for the moment—it's a big tree, and it still has most of its leaves.

“I'm not fooling around here!”

The branch I'm on is only about fifteen feet above the ground. He is circling the tree, raking the branches with the beam of light. Any second now the light will find me again.

Now or never. I let go of the branch and drop. I land on my feet and roll, leaves flying, then scramble to my feet and take off running. I hear shouts. Flashes of light hit the trees on either side of me. I run full speed through the greenway, zigzagging through the trees the way Andy weaves his way through a football field full of opponents. I am over the wall and out of Woodland Trails within a minute, but I don't slow down. I keep on running until I get home.

As I climb through the window, gasping for breath, I hear Andy's voice behind me.

“I told you you'd get caught, Dougie.”

I
am in my pajamas in bed with my eyes closed when the doorbell rings.

“I am asleep,” I whisper, lying to myself now. “I've been in bed for an hour.”

I hear my father's slippered feet stomping angrily from his bedroom to the front door, then voices. At first I can't hear what they are saying, then my father's voice cuts through the walls.

“I am
telling
you, he is
asleep in bed
. He does NOT go OUT at NIGHT!”

I hear the mutter of other voices, then my father's again:

“THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS! ARE YOU CALLING ME A LIAR?”

More muttering, then:

“OKAY! OKAY, YOU WANT TO TALK TO HIM, FINE! I'LL GO GET HIM.”

Slippered, stomping footsteps approaching. The door opens.

“DOUGLAS!”

I sit up. “What? What?”

“I want you to come out here.”

“I'm sleeping.”

“No you're not. You are awake. Your eyes are open. Now come out here. Some men wish to speak with you.”

Feigning grogginess, I crawl out of bed and shuffle down the hall after my stomping father.

A large policeman with a mustache is standing in the entryway. I do not like policemen. My heart was pounding hard before; now it's bouncing off my ribs.

“Come along, Douglas,” my father says.

I edge closer. A smaller man, balding and wearing a green sweater, is standing beside the policeman. Melissa's father. They are both looking at me.

“That's him,” says Mr. Haverman.

The policeman holds up his hand, silently asking Mr. Haverman to shut up. He says to me, “Well, son?” He has a nice voice.

“Well what?”

“I understand you were visiting Woodland Trails this evening.”

I shake my head.

“See?” says my father. “He was in BED. I TOLD you.”

A new voice enters the conversation. “What is going on here?” It's my mother, clutching the front of her bathrobe.

“Go back to BED, Andrea!” my father snaps.

She shudders as if his words were stones, then turns and shuffles back to her room.