Invisible Girl (3 page)

At St. Henry’s High, I’ll know how to hide so no one sees the knot of snarls in the back of my hair I can’t get out or the hem falling out of my uniform. I’ll know how to be invisible there.

My eyes spin around the faces of all my uncles. They all have homes. Don’t any of them want me? Couldn’t I stay with my cousins? “Uncle Sean, can’t I stay with you?” I say.

He folds me into his big bear arms. “It’s better you get away from all this for a while, Stephanie. Your dad just needs some time to—”

I push away from him and race upstairs to my bedroom. My brush is sitting on the dresser by my bed where my mother left it, the night before last, when she was a queen and brushed my hair until it crackled. I hurl the brush against the wall. Then I slam shut my door and lock it, standing with my back pressed against it as though I could hold back the truth.

I feel my knees grow weak and sink slowly to the floor.

CHAPTER THREE

The plane is freezing and I’m wearing only shorts and a T-shirt because it was eighty and boiling in Boston when I left. I’m right in the middle of two repulsive people. On my right is a woman who has on a too-tight, shiny shirt that squeezes her stomach into loaves of fat, who keeps making little burping sounds, like she’s building up for a major puke. The man on my left is skinny with glasses and major B.O.

I am one hundred percent grossed out. I look back down at
The Mystery of the Brass Bound Trunk
where Nancy is off to South America, and try to focus on the words.
“Like as not, Nancy will come back with her new trunk full of mysteries!” laughed Mrs. Gruen to the girl’s father.

I’ve broken my rule about reading a Nancy Drew in public. I need it to calm my nerves. Plus, I don’t care if the two rejects sitting next to me see me reading this. Between the burps and the B.O. they probably are creating too much fog to make out the title anyway.

I go back to my reading. Nancy’s father just had a beautiful new trunk with Nancy’s initials engraved on it show up at the Drew home in anticipation of her travel needs. My suitcase is metal and banged up. It was in our basement under an old sleeping bag that smelled like mildew.

I take out my Warrior Word notebook. I’ve been making this notebook since I was eleven. During lunch I go into the school library and read so I don’t have to be just standing around the groups of other girls in the cafeteria like a dork with no one to talk to.

When I was younger, I had two girlfriends, Karen Fratenelli and Maggie Hogan. But then their moms found my mom drunk when they came to pick them up on Saturday morning after they slept over. Their parents wouldn’t let them come over after that.

Worst of all, everyone at school found out. People started acting weird to me, saying, “Want to play hop
scotch
” or, “Stephanie, you look beery nice.” Karen told me her father said, “No can do” when she asked if she could come over for even an hour after school. I don’t believe she ever really even asked him. She and Maggie had already started whispering when I walked up, and then when I asked what they were talking about, they’d said, “LSPJ” (long-story-private-joke).

After that I stopped calling them. I made them into Top Enemies of Nancy Drew. I put pins in their school pictures. I tried not to think about the nights I’d spent at their houses where we brought back Martha Washington in séances, demanding that she give us a sign and screaming into each other when the candle flame flickered.

After Karen and Maggie became enemies, I just read book after book in the library at lunch and after school. Adult books by important dead people, not Nancy Drews.

When I didn’t know a word, I’d put a small dot in pencil in the margin of the book and tuck a scrap of paper in between the pages so I could look it up later. On Fridays, after school, I went in and wrote down all the words in my notebook and erased the dots in the novels. On Saturdays and Sundays, I wrote down the exact pronunciation and definition. I began thinking of these as my Warrior Words.

I’ve never spoken any of my Warrior Words out loud to anyone. Instead, I tend to them like baby birds, sitting on them and keeping them warm until it’s time for them to hatch. Once in a while, if I’m completely alone, I’ll whisper them into my hand, just to make sure they’re not too frightened to actually come out of my mouth.

I stare out the plane window now, seeing my parade of words in the cottony clouds.
Clandestine
, in elongated cursive, sneaks forward followed by a hissing
surreptitious
written in wavering print.
Befuddled,
in faded block letters, stumbles across, and I feel sorry for the old professor shuffling after it, who’s trying to put it back onto his shoulders.

Calmness seeps into my veins. I’m invisible when I’m watching my words. I lean back against the seat and watch
zephyr
flutter by with wispy silver letters. I’m shocked and lit with panic when the plane finally lands.

Michael Sullivan’s wife, Sarah, holds up a sign that says WELCOME, STEPHANIE in giant red letters. I want to walk right by her and make my living on the streets solving cases for poor people who can’t pay with money. I’d trade my skills for a hand-knit sweater or a baked ham.

Sarah looks like a mom in a TV commercial with her short brown hair, big white teeth and a honey-how-about-some-fresh-brownies smile.

I hate everything about her.

We get into her car.

“So, Stephanie,” she says. “I think you should just call me Aunt Sarah.”

I want to turn to her coldly and say, “Why?” Or else come up with some other rude yet funny smart-ass remark like a freckle-faced American Artful Dodger. Not that I have freckles. Or, that I’m funny.

My Catholic school training kicks in and I say, “Thanks.” I see her through my mother’s contemptuous eyes. Her lack of makeup, her checkered, sexless skirt. Her daughter better not try to be friends with me. I’ll grow my nails long, paint them red and scratch her eyes out. That will wipe the smile off of Aunt Sarah’s face.

She takes a left turn and we are on some freeway with a million cars. “Have you ever been to Los Angeles before?” she asks in her friendly commercial mom voice.

I shake my head and then realize she can’t see me since she’s watching the cars. “No, I usually spend my summers abroad” pops out of my mouth.

I couldn’t help it. I watch her to see what she’ll say. Maybe she’ll find me snippy and send me back without having to scratch the eyes out of her precious daughter.

She doesn’t have time to say anything, though, because a black Mercedes cuts her off and she yells, “Jackass” in a voice that’s not a mom’s on a commercial at all.

I sneak another look at her. Her hands are tight on the wheel and her teeth are clenched on the right side. Maybe she’s really some kind of maniac?
The Mystery of the Psychotic Driver.
I subtly check my seat belt and then sneak a hand out to grab on to the door. She cuts off the guy who cut her off, then ignores his furious honking and flipping her the bird and says, “You’re going to love L.A.”

CHAPTER FOUR

We are in Encino. The Sullivans live in a mansion and I know the style is Spanish from one of my mother’s books on rich people’s houses.

This house looks like it’s right out of a Nancy Drew mystery. There are balconies with vines and two towers with little arched windows where a kidnapped princess could tap “help me” in Morse code with her feet against the wall.

Aunt Sarah pulls into a five-car garage and says, “Follow me” in a too-happy voice.

She leads me through a giant kitchen onto a patio with a ceiling of wooden slats covered in twisting leaves. Her backyard is the size of our school football field. There are no neighbors behind it, only mountains stretching far away in jags of pine trees. I feel like I’ve been plunked into paradise.

A pool sparkles below jutting boulders. A waterfall spills from the mouth of a little cave. Flowers and plants I’ve never seen before are draped in brilliant colors all over rocks, walls and hedges.

Aunt Sarah slides into a dark green chair and motions for me to sit across from her. “Whew,” she says. “This heat.”

Whew what? Aunt Sarah is a wimp. Obviously she’s never been to Boston in the summer. There’s no humidity here. All I feel is a perfect breeze and a warm sun diluted by the lattice of vines overhead.

A woman with dark hair and eyes and wearing blue jeans comes out. I figure she’s like a neighbor on a TV show who’s friendly enough to come in without knocking when she says in a Spanish accent, “Mrs. Sarah, what I get you?”

“Just some lemonade and fruit for now, Carmen,” Aunt Sarah says, and I narrow my eyes, thinking that maybe this woman who supposedly “works” for her was actually abducted from her happy home in a village in northern Colombia and is too afraid of the drug lords to run away.

I feel a swell of confidence in my deductive powers and picture a book cover featuring me in front of Aunt Sarah’s house with a lantern in my hand, under the words
The Encino Slave Mystery.

Carmen comes back in two seconds with a pitcher. Aunt Sarah says apologetically, “I don’t know where to start, Stephanie. First, I’m sorry no one is home. Annie is at her tennis lesson, the boys are probably swimming, and Megan is still at a sleepover.”

Whoa! I’m on overload. Annie, Megan, the
boys
? Dear God, let there not be brothers here. I look out at the pool shimmering in the yard. “Swimming?” I ask stupidly.

“Kills you, doesn’t it?” She nods. “They barely touch it all summer. Apparently everyone swims at the tennis club down the street.”

The way she says “everyone” makes me even more nervous. My plan was to find a library and hide when I wasn’t in school. I hope they don’t think I’m going to go swimming. I don’t know how to swim. I don’t even have a bathing suit.

I had pictured being housed in a garret and forced to eat disgusting food and wear rags. I figured I would suffer and later write about my experiences, but socializing and all of its horrible implications wasn’t even considered.

I find my voice. “I thought you guys had only one child. One girl.”

Her light green eyes open wide. “One? Oh my gracious. Michael Junior’s the oldest; he’s twenty and home for the summer from Stanford. Then there’s Patrick and Danny, the twins, fraternal, not identical, they’re nineteen and home from Berkeley. Then Annie, she was fourteen in March, she’s—a couple years older than you?”

My cheeks burn. “I was fourteen last February.”

She laughs totally unaware of my humiliation and makes it worse. “You’re such a little thing I just thought—”

She’s distracted by a loud noise in the kitchen like a chair turning over. I hear low voices and loud laughter and what sounds like shoving. Dread stuns me. Older boys.

I want a quick earthquake to crash the house so I’m spared meeting them. I never talk to older boys. I even keep my distance from those who are my cousins, staying out of their way as they go by in a herd of sweatshirts, footballs, big feet and grunts.

“Boys,” Aunt Sarah calls out gaily. “Come out here, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

More noise. It sounds like fighting. Three blond heads of hair flashing over tanned faces and torsos come spilling out of the sliding patio doors. I’m mortified to be sitting here with a piece of fruit in my mouth as if I just sit and eat fruit all day long.

“This is Stephanie. She’s going to be staying with us for a while.”

“Hey,” one of them calls out and they start to troop back into the house.

I feel a spark of relief at their departure, which Aunt Sarah ruins by snapping, “Gentlemen.”

They stop.

“Now, how about some introductions,” she says.

I’m double-dying now as they all walk right up to me. The tallest one sticks out his hand and says, “Enchanted to meet you. I’m Michael.”

I hate Aunt Sarah for doing this to me. I look at his face and he’s really, really cute with green eyes and wavy hair. I don’t know if he’s kidding with the “enchanted” or if he’s saying that because he’s rich and that’s how rich people talk. I’m so embarrassed I’m almost choking. I put my hand in his and focus on doing a solid shake. “Stephanie O’Hagen,” I say solemnly.

He gives me a slightly surprised look, and then one of his brothers knocks him across the back of the head and says to me, “I’m the smart twin, Daniel. The dunce next to me is Patrick.”

I realize that Daniel is almost as cute as Michael but with a skinnier nose and a slightly longer chin. Patrick looks like both of his brothers but is somehow not really cute at all, so I’m the least afraid of him. I figure he stares in the mirror while he’s shaving with a sad face, thinking he got the short end of the genetic stick.

“All right, you can go back to being savages,” Aunt Sarah says.

They fall back into the kitchen, leaving me breathless. Then, a little girl of about seven comes out onto the patio and cries, “Mommy!” as she falls into Aunt Sarah’s arms.