The Invisible Day (6 page)

Jody’s address was 26 West Eighty-fourth Street. We figured out that it must be close to the Museum of Natural History because the subway stop there is Eighty-first Street. And we knew from our City Study class in the third grade that the numbers uptown start at Central Park and go west and east from there. So number 26 must be within a block or two of the park.

We headed for the C train. We’ve both been to the museum enough times to know that much.

At the entrance to the subway, my stomach clenched. My legs felt as if they hadn’t worked in a long time. I was so glad to have Hubert
with me. And even though he didn’t say anything, he held my hand a little tighter, so I knew he was nervous, too, about going into the subway without grown-ups for the first time.

We started down the stairs. The smell of pee and the smell of the chemical they use to wash away the pee were fighting for first place.

There was a homeless man sitting on a crushed cardboard box on the bottom step, his neck and face wrapped in a rainbow-colored scarf. A coffee can stood by his feet with a few pennies in it.

Hubert let go of me and fumbled for his bus pass as he went a few steps ahead. I pulled two nickels out of my jeans pocket and tossed them into the man’s can. They landed with a tinny chime. The man grunted in alarm and looked around him wildly, clutching at his shabby jacket. Maybe I shouldn’t have scared him, but it was kind of funny, too.

Hubert showed his pass to the token clerk
with a practiced wave. His dad usually brings him to school on the subway. With my knees scraping the grimy concrete, I ducked under the turnstile, just as the train was pulling into the station.

Hubert got a seat right away, next to the doors. I didn’t want to sit, in case someone sat on top of me, so I stood up and held on to the pole.

I liked that subway ride. Because no one could see me, I felt completely safe. It was like a science fiction movie, and I was the alien. Hubert was trying to act cool, but he was sweating with fear. He thought someone would notice that a ten-year-old should not be riding around in the middle of the day. But no one even glanced at him. The other riders were either reading the
Post
or gazing off into space. Grown-ups pretend that someone’s briefcase or bottom pressing into them is a totally normal thing. Lucky for me, I could really stare for a change.

At the Forty-second Street stop, a lot more people crowded on. I had to wiggle a bit to avoid getting squished, but I had a close-up view of several chest pockets and bosoms and hair beads and chins. Inspected closely, chins do not have much to recommend them.

What if I suddenly popped back right now? I thought. All these people would be astounded. Oh, please let that not happen!

Getting off the train at Eighty-first Street was more of a problem than I had planned for. I was stuck in the middle of the car, and I couldn’t just say “Getting off, please,” like a regular person.

Hubert held the door, which kept trying to close. I had to push a bit, and I accidentally stepped on one man’s shoe. He glared at Hubert and said, “Oh, excuuuuse me,” in a really mean way.

I poked Hubert to let him know I was there. I shoved through just as the door was closing.
I feel so sorry for people who have to do that every day. It was making me sweat, just doing it once.

G
etting back to the street and the sunshine made us both feel better. We stood facing Central Park, with the Museum of Natural History looming up on our right. That meant that we had to walk away from the museum to get to Eighty-fourth Street. It only took us a few minutes to figure it all out. That’s one good thing about a city with numbers for streets; you only have to know how to count.

The park was waiting for spring. The trees were full of teeny green spots, about to burst open. The grass was looking like grass instead
of muddy hay. The sun seemed brighter here than it had downtown, maybe because it had all that nature to reflect on. I felt slightly giddy and happy.

A horse-drawn carriage paused at the corner. One of those fancy things for tourists, with plastic roses looped across the canopy.

An idea flashed into my head. It felt like my last chance.

“Hubert,” I ordered, “stand right here. Do not move an inch. I’ll be right back.”

One second later I was hauling myself up the side of the coach. I slipped into the seat behind the driver. Across from me were a man and a woman wearing matching fedoras.

The driver clicked his tongue, and away we went. We clopped down the road with taxis and cars zooming past. The spring air breezed around us. As we rode along beside the park, I felt like a royal person surveying my lands.

“Oh, Pete,” the lady sighed, and put her head on the man’s shoulder, making her silly hat go crooked.

Silently, I begged them not to start smooching right in front of me.

I turned around and knelt on the seat so I could see the horse. He was old and white with barnacles on his knees and a red ribbon braided into his tail. At the stoplight, I hopped down, wishing I had time to go around the whole park. I raced back to Hubert, who was standing like a statue on the corner.

“Okay,” I said, a bit out of breath. “Here I am.”

“Where did you go?” he whined. “You left me alone!”

I hesitated. I knew he would disapprove.

“Oh, my God, Billie, you didn’t pee in the street, did you?”

I started to laugh and couldn’t stop. I had to stuff my fist into my mouth so I wouldn’t make noise. Finally, I pulled myself together.

“Let’s go. We’ve got important business.”

Number 26 West Eighty-fourth Street was a three-story house. A New York browns tone, except that the bricks were painted pale gray and the shutters were black. There were red window boxes under every window with pointy green shoots sticking up.

Hubert said point-blank that he was not going in.

“I got you this far safely. I’ll wait outside. If there’s a lunatic in there, I might have to go for help. And don’t bother to butter me up. I’m staying here.”

He parked himself across the street, leaning against a hydrant.

I climbed the steps and lifted the wooden knocker, which was shaped like a coiled snake. It sounded like a drum when it struck.

I heard a bird singing. I heard a siren far away. No one came to the door. I realized the knocker was just for show. I pushed a button I hadn’t seen before.

Suddenly there was a fanfare of yips and barks on the other side of the door. A blare of static came from the intercom, and then a crackly voice.

“Hello?”

“Hello?” I said. “This is Billie Stoner. I have your bag.”

“Come in and come up the stairs. Come all
the way up to the top.” The handle clicked and the door swung open.

I looked across the street at Hubert. I waved, but of course he couldn’t see me.

A floppy white dog with black freckles on its rump and a lopsided eye patch jumped up on me and started to lick. It felt good that someone knew exactly where I was.

A
fter the sparkle of the day outside on the stoop, it was dim in the hall, like switching the light off. But the dog wasn’t waiting for my eyes to get adjusted. It slid across the polished floor with its nails clattering, heading for the wooden staircase.

I followed my leader and started to climb, rubbing my fingers along the fancy carved
railing. There were wooden pineapples on the end posts. The second-floor landing had wallpaper with flowers the size of basketballs. All the doors were closed so I couldn’t sneak a peek.

“Keep coming!” a voice called from above. The dog was way ahead of me. I started up the second flight. The stairs were creaking like crazy, announcing my every step. I felt like a ghost in a haunted house.

On the third floor, the bathroom door was slightly open, but all I could see was an old-fashioned marble sink with shining faucets and rows of gray tile like old teeth.

“You’re almost here.” The voice encouraged me upward.

My legs were aching. In our building, we have an elevator. Imagine if Jane had to climb all these stairs!

But when I got to the top, the climb was definitely worth it. The stairway opened straight into one big room. It wasn’t a musty, creepy
attic because sunlight burst through skylights in the ceiling, making a bright and wonderful greenhouse. At least, it was partly a greenhouse, with ivy and herbs and flowers growing in pots along all the windowsills.

It was partly a laboratory, too, with rubber hoses and test tubes and a Bunsen burner. Liquids of different colors sat in glass beakers on a table under the skylight, casting rainbows on the walls. The sloped ceiling came down almost to my shoulders. The only place a person could stand up straight was in the middle of the room.

The floor was a maze of electric train tracks going between and under all the furniture. Where there weren’t tracks or chairs or table legs, there were piles and piles and piles of books, like a miniature city of wacky skyscrapers.

It was the most beautiful room I ever saw.

But I didn’t take it all in at first, because first there was Jody. She was standing at the
top of the stairs, leaning on a crutch and grinning down at me, just as if she could see me.

“Hey!” she said, when I reached the next-to-last stair. “Stop right there!” Her mouth was so full of braces that she looked like she’d eaten one of her railway tracks. Her left foot was in a walking cast.

“Can I have my bag?”

I put down my backpack and groped inside. The bag was invisible when I tried to hand it to her, so I put it down on the top step. She leaned over to scoop it up.

“Okay,” she said. “Stay there. Don’t move. I’m going to sit down. You come up and sit down anywhere, and I’m going to guess where you are. I’ll give you a tip. The outer edges of the stairs don’t creak.”

She hobbled away and sat in a rolling office chair across the room, propping her crutch against the slanted wall. The dog flopped down across her feet. I guessed that Jody was about fifteen, but she wasn’t much taller than I am.
She had eyes the color of black coffee, and her hair was so silky and thin that her ears stuck right out from under. She was wearing a wild shirt with shiny polka dots on it and maybe her father’s corduroy pants, scrunched together at the waist with a purple tie. It was so weird, it was cool.

I crept up the sides of the stairs and crouched near the table where her chemistry stuff was set up.

“Watch out behind you!” she shouted, just as my backside hit a stack of books and sent them sprawling across the floor.

“How did you know which way was behind me?”

She laughed, making a sound like a broken blender.

“I cheated,” she said. “First, I watched Pepper sniffing to see where you were. And whichever way you turned, you were going to knock something over. It’s a simple magician’s
trick: Distract the audience and pretend to know more than you do.”

That last line made me feel uneasy.

“I never met a magician in real life,” I said, “but I’m sure you’re very nice and you probably know more than you think.” Like how to cure me, I was praying.