by Ross Welford
‘Ha’d on, what about Cockney Boy here? What’ve you got? Any cash on you?’
Boydy has been very quiet. Quiet? Silent. For a big guy he seems strangely powerless when it comes to resisting these two.
‘Nothin’.’
Recovering from his confusion, Jesmond takes over what is pretty much a mugging but without any violence. ‘Nothin’ at all? You’re out and about without even the money to buy a pie? I don’t believe you. Shall I find out?’
Jesmond takes a threatening step towards Boydy, and that’s all it takes. Boydy pulls a five-pound note and some change from his pocket.
‘Thought so,’ says Jesmond. ‘And thank you both very much for the reward. Quite unnecessary of course,’ he adds, with exaggerated politeness.
Then he throws Lady’s lead down on the ground, and they both walk away in the direction they came from, back over the causeway.
But they’re behaving strangely, heads together, talking earnestly. I see Jesmond hold up his right hand in front of his sister. They’re about ten metres away when Jarrow turns back.
‘Hey, Pizza Face! I’d keep the mask on if I was you. Big improvement!’
Boydy is red-faced with anger. His mouth is turned down in a perfect curve of unhappiness and I can see straight away that he’s angry not only with the twins, but also with himself for not having more courage to stand up to them. I don’t exactly blame him, but it doesn’t matter: he’s doing enough blaming for both of us.
I’m about to tell him not to worry about it, but something feels different.
It starts in my fingertips, an aching sort of tingling, and spreads to my scalp. By the time Boydy and I are much further along the beach, I can feel rivulets of sweat trickling down my back and my whole skin is fizzing like a soluble aspirin.
‘Hang on, Boydy! Stop,’ I call ahead to him. ‘I feel strange.’
My stomach convulses, and I fall to my knees, retching and vomiting in the sand.
‘You OK, Eff?’ says Boydy – a bit pointlessly because I’m obviously not. ‘Shall I call someone?’
Then the sensation stops almost as quickly as it started. I get to my feet, spitting the taste of sick from my mouth. I remove my glove because I want to feel the crawling skin on my face.
And there it is.
My hand.
I take off my other glove and look up my sleeve. My arms are there too!
‘Boydy! Boydy! I’m back! Look!’
I take off the mask and wig.
Lady bounds up to me, relieved, I think, to see me again.
Boydy turns and looks, and grins slowly.
‘Oh yeah,’ he says, nodding. ‘That’s a lot less weird, Effow!’
An hour later, I’m back home with Lady and Boydy. Gram is still out, due back shortly. Boydy and I are in the garage, looking at the sunbed.
Boydy shakes his head. ‘Why should a sunbed make you invisible? People go on sunbeds all the time, and they’re pretty harmless. What’s special about this one?’ He thinks for a moment. ‘We could ask the woman in the tanning shop?’
‘I can imagine how that’ll go,’ I say with a sarcastic tone. ‘Oh, hi. That sunbed you gave me? It’s just made me invisible. Besides, tell her, and by the afternoon half of Whitley Bay will know and then it’ll be the whole world. Like, literally. Imagine: it’ll be in the papers, on the telly, all over the web.’
‘Assuming she doesn’t just fink you’re nuts. You’ll be famous!’
‘Exactly, Boydy. Exactly. And I don’t want to be.’
‘Really?’ He sounds genuinely surprised.
‘Yes really! If I’m gonna be famous at all – and I can’t really see the appeal – I want to be famous for something that I’ve done, not for having an unfortunate accident on a sunbed and being followed around by paparazzi. Besides, Gram would hate it. She’d probably think it was common.’
But Boydy’s not listening. He’s wrinkled up his nose and sniffs the air.
‘Blimey, Eff. Was that you?’
I thought I’d sneaked the burp out unobtrusively but evidently not.
‘Sorry. Yup, guilty. It’s a burp, by the way, not a … you know. I think it’s a side effect.’
His eyes widen and he sniffs again, almost gagging. ‘What is that? It’s … it’s inhuman!’
‘I think it’s my Chinese herbal medicine. I kind of overdid it, and it’s playing with my guts, so—’
‘Hang on. Your Chinese herbal medicine? Where did you get it?’
‘Off the internet. It’s an acne treatm …’ And then I tail off as it dawns on both of us simultaneously.
Back in the kitchen I have taken down the box of Dr Chang His Skin So Clear. There’s a picture of a smiling model on the front, and a tiny picture of some Chinese guy in a white lab coat on the back. Everything on the box is in Chinese, except for a white sticker in English that says:
5 grams in water every daily.
That’s it.
‘Did you weigh it out?’ Boydy asks.
I shrug. I’m embarrassed.
‘Kind of.’
‘So, five grams of liquid is about a teaspoon,’ he says.
‘Ah. I thought it was a tablespoon.’
‘No, that’s about fifteen grams. And you did this once a day?’
‘Sometimes more.’ I’m mumbling like a kid found raiding the biscuit tin, only instead of there being guilty crumbs around my mouth, I’m blushing with shame.
‘So …’ he says, ‘… a massive overdose of some unlabelled, unlicensed, unidentifiable stuff might have combined with a massive overdose of dodgy UV rays from a cast-off sunbed to make you invisible?’
‘Um, yeah,’ I say.
Looks that way.
Boydy flips open my laptop that’s on the kitchen counter. ‘What’s the website where you got this anyway?’ he asks, and I tell him.
He types in the URL.
Error 404. Sorry, the website you have asked for cannot be found.
He tries again in case he has made a typing error, but the same message comes up.
Next he types ‘Dr Chang His Skin So Clear’ in the search box. There are only three search results and they all lead to the same message saying that the website cannot be found.
I’ve got the beginnings of a horrible, cold fear, but then I hear a key in the front door, and Lady gets up to greet Gram.
Quickly, Boydy takes the paper bag of powder from inside the outer box and shoves the cardboard box in his pocket.
‘I might be able to get the box translated,’ he says, just as Gram comes in the kitchen.
The second she sees Boydy, Gram straightens her shoulders and puts on a smile.
I think she’s just relieved that I know someone. It’s not often people come round these days. The last was Kirsten Olen and that was ages ago.
I do the introductions and Boydy doesn’t mess up. That is, he stands up, shakes her hand, looks her in the eye and smiles. He could almost have been taught by her.
‘Will you stay for tea, Elliot?’ she asks, beaming with delight that I have brought someone home who doesn’t mumble and look at their shoes.
‘Ah, no, thank you very much, Mrs Leatherhead. I’ve got to be off. Very nice to meet you.’
Wow, I think, so he knows the rules as well. It’s like being in a secret society.
Gram is making tea and I’m trying to behave as if this has not been the weirdest day of my whole life.
The radio is on. Gram always listens to Radio 3 or Classic FM. (She sometimes asks me if I know the composers and if it’s on the organ I usually guess ‘Bach’ and I’m right about half the time. She forgets the times I’m wrong, so she has this totally false idea that I know loads about classical music.)
Do you ever get that thing when someone’s being nice to you, and chatty and everything, but you just can’t be bothered? And you can’t say anything because that would just be rude, so you have to pretend to be paying attention by making the right noises? You know, raising your eyebrows and going ‘hmm!�
� and stuff.
That’s what it’s like with Gram right now.
She’s wittering on about … Well, that’s the point. I’m not listening, so I don’t know what she’s wittering on about. I pick up ‘Reverend Robinson’ and something about his sermon that morning, then Mrs Abercrombie and the Food Bank Committee, and something to do with something else, and …
‘Are you all right, Ethel?’
‘Hmm? Yes, Gram, thanks. Fine.’
‘Only, I have just told you about Mrs Abercrombie’s Geoffrey and you haven’t said a thing.’
It turns out – because Gram tells me again, and this time I make sure to pay proper attention – that Mrs Abercrombie’s Yorkshire terrier, Geoffrey, has joined the list of local missing dogs.
I pretend to be sorry, but:
a) I am too tired to be bothered.
b) Geoffrey, despite having only three legs, is detestable and seems to have grown an extra load of temper to compensate for his missing front right leg.
And …
c) There is – obviously – only one thing on my mind.
You know I said I was done with crying?
Turns out I was wrong.
All my bubbling emotions overflow and I start sniffling at the kitchen table. I feel Gram’s arms round me, and she doesn’t even know what’s the matter.
‘It’s all right,’ she says, though how can she know?
I hug her back; it feels good. I can smell her tea-breath and her flowery, soapy scent. In that moment, in that hug, everything seems OK again, and I let myself briefly forget that everything is very far from OK. Hugs are good like that.
It gives me the strength for one more try.
‘Gram?’ I start. ‘You know I said this morning that I had become invisible …?’
I’m hoping she’ll listen while I offload everything that’s on my mind.
She doesn’t, though. Instead, she pulls up a chair next to me and carries on EXACTLY where she left off before: feeling that the world sometimes ignores you, the sense that you have to shout to make yourself heard, that people look straight through you as if you are invisible.
And so on. She’s being nice and everything, but it doesn’t help.
My mouth is full of the words I want to say:
‘No, Gram. I mean I was REALLY invisible.’
But I swallow them again.
‘I’m a bit tired, Gram,’ I say. ‘I’m just going to go to bed, I think.’
‘All right, pet,’ says Gram. ‘I’ll bring you up a cocoa.’
I go upstairs, and check myself over again and again in the big bathroom mirror. Everything seems to be back to normal – that is, there are no bits of me that are invisible.
What’s more, I think my spots are getting a bit better. No – really, they are. It’s not just my imagination.
I’m feeling very alone, and that makes me think of Mum.
I haven’t opened my shoebox of Mum stuff for ages. It’s there on the shelf, along with books and soft toys, and I get it down, open it up, and lay out the things.
WHAT IS IN THE BOX OF STUFF FROM MY MUM
The T-shirt I’ve already told you about. I give it a deep sniff, and it’s like magic: a calming, comforting smell. I hold it in front of me, opened out, and try to imagine Mum filling out the black fabric. It’s a lady’s size eight according to the label, so Mum wasn’t all that big. (I lay it out on top of my bed.)
The card is next. (I read the rhyme, although I know it by heart: I just like to imagine her hand holding the pen that wrote the words. She probably wore dark nail varnish, and her hands will have been slim and pale.)
There are three little beanbag cats, all different. There’s a black-and-white one, a stripy one and a pink one. There should be four, actually, because I saw the full set in a toyshop once, and it’s a blue one that’s missing. But I’ve only got three and that’s OK. I’ve never given them names, in case Mum did and I wouldn’t want to choose different names. (I arrange them on top of the T-shirt in a neat line.)
A little packet of Haribo sweets. A bit odd, I guess, but Gram says Mum loved Haribos, and at her funeral everyone who came was given a packet. I can’t really remember, but I like the idea of people eating sweets at a funeral, although I didn’t eat mine obviously, which is why I’ve still got them. (I put the packet next to the cats.)
Last, there’s a leaflet advertising a concert for a singer called Felina who was appearing at a music festival on Newcastle’s quayside. Except Mum died before the concert took place. I like to think she was looking forward to it in the way I look forward to stuff like Christmas.
I’ve done it loads of times before, this laying out of the shoebox stuff. I do it the same every time, and I never get sad.
Only, this time I do get sad, and that takes me by surprise, and makes me sadder still. I quickly put the stuff away in case I start to cry again, and I sit on my bed, listening to my breathing.
And that is where the whole invisible thing might have ended. Just some weird day that came and went, with nobody to say that I was telling the truth – apart from an unpopular kid at school who is well known for shooting his mouth off, so no one would have believed him.
I could have left it at that. That would have been fine.
But then I’d never have discovered who I am.
Once things happen, I find, they happen pretty quickly.
The first thing, though, is not really a ‘thing’.
It’s Elliot Boyd. Well, Elliot Boyd and Kirsten Olen. And me.
Boydy first. He has decided that we are best friends, and for days now has been coming up to me, super-friendly, waiting for me in the lunch queue and at home time – and it has been noticed by other people.
I don’t want to be mean to him, but he still gets on my nerves with his constant stream of one-sided conversation, always about himself and something he is interested in. The only thing he wants to talk about, apart from the lighthouse, is the invisibility thing – and we can’t talk about that with other people, so it’s just him and me. I’m forced to tolerate him because we share the secret, and he’s taken the package of Dr Chang His Skin So Clear, which I am furious with myself about.
The last couple of afternoons I’ve waited in the toilets along the corridor from the lockers to make sure he has gone before I walk home. Yesterday he was hanging about for half an hour, this slightly sad look on his round face, which almost made me change my mind.
So it’s lunchtime, and the Knight twins are nowhere to be seen. I’ve spotted that Kirsten Olen is in the queue with Aramynta Fell and Katie Pelling, and I join them so that I am already partnered up if Boydy makes an appearance.
The girls are OK. It’s not as if I dislike Kirsten Olen. We fell apart rather than fell out.
It’s Aramynta I’m not so sure of. It starts as soon as we sit down (me being careful to make sure there are no spaces either side of me, just in case).
Aramynta smiles this warm smile that chills me, and half closes her eyes mysteriously.
Oh God, this is not going to go well – I can tell from the smile. It’s too friendly. Why did I sit here?
‘The posse and I were talking …’
Oh, please. ‘The posse’ is Aramynta Fell and some other girls at the table – presumably including Kirsten now, which is disappointing. Individually they’re all right. Katie Pelling once let me copy her chemistry homework when I had forgotten, which is actually quite a nice thing to do. Together, though, they are so completely tiresome. It seems to be their mission in life to ignore the school’s no-make-up/jewellery/short-skirts rules whenever they can, and they’re forever getting into trouble for it.
Seriously: what is the point?
Anyway, Aramynta goes on:
‘We were talking and we think your skin is, like, so much better than it was.’
‘Umm … thanks?’
Katie Pelling starts spluttering with laughter. When that happens, you know you are on the receiving end of something e
ven if you don’t know what it is. She tries to cover it up with a cough, but I can tell.
‘Walk away,’ Gram would say. ‘Walk away and do not stoop to their level.’
Good advice, but what if you want to find out what they were going to say?
‘And we all kind of wondered: is it, like, official – you know, you and your boyfriend?’
Katie Pelling gives up trying to hold back, and emits a snort of laughter – the sort that comes with an unwanted helping of snot, which makes the others laugh even more.
Aramynta is cross because they have ruined her straight-faced wind-up, but she maintains an expression of pure innocence.
‘Boyfriend?’ I say, furrowing my brow and trying to appear as baffled as I can even though I know exactly what she is referring to. ‘I don’t have a boyfriend. You know that, Aramynta.’ Good, I tell myself: calm, but firm.
‘But you and Elliot Boyd – you look soooo cute together! Aren’t they? Kirsten! Aren’t they cute together? Elliot and Ethel. Ethiot!’
Kirsten nods, struggling to keep a straight face. ‘So cute! I totally ship them!’ As she says this my heart sinks, because I realise I am losing my oldest friend.
‘You’d better watch out, Ethel. The girls’ll be after him.’
‘She needn’t worry,’ says Katie Pelling. ‘There’s plenty of him to go round!’
More spluttering and chortling.
I’ve had enough. All the feelings that I have been bottling up for days rise up in my chest, and I feel myself getting hot with anger.
‘That … that lump is not my boyfriend! He’s not any sort of friend. I don’t even like him. Who does? He’s a pain in the neck. I hate him. He hangs around me like a bad smell.’
This last comment is a cheap shot. Irritating though Boydy is, I have been close enough to him to know that the ‘Smelliot’ thing is untrue. Still, I think I’ve said it forcefully enough: opposite me, Aramynta and Kirsten are wide-eyed.
