Invisible

by Pete Hautman

“I don’t have a problem. I just want to be left alone.”

  “Yes, well, ah … we’ve made some, ah, adjustments in your class schedule. …” He looks at Ms. Neidermeyer.

  “We thought it best to change your lunch period, Douglas. We don’t want another incident like last Tuesday.”

  “Incident?”

  “The food fight.”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “Nevertheless, don’t you think it would be best for you to eat your lunch at a different time than Freddie Perdue and his friends?”

  “What difference does that make? They’re in jail, aren’t they?”

  Uncomfortable silence ensues.

  Principal Janssen shifts in his chair. “Well … no,” he says.

  “How can they not be in jail?”

  “I know you’re upset about what happened—”

  “They tried to kill me!”

  “Douglas, please sit down. … Thank you.”

  I am shaking.

  “Douglas, we want you to know we believe you. Those kids were up to no good. The police brought them in and talked to them. All three of them denied harming you. I’m afraid it’s a case of your word against theirs.”

  “Theirs is wrong.”

  Ms. Neidermeyer reaches out a red-nailed hand and touches my arm. “We know that, Douglas.”

  I shrug away her touch. “It’s not fair.”

  “No, it’s not. But we’re trying to make the best of the situation. We’ve designed a new schedule for you. You’ll be moving to the second lunch period and changing from Mrs. Felko’s afternoon art class to the morning class, and you’ll be in Study Hall C after your lunch period.”

  “Why do I have to change? Why don’t you change their schedules?”

  Principal Janssen says, “It simply was not practical, Douglas.”

  I hug myself to stop the shaking. It doesn’t help.

  “They should all be in jail,” I say. “You should at least kick them out of school. You’re responsible for my safety.”

  “Douglas, we have a responsibility to be fair to all of our students. I don’t know exactly what happened between you and those three boys, but I’m sure that their attack was not completely unprovoked. Things like that don’t just happen. I don’t know what you did to anger Freddie Perdue, and frankly I don’t want to know, but you must realize that you had a part in it.”

  I gape at him, hardly able to believe what he is saying.

  Ms. Neidermeyer says, “No one is saying you deserved to be injured, Douglas. We’re just trying to make the best of a very unfortunate situation.”

  “I’ve spoken with Freddie and Aron and Ty,” says Principal Janssen. “They know that if they bother you—if one of them so much as touches you—they’ll be expelled. I promise you won’t have any problem with them.”

  I feel sick.

  “Oh, and one more thing. We’ve moved you to the last period calculus class. Your first period class will now be language arts.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “We thought it would be best for you.”

  For a moment I am more confused than ever. Then I realize that first period calculus is the only class I share with Melissa Haverman.

  They are trying to keep me away from Melissa.

  26

  FLAMMABLE

  The one good thing about my new schedule is that Andy and I have lunch at the same time. We grab one of the empty tables in back and I tell him about my meeting with Principal Janssen and Ms. Neidermeyer. The more I talk about it, the madder I get.

  “I don’t see why they’re messing around with my schedule when I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Well, you did get caught window peeping.”

  “I didn’t get caught.”

  “I mean, none of this would have happened if you hadn’t gone to Woodland Trails.”

  “You’re as bad as the rest of them. No, you’re worse. You’re supposed to be my friend.”

  “I am your friend, Dougie.”

  “Then you should go beat the crap out of Freddie Perdue.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “I want you to beat the crap out of all of them: Freddie, Ty, Aron, Mr. Janssen, and Melissa’s dad.”

  “Okay, I’ll beat ’em up, but after they catch me, will you come visit me in prison?”

  “You won’t go to prison. Freddie didn’t.”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t beat up five people. Just you.”

  “Ha-ha. Hey, what time does this lunch period end?”

  “It’s almost over.” He stands up and points at the clock on the wall behind me. “I gotta get to Spanish.”

  I turn my head to look at the clock. Two sophomores at the next table are staring at me.

  “What are you looking at?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” one of them says.

  “You’re looking at something.” The bell rings. “I don’t like being stared at,” I say.

  “Sorry.” The sophomores pick up their trays and head for the trash.

  I turn back to Andy, but he is gone.

  According to my new schedule I am supposed to go to Study Hall C, but the idea of sitting in a crowded study hall with a bunch of kids staring at me makes my stomach hurt. I can hardly endure being inside this building. I think of Principal Janssen and a clot of anger, a burning sensation, forms high in my chest. My bruised ribs throb and my teeth grind against each other and I imagine him one inch tall and me driving over him with the Madham Special.

  Dr. Ahlstrom says I should be careful when I get angry. She says that anger is powerful and difficult to control and that when I feel myself boiling over I should take a walk. I look out the glass doors of the south exit. Outside it is bright and sunny, a beautiful November day, almost seventy degrees. I walk out of the school. I have no destination, but my feet seem to know where I’m going. As I walk I feel my anger growing. I’m mad at Freddie and his bunch, sure, but I’m even madder at Principal Janssen and Ms. Neidermeyer. And the cops. And Melissa’s father. I’m mad at all the kids who stared at me and all the kids who didn’t. And I’m mad at Andy. I let my anger twist and turn. I imagine terrible fates for each one of my tormentors, my betrayers, my persecutors. When I reach the chain-link fence surrounding the football stadium, I turn back to look at the school. The red brick walls look heavy and cold and indestructible.

  I follow the fence around to the gate. It is open. I enter the stadium and climb to the top tier of seats and sit in the sun and open my notebook. I begin to draw the sigil, tracing the invisible curves and lines in my head. The sigil mutates. The letters are almost impossible to see now, but I know they are there, tangled within the fire, fighting to escape.

  I stare at the completed sigil and feel my anger drain into it.

  As I stare into its twists and curves I imagine licks of flame and searing heat. I look over at the school and imagine the bricks and steel melting into slag.

  And I see someone walking toward me.

  It’s Andy.

  “Hey,” he says, sitting down next to me. “Watching the game?”

  “I’m processing my anger,” I say.

  “Is that like processing cheese?” He grins.

  A few minutes ago I was mad at him, but now I see his smile and listen to his incredibly stupid joke and all my anger melts away. How could I stay mad at Andy?

  “Yeah, it’s like cheese,” I say.

  “What are you drawing? Is that a fire?”

  “It’s a flaming sigil.”

  “Oh, cool!”

  “So how come you’re here? I thought you had Spanish class.”

  “I looked out the window and I saw you sitting out here, so I told Mrs. Garcia I had to go throw up.” He laughs. “You know what she said? She said, ‘You don’t look so sick to me, but okay, you go vómito.’”

  “What if she looks out the window and sees you?”

  “She won’t. So, I guess you’re pretty mad at everybody.”

  “
You could say that. I’m thinking about burning down the school. Only I don’t think brick is flammable.”

  “You’re quite mad, you know,” he says in a British accent, doing James Bond.

  “Not mad, disturbed.”

  “Okay, disturbed. But let’s not burn down the school. I’ve got a better idea.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You got any change?”

  I dig in my pocket and come out with a quarter and three dimes.

  Andy stands up. “C’mon.”

  27

  POWER

  This is power: You drop a metal disk into a slot in a metal box, speak a few carefully chosen words into a black plastic contrivance, and minutes later seventeen hundred people (give or take a few) instantly drop whatever they are doing and file out of a huge red brick building into the sunlight.

  Andy and I watch from across the street, then slip into the throng. Several teachers are trying to herd us toward the stadium. Everybody is talking and moving and bouncing off each other, tossing misinformation back and forth:

  “… just a drill …”

  “… fire in the basement …”

  I get separated from Andy in the confusion of bodies and am absorbed into the crowd.

  “… somebody got shot.”

  “Omigod, who got shot?” says a dark-haired girl to my right.

  “It’s a bomb threat,” I say, getting into the spirit of it, enjoying being part of the crowd, bumping against her with my shoulder.

  She gives me a nasty look and moves away, but I hear her tell someone there’s a bomb in the school.

  “… gonna blow up the school …”

  “… probably a gas leak …”

  “… I feel sick …”

  I am craning my neck, looking for Andy, when I see Melissa Haverman. I move toward her, but she sees me coming and her eyes go wide and she moves away. I’m cut off by a tight clot of sophomores.

  “I heard there’s a bomb,” I say, trying to break through.

  They don’t hear me. There are too many voices.

  “… fire in the chemistry lab …”

  “… practice drill …”

  “… terrorists …”

  “… I heard it was gas …”

  “… poison gas …”

  “… explosion …”

  “… killed …”

  The shouts of the teachers are lost in the shuffling and chatter, and I lose track of Melissa. Two police cars show up just as the last people leave the building. They get out their bullhorns and help herd us to the stadium. We squeeze in four abreast through the gates and spill onto the field. Kids are looking for their friends, trying to gather into their cliques and clubs and friends and subcultures—jocks looking for jocks, boyfriends seeking girlfriends, pretty girls looking for the other pretty girls, goth seeking goth—but we are being herded mercilessly, the cops and the teachers teaming up to organize the mass of students. It takes about twenty minutes to get us all into the stands and seated. I can’t see Andy anywhere.

  I am sitting between two guys I don’t know and who don’t know me.

  One of them says, “This is so stupid.”

  “How do you know?” I ask him.

  “It’s just some sort of prank. Somebody pulled the fire alarm or something.”

  “It’s not a fire alarm,” I tell him. “It’s a bomb threat.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I heard one of the teachers say so. I think it’s serious.”

  “Seriously stupid, maybe. When’s the last time you heard of a school blowing up?”

  “That doesn’t mean it couldn’t be real.”

  “It’s just some jerkball with a phone. It’s always some idiot with a phone.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, a bit nettled. “You don’t know who it was, and you don’t know if there’s a bomb.”

  “You’ll see,” he says.

  One of the teachers—no, it’s Principal Janssen—has borrowed a bullhorn from one of the cops.

  “ATTENTION … could I have your attention, please!” He gives the chatter a few seconds to die down. “As you all probably know by now, we received a phone call from someone claiming to have planted a bomb in the school—”

  “I told you,” I say to the kid on my right. He ignores me.

  “In all likelihood,” Principal Janssen continues, “this is a misguided prank. The police are going through the building right now. The process will take them about two hours, which will take us to the end of the school day—”

  A weak cheer emanates from parts of the stands and several students stand up as if to leave.

  “Sit DOWN. This is NOT cause for celebration, and NO ONE is leaving until two fifty. This is a serious matter. It is serious any time there is a threat to our safety. And I promise you, we will find the person or persons behind this, whether or not that threat is real, and they will be held accountable.”

  He goes on for a while but eventually winds down. Conversation in the stands is mostly speculation about who might have phoned in the bomb threat. The most popular theory is that it was a student from St. Andrew Valley High, our rival school. A couple of the goth kids are also mentioned, just because they wear black and act spooky.

  I don’t hear anyone mention me or Andy.

  28

  TRAINS AND LOCKERS

  News of the bomb threat does not make anything easier at home. My mother sees it as another excuse to put me in a private school. My father, naturally, is opposed. He uses logic to make his point:

  “DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH THOSE PLACES COST?”

  “Yes, but his school is receiving bomb threats. How can he learn properly in such an environment?”

  “THERE WAS NO BOMB!”

  My mother starts shaking, but she doesn’t give up.

  “The Catholic school isn’t that expensive—”

  “WE AREN’T CATHOLIC!”

  “You don’t have to be Catholic, and they have a very good program—”

  “WHAT DID I JUST SAY?”

  And so on. Of course, my father has logic on his side, and he can yell louder, so I’m pretty sure I’m not going to Catholic school anytime soon.

  That night I dream of fires and explosions and student bodies moving in great masses from one building to another and bumping into Melissa Haverman. I bump her again and again, but she won’t look at me. And then Andy is there, floating like a ghost, laughing at me. I wake up. The room is dark. My clock reads 3:17, the same number as my room at the hospital. Seventeen everywhere. I am seventeen. Seventeen is the seventh prime number. I sit up in bed and listen. All is silent. I go to the window and open it. Andy’s window is shut. The blinds are closed. I call out his name once, but I know he won’t hear me. After a time I return to bed and close my eyes and imagine a train passing. The engine has long passed; the end of the train is nowhere in sight. I count the cars: boxcar, container car, Pressureaide freight car, tank car, tank car, tank car, Coalveyor, boxcar, boxcar, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car, passenger car. …

  In the morning everybody at school is talking about the bomb threat. I weave through the crowded halls, everyone ignoring me. I stop at my locker and spin the combination lock. …

  Something is wrong. The lock feels wrong. It turns too easily, without the usual faint clicking. I pull up on the handle and the door swings open and I stare at the contents.

  Someone has been in my locker.

  I sort through my stuff to see what is missing. My books are there, and my extra sweatshirt, and my file folders full of old papers. …

  Someone’s hand comes down on my shoulder and I jump.

  “Easy, Douglas.” It’s Principal Janssen.

  “Someone broke into my
locker,” I say.

  “It’s okay, Douglas. We need you down at the office.”

  His hand is still gripping my shoulder.

  “Somebody was in my locker!”

  Kids are stopping in the hall, staring at us. I guess I was yelling.

  “Come along,” says Principal Janssen, pulling me away from the locker.

  “My stuff!”

  “No one will bother your stuff.” He shifts his grip to my upper arm. I see flashes of faces as he moves me quickly down the hall, I try to keep up, but my feet barely touch the floor. Everyone we pass is looking at us. Looking at me.

  29

  INTERROGATION

  Principal Janssen’s office is on the east side of the building. The morning sun slices through the aluminum blinds, puncturing my skull like a bright yellow knife. Their eyes are cutting at me too. Six eyes: Janssen, Ms. Neidermeyer, and the cop. The same cop who accused me of spying on Melissa Haverman. The same mustached cop who visited me in the hospital and who refused to put my attackers in jail where they belong.

  “Douglas, this is Officer John Hughes. He is with the Juvenile Affairs Division of the Fairview Police Department.”

  Officer Hughes gives me a small nod.

  “We’ve met,” I say.

  Principal Janssen clears his throat. “We’d like to talk about yesterday afternoon, Douglas. Do you have anything to tell us?”

  “What do you mean?” I say, all innocent and bewildered.

  The three of them exchange glances. Ms. Neidermeyer leans forward in her chair.

  “Douglas, we know who called in the bomb threat yesterday.”

  For the next seventeen seconds there is much staring and waiting. I finally break the silence. “Well? Are you going to tell me who it was?”

  “Douglas, you know who it was. You were seen.”

  “Seen where?”

  “Several students saw you in the football stadium just before the phone call.”

  “I was in the stadium,” I say. “It was my study hall period. I was working on an art project. Do you want to see it?”

  “No,” says Principal Janssen. “What we want, young man, is for you to come clean with us. We know you called in that bomb threat.”