Invisible (9 page)

“I hear you got yourself a job as a punching bag for the football team,” he says.

“How'd you get in? Visiting hours are over.”

“I just walked in. Nobody said anything. I couldn't come earlier because we had rehearsals for the new play.”

“That's okay.”

Andy sits down next to the bed and looks closely at my torn ear. “Dougie, you're a mess!”

“It was Freddie and Ty and Aron.”

“I heard. The cops picked up all three of them.”

That news—and Andy's presence—make me feel much better. “They say I can go home in the morning.”

Andy reaches out and rests his warm hand on my arm. “I'm glad you're okay,” he says. “But I have to tell you something: I told you so.”

“Told me what?”

“That you'd get in trouble for sneaking around Woodland Trails.”

“Oh.”

“You could have been hurt worse.”

“I know. I tried to yell for you, but they stomped the air out of my chest.”

“I'm sorry. I can't always be around to help you.”

“I thought I was going to die.”

“I won't let you die.”

“I won't let you die either.”

“I know.” I see the tears gathering in his blue eyes, and tides of joy wash over me. He cares. He really cares what happens to me. And he is the only one who understands.

M
y parents keep me home from school for the rest of the week. That's fine with me. I spend the time working on my bridge. My ribs hurt, my palms are scraped and sore, my stitched-up ear itches, and I have a headache that won't go away—but it hurts just as much to do nothing at all. I've completed the towers, the anchors, and all the bridge deck segments. I've strung the main cables. I've dyed the thread I'm using for the suspender cables, or stringers. Now I'm hanging the bridge deck from the 162 pairs of vertical stringers. Each pair of stringers takes about fifteen minutes. On the actual Golden Gate Bridge the stringers had to be adjusted to
a fraction of an inch. On my bridge, the leeway is hundredths of an inch. The work is intricate and precise.

Late Thursday afternoon I am installing stringer pair number thirty-seven when the doorbell rings. I hear my mother, then another woman's voice, then double footsteps. I hear my mother saying, “I'm so sorry! With Douglas injured, and everything else going on, we simply forgot to call you.”

“That's quite all right.” I recognize the voice now. It's Dr. Ahlstrom. “I've been meaning to drop by in any case. Douglas has been talking so much about the little bridge he's working on.”

“Little?” My mother laughs. They are at the top of the stairs now, and she calls down, “Douglas, you have company, dear.”

I don't say anything right away. I hate being interrupted when I am doing precision work.

“Douglas?”

“I hear you.”

“May we come down?”

“Okay. I guess.”

I watch their feet coming down the basement steps, one through thirteen, and then I see my mother's face and then I see Dr. Ahlstrom's face.

“Good afternoon, Douglas,” she says. And then she sees the bridge and her chin drops and she says, “Good Lord. Douglas. Oh my God.”

“I told you,” I said.

“Douglas, I had no idea.” Dr. Ahlstrom is only the fifth living person ever to see my bridge. Me, Andy, and my parents are the four others.

“It's … it's beautiful,” Dr. Ahlstrom says, and I feel my blood bubbling with oxygen.

“It's not done yet,” I say.

“Yes, but, my goodness, Douglas.” She approaches the bridge and looks at the details, at each carefully shaped and fitted matchstick, at the perfect joints and precise alignment of the parts. For a moment I see it through her eyes. It seems impossible that anything made by hand could be so precise and flawless.

She reaches out a hand to touch it.

“Don't!” I slap her hand back.

“Douglas!” my mother says.

Dr. Ahlstrom clutches her slapped hand and looks at me with wide eyes.

“I'm in the middle of hanging the suspender cables,” I say. “Nothing can move.”

“It's all right,” says Dr. Ahlstrom. She gives me her professional smile. “It's a remarkable model, Douglas. What inspired you to build it?”

“Bridges are important. They connect things. You need them to get from one side to the other.”

“That's very interesting.”

That's what she says when she's trying to get me to talk. I am not in the mood.

I say, “Are you going to charge my parents for coming here today?”

“Douglas!” my mother says, horrified. Anything to do with money embarrasses my parents. I don't know why.

“It's all right,” Dr. Ahlstrom says to my mother. “Douglas and I are often quite honest and direct with
each other.” She turns back to me. “As you know, I bill 50 percent of my consultation fee for missed appointments, Douglas. I'm not charging any additional fee for my visit here, as it was something I decided to do on my own.”

“Okay then,” I say.

Nobody says anything for three or four seconds.

“I have to get back to work,” I say.

W
hen I go back to school on Monday, everything is different. As soon as I walk in the door I can feel it. Everybody is looking at me. People who never knew I was alive before are staring at me like I'm a freak. I pretend not to notice. I go straight to my locker and drop off my backpack. People slow down as they walk past, staring at the stitches in my ear. I ignore them.

When I get to calculus, before I sit down at my desk, Mr. Kesselbaum tells me to report to Principal Janssen. Everyone (including Melissa Haverman) watches me walk out of the classroom. The kid who got beat up. The kid with stitches in his ear.

In the front office I sit on the bench and wait until the secretary calls me into the principal's office. Inside, Principal Janssen and Ms. Neidermeyer, the school counselor, are waiting for me, wearing two of the phoniest smiles I've ever seen.

“Good morning, Douglas. We're glad to see you up and around again,” says Principal Janssen. Janssen is big, fat, small featured, and soft voiced. He always wears corduroys, colorful sweaters, and slip-on shoes. His eyes are the color of mud.

Ms. Neidermeyer is the exact opposite of Principal Janssen: skinny, shrill, wide mouthed, big nosed, sharp chinned, red nailed, and wearing a crisp navy blue outfit.

“How are you?” she asks. They are the first three words she has ever spoken to me. Why is she acting like we're old friends?

“Have a seat,” says Principal Janssen.

I sit in one of the plastic chairs in front of his desk.

“I guess you had a pretty rough week,” he says.

“I got beat up,” I say.

“Yes, and you had that little run-in with the police.”

I shrug. “They thought I was somebody else.”

Nobody speaks for what seems like five minutes, but it was probably only a few seconds.

Principal Janssen clears his throat. “Yes, well, I know you've been having some problems with some of the other students. …”

“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.

T
he 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.