Invisible (5 page)

M
y mom wasn't exactly thrilled to pick me up from school.

Luckily, she was too preoccupied with my face, specifically the dark blue bruise forming over one eyelid, to harp about the inconvenience of shuttling me home every time I miss the bus.

Or maybe not so luckily, considering the way her jaw dropped open when she caught her first good look at me.

“What happened, Jane? You look like you've been mugged!”

Sadly, that wasn't an inaccurate description.

I did my best to shrug the whole thing off. “Nothing, Mom. I had a small accident in the cafeteria. I tripped.”

I just kept that last part to myself.

“It looks worse than it is, I promise.”

My mom examined my face while we idled at an intersection, and I found myself mentally trying to will the traffic light to switch to green so that she would have to pay attention to the road.

No such luck.

“You fell?” she repeated in disbelief.

“Mm—hmm.” I kept my voice noncommittal. I didn't want her to guess the truth, but I also didn't want to lie. Still, when she asks, “How was your day, honey?” she doesn't want
“Gee, well, today I got into a fistfight”
to be the answer.

It
can't
be the answer.

So even though that was exactly what happened, I carefully skirted the truth.

“You know me, total klutz. I'm just surprised it didn't happen sooner.”

That was all it took to get my mom assuring me that,
No, I wasn't a klutz. It was all her fault for letting me drop out of ballet lessons when I was seven, and that if only I had continued I would be every bit as graceful as Elle.

A lecture that I had grown so accustomed to hearing that I could tune it out effortlessly.

Our car rolled past the neatly lettered SMITH mailbox and the white picket fence before pulling into the garage.

“Why don't you go use the makeup I got you for your birthday? I'll call you when it's time for dinner. How does that sound?”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself in check. “Uh . . . sure. That sounds great, Mom.”

Shoving open the car door, I tried to make a hasty getaway to my bedroom. The last thing I wanted was to be stuck deflecting more questions or nodding along to more lectures.

I didn't make it past the kitchen.

“God, what happened to your
face?
It looks like roadkill. More so than usual, even.”

Oh, the joys of having an older sister. Scratch that. Oh, the annoyances of an older, more popular sister taking time away from college (and her precious sorority sisters at the Theta Beta Omega house) while she waits for her internship helping the homeless to begin. That's right:
helping the homeless.
She can't even be straight-up vapid and shallow the way sorority girls are in the movies. Instead, she lounges on the sofa in the living room simultaneously filling out grant proposals and watching crap television. And mocking me whenever possible.

Not like any of that is a challenge for her.

“Thanks,
Lane
.” I put a heavy emphasis on her full name just to annoy her. Lane and Jane Smith. I seriously don't know what our parents were thinking when they picked out our names. Of course, my sister had found a way to make it work for her. She started signing everything “L” back in middle school. That was it, just one initial. L. Smith. But the abridgment stuck to the point that even my parents found it a more natural fit than her given name.

Now it feels weird to even think of calling her anything else.

Unfortunately, my name isn't quite as flexible when it comes to nicknames. I mean, theoretically I could have started signing things J. Smith. But since my associations with the name “Jay” are restricted to birds or middle-aged men with receding hairlines . . . I wasn't exactly tempted to make it permanent. Or even temporary.

My sister has always been the lucky one.

Elle crossed her arms and smirked. “I'm just telling you the truth. It's not
my
fault you look like crap.”

Definitely time to escape to the privacy of my bedroom.

“I'm so glad you're home,
Lane,
” I called back over my shoulder as I climbed the stairs to my room. “And only two weeks and two days before you leave. Not that I'm counting or anything.”

And then I slammed my door shut so I wouldn't have to hear her reply.

It was only when the lock clicked into place that I was able to release the breath I had been holding and my tension began to ebb.

I love my room.

Back when I was six I convinced my parents to let me have my grandma's bed after she passed away. I risked what the other elementary school kids, including Kenzie, termed “death cooties” because it was the most luxurious thing I had ever seen. The large wooden frame included four spindly posts that spiraled upward before disappearing into a canopy of rich golden-yellow fabric that draped and billowed above me.

And it was all mine.

Mainly because by the time Elle realized that “death cooties” weren't a big deal, my dad had sworn that he was never moving that
blasted bed
so much as an inch ever again. That was the only time I could think of when my sister had been jealous of
me.

I flopped down on the bed and stared at the fabric pattern I've admired every morning for the past eleven years. It was comforting knowing that the exact same view would greet me the next morning. Especially because it felt like nothing else in my life was stable anymore. Not when my friends were on a first-name basis with rock stars, and football players were probably planning on stuffing me into trash cans.

Which was why I wanted to enjoy the familiar view in peace while I could still see out of one unbruised eye.

My cell phone started ringing.

So much for that plan.

“Isobel told me everything,” Corey announced, instead of saying hello like a normal person.

“About landing the front page of the school paper?”

“Yeah. Someone's been a busy girl. Apparently, you're working on an article right now. Funny how you never mentioned it.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh' is right! I thought we agreed that when it comes to big news, I'm
always
your first phone call. What happened to that,
friend?
Suddenly, I'm not good enough for you?”

I grinned. No one does fake indignation quite like Corey. “Nope. You're not important to me at all.”

“That's what I thought.” I could hear the smile in his voice.

“It's not like I've told you all my secrets and embarrassing moments or anything. Oh wait . . . yes, I have.”

“Well,” he said melodramatically, “I don't recall my phone ringing
this
time.”

I rolled my eyes and instantly regretted it when a jolt of pain shot through me. “Consider me properly chastised.”

Although I couldn't help wondering when exactly I had been expected to fill him in on
my
life. It's rather hard to connect with somebody who spends the majority of his time waiting for someone else on Skype. Even when he's away from his computer, he's always checking his phone to make sure that he didn't somehow miss a call from his superbusy rock-star boyfriend. Lately, talking to Corey felt like trying to get a six-year-old with attention deficit disorder to put away his crayons.

But I couldn't say any of that without offending him.

And upsetting my best guy friend was the very last thing I wanted to do.

“Okay, now that we've straightened that out, I'm so excited for you! Jane Smith using her skills for the good of all geek-kind. I love it. So, what breaking news are you going to report?”

“Wow, slow down. I'm not exactly interviewing dictators and presidents here, which is definitely for the best. I would probably choke and somehow wind up serving a twenty-year prison sentence.”

“Nah . . . forty to life at least. For treason.”

My fingers itched for a pen so that I could scribble down another fake death. It was almost ridiculously easy picturing myself in a bright orange jumpsuit, insisting that it was all one big misunderstanding as Lisa Anne instructed a guard to return me to my cell. But this time, I did my best to shake off the image.

“Care to describe those skills you mentioned? My ego could use a boost.”

“Oh, you know,” Corey said airily, even though obviously I didn't. “You always know when it's ‘my friends and I' or ‘my friends and me.' ”

His words brought a sharp, acidic taste to my mouth, but I tried to play it off.

“Armed with talent like that, I must be one step away from a Pulitzer.”

Corey laughed and the tension in my shoulders eased slightly. “You know what I mean, Jane. You pay attention to the details and crap.”

That was one way to put it, but Corey wasn't finished. “Plus, you're really good at listening to others.”

Yeah, well, when your best friends are too wrapped up with their boyfriends to ask about
your
day, you tend to get a lot of practice listening.

But I couldn't say that either.

“Is that a nice way of saying I eavesdrop?” I joked instead.

“Yes.”

“I can live with that.”

“Look, Jane, you'll rock the assignment. I'm betting the thing is half written already.”

I thought back to my failed attempts during detention. “Not so much. The story is proving to be . . . resistant. Maybe I should ditch it entirely and write about your whirlwind celebrity romance instead.” I deepened my voice in a halfway decent imitation of a brusque reporter. “Tell me: What's it like to date America's hottest young rock star, Timothy Goff?”

Corey snorted. “It's not exactly a ‘whirlwind' romance when you see him more often on television than on Skype.”

I could practically feel the exasperation rolling off him. “The long-distance thing not working out so well?”

“It's just . . . we've spent a total of nine days together, five of which were with Mackenzie and the rest of his band. I mean, he came up to see me over New Year's, which was . . .
amazing
. But he's back in LA working on a sound-track project that's meant for a slightly younger demographic than their other stuff. I guess there's a lot of pressure for them to come across as
family friendly
.”

“I take it that having the lead singer come out as gay isn't part of that image?” It wasn't exactly a difficult conclusion to reach. The frustration in Corey's voice was a pretty big giveaway that everything here was
not
okay.

“Exactly. Tim keeps telling me that the sneaking-around part is temporary and that he wants to take us public. And I believe him. I really do,
but
. . . I think his definition of temporary is different from mine.”

“Months?” I asked sympathetically.

“Try
years
. And I know it's stupid, but I want our Facebook profiles to make it clear that we are together. Taken. Committed. Instead, he couldn't even kiss me to ring in the new year in case someone snapped a picture.” Corey took a deep breath. “Let's face it: He could date any guy he wants, which
eventually
he will figure out. And when that happens, well, I'll probably find out via the front page of
People
magazine.”

“You don't actually believe he'd do that,” I insisted.

“You're right.” Corey sighed. “Tim's too nice to blindside me that way. He'd dump me via Skype instead.”

“You're being ridiculous.”

“I'm not so sure, Jane. If you were a celebrity, would
you
want to date someone in high school?”

I couldn't contain my snort of disbelief. “First of all, me, a celebrity? Never going to happen. I'll leave that to Kenzie. Secondly, if I were to meet an attractive boy who was smart, funny, and kind, who liked me back, then yeah, I'd want to date him. Gee, I wonder who fits
that
description!”

“It's not that simple.”

“Sure it is!” I argued, pacing around my room. “You're just being stupid and insecure. That's my job, remember?”

Corey laughed. “Stupid. Yeah, that's exactly how Mr. Taylor will describe you at our graduation ceremony. Right before you give your valedictorian speech.”

“I'm not the valedictorian yet,” I countered. “And you know that doesn't mean anything. It's not exactly hard to get A's here. I
never
speak up in class, and so far that hasn't made a difference. The only reason you don't have a 4.0 is because you keep blowing off assignments to go into Portland.”

“True. Speaking of blowing off assignments . . . got any plans for tonight?”

“Just homework and nothing that can't be postponed. Why?”

“Okay, then hear me out.”

There was such a long pause that I checked to make sure we hadn't been disconnected. “Corey?”

“Look, you're being such a badass now. I just thought you might want to consider changing up your look. Baggy sweatshirts and ill-fitting jeans aren't exactly trendy.”

“Uh . . .”

“If you want people to take you seriously, you can't look like your closet has been on lockdown since middle school. Trust me, if you walk into school tomorrow looking like a million dollars, you could easily become Smith High School's next big thing.”