The Invisibles (6 page)

“How?” Ozzie demanded. “How was that not funny?”

“I just don't think parents calling each other names like that in front of their kids is funny.” Grace shrugged and looked away. “We have different senses of humor, I guess.”

“Oh, for Christ's . . .” Ozzie began, but Monica reached out and tugged at her sleeve. Ozzie took a deep breath. “Okay, whatever. I'm sorry if I of
fend
ed you.” She shook her head as she began rolling up her sleeves and then dropped her arms into her lap. “Well, there's no way I can tell the next joke, then. It's filthy.”

Nora waited, wondering if Ozzie would back down first or if it would be Grace. They were sitting across from each other in the circle, with no more than a foot of space between them. “Well, I don't have to tell it,” Ozzie said. She shrugged, clearly
disappointed. “It's not a big deal. I did my thing.” She reached out and poked Nora in the shoe. “How about you go next, Norster?”

Nora stared at her feet. She could feel something hot beneath the planes of her face, a slow spreading of blood under her cheeks. She wanted to read it. She knew it was a good one. She'd spent a long time selecting it last night, poring through her notebook for just this occasion. But she didn't move. What if they laughed? Or thought it was stupid? It wasn't an actual
talent,
like Monica's cooking or Ozzie's joke telling. She was just borrowing someone else's words. They weren't even hers.

Ozzie put a gentle hand on the knee. “Come on. Show us what you brought. We really want to know.”

Nora looked up. Ozzie was staring at her with a face so full of encouragement that it made something in the back of her throat hurt. She took out her notebook and handed it to Grace, who read aloud: “I collect really good first lines from novels. For tonight's meeting, I chose the first line from the Prologue of
The Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison. It goes like this: ‘
I am an invisible man.
'”

Grace looked up from Nora's notebook. “What does that mean? Is he a ghost?”

Nora looked away, mortified. The book, which revolved around a man the world refused to see, had left her pondering the unseen parts of herself, how there were sides of her that she would never, ever show another human being. Was it possible that such a thing could also be true of Ozzie and Monica and Grace? And if it was, might details eventually emerge among them, bruised flowers held in cupped hands, opening ever so slowly for the rest of them to lean in one day and touch? Could it be the reason for a group in the first place?

Or was she wrong?

Maybe she was wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.

Then Ozzie said, “Shit, I love it! You really collect first lines?”

Nora nodded.

“That is the coolest thing ever!” Ozzie said. “God damn, I wish I had thought of something like that! How many of them do you have?”

Nora's deflated heart began to swell back up, a balloon receiving air again. She took the notebook out of Grace's hand. “Seventy-eight,” she wrote.

“Seventy-
eight
?” Ozzie sat back in disbelief. “You've read seventy-eight books?”

“I've read hundreds of books,” Nora wrote back. “But I only write down the first lines of the ones I like.”

“Fuck,” Ozzie said. “That is fucking amazing.”

“It really is,” Monica said. “I can't imagine getting through one book, let alone hundreds.”

“‘I am an invisible man,'”
Ozzie recited. She studied the edge of her shoe for a moment, as if puzzling over something. Then she lifted her head. “How about The Invisibles?” she asked. “For a name? Our name?”

“The Invisibles?” Grace repeated the words as if saying them for the very first time. “I don't get it.”

“No, no, it's perfect!” A faint sheen of perspiration gleamed from the edge of Ozzie's hairline, and her eyes were bright. “Think about it. We've been invisible to most people for most of our whole lives.”

“Um . . . which totally
sucks
?” Monica interjected.

“Which totally sucks,” Ozzie agreed. “
Except
”—she stopped
and pointed her index finger at the whole group—“except that now we have a choice. We can choose to be invisible to everyone.” She paused dramatically. “Except each other.”

“Ooooh.” Monica raised her eyebrows. “I like that.”

“Yeah.” Grace nodded. “Me too.”

Nora closed her eyes as the moment swelled around them.

“The Invisibles!” Ozzie crowed, pulling back again and raising her fist in the air.

“The Invisibles!” Monica and Grace echoed, lifting their arms. Nora raised her hand too and made it into a fist.

Fifty feet below, the sound of crickets thrummed in the dark air. A car trundled past, its headlights glowing a lemony yellow against the side of the house, and then faded again. For a split second, Nora felt as though she were in heaven, or at least somewhere very good, somewhere far away from everything else she had known up to that moment in her life. She squeezed her eyes shut so as not to forget it.

“Okay, Grace's turn,” Monica said. “What did you bring?”

Grace reached for a soft satchel sitting nearby. Inside was a rolled-up piece of parchment, which, when she unfurled it, revealed a drawing of a girl sleeping in her bed. Nora sat back at first, alarmed to see such a vivid likeness of herself, and then, as curiosity got the better of her, crept forward again. It
was
her. When had Grace even done such a thing? Nora hadn't seen any paper or pencils anywhere; she'd never observed Grace drawing at all.

“I sketch things,” Grace explained. “That's really the only thing I can do. I drew you when you were sleeping,” she said, looking apologetically at Nora. No one said anything for a moment.
Grace looked down at her knee, touched a small scab. “That's it, really. I didn't know what else to bring.”

“Wow,” Monica said. “It looks exactly like her.” She pointed to the limp cowlick Grace had drawn at the top of Nora's forehead. “Even the hair. It's like, perfect.” She turned to look at Ozzie. “Don't you think?”

Ozzie was staring at the picture too. “It's
really
good.” She squinted at Grace, as if looking at her with new eyes. “That's a gift, you know, being able to draw like that. You should really consider doing something with it.”

Grace blushed and then looked away.

Ozzie clapped once, as if killing an insect, and the moment was over. “Okay, now we do ‘Who Wants What?'”

“Yay,” Monica said softly. “My favorite part.”

“What's ‘Who Wants What?'” Grace asked.

“Exactly what is sounds like,” Ozzie said. “We go around the circle, and everyone tells the rest of the group what they want. It can be anything, as long as it's not totally ridiculous, like a million dollars or something. And then, before the next meeting, we'll try to find a way to give it to you.”

“I want my mother to come get me,” Grace sputtered. “But you can't give me that.”

“No,” Ozzie concurred. “But maybe we can do something close to that. What is it about your mother that you want?”

“I just want
her
!” Grace insisted. “Here. Right now. I want to hold her and hug her and remember what she smells like and . . .” She drifted off, a catch in her throat.

Ozzie arched an eyebrow. “What does she smell like?”

Nora listened, breathless, as Monica described her mother's
scent: a combination of burnt caramel, fresh-cut grass, and Chanel No. 5 perfume. Somehow, she realized, the rest of them were going to find a way to get that smell, or something very close to it, to Grace before the next full moon rolled around. Her heart felt close to bursting, thinking of contributing such a joy to someone else. It was the most wonderful thing she could imagine, like having Christmas every month.

“How about you, Mons?” Ozzie asked. “What do you want?”

“A hug.” Monica shrugged, blushing.

“Again?” Ozzie tilted her head. “You said that last time.”

“I want three this time.”

“You're too easy,” Ozzie said, gathering the girl in her arms and hooking her chin over her shoulder. She held her for a good thirty seconds before letting go again. Grace went next, pulling away quickly and ducking her head to avoid Monica's gaze, and Nora did the same thing, but not without noticing that Monica seemed to whimper a bit as she withdrew herself from her grasp. It was strange how such a simple thing could be loaded with complication; awkward in a way that was full of both need and apology.

“Thank you,” Monica said, glancing shyly at all of them.

“How 'bout you, Nora?” Ozzie asked. “Anything you want right now?”

Nora's brain raced. How could such a small question be so difficult to answer? Or was the real question that such a thing had never been asked of her before? Maybe an answer did not even exist. She shrugged, fiddling with a shoelace, her mind a blank.

“Nothing?” Ozzie pressed. “You don't want one single thing right now?”

Nora paused in the middle of a shrug and then picked up her
notebook. “THIS,” she wrote in large, capital letters, showing it to the group. Ozzie grinned broadly, and Monica reached across the circle and took her hand, just as Grace pressed a palm against her knee. “You got it,” Ozzie said.

“How 'bout you, Oz?” Grace asked as the moment passed. “What do you want?”

“Ugh!” Ozzie threw her head back. “I want so many things! I can't decide!”

“Like what?” Monica urged.

“Well, I totally want to get laid.”

Grace rolled her eyes. “You're on your own with that one.”

“Okay then,” Ozzie said. “I want to take a road trip. A real one. With all of you guys.”

“What's a real one?” Monica looked nervous.

“Cross-country,” Ozzie said. “Or at least halfway. In a convertible. Blue, with white siding, the top down. Full tank of gas, and a case of beer in the trunk.”

“I thought you said these things couldn't be totally ridiculous,” Grace said. “None of us even has a driver's license if you hadn't noticed, let alone a car.”

“We could always steal one,” Ozzie looked at her slyly, laughing as Grace gasped. “I'm kidding, tightwad.”

They waited as Nora wrote feverishly in her notebook and then held it up for Ozzie to read. “What is it about the road trip that we could give you now?”

Ozzie sat back and tilted her head up. For a long moment, she looked up into the night, as if studying a specific star. “Freedom,” she said finally. “The feeling of being able to go anywhere at all
with nothing to worry about, nowhere to be, no one to answer to but myself.”

A silence descended on the group. It was a tricky one, for sure. But, Nora decided, she would do everything she could to try to give Ozzie something close to that feeling before the next meeting.

“All right, now comes the most important part.” Ozzie stood up, turned around, and held her arms up until it looked as though the moon had settled in between them. “We come up here every month during the full moon because this is the time that her powers are at their fullest.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute.” Grace paused in the middle of rolling up her parchment paper. “Is this gonna be like some voodoo ceremony? 'Cause I'm one hundred percent Catholic. I believe in Jesus and Mary. I'm not into the whole moon- and planet-worship kind of thing.”

“Mary is a symbol of the moon,” Ozzie said.

“Mary?” Grace repeated. “As in the Blessed
Virgin
Mary?”

Ozzie nodded. “Haven't you ever seen a picture of her standing on the crescent moon? That's because the moon and Mary both represent the same thing: purity.”

Grace's forehead crinkled as she considered this. “Well, I guess it'll be okay, then.”

Ozzie cleared her throat and began again. “The Invisibles choose to hold their meetings under the full moon because she is the strongest female force in the universe. She is our first mother. The one who will never let us down, who will stay with us always and forever.” She grabbed her stick from out of her back pocket, stood up, and faced the moon again. Her hand
moved quickly as she traced the air with her stick. “Tonight we ask her to listen to us, to read the wishes we send her for our future, and to answer them someday when the time is right.” Ozzie's hand moved faster and faster as she traced her wish in the sky; for a moment, Nora thought Ozzie was joking, because her wish was so long. But then Ozzie's hand grew limp, and when she turned and faced the rest of them, Nora could see the glimmer of perspiration along the line of her nose. Her lower lip trembled and she sat down quickly.

“Your turn,” she said to Monica. Her voice was low, hoarse, shaken.

Monica stood up and wrote her wish out for the moon in stick letters. Grace followed, and then Nora, who stood for a full minute under the orb, just staring at the milky glow it cast on the yard below, how the light of it bathed the steeple tip of Saint Augustine's church in the distance, turning it a silvery blue.

“It can be anything,” Ozzie whispered behind her. “Anything at all.”

Nora moved forward then and lifted her arm and began to write.

S
he woke with a start as the plane began to descend. Beneath her, she could feel the wheels of it emerging from the belly, its iron legs stretching and creaking like the heavy branches of trees.

The large woman in purple leaned toward her. “We're here,” she said. Her breath smelled like salted peanuts. “You slept through the whole thing.”

Nora breathed a sigh of relief. Past the old man, out the window, she could see land again, a line of trees, and sheets of pavement as they came closer and closer into focus.

It was time.

For better or worse, it was time.