The Opposite of Invisible (11 page)

He moves his head to look at me, eyelashes like curtains. “Are you sure?”

Thank you, thank you for asking
. No, I am not sure. Of
anything. When he tells me he loves me, and I believe it, maybe that’s when I’ll be sure.

I just kiss him again. And again.

I guess he gets the point; no one is moving toward the backseat.

For tonight.

I haven’t seen much of Jewel since the Bath, even from a distance. In Spanish, he faces the wall. But I do know that he and Vanessa are glued.

I do my best not to think about exactly what body parts might be coming into contact between the two of them.

I have no right to be jealous that Vanessa is with Jewel. I know that. But I thought I broke his heart at the troll.

Now does he even care about me?

Of course, I see Vanessa in art workshop. She’s been doing a series of hearts. Not lovey-dovey bubble ones, but anatomic hearts. Organs. With valves. She’s painting them onto canvases, every heart a different color.

Is that her way of falling in love?

Today she works in red.

I focus on my Christmas portrait of Mom and Dad. It’s their faces against a red background, which represents our kitchen. My mom’s nose is too long, so I get to work on fixing it.

I zone out as I create a better world on canvas.

Friday I take my parents’ portrait out of my cubby. I ended up making it more impressionistic because I couldn’t quite get their faces right. It’s done, I decide. Best I can do.

I walk back to my seat. How much do I wish there were a glass studio at school? Working with glass is all I really feel like doing. After just one lesson it feels more exciting to me than anything in the studio. Plus it’s not in the studio. It’s my own thing.

My mind wanders. It occurs to me that these are probably the stools that were used in the Bloodbath box room. I could be sitting where spaghetti-brains sat.

As I take out my drawing pad to work on the showcase cover, I smile, thinking of being in that room with Simon. The way he kissed me.

I draw an elephant, huge, his trunk raised.

I go into an art trance as I work on filling in the beast’s body.

My mind is blissfully blank until the bell rings.

When it does, I walk out into the hall. Jewel stands there, waiting for Vanessa. He doesn’t even look at me as I pass.

My brain spins.

I didn’t factor in that gaining a boyfriend might mean losing a best friend.

I barely make it to my locker before I start crying. I bend down and root around in the pile of junk at the bottom of my locker, hiding.

  I’m wearing my new denim mini and the light blue shirt my mom chose. The top brightens my eyes.

I have no idea how Simon’s friends dress for parties. I can imagine some of the girls in clothes they consider rebellious, from Hot Topic in Westlake Center. Every time I go by there, I think it’s where quirky, cool things go to die.

Jewel and I joked about that. It started when we saw a
Gremlins
T-shirt hanging in the window, lusted after it, and then saw Christy VanSant, head cheerleader, wearing it under her J.Crew blazer.

At eight o’clock, Simon’s honk comes: three short bursts.

“Hey, good-lookin’,” he says as I open the car door and climb in.

He’s wearing the same outfit as the day at Pike Place Market. The turquoise sweater, Adidas vest, and his best faded jeans.

I wonder if he knows how much I wanted him that day, before I actually had him. If that’s why he’s wearing it.

“You look good,” I tell him as we zip over to Mike’s house.

“It’s fun when Corrigan’s parents skip town,” Simon says as he finds a spot for the car.

People I don’t recognize stand on Corrigan’s small front porch, drinking out of red plastic cups and laughing too loudly.

“Private school,” Simon whispers into my hair as we approach. They all seem to know him, waving and even whooping as we approach.

“Who’s your girl?” asks a guy wearing a white baseball cap over his buzz cut.

“This is Alice,” Simon says.

This is me
, I think. I am Simon’s girl.

Inside the house, someone props a stereo speaker on a window ledge.

Some rap song thumps onto the porch.

“Woo-hoo!” screams the guy, raising his drink above his head.

“Let’s go in.” Simon gives my arm a squeeze.

I follow Simon inside. He acts like it’s his own place.

I realize that I’ve never felt as comfortable even at Jewel’s house as Simon seems to feel here. And come to think of it, he has a way of owning whatever space he occupies. I guess that’s confidence.

Simon heads directly for the kitchen counter, stocked with a variety of alcohol. Every kid in this place, except for Simon and me, must’ve raided their parents’ stash.

I guess I realized that a party at Corrigan’s would mean alcohol, but this is really a lot. Simon seems fine with it, though, even excited about it. I’ve never really had the desire to get drunk.

He hands me a red cup that smells like raspberries and nail polish remover. I step out of my frame. I take a drink.

Simon pours his own cup to the brim and we move to the couch.

I give myself over, drinking up, chatting with strangers about pop music, borrowing lip gloss from Mandy. As she hands me the tube, she says, “What’s mine is yours.”

I am at this party. I am the life.

I nuzzle into Simon, leaning on his arm, my head against his neck.

We drink and talk some more.

Simon stands up and takes my hand, leads me back to the kitchen. While he’s mixing vodka with lemon-lime soda, Mike stumbles in and opens the fridge. “I gotta find some pepperoni!”

“Only Corrigan decides to make pizza during a party where everyone is drinking but no one is eating,” says Simon, stirring his concoction. “I gotta pee.”

“Get in line!” Mike shouts.

By the time Simon’s back from the bathroom, I’m alone in the kitchen and I’ve finished his green drink. It tasted like melted Popsicle.

I’ve gone beyond half-drunk. For the first time in my life. My head feels light. I close my eyes and try to get back into myself. I try to drown out the voices, the pumping music, the sway of the crowd.

Simon grabs me by the waist.

It feels too good.

Then I feel like I might vomit.

Simon burps in my ear. I turn around. His eyes are watery. “I’m pretty gone.”

“I can see that.” We’re both drunk. It’s a couple of miles from Corrigan’s house to mine. I could walk. “You can’t drive me home.”

Corrigan comes back to the kitchen, takes his pizza out of the oven, and grabs Simon by the elbow. “Shooting pool,” he says. “You versus me.”

Simon follows him.

He actually leaves me standing there.

I take deep breaths. I could stay; hang with Mandy. But the world is spinning. Simon’s not with me. I feel like I’m falling.

I slip out the garage door and start walking. Carefully.

Saturday I hear the chimes above the front door when my parents leave for a brunch date with Dad’s old colleagues. I stay in bed until one.

They know. When I got home last night they were waiting in the kitchen. I was as quick as possible about saying good night but I’m sure they could tell that I wasn’t my sober self.

I’ve never disappointed them like this before. Or myself.

I sit up in bed and look at my Dove Girl.

It’s almost like she’s sending me a message, instead of our usual thing, which is all about me asking her for help.

I get out of bed and grab my sketchbook from the floor. I sit on the bed. Close my eyes.

Her face is calmness. She’s only a few lines and circles. She’s barely even there. Nothing weighs her down. She’s light. She can fly.

Pencil to paper, I open my eyes and start with the bird, her wings. The angles of the feathers are so simple, but I’ve never been able to do them exactly before.
Just breathe
, I tell myself. Pencil up and pencil down. Just shapes.

Then I get to the eyes—curved lines with three-quarter circles underneath. The nose, long with only a slight bend. The lips, a straight line surrounded by a heart.

Pencil up, pencil down. Simple.

I’ve done it. I’ve copied her.

And I think she’s starting to rub off on me.

I need to find my own peace.

Talking to a poster is so not enough.

I need to concentrate on friends who talk back.

  The rest of Saturday is filled with cable television and a Nancy Drew book that I found under my bed. Mysteries solved in the span of about two hours. I wish.

Then I lounge on the couch watching guys who remind me of Simon’s friends try to win a date by bench-pressing the girl, who wears a bikini and doesn’t have tan lines.

The phone rings as contestant number three lifts the girl. Maybe it’s Jewel calling to … what? Apologize for leaving me to the wolves?

“Hello?”

“Hey.” Not Jewel. But I feel a flutter in my middle.

“Hi.”

“You said that already.” Simon sounds nervous.

“Did I?”

“So, I’m just calling to say I had a good time at the party.”

I did too. But I have a hangover.

And what about the way the night ended? That was so
not
fun. Are we going to talk about it? About Simon’s being too wasted to take me home? My face feels hot.

“Yeah,” I say.

“You left early.”

“You remember?” I am harsher than I want to be.

“Of course,” he says. “I looked all over for you.”

How can I explain the way I felt at that party without him? “Yeah.”

Maybe he’ll invite me out and we can talk somewhere. I think there’s a good band at the Showbox tonight. I could invite him.

“Hey,” I say. “Let’s get a
Stranger
from the newsstand and check out the shows tonight.”

He breathes. Then I hear Corrigan in the background. He’s saying something like “Tell your woman you’ve gotta go!”

Simon coughs. “Actually, I gotta go.”

“Oh.”

“I’m at Corrigan’s still. Crashed here. We’re going for burritos.”

I picture them, surrounded by empty bottles and who knows what else. “Sounds good.”

“Talk to you later.”

Somehow that sounds even less promising than
“See ya.”

Most people would be getting grounded right about now.

Maybe a break from Simon would be the right thing.

At dinner, my parents bring it up. Dad looks at me over his pasta and says, “We need to talk about last night.”

“I know,” I say. I might cry if I say more, and I really don’t want to do that right now.

“No more drinking,” Mom says. “None!”

“I know. I didn’t like it. It felt awful.”

“Remember that feeling,” Dad says. “Getting drunk is not all right.”

It was horrible being drunk, and seeing Simon drunk. It made me feel … more alone than ever. Even at a party, I felt … invisible, again.

“This is your freebie,” Mom says. “Next time we won’t be so easy on you.”

“I’m done with it. I swear.”

If only I could get Simon to make the same promise.

Simon calls after dinner on Sunday. “How was your weekend?”

He’s being casual. “Fine. Yours?” I hope he can hear that I’m being short with him.

“After Corrigan’s, I worked at the aquarium. Then today we had practice.”

“Oh.” I pause.

“Something wrong?”

Yes. I’m waiting for him to apologize for the party.

He left me alone. And then he chose burritos with a beefhead over hanging out with me. It didn’t feel like … what I want in a boyfriend.

I just blurt it out, “At the end of the party and then all the rest of the weekend, I didn’t really feel like I was your girlfriend.”

His voice sounds thinner. “What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t take me home, or make sure I got there,
and my parents … then you didn’t hang out with me on Saturday or today. What’s that about?” I’m trying not to boil.

“I was having fun. It was a party. And the rest of it? I guess … I don’t know. I … feel like maybe I’ve been too into you.”

I fiddle with the magnets on the refrigerator. “How so?”

He lets out a breath. “I just like being around you so much. I want you to be happy. I guess that’s part of why I went with Corrigan at the party. I could tell you weren’t really into the party anymore, and I didn’t want you to get angry.”

“I wasn’t angry. It was more … uncomfortable.”

“I didn’t know you felt so bad that you’d leave. I feel terrible about that. I’m going to do better. Okay?”

It’s a dream come true.

So why don’t I feel lucky?

Monday morning, I reach the scone place and wonder if I have time to grab coffee. I look in the window and see a blue sweatshirt. That’s what I notice first. Not Jewel. His hoodie.

Is Vanessa with him?

God. She lives in Ballard. Of course she’s not with him before school.

He turns, sipping what I know is a vanilla latte.

He sees me.

We’re caught.

There’s still three-quarters of a mile to school and we’re both headed that way.

He walks out of the shop and I say, “I liked your photos at the art show.”

We fall into step together.

“I didn’t think you were there,” he says.

Yep, spying through the window. Trying to be invisible. “I helped take down the show.”

Okay, we’re talking. Just two old friends walking and talking. Except for the elephant walking between us.

He drinks from his cup and I tug on my non-ponytailed hair.

“How are your parents?” he asks.

I think about telling him that my mom mentioned our
families doing Thanksgiving together. She frowned when I didn’t say anything.

“They’re good.”

We pass the junk shop and its window is done up in pilgrims. Corn husks everywhere.

“Aliens,” Jewel says.

I look at him. “Like in the Shyamalan movie?”

“Yeah.”

We watched that movie on DVD during the summer. We argued about the ending, where it turns out that God has been planning everything just right so that the family can beat the aliens. Jewel thought it was too easy, a stupid explanation. I just liked seeing that everyone was okay in the end. Is that how this will turn out, with everything okay in the end?