How To Be Invisible

Peaches sagged back into the sofa.

  “After dinner tomorrow, when I get back from pilates.”

  Melchior paused for a moment, then left the room and went up to bed without another word.

  Peaches turned on the television again. The news was on and she just sat there staring at it. She paused the image on a picture of a man with an angry face who was demonstrating against something or other.

  After several minutes, she took the image off pause, and switched to some old movie. It must have been a sad one, because she started weeping. I didn’t want to watch the film, so I decided to go to bed.

  Then I realized that I was unable to go to bed. Because Melchior had closed the door behind him, and there was no way for me to get out without making it look like there was a ghost in the room.

  I was so enervated, I thought I was going to keel over there and then, but after about fifteen minutes Peaches yawned, dried her eyes with the back of her hand, switched off the television, opened the door and headed for the kitchen.

  “Enervated”, incidentally, means “weakened” or “exhausted”.

  She closed the door behind her, but once I heard that she was in the kitchen, I took the chance and opened it again, closed it behind me, and bolted back up to my room. There I grabbed the book, held it to my chest and ran into the mirror. Immediately, I was back to being visible.

  It hadn’t been a completely wasted evening, I decided, as I crawled as quietly as I could back under the covers, hiding the book beneath my pillow. I’d learned something important about being invisible – make sure you’re not stuck in a room with a closed door, because you might not be able to get out again.

  Also I had learned what the word “lecherous” meant. Since I hadn’t heard it before, I looked it up. It means “lewd, lustful, lascivious or libidinous”.

  I had no idea why Peaches thought Melchior’s fat ass was lecherous though. Anyway, his ass wasn’t fat. It was so thin he hardly had an ass.

  But I hoped to find out pretty soon. Peaches had promised to talk with Melchior about the Big Problem Between Them the next night, so I would find out all about it then. It gave me butterflies in my stomach to think that I would finally get to discover the big secret.

  But as it turned out, I was very late getting home the next day. Because another opportunity came up – one that was just too good to be missed.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MY BOWELS EXPLODE

  I often talk to myself. Inside my head, not out loud. Everybody does, presumably.

  I might say to myself in a stern, reproachful voice, “You really must try harder to be less shy.” Or when I get angry about something, I say to myself in a soothing voice, “Just take it easy.”

  It’s commonplace. But who is talking to whom?

  If there are two voices inside your head, are they both real, or is only one real? Or are they actually both the same voice?

  If they are the same, why does one ask questions and the other answer them? Why does one voice ask for reassurance and the other offer it? Why does one urge and cajole and nag and the other try to do what it is told?

  How can a voice exist in the first place when there are no vocal chords to create it, only brain cells, and no ear to listen to it, only more brain cells?

  This confuses me. I’ve read too many science books that tell me there’s no such thing as “me” in the first place, let alone two “me”s, because you can’t empirically study the mind – it is not physical. The mind has no substance of any kind. Therefore it cannot logically exist. And yet it must do, because I am thinking all the time.

  Only the brain exists, because it is material, and something that is not material cannot by definition exist. Yet even with modern CAT scanners that monitor the brain’s activity, only a very small amount can be known about such a very complex organ. We know virtually nothing about how it generates consciousness.

  The morning after I had eavesdropped on my parents, I said to myself, “You had better be careful with this invisibility experiment – perhaps there is stuff it is better for you not to know.” Which I considered was a mature thought to be imparting to my other self who, unfortunately, wasn’t really listening. But the dialogue stopped sharply as soon as I checked my Facebook page.

  On my home page, there were three words in capital letters: I AM GAY.

  I blushed. Doubtless Mr Maurice Bailey would have thought it amusing that I could blush, since he thought it peculiar that I might get a suntan.

  I knew perfectly well that it was possible to hack into people’s Facebook accounts and leave misleading messages, but I had never been a victim. I removed the post immediately and hoped that no one had seen it. It was almost certainly Lloyd Archibald Turnbull doing this, or one of his gang – one of the two Waynes or possibly Susan Brown.

  I was unsure what to do. I could not report this to the school authorities – it would be too embarrassing, and I had no proof that it was Lloyd Turnbull or his cohorts anyway. Furthermore, I was aware that snitching, or “grassing up” as it is known among the criminal fraternity, is taboo among schoolchildren.

  I was also morally confused. Is it really an insult to say someone is gay? In my case it was simply inaccurate. I suspected it was intended as an insult though, and that was enough to make it upsetting.

  But I had no time to think about it, because I had to hurry off to school. The bus was due in a few minutes. I grabbed my copy of How To Be Invisible – who knew when it might come in handy? – and stuffed it into the bottom of my book bag.

  Within seconds of my reaching the stop, the bus arrived with Mr Maurice Bailey driving. I entered through the automatic doors, and he smiled as usual. Then out of the blue he said, “What kind of car does your dad have?”

  “Pardon?” I said.

  “Is it a BMW?”

  I didn’t know why he would have thought that.

  “No,” I said. “It’s a five-year-old Mitsubishi, silver-grey, with a 1597cc engine.”

  He snorted.

  “Foreign rubbish. Well, they’re all foreign now. One part comes from China, another from India. Do you know what I drive when I’m not driving this bus?”

  I said I had heard that he drove a jeep.

  He looked disgusted.

  “Who told you that? A jeep? Yankee scrap metal. No. My baby is a 1952 Series 1 Land Rover, British made. A real classic. None of your foreign junk.”

  I nodded as if I knew what he was talking about and hurried off to go and sit down.

  The bus was very full that morning. In fact there was only one seat free.

  That seat was next to Susan Brown, who was staring at me fixedly from behind the lenses of her pink-rimmed spectacles.

  I decided I would stand, but Susan Brown shifted over towards the window, clearly implying that I should join her. I felt conflicted. For one thing, I was fairly convinced – despite her sympathetic message – that Susan Brown was “in” with the Lloyd Turnbull coterie.

  “Coterie”, incidentally, is another name for “gang”.

  But more disturbing than the suspicion that Susan Brown wasn’t to be trusted was the growing recognition that I was physically attracted to her. She was extremely pretty – at least to my way of seeing. She had big eyes peeping out from behind her glasses and clear skin, apart from a peppering of freckles on her nose, and a sort of smile that I thought was very calm and reassuring.

  So I had one of those conversations with myself. It went like this.

  Me 1: Why don’t you sit with her?

  Me 2: Because she’s friends with Lloyd Archibald Turnbull and I can’t trust her.

  Me 1: It’s only a bus journey. You don’t have to trust her.

  Me 2: There’s no room on the seat.

  Me 1: That’s not true.

  Me 2: I’m happy standing up.

  Me 1: No, you’re not.

  Me 2: I’m too shy to sit next to her.

  Me 1: Don’t be a baby.

  Me 2: I think I’ll just stay her
e.

  Me 1: Sit down, you baby.

  Me 2: Who are you calling a baby?

  Me 1: You.

  Me 2: I’m not taking that from you.

  Me 1: Do something to prove me wrong, then.

  Me 2: I might.

  Me 1: Go on then.

  Me 2: I don’t have to do what you tell me.

  Me 1: Baby.

  That was simply rude. I wasn’t going to take that from me. So I sat down next to Susan Brown, making sure that there was a suitable distance between me and her – so much so, that half of my bottom was hanging off the edge of the seat.

  For the second time that day, I was blushing deeply. At the same time, I felt happy to be sitting next to her, even if, as was quite probable, she was in league with my nemesis, Lloyd Archibald Turnbull.

  A “nemesis”, incidentally, is “an unbeatable opponent or a source of harm”.

  We sat there in silence for two stops, during which time I simply stared at the floor. My rational mind seemed not to be functioning very well. Then, as we approached the third stop, she spoke to me.

  “Where do you live then, Strato Nyman?”

  Her voice was, quite objectively speaking, lovely, like words set to a tune. It was a soft voice, but surprisingly clear – I could hear it over the roar of the bus engine. And it held something in it that made me somehow slightly bolder. I looked up at her. She was smiling pleasantly.

  “One hundred and seventeen Devonshire Crescent HP3 7FS.”

  It felt like the stupidest thing I had ever said in my life. But Susan Brown didn’t giggle or laugh at me. She simply replied, “That’s only a few streets from me. I must get on the stop before your one.”

  “Yes,” I said, racking my brains for something more interesting to say. But nothing would come. We fell back into silence for a while.

  Then, just as we were reaching the fifth stop, Susan Brown said to me, “Is Lloyd Turnbull still giving you a hard time?”

  I shrugged as if I hadn’t noticed whether he was or not.

  “I saw that mean trick he pulled on Facebook. I know what he was getting at. ‘Dark Matter.’ He seemed to think it was hilarious.”

  I said nothing.

  “Actually, I feel a bit sorry for him because of his bad arm. He wasn’t like this before the car accident. I think it makes him feel he has to go on the attack before anyone attacks him first. Also, his mother is a gorgon.”

  A gorgon, I knew, was a mythological female creature with hair made of venomous snakes and a face so hideous it turned anyone who saw it to stone.

  “I don’t really mind about him,” I heard myself say.

  Again, my two selves were having a fight, one of them kicking the other brutally on the shin. Because if I did really mind – and I did – why wasn’t I saying so?

  Suddenly I had a moment of insight into why grown-ups lie so much – because they don’t know why they’re doing it, or even that they’re doing it.

  “You should have minded,” said Susan Brown.

  Now my two selves were having another argument. One self was saying to the other, “Should I tell her about the new post this morning?” And the other one was saying, “No, definitely not.” And the first one was saying, “Don’t be such a coward.” And the second one didn’t have a chance to reply because then Susan Brown said something else.

  “Have they done anything else on Facebook?”

  Now my radar was on. Was she simply acting as an agent for Lloyd Archibald Turnbull and the two Waynes? Did they simply want to check that hacking into my account had had the intended effect – to make me upset? My two selves went at it again.

  Me 1: Tell her.

  Me 2: No – she’s not to be trusted.

  Me 1: But you have to trust someone.

  Me 2: Why? Why do I have to trust someone?

  “Yes,” I said, cutting my thoughts off in mid-train. “They hacked into my account this morning and updated my status to say that I was gay.”

  At that very moment the bus shuddered to a halt, and there was a clamorous huddle of people getting off. Susan Brown dropped her bag. I checked my watch. I was late, and I had Dr Ojebande first. If I was late for him, he would punish me for it all through the lesson.

  I could not hang around waiting for Susan Brown to find her bag. I joined the throng and headed for the door. I hoped upon hope that Susan Brown was on my side instead of Lloyd Turnbull’s. But it isn’t easy to trust someone. Every time you do and they let you down, it gets harder to trust someone else the next time, until one day you don’t trust anybody at all.

  As soon as I left the bus, I felt the most overwhelming desire to evacuate my bowels. I didn’t know if it was out of nervousness, or whether there had been something wrong with the mushroom omelette Melchior had made me for breakfast. Peaches had insisted on picking her own mushrooms since we’d moved down here, but I wasn’t sure she knew the difference between a chanterelle and the death cap, the former being delicious and the latter being fatal. Either way, there was nothing for it. Even though it would make me even later, I had to stop off at the boys’ room, where my bowels virtually exploded for thirty seconds non-stop.

  Five minutes later, I made it into the class. Everybody was seated and the lesson had begun. Dr Ojebande turned his bulging green eyes on me. He ran his hand exasperatedly through his ice-white hair. He tapped his black Bible impatiently with his finger in a very ominous fashion. But I barely noticed. I could not take my eyes off Susan Brown.

  She had taken a seat directly next to Lloyd Archibald Turnbull.

  Now I was certain that Susan Brown and Lloyd Turnbull were in cahoots. I couldn’t help but stare. Lloyd Turnbull gave me a small, mocking grin. Susan Brown looked impassive. I tore my gaze away, and made my way towards an empty seat, eyes glued to the floor.

  “Nice of you to join us, Mr Nyman,” said Dr Ojebande softly, now looking pointedly at his watch. It was an old-fashioned pocket watch that he kept in a small pocket of his suit, apparently designed just for that purpose.

  I mumbled a barely audible apology and sat down.

  “Is there any particular reason you would like to share with us as to why, when every other student in the class made it to their desk on time, you, with all your alleged intellectual gifts, could not do the same?”

  He replaced the watch in its special pocket and stared at me accusingly.

  I said nothing. I was feeling too sick and too shy. I could hardly say that I had been stuck in the toilet.

  “Well?” Dr Ojebande’s voice took on a harder tone.

  “No, Dr Ojebande,” I mumbled.

  “Pardon?” said Dr Ojebande. He waited.

  I said nothing.

  “I thought since you are ‘gifted and talented’ that you would be able to articulate yourself better. That is right, isn’t it, Mr Nyman? You are gifted and talented? Is that not the case?”

  I mumbled something again, not knowing what to say.

  “He said, ‘Mumble mumble glup bibble,’” said Lloyd Turnbull.

  The rest of the class laughed, although I noticed that Susan Brown did not.

  Now Dr Ojebande turned his swivelling eye on Lloyd Archibald Turnbull.

  “I have already had to re-seat you this morning for your insolent behaviour, Mr Turnbull. It appears to have had no inhibiting effect on you. Therefore, I would like you to join Mr Nyman in a one-hour detention this evening.”

  “Arse!” said Lloyd Archibald Turnbull, pretending that he was sneezing.

  “I beg your pardon?” snapped back Dr Ojebande, his whole body tensing, leaning forward now towards Lloyd Turnbull. His hands closed around the Bible as if he was going to fling it at him.

  “Yes, sir,” said Lloyd Turnbull sullenly.

  With that, Dr Ojebande’s hand slowly released his Bible. His grey, heavy eyelids flickered, and then he turned back to the blackboard and began to write.

  The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Encouragingly, nobody made any remarks about my Faceb
ook status. Perhaps I had removed it quickly enough, although presumably whoever had posted it would be able to do it again if they so chose.

  I rang Peaches on my mobile phone to inform her that I was going to be late on account of the fact that I had been given a detention. She seemed unconcerned. I believe I had disturbed her while she was working on her book, and when she is writing she really takes very little interest in anything or anyone else.

  School finished at 3.30 p.m., and I walked towards the detention room, clutching my book bag to my chest – I was nervous of anything happening to How To Be Invisible. When I reached the room, Dr Ojebande hadn’t arrived yet, but Lloyd Archibald Turnbull was sitting at one of the desks, picking at a spot on the back of his bad hand. He looked up briefly when I entered, then went back to picking at the spot. I found a desk four rows away, slightly to the rear of him, and sat down, still holding my bag.

  After a few minutes, Dr Ojebande still hadn’t arrived. At that point, to my surprise, Lloyd Archibald Turnbull turned his head and spoke.

  “Do you want a stick of gum?”

  I looked up and he was holding out a packet of Wrigley’s chewing gum.

  I decided not to mumble this time. I think my confession to Susan Brown had loosened me up a bit.

  “You just want to get me into trouble.”

  Lloyd Turnbull shrugged. All the same, I reached out and took the gum, although I decided not to open it. I put it in my pocket. Lloyd Turnbull smiled, unwrapped another stick of gum and put it in his mouth.

  Emboldened by the fact that he had spoken to me politely in the first place, I decided to risk a question.

  “Turnbull?”

  He turned lazily to look towards me, his jaw working on the gum

  “Nyman?”

  “What have you got against me?”

  I could hear my voice quaver slightly as I asked this. My blink rate became frenetic.

  He smiled in a perfectly friendly fashion, chewing slowly, then turned again towards the front of the room and spoke without looking at me.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  At that moment, Dr Ojebande walked into the room, and without missing a beat or even apparently looking in our direction, he said, “Turnbull, take that gum out of your mouth and dispose of it immediately.”