What Not to Do If You Turn Invisible. Ross Welford
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Название: What Not to Do If You Turn Invisible
Автор: Ross Welford
Издательство: HarperCollins
isbn: 9780008156367
isbn:
So it must be the second one that is causing me to be invisible. Light is passing through me, so even though I am still here, it looks as though I am not.
Not that knowing this helps me much.
I’m playing the sequence of events back in my mind: getting onto the sunbed, setting the timer, falling asleep, being woken by Lady nudging her bowl, and …
Lady. Where is she?
I last saw her running off out of the back door. Standing there, looking out, I call for her, then whistle, then call again.
It’s like: have I not got enough to worry about at the moment without a lost dog to add to it?
I’m thinking of the rash of Missing Dog posters on lamp posts lately, and I feel sick. Everyone has been talking about them.
There used to be one or two a year taped to lamp posts: lost dog, lost cat, have you seen it? That sort of thing.
Just recently there seems to have been about one a month. Gram mentioned it the other day, telling me to keep a close eye on Lady when I took her out.
‘You never know, Ethel,’ she said. ‘There’s some funny people around.’
What if someone has taken Lady? Lady is so friendly she’d go with anybody.
I need to find her, and to do that I need to go outside: probably to the beach as that’s where I would go if I was a dog.
It’s a risk. It’s a massive risk, in fact, but sometimes the only alternative to a risk is to do nothing at all, and that is not really an option right now.
I’m going to have to go outside, while invisible.
I add some clothes to those I already have on. Socks and trainers, a polo-neck sweater that covers up my invisible throat, a long-sleeved hoodie, and already I’m looking slightly less weird – kind of like one of those headless shop dummies, if that qualifies as ‘less weird’.
In my bottom drawer is a pair of gloves, which leaves only my head to sort out.
There’s a plastic crate in the garage with old dressing-up gear. In it I find a sparkly wig from some school show I was in and a plastic mask with a clown’s face. I hate clowns, but still: it does the job. With the hood of my sweater up, I look like … what?
I look like some weird kid who’s decided to go around wearing a clown mask. Odd, definitely, but not totally mad.
I’m halfway to the front door in this get-up when my phone pings with an incoming text message.
From: Unknown Contact
Hi Ethel: Is now a good time 4 me to work on my beach bod? I’ll stay out of ur way. With you in 2 mins. Elliot
And there you have it, in one single text message, why Elliot Boyd grates on you so much. Pushy, presumptuous, in your face and a dozen other words that mean ‘total pain in the neck’ are all going through my head as my fingers compose a reply.
NO. Not a good time. Just on my way out. Try me later. Ethel
Why, why, why instead of saying ‘just on my way out’ did I not say, ‘I have gone out’? If I had, I could have pretended not to be in when the doorbell goes.
Which it does – seconds after I press ‘send’.
I’m in the hallway. I can see his outline in the front-door glass, I can even hear his phone when he gets my text, and then he sticks his fingers through the letter box and calls through the opening.
‘All right, Eff! Good job I caught you! Open the door, eh?’
What choice do I have?
I open the door.
We both gasp when we see what the other is wearing.
‘Whoa!’ he says. ‘You never told me I had to come in fancy dress. What’s that all about?’
‘What about you?’ I say.
I may be in a bizarre outfit of sparkly wig and mask and gloves – but Boyd? He looks like he’s heading to Florida: vast baggy shorts, a Hawaiian-style shirt decorated with sharks, sunglasses (unnecessary today), and a baseball cap sitting on top of his springy hair. He’s carrying a beach bag and I can see it contains a towel and various tanning lotions.
We stare at each other in the doorway for a good few seconds.
If I wasn’t feeling so completely unnerved by what was going on inside my clothes, I could probably have said something smart like, ‘Sorry, I don’t take clothes advice from someone ejected from Disneyland for fashion crimes.’ But I don’t.
Instead I say, ‘It’s a sponsored thing. I’ve got to stay dressed up for a whole day to raise money for, erm …’
Quick, Ethel. Think of something. He’s waiting for you to finish the sentence.
‘… for your lighthouse thing.’
Why? Why that? It’s like there’s another me inside my head, yelling at me: ‘What did you say that for, you complete pinhead? Now he thinks you care about his stupid lighthouse obsession. You idiot! Why didn’t you just say famine relief or cancer research or climate change? Or anything else?’
And all I can do about the voice in my head is reply with another head-voice saying, ‘I know! I’m sorry! I’m just not thinking straight. I’ve got quite a lot on my mind at the moment in case you hadn’t noticed.’
Boyd has been talking.
‘… Terrific! Fanks a lot! Sponsored fancy dress? Brilliant idea! The whole day? Sweet! Anyway, I just got your text. Sorry, should have checked earlier. Just on your way out, are you? When are you back? I could wait for you, or, you know – let myself out?’
No. Definitely not. Instead, I tell him about Lady.
‘I saw her going down to the bottom of the backyard,’ I say to him. ‘I thought she was just going for a wee.’ That is less than entirely truthful. What I really thought was that Lady was utterly, totally freaked out by my invisibility and had legged it.
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