Laurie sits up. He’s making the face I’ve never seen anyone else pull off, like he’s smiling and frowning at the same time—a mixture of amusement and worry. “Who?”
“Stephen,” I say. “He helped me with the bags. Sort of.”
I throw a smile in Stephen’s direction, wagering that a friendship might spark if we share a joke about our mutual skill at bag dropping. But he’s staring at my brother and his hands are shaking.
Laurie’s gaze slides to my right, where Stephen is frozen. Laurie’s brow furrows and then he looks at me again. “Okay, Josie, what’s the deal?”
“Every time you call me ‘Josie,’ it defeats the purpose of my pen name,” I say.
“Whatever, Betty.”
I give him the finger. “Come on, bro. As the elder child, I am entitled, nay, obliged to order you about. Two lemonades. Now.”
“Why two? Aren’t you a little old to have an imaginary friend?” He grins. “I know you’ve dreamed a dream of setting me up with my soul mate now that we’ve landed in this supposedly gay-little-brother-friendly metropolis, but I’m not that desperate . . . yet. Besides, my own imagination serves just fine when needed. I’ll keep you posted, though.”
I don’t understand. My eyes flit from Laurie to Stephen and back again. It couldn’t be any hotter in this stuffy apartment, but I feel like someone dumped a bucket of ice water over my shoulders.
“Don’t be rude.” I bite my lip because I sound like my mother.
“Uh—” Laurie starts to look genuinely concerned. “How long were you out in the heat?” He scrambles up. “I’ll get you that lemonade.”
My heart bangs around my rib cage like a pinball as Laurie trots towards the kitchen.
Beside me, Stephen whispers, “It’s okay. I’ll go.”
Chapter 3
FOR THE FIRST FEW minutes, I try to convince myself that the curse has been broken. There was a time limit, and I’ve reached it. Just as easily as I disappeared from the world, I have reappeared. Nobody told me this day would come. Maybe nobody knew. But there, in the hallway, for the very first time, I am seen.
It’s exhilarating and horrifying and mind-blowing. She sees me, and I assume that everyone will see me now. It just happened to be her.
My curse, my sentence, has been completed.
I try to remain calm. There is no way to express what I’m feeling. Maybe to a stranger I’d never see again, I’d feel the freedom to blurt out what’s happened. But this is a girl who is now living on my hall. I must act normal. Not the normal of my own life, but the normal I’ve witnessed in everybody else’s.
This is it, I think. I can do this.
The curse has been broken.
I am visible.
As it sinks in, the exhilaration and the horror and the mind-blowing ordinariness of what I am doing all combine into a fierce static of emotions. Elizabeth doesn’t seem to notice this. To her, I am just a boy from down the hall.
Extraordinary.
Somehow I make conversation. Somehow I speak.
She is seeing the face I never get to see, because no mirror has ever caught me.
She invites me in for lemonade. I want to see how far I can take this. I feel like I can take it as far as I want.
Still, picking up her bags requires effort. I must concentrate, make my body present. I figure that perhaps it doesn’t come back all at once. It’s a shock to the system. A complete reorganization of the system. This is going to take time. I lift the bags and follow her into her apartment.
I figure we’ll be alone. We can keep talking. I can continue to get used to the notion of being visible. Then I see Elizabeth’s brother on the floor. Another person.
I prepare myself.
I am ready for him to see me.
I am ready.
But he doesn’t.
He doesn’t see me.
Now the static I’ve been feeling fills the room, fills the world. I see the surprise on Elizabeth’s face, but it’s nothing compared to the surprise that seems to be lashing at my every thought.
He doesn’t see me.
But she does. She does.
“Aren’t you a little old to have an imaginary friend?” he asks her.
That’s what it feels like. I am trapped in someone else’s imagination. Someone else’s dream. And that someone is about to wake up.
Somehow, I find words. “It’s okay,” I say. “I’ll go.” Luckily, she’s left the door open. Luckily, she is too confused to follow me. I run to my door, my feet not making a sound. Or maybe she hears them. I don’t know. I feel I don’t know anything anymore. Usually I look at least four times before putting the key in my lock. But now I don’t care. Now I just need to be inside. Now I need to close the door behind me. Lock it. Breathe. Scream. Breathe.
* * *
There is a mirror in our front hallway. In all of those years, my mother never understood what it did to me. Or maybe she thought I needed a reminder, and she didn’t want it to always be her.
I look inside it now.
I see the wall behind me. The bookshelves. The light from the window, set at an angle.
That’s all.
* * *
It has to be her.
In the minutes that follow, I realize it isn’t that the curse has been broken. It’s that she’s found a way around it. It’s her, not me.
I need to test this theory. I wait until it’s late, until I’m sure that she’ll be asleep. I listen to the silence of the hallway, the silence of the building, before I creep outside.
Maybe it isn’t just her. I have to know.
* * *
I head out of my building. The doorman is so busy watching late-night TV that he doesn’t notice the door opening. This doorman has always been helpful to me.
It’s a cool, late-summer night. There are some stray pedestrians on the Upper West Side, but not many. I head to the subway station, jumping the turnstile with ease. Nobody calls to me to stop.
The subway arrives just as I’m stepping onto the platform. The doors open and I find myself in a half-full car. I look around, waiting for someone—anyone—to meet my eye. Nothing. So I start to move. Bounce up and down. Do jumping jacks. Swing around a pole. Crazy behavior. Insane behavior. The kind of behavior that would have to make someone either look or look away.
Nothing.
I move from one car to the next. The door opens, the door closes—people notice that. The last car isn’t as busy. Just a few people, clusters of couples and one single guy. I walk over to him. He’s in a suit. Maybe thirty. His tie is off. He’s got a beer in a bag at his feet, next to his laptop case. Every inch of his body reads It’s been a long night.