“What was that?” Manny, Cruz’s father, this time.
Cruz, feeling as if she was in a dream, held the Wheat Thins directly in her father’s line of sight. Nothing. No reaction.
Cruz waved her free hand before his face, peering intently at his eyes. Not a flicker. Not a movement of his iris.
He can’t see me!
What had been a tingle was now a rush, a thrill that raised goose bumps on Cruz’s arm. She could see the bumps, she could see her arm, she could see the Wheat Thins, she could see everything.
And they did not see her. Or anything she held.
She set the box on the counter and stepped back.
“Whee Tins!” her mother shrieked. “Look, Manny, look!”
“Okay, Wheat Thins, so what?” he demanded, getting angry at all the strangeness.
“They were no there and then they there!”
“You’re crazy, woman, have you been drinking?” But he looked around himself, suspicious, worried.
Cruz retreated to the hallway. Retreated all the way to the front door. She leaned back against the wall, trying not to gulp air, trying to control the hammering in her chest.
I’m invisible!
Bugs or no bugs, she had to see Shade like right now. She bolted, clattering down the stairs, stopped on the street outside, wanting further proof. There was a ponytailed mom leaning over her baby in a stroller. Cruz put her hand directly between mother and child and . . . nothing!
Oh. My. God!
She ran toward Shade’s house, just a block away, but as she ran she had the unsettling sensation of being observed. She glanced around: no one. She peered at the nearest windows: no one was staring at her.
But still she felt it, the feeling of being watched. And more than just watched. There was a feeling of malice, a feeling that someone was not only watching her but secretly laughing at her.
She shook it off, knocked on Shade’s door, and, when it opened, pulled Shade out onto the rear deck and whispered, “Can you see me?”
“I haven’t gone blind, Cruz.”
“I was invisible! I guess I stopped being, um . . . but I was absolutely invisible!”
“Are we talking metaphorically?”
Cruz shook her head. Then she focused the swirl of wild emotion inside her and . . .
“Whoa!” Shade said.
“You can’t see me now, can you?”
“Okay, that is amazing. Get inside! Now, before someone sees . . . or doesn’t see you.”
They moved immediately to Shade’s bathroom and turned on the water for the benefit of any microphones.
Cruz flickered back into view.
“How did it feel?” Shade asked, and Cruz knew there was something specific behind that bland question.
“Fine. Normal,” Cruz said. “Except . . .”
“Except?”