Invisible Inkling

Do You Have to Be Such a Little Brother All the Time?

“Do you know what a dangerous pumpkin is?” Nadia asks as she walks me to school Tuesday morning. She’s drinking a large takeout coffee from the diner. I’m eating a corn muffin from a paper bag.

I give her a blank look.

She explains. “It’s a pumpkin carved beyond the usual basic pumpkin carving. Way, way beyond. My school is having a contest, on the day before Halloween. I think I have a chance to win.”

“Cool.”

“So, listen up.”

“What?”

Maybe she’s going to ask for my ideas, I think. I have a lot of ideas for stuff like dangerous pumpkins.

“Leave my pumpkins alone when I carve them,” says Nadia.

“What?”

“Don’t even touch them. Not even with one pinkie finger.”

Oh. She doesn’t want my help. At all.

“I don’t want to touch your stupid pumpkins,” I say. “Why do you think I even care?”

“Dad told me about your top secret squash project. I don’t want you getting ideas.”

Ugh.

That top secret squash project that doesn’t really exist.

I wish I’d never invented it.

“You’ll regret it if you mess with them,” Nadia adds.

“Now you’re making me want to mess with them,” I say, cranky. “Now you’re tempting me.”

She stamps her foot in her big boots. “Do you have to be such a little brother all the time?”

“I am your little brother.”

“I am really not in the mood for you right now.” Nadia takes an angry sip of coffee.

“I’m not in the mood for you, either.” I take an angry bite of corn muffin.

We walk the rest of the way to school in silence.

That afternoon when Dad and I get home, Nadia has four jumbo pumpkins on the dining table, carving them for the contest Friday night. They have their tops cut off and their insides scraped out. She is bent over one of them with a vegetable peeler.

I’m not really going to mess with them. I would never. But Inkling might. I can’t buy him a pumpkin till I get paid on Friday, and even then, my five dollars will only buy a tiny one.

Where is he?

I look, quick, in Inkling’s favorite spots. No indentation on the couch pillows. No bump behind the window curtain. No movement of the bowls on top of the kitchen cabinets.

He’s not here.

Strange.

“Hey,” says Nadia, looking up from her carving. “Did you go in my room again? The stuff on top of my dresser is all messed up.”

“Don’t look at me. I’m just getting home.”

“Don’t lie.”

“I didn’t go in there! When would I even have time to go in there?”

Nadia turns to Dad, who is rooting around in the fridge. “Dad, tell him not to lie! My stuff is all out of order.”

Dad comes over and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t argue, little dude. Just say you won’t do it again.”

“But—”

“And then,” Dad adds, “don’t do it again. Nadia doesn’t go in your room when you’re not home.”

Actually, Nadia is right this minute wearing my red hoodie that is way too big for me. There’s no way she got it anywhere but my dresser.

“Dad,” I say, “she—”

“Little dude, can we please just end this argument? It is up to you to make it end,” Dad says.

Bleh.

Dad’s always listening to Nadia instead of me. Plus, blaming me for stuff Inkling does. I wish I could explain about my bandapat using Nadia’s hair products—but I can’t. Inkling’s scared the evil scientists will come find him if anybody knows he lives here.

Plus, my mom has a “no pets” rule and she’d never let me keep him.

Plus, Inkling is my best friend. Besides Wainscotting, who moved away.

I lie. The words stick in my mouth, but I force them out. “I won’t go in your room anymore,” I say. “Sorry.”

“Thanks,” Nadia says.

Sometimes, I wish my sister would mistakenly get on a rocket going to outer space and get stuck on the moon, cold and lonely. The only way she could contact me would be to send postcards.

I could get cool postcards with outer space dust on them. Plus, I’d miss her.

I could think, Oh, Nadia, my sister. Remember how she took me for pizza? Remember how she let me stay up late when our parents went out for dinner?

I could look at the postcards and think stuff like that. I could forget all the times she was horrible.