Invisible Inkling

Theft of Cheesy Goodness

Do you want to get some pizza?” I ask gently. Pizza is the food I always want when I’m feeling alone.

“Yes, please,” says Inkling, sniffing. “What’s pizza?”

“Crust and tomato sauce and cheesy goodness,” I say.

“Can you really eat it? Or is it just a symbol of something else?”

“You can really eat it,” I promise.

“Then let’s go.”

He climbs onto my back. Nadia takes us to Giardini’s for a small pie, since my parents have to work through dinner anyway.

At the pizza place, Inkling sits under my chair. My plan is to rip off bits and give them to him where nobody can see, the way you would a dog—but after his first bite, Inkling starts poking my leg hard, under the table.

I poke him back.

He pokes me again. “Cheesy goodness,” he whispers. “More cheesy goodness.”

I rip him off a bigger piece and sneak it down.

It’s gone in two seconds, with a small slurping noise.

“More.” He pokes me again. “More cheesy goodness.”

Nadia stands to get a shaker of oregano and some napkins. As soon as her back is turned, Inkling climbs onto the table—I can hear him huffing—and starts pulling the rest of our pie toward him.

“Excuse me!” I grab the crust and pull it back. “You can’t take the whole thing!”

Several bites disappear from one edge. I see them go invisible as they enter Inkling’s mouth, a string of cheese hanging in midair before he slurps it up.

“Come on!” I say.

“Cheesy goodness,” he mumbles, between bites. “Inkling likes the cheesy goodness.”

“You’re going to have to get off the table as soon as Nadia comes back,” I whisper.

“Now then!” he says. “Cheesy goodness!” The entire pie starts scooting across the table again.

“No!” I reach for it, but Inkling’s too fast. The pizza flops onto the floor and zips across the tile, under two tables and several chairs, around a cooler full of drinks, and into the darkest corner of Giardini’s.

In seconds, it is gone.

All that’s left is the slices on our plates.

“Hank, my man,” says Nadia, returning. “Way to hog the pizza. You eat that fast, you’ll make yourself sick, you know.”

“It wasn’t me,” I say. “It was—”

She squints her eyes at me. “It was what? Your invisible friend?”

I start laughing, because it’s true. And my life has become so strange and so happy so quickly that I can’t stop. I laugh and laugh until Nadia has to hit me on the back and make me drink a glass of water.

At home that night, Inkling tells me I have to keep him secret. Over the years, humans have endangered bandapats by trapping them and locking them in hush-hush science labs. The scientists are searching for the source of bandapat invisibility, but it’s never been found. And in the labs, the bandapats waste away and die from sadness. “Promise me you won’t say a word, Wolowitz,” Inkling begs. “Because I can’t have that happen to me. I can’t be a science experiment. It would break me.”

I promise, and tell him we also have to keep him secret because of Mom’s “no pets” policy. “Never, never” is the rule. She says seven hundred books, two kids, and Dad all together in our apartment—that’s already more than she can handle.

We shake hands on it, Inkling and I. It is strange shaking hands with an invisible creature. His paw is rough on the bottom and divided into pads.

What does he look like?

Fluffy.

Stout.

Soft ears, a large tail, and padded feet with hard little claws.

That’s all I can tell, so far.

Maybe he’ll tell me more, later. Maybe he’ll let me touch his face.

While Mom, Dad, and Nadia are on the living room couch watching E.T. that night, I make Inkling a bed in my laundry basket. I feed him a bowl of cereal and some leftover broccoli for dinner. “That rootbeer didn’t hurt me any worse than a kangaroo I fought once,” he says, munching.

“You fought a kangaroo?”

“Oh, they’re all over the outback of Ethiopia,” Inkling says. “I dropped on one that was hopping home with a huge, yummy-looking pumpkin. Waited in a tree and just dropped when the roo was least expecting it. There was big-time combat. She defended her pumpkin to the very last. But in the end, no bloodshed. Just aches and pains.”

Of course he’s for-serious lying—hello? Kangaroos don’t come from Ethiopia, and last time he mentioned home it was in the Ukraine—but it’s more fun to listen to him than to call him on it.

“Who ate the pumpkin finally?” I ask.

“Me, of course. Bandapats nearly always win in combat. Invisibility gives us an advantage.”

I can’t resist saying, “Except maybe with dogs, huh?”

“What?”

“Dogs, and their sense of smell. They can always tell where you are.”

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

“Rootbeer!” I say. “She can tell exactly where you are. Even when you’re up in a tree.”

“The rootbeer’s not a dog,” says Inkling.

“Yes, she is.”

“Listen, I have traveled all over the world, and I’ve seen dogs and dogs and dogs. This rootbeer is nothing like a dog. Her face is all squashed in and she has ears like a bat.”

I laugh.

“I’m fine with dogs,” Inkling claims, “but the rootbeer is another story. I have to steer clear of her.” He eats another piece of broccoli. “Anyway, I’m only sticking around until the Hetsnickle is paid.”

“Hetsnickle?”

“Hetsnickle was a famous bandapat. The debt of honor is named after her. You know, how I have to save your life because you saved me from that rootbeer? That’s the Hetsnickle debt.”

I nod, but I’m not thinking about the Hetsnickle. What I’m really thinking is:

I have an invisible friend.

It is not my imagination.

It is true, real life.

I have an invisible friend.