Invisible Inkling

Invisible Blood

Inkling is bruised and shaken. He’s got a cut on his back left leg, and he demands that I put ointment and a Band-Aid on it when we get home. I get the stuff and bring it to my bedroom.

“Where’s your leg?” I ask, kneeling by the bottom bunk where he’s lying on my pillow.

“Here.”

“Where here?”

“Here!” His rough foot hits me gently in the nose.

“Okay, already.” I take his leg in my hands and feel the ankle beneath the thick, damp fur. “I can’t see any blood.” I look down. My fingers feel wet, but they look as clean as ever.

“Where your left hand is touching,” snaps Inkling. “It’s a gaping wound, practically. I’m sure you’re getting germs in it right now.”

“Sorry.”

“Did you wash your hands before you started this operation?”

I yank my hands away and open the tube of antibiotic cream. “Put your cut underneath the tube,” I say. “That might work better.”

I manage to squeeze the cream on and wrap a large Band-Aid around the leg where Inkling says the wound is. The bandage disappears as it sticks to Inkling’s fur.

That night, Inkling sleeps on my pillow instead of in the laundry basket. I pet his fluffy neck in the darkness.

I hate not knowing what he looks like.

How can you really know someone if you don’t know how he looks?

I know Nadia by her green hair and big boots—not the whole Nadia, but an important part of her. I know Chin by her dimples and the jeans with the holes, Dad by his scraggle beard, Mom by her chapped ice-cream-store hands.

Inkling has been here a while now, and all I can tell you is what my fingers know:

He’s about the size of Rootbeer, but fatter.

He has claws and a bushy tail.

His nose is cold and wet.

His teeth are sharp.

But is he brown? Or blue? White?

Does his face look shifty? Bossy? Clever?

Thoughtful, like Chin’s?

Or enthusiastic, like Dad’s?

I’ve asked him over and over, but he never really answers.

“I’m extremely cute,” he tells me when I ask again, tonight. “What else do you need to know?”

“Cute people don’t like to be invisible,” I point out. “Funny-looking people like to be invisible.”

“I’m naturally invisible,” says Inkling. “It’s not like I could let you see me even if I wanted you to.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Not even for a few minutes?”

Inkling avoids the question. “Invisible is better for me anyway. It’s a rough world in this big city. Bandapats are endangered. I have to keep myself alive. If anyone got a glimpse—if anyone besides you knew about me—I’d end up in a science lab. Or even worse, a zoo.”

“So you can be visible, sometimes?”

“No.”

“You just said, ‘If anyone got a glimpse.’”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Wolowitz. Will you leave it alone? I’m an invisible bandapat.”

We’ve had this conversation, or one very like it, lots of times.

But I can never leave it alone.

I want to see him so badly.

On Wednesdays, Chin and I have Theater of the

Mind after school. It’s where you stay late with the drama teacher and do projects. I like it because the drama teacher never complains about my overbusy imagination. He actually likes my overbusy imagination.

I go because Dad can’t pick me up until the after-school rush is over at Big Round Pumpkin, and on Wednesdays Nadia has PSAT study all afternoon. When he’s off work, Dad picks up Chin, too. He arranged it with her mom at the start of the school year. I heard him on the phone saying stuff about “fostering their friendship” and how Hank “seems lonely since Alexander moved away.”

I’d be annoyed, except Chin is fun to hang around with. Our Great Wall of China in matchsticks is nearly done, and she’s already sent away for instructions on how to do a Taj Mahal. On Theater of the Mind days, we usually play alien schoolchildren in the park across the street, and then Dad takes us for Thai food. In alien schoolchildren, which I invented, Chin is a mean teacher and I am a variety of weirdo aliens she has to teach. The aliens all have cool powers they use to make trouble for the mean teacher. Superlong tentacles shoot out of their bodies and grab the chalk out of her hands; or brain control makes her think she is shrinking to the size of an ant when really she is normal.

Today, Chin and I race to climb this really big rock at one end of the park, because that’s the best place to play alien schoolchildren. Dad heads over to chat with some other parents in the far corner where the picnic tables are.

Chin gets on the rock right away, but my backpack is really heavy, so I bend over to put it down by a tree—and a foot hits me in the backside.

It’s Gillicut.

Of course it’s Gillicut.

It’s not enough that I gave him half my lunch today; he has to come torture me in the park, too.

My dad still hasn’t come up with anything I can do to stop him. And Inkling hasn’t, either.

“Leave me alone!” I say, turning.

“Make me,” he growls.

Oh.

Um.

I have no idea how to make him.

Also, he’s not doing anything right this minute. So I can’t figure out how I’d even make him when nothing’s happening.

“You can’t just go kicking people, Bruno,” says Chin from high on the rock.

“Why not?”

“Because . . . you can’t,” she says lamely.

“But I just did. So, yeah. I can.”

“Why are you always picking on Hank?” Chin demands.

I am standing there. Like an idiot. Like a victim. Saying nothing.

“He annoys me,” says Gillicut. “Plus, he stinks at soccer. And he has sprinkies in his lunch.”

“What if he stops bringing sprinkles?” Chin asks.

Gillicut grabs the sleeves of my sweatshirt, tugs them down over my hands, and shakes them up and down, hard. “Oh, he doesn’t want to do that!” he says, jumping as he shakes me. “Don’t stop bringing sprinkies, Spanky! You wouldn’t like to see what happens when I don’t get my sprinkies!”

He releases me, laughing.

I am breathing hard.

I want to kick him.

I could kick him, from where I’m standing. He’s doubled over, laughing.

I should kick him.

I should.

Maybe then he’d leave me alone.

But—

I can’t quite make my foot kick out.

It’s like, I want to do it, but my foot is too scared.

I may not be a pacifist exactly—because I’m not sure you can call yourself a pacifist when you’ve built a Great Wall of China from matchsticks plus a set of airplane bombers from Legos—but let’s be honest: I have zero fighting skills.

“Is the Spanky Baby gonna cry now?” Gillicut asks. “Does it want its spanky mommy?”

“Why are you such a dirtbug?” I spit out.

“Oh, am I? Ask your spanky mommy why.”

“His dad is here, actually,” Chin mutters from the rock.

“Go on, Baby,” says Gillicut. “Run away like you always do and ask your spanky mommy.”

Oh, I hate him so much.

So much, so much.

“Just ’cause your mom doesn’t want you anymore doesn’t mean you get to call me a baby,” I snarl.

It’s a mean thing to say, but words are all I’ve got.

He reels back like I’ve hit him. “Don’t say that. Shut up about my mom!”

Oh no.

I’ve really done it now.

Gillicut’s mom moved out, Ms. Cherry said.

Who knew I could be so mean? And so stupid?

Gillicut’s hand balls into a fist.

I’m not sure whether to run or duck—or just stand there and take whatever he’s going to dish out.

But then, there is Dad, peeking over the big rock. “Hank! Sasha!” he says. “You guys ready for dumplings?”

I want to run and tell Dad everything that just happened.

I want to tell him and have him take my side: stride over to Gillicut and make sure that dirtbug never bothers me again. I want Dad to wrap his arms around me and tell me I’m all right and Gillicut is all wrong.

But—I’ve just said that thing. That awful, awful thing about Gillicut’s mom not wanting him.

When I think about explaining that to Dad, my face feels hot and I want to crawl under the big rock.

I can’t bear to have my father look at me with disappointment in his eyes.

I don’t ever want him to know I’ve been so mean.

Sasha jumps down from the rock and runs over to Dad. “Let’s get out of here,” she says.

Dad does a silly little dumpling dance. “Dumplings, yumplings, roly-poly dumplings! Eat you, eat you, we will eat you UP!”

Chin laughs.

Dad laughs.

Gillicut speaks under his breath. “You’re gonna pay for what you just said,” he tells me.

I know it.

I know I’m gonna pay.

Dad and Sasha are walking out of the park. I shoulder my backpack and follow them without a word.