Been a while, huh? Original fiction is taking up a lot of my time, as it should be. So is youtube, as it should not be.

Thanks to my reviewers!

You Know Who: Do I know you?

Emily: No, it wasn't a good idea of Greg's, but people get things wrong all the time. Especially annoyed teenagers. I'm glad you liked the twins, though! On The Wizard's Manual: Well, I asked the Emily I based that character on, and she said she hasn't been reading my stories, so I assume I don't know you, unless you're lying. Why don't you get an account so I can answer your reviews?

I actually wrote this before the next, but I think it works better in this order. The two chapters are about two girls who choose wizardry for about the same reason, though they and the causes of their problems are very different.

I got the name and an idea or two from a song by a singer I liked when I was little, which I'll put some of the lyrics to at the end.

Invisible Girl

I'm never good enough.

Sky retreated to her room. Again, her father was unimpressed, no matter how hard she tried.

Some people told her it was because he was Chinese, and Chinese people didn't value girls – but that wasn't true. He was not Chinese. His parents were Chinese. He was American. He hardly even spoke Chinese. That was definitely not the reason.

Some people said that it was because she reminded him of her mother, but she looked at pictures of her mother and saw no resemblance to her in that Caucasian face.

No, it was just Sky. She had started out neither as smart nor as outgoing as her brother, and now that she tried to reform, he would not see it.

She was invisible to him, and to the rest of the world.


Almost.

"Jeremy, would you please bring Sky down to Earth?" Sky's history teacher asked.

Heat rushed to Sky's cheeks, and she sat up, furious that she had been caught daydreaming again. Her eyes flicked to the clock. Twenty more minutes before the weekend. At least she'd be away from these people. She could almost look forward to the escape.

"Sky's off in the clouds again," one of the other boys joked.

The rest of the class laughed, too, each student probably thanking divinity that the teacher had chosen someone else to tease.

Sky's hands clenched under her desk. She couldn't find anything to defend herself with. Not against thirty people.

She wished she could truly be invisible.

After school, Sky ran to the city bus rather than the school bus. Her brother would scold her, but even if she didn't get back before her father got home, he wouldn't remember the offense for more than five minutes. It was worth it.

She got off at the library and turned right, to the children's section. She stopped at the librarian's desk.

"Hi," the woman said. "Want to read today?"

Sky nodded and grinned.

The librarian gave her a picture book, and she read through it quickly, then sat on one of the beanbags and called to the nearest kids, "Want to hear a story? It's a really good one. Come here."

One of the girls ran to her immediately and sat at her feet. "I'm first."

Sky had never been first at that age. "We're all doing it together. It's more fun that way."

A boy had to be pushed by his mother. Another couldn't seem to decide whether listening to a fifteen-year-old girl was okay for boyhood, but he came, too.

"I'm Sky." She grinned at them, not ashamed of her crooked teeth that her father didn't think needed braces. "What's your name?"

Two others came before she started, and a sixth in the middle. They sat quietly and listened to her as she read, coming up with different voices for each character, pausing when she needed suspense, showing the picture at the end of each page.

When she finished, one started clapping, then the rest. They wanted another.

Sky was glad that she was not invisible.


Sky's mother had died when Sky was three years old and her brother, Adam, had been five. It had been an accident, unexpected.

Adam had been the right age and smart and attention-loving enough to play the part of a bereft child. He had cried and asked for Mommy. He had put on a brave face when he needed one. He had let himself be dressed up and comforted as the adults wished. They – and there were many friends and relatives – had loved him and given him all the attention he craved.

Sky had quickly learned that crying or trying to find Mommy would cause a group of strangers to surround her, talk to her, try to hug her, and tell her that everything was okay, which by definition meant that something scary was happening and she might think things were not okay. If she stayed quiet, one or two people at a time would come, and they usually didn't worry whether she was all right, and they would act normally. But some strange people still came, so she tried to make herself even less noticeable.

She perfected that invisibility over the next few years.

School had come not long after her mother had died. Adam loved school, so Sky had been excited. But it turned out to be full of strangers who acted silly and made her do things she didn't want to do. Hiding became useful there, too. When someone came to play with her, and came again later, she knew that was a nice person. The others didn't care about her, so they weren't nice.

Later, she had started academic work. She had realized that her father was disappointed in her already for not having gotten ahead. She held back, since if she didn't try, she wouldn't fail. She had tried to learn things on her own, but she disappointed herself. She barely did well enough to not make her teachers worry, even in reading.

She got to fifth grade graduation before she realized that she had truly disappointed her father. But it was too late.

She used to have friends. People found her in the corner and played with her. They listened to her read. They even sometimes invited her to their houses. But each one moved on. Shy newcomers made her their first friend at the school, but they found others in time. It happened again and again. She couldn't hold onto them. She was water, weak and easy to pass through. Transparent.

People still talked to her, but they never invited her anywhere. She never met someone outside of school except for group projects, and that was usually at the library. Only the new students shared anything with her. By the second quarter of the year, she would always be eating lunch alone.

Even the little kids who loved her were just visitors. Some remembered her week after week, but only as the girl who held the books. There was nothing there.

She couldn't change it. She didn't know how. She was fifteen years old and in ninth grade and had no idea how to make friends.

She was nothing.


Dad wanted to know if Adam was done with his homework before he went to a friend's house Saturday morning. Adam lied. Sky knew it. She didn't say so.

Dad didn't ask if Sky was finished. She was.

She rode the bus to the library and read for two hours. She watched the kids run off, happy that some girl had spent time with them, wanting to see their friends.

This time, Sky was left feeling even more depressed. When she had been their age, she'd had friends, and she hadn't known that she couldn't hold onto anyone.

Who am I if nobody knows who I am? she wondered. How can you exist when nobody sees you? When they all pass by you? What is a person who nobody knows? Am I even a person?

She hated this feeling, coming like a strange waking dream as she watched people move around her, every person connected to other people while she was alone, adrift, invisible.

Reality seemed to slip away. She was afraid, and she wanted something or someone to hold onto so she could find out who or where she was, but nothing but empty ocean moved around her.

Maybe she would drown.

It was all her fault. She had made herself this way. She had pulled herself to the side, fallen back from her group.

The loneliness was overpowering.

Nobody knows who I am, nobody sees me, so how can I know anything? Be anything?

"Sky?" the librarian asked.

Sky pulled herself back to the library and hid her thoughts. "Yes?"

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Why?"

"You looked distracted. Sad."

"No, I'm fine."

"Is everything all right? Is something going on – at home or school?"

"No, nothing's going on. I'm fine."

The librarian shrugged. "All right. Go find a book – it'll cheer you up. The right book always helps."

Sky nodded and turned to the children's bookshelves. Only after the librarian went back to her desk did she realize that she had agreed that something was wrong that books could fix.

She signed to herself. What if she had admitted what she felt? No, she couldn't describe all this. She'd come out sounding disorganized and silly.

She wondered what it would have been like if she'd had her mother. Another female to talk to. No reason to learn to hide. Someone to love her. No reason for her father to turn away. She would have been real.

Someday, would she forget herself like people forgot her?

She could escape in books, but wasn't that the beginning of escaping for good – in insanity?

She turned suddenly, a title catching her eye. So You Want to be a Wizard. Hadn't she seen that one before? Maybe someone had recommended it. She didn't think she'd read it yet. She pulled it out and looked for some more books to join it.


When she came home, Dad didn't say anything to her or even look up for more than a moment.

She decided to read the wizard book first. It felt like she should start there.

She was slightly surprised by the style, but she had read books that took themselves this seriously. What she found odder was its depth. Who would invent something like this? And what in the world was it doing in the children's section?

She was a hundred pages in before she started worrying.

Who would write this? What was going on?

Is this even real? Sky wondered. But what else? She couldn't hallucinate a whole book – or all these details – could she? She knew s he should ask someone else whether it as real, but there was nobody to ask.

She closed the book and put her head in her hands. I'm finally going crazy.

But really… how could she create all this?

So what was going on?

Sky could have used advice, or comfort. But that didn't exist.

When she thought of accepting the book, she was terrified of what it would mean about either her sanity or the structure of the universe. But when she thought of casting it away, other, older fears rose.

One day, would she simply cease to exist? When nobody would notice the difference anymore, would she just not be there anymore? She knew it was a crazy thought, but she couldn't get rid of it.

She needed something to anchor and define her, so she would stop being a nothing. So she could stop having to be invisible.

But if it wasn't real…

She risked losing herself either way. But she had to choose.

I'll take the chance and see what happens, she thought.

She found that all-important Oath she'd read earlier, and she spoke the words.

And nothing happened.

She had not known that she had enough emotion left to be so disappointed.


Nothing happened the next day, either. She stayed in her room and read a different book to try to forget what hadn't happened. But she couldn't stop remembering it.

The next day was school. Sky knew how to behave, how to keep herself apart and safe.

But they were starting a project in English, and it was a group project. It was more difficult to hide when she had to work with someone. Maybe she wouldn't have to do most of the presentation, though.

She didn't have a person to choose, so she just stood and waited for everyone else to pair up.

The last person standing was, surprisingly, Elissa, who usually had friends to join. Sky didn't really want to work with her, a fairly popular girl, a gymnast, and black. Sky knew racism was wrong, but she didn't even understand the two races in her own background, let alone a third.

Elissa noticed her. Their eyes met for a moment.

Suddenly, Sky felt a connection with her, and something much greater, and she remembered the book at the bottom of her stack at home.

Elissa walked over to her. "Hi."

How did you ask if someone had found a strange book – because you had this feeling she had?

Elissa sat on one of the desks, her feet dangling. As if she were shy, she took out a book, as if to hide behind it.

She opened to a page Sky recognized and set it on the table.

Sky swallowed, looking at the Oath. She wished she'd brought her book.

"When did you get that?" she asked.

"Yesterday," Elissa said. "You?"

"Saturday." She swallowed again. "So it's real."

"Thank God," said Elissa. "And thank God it's not just me."

Sky, who didn't believe in any God she'd heard of before, but thought she might be able to believe in the One, whispered, "Thank God…"


The first two verses and chorus of the song, though I only really used the first one:

Invisible Girl
copyright 2001 By Tom Knight and Christine Somerfeldt

She discovered when she was three
The secret of invisibility
If they didn't understand
Or things got out of hand
Then she could disappear completely

As she got older she made some friends
Who could see her and not pretend
She's smart and she is strong
She's been here all along
They say that seein' is believin'

Invisible Girl, Invisible Girl
Take us into your invisible world
What you've hidden away
Could save the day
We really want to see you
Invisible Girl