Free Translucent by Dan Rix Page B

slightly. As if blood still flowed through them.
    Why wasn’t I bleeding?
    “Why is it blue?” said Megan.
    I thought of something else. Blue blood. Blood was only red when it oxidized in air. Otherwise it was blue. That’s why veins looked blue under your skin.
    “Hang on,” I said. “Hold out your palm.”
    She yanked her hand back. “Nuh-uh. No way. You’re not touching me with that.”
    “I’m not going to touch you.” I grabbed her hand and held it up, then slowly lowered my severed finger toward her palm.
    “You better not touch me.”
    I ignored her and focused intently on the closing distance.
    “Leona,” she warned.
    “Shh.”
    Two inches from her hand, though nothing appeared to touch her, I felt the tip of my finger touch her palm. Her hand flinched away, and she stared at me, wide-eyed. “What was that?”
    My heart pounded. “Did you feel that?”
    “You touched me. What was that? Was that some kind of NLP crap?”
    “My finger,” I muttered, staring at where it should have been, “it’s not gone . . . it’s still there. You just can’t see it.” I probed the air with my other hand and found it. Right where it was supposed to be, floating in empty space—my fingernail, the joint, the whole finger.
    I could touch it, but I couldn’t see it.
    Invisible.
    It felt sticky.
    “I think I know why.” I went to the base of my finger, still visible, and peeled back the sticky stuff, rolling it off my finger like a latex glove. My finger came into view again, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
    Still there.
    I rolled the substance into a squishy ball the size of a pea. I could feel it, but couldn’t see anything. “It’s that sticky stuff.”
    “Let me touch it,” said Megan.
    So I transferred the drop onto her fingertip, and she started playing with it. It was so weird watching her play with something I couldn’t see. She reached behind her, snatched up an eraser, and began stretching the substance around it. Bit by bit, the pink rubber vanished from sight until her hand appeared empty.
    She grinned and made a motion of throwing. “Catch.”
    I flung out my hands and my eyes darted, searching for movement. The eraser hit me it the face, bounced off my knee . . . and vanished.
    “Brilliant,” I said, combing the floor. “You already lost it.”
    “You were supposed to catch it.”
    We went in widening circles until my hand brushed the eraser, and I heard it thump a few inches away. I chased the sound and snatched it up before Megan did.
    My fingernails dug into the rubber, and I peeled back the invisible stuff to expose a section of pink, then rolled it into a ball again. It seemed to want to stick to itself, now that there was enough of it. Surface tension or something. My fingers were finally clean. I stretched it back around the eraser, fascinated.
    Megan watched me. “You don’t . . . you don’t think it came from the . . . you know . . . ?”
    “From the meteorite?” I finished for her.
    “It was wet, remember?”
    A tremor of fear went through me. Suddenly, it made sense. “I think this was what the Air Force was looking for. This was why they ripped up my room.”
    I had a cut on my finger.
    “You don’t think it’s dangerous, do you?”
    “Considering they came in with hazmat suits and incinerated everything in sight and put up biohazard signs around the impact zone, no, Megan, I’m sure it’s perfectly safe.” I pulled out my cell phone and the business card Major Connor had given me. “I’m going to call that Air Force guy and tell him.”
    “Are you serious?” she said. “It can make stuff invisible.”
    “It’s the right thing to do.” My phone clicked on in my hand, and I typed in his number.
    “Leona, it can make stuff invisible.”
    “I’m aware of that,” I said.
    “So let’s just, I don’t know . . .” She fidgeted. “Let’s just hold onto it for a while. What’s the harm in that?”
    “No, Megan. I’m doing the