Free Underdogs by Markus Zusak

alone.
    Coca-Cola is spilled down the road. It flows into the drains like blood.
    Car horns blow.
    Brakes snort and then the cars carry on. I walk. No people. No people.
    It’s weird, I think, how everything can just carry on without all the people. Maybe it’s that the people are there but I just can’t see them. Their lives have worn them away from my vision. Perhaps their empty souls have swallowed them.
    Voices.
    Do I hear voices?
    At an intersection, a car pulls up and I feel someone staring at me — but it is emptiness that stares at me. When the car leaves, I hear a voice, but it fades.
    I run.
    I chase the car, ignoring blaring don’t-walk signals that flash their red legs at me and beat at my ears, just in case I’m blind.
    Am I blind?
    No. I see.
    I keep running and the entire city swipes past me like I’m drien by some human-alien force. I bump into invisible people and keep running. I see … cars, road, pole, bus, white line, yellow line, crossing, Walk, stutter, Don’t Walk, smog, gutter, don’t trip, milk bar, gun shop, cheap knives, reggae, disco, live girls, Calvin Klein billboard with woman and man in underwear — enormous. Wires, monorail, green light, orange, red, all three, go, stop, run, run, cross, Turn left anytime with care, Howard Showers,drain, Save East Timor, wall, window, spirit, Gone for lunch, back in five minutes. No time.
    I run, till my pants are torn and my shoes are simply the bottoms of my feet with some material around the ankles. My toes bleed. I splash through Coke and beer. It dribbles up my legs, then down.
    No one is there.
    Where is everyone?
    Where?
    No faces, just movement.
    I fall. I’m out. Cracked head on gutter. Awaken.
    Later.
    Things have changed, and now, people are everywhere. They’re everywhere they should be, in the buses, trains, on the street.
    “Hey,” I say to the man in the suit waiting for the walk sign to clock on. He acts like he may have heard something, but walks on when the right sign arrives.
    People come right at me, and I swear they are trying to trample me.
    Then I realize.
    They come right at me because they can’t see me. Now it’s me who is invisible.

CHAPTER 10
     
    During the week, I must confess, Rube and I were up to old tricks. Again. We couldn’t help ourselves. Robberies were out. One Punch. Out.
    So what the hell else was there for us to do? The decision I came to was backyard soccer, or football, or whatever you please to call it. For starters, we had to.
    We did.
    I promise.
    Maybe I asked Rube if he wanted to get into it because he was still so miserable about the whole street-sign debacle. Admittedly, it was demoralizing, to actually succeed and then find a way to make yourself fail again. It hurt more than Rube could relate. He just sat there every afternoon and rubbed his gruff jawline with an ominous, melancholic hand. His hair was dirty as ever, strewn over his ears and biting at his back.
    “C’mon,” I tried to get him in.
    “Nuh.”
    It was often like this. Me, being the younger brother, I had always wanted Rube to do things, whether it was a game of Monopoly or a ball game in the backy Rube, the older brother, well he was the judge and jury.If he didn’t feel like doing it, we didn’t do it. Maybe that’s why I was always so willing to go on his robbery missions — simply because he actually wanted me to come along. We’d given up on doing things with Steve years ago.
    “C’mon,” I kept trying. “I’ve got the ball pumped up, and the goals are ready. Come have a look. They’re chalked onto the fence at both ends.”
    “The same size?”
    “Two meters wide, nearly one and a half high.”
    “Good, good.”
    He looked up and gave a slight smile, for the first time in days.
    “We on?” I asked again, with far too much eagerness. “Okay.”
    We went outside then and it was lovely. Absolutely lovely.
    Rube fell to the cement and got up. Twice. He swore his head off at me when I scored, and it was