Free Invisible Boy by Cornelia Read Page A

actually didn’t have any, and hers just kept spending it all trying to look like they had even more. As such, we’d learned
     early to elicit the kindness of strangers.
    “
Here is Belladonna,
” I intoned, “
the Lady of the Rocks/The lady of
    situations
.”
    She did one line, muttered “Byron,” and snorted up the next.
    “Try harder, Veruca.”
    Astrid rolled off the bed and walked over to her stereo. “If I have to listen to one more
second
of fucking ‘Norwegian Wood’ I’m going to shoot myself. Read me another couplet.”
    “What are you putting on?”
    “Vivaldi.”
    “What the hell’s Vivaldi?”
    “Your people have no
culture
, Madeline. If ever there were a race whose conscience remains woefully uncreated—”
    “I am
highly
conversant in the greatest hits of Puccini,” I said.
    “Mozart… Beethoven… And by the way, eat me raw.”
    She dropped the needle onto
The Four Seasons
, Side A, then opened the window and lit a Dunhill.
    “Not bad,” I said when the first violin started in, soaring above the string-section pack. “Got a good beat—you can dance
     to it.”
    “Read me another couplet, ungrateful bitch. That last one was a lousy hint.”
    I cleared my throat. “‘ HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME —’”
    “Eliot!” she crowed, triumphant.
    “Title?”
    Looking back over her shoulder, she threw me a smirk. “‘Teenage Wasteland’?”
    “
Exactemente
, you goddamn genius.”
    “We’re going to rule the world, you and I.”
    “Of course,” I said. “No question.”
    “Say that like you
mean
it.”
    I picked at my jacket’s duct tape. “Sure.”
    At fifteen I’d discovered this small slice of world in which my natural impulses suddenly marked me not outcast, but leader.
     I’d seen my life come shining, from the west down to the east.
    I was now three years older, and reluctant as hell to leave this safe haven.
    I looked up at her. “I must admit to an increasing sense of panic that I’m doomed to become one of those awful little people
     who peaked in high school.”
    “Goddamn it, Madeline, we are the
balls
,” said Astrid, kicking me in the thigh. “Now and forever.”
    “Look,” I said, “in this place, you and I own any goddamn room we walk into. We can get up onstage and play the entire school
     like a fucking violin, conjuring forth any nuance of emotion we want—teachers, classmates, administration—off the cuff, pitch-perfect
     every time. Either one of us could snap our fingers and start a riot, or stop one dead in its tracks.”
    She nodded. “Absolute power.”
    It’s why we were friends. I mean, who the hell else could we have admitted this to?
    “Absolutely,” I said, then pointed at the window. “Out there, however, it’s a goddamn crap shoot. Entropy… chaos.”
    She crossed her arms, impatient. “Don’t be such a pussy.”
    “I’m not a pussy, I’m a realist. Our main ingredient is just charisma, Astrid, the very quintessence of ephemerality. ‘One
     shade the more, one ray the less…’ and
hey presto
, it’s gone.”
    “Bullshit,” she said. “The only thing that can take it away is allowing yourself to doubt it.”
    “Well, there you go, then. I’m dead meat.”
    Astrid blew a stream of smoke out the window, then turned back to me. “Take off your jacket.”
    “Why?”
    “So you can give it to me.”
    “I don’t want to fucking give you my jacket. The window’s open and it’s goddamn freezing in here. Besides which you’re already
wearing
a coat.”
    “Yeah, but we’re trading.” She stuck the Dunhill in the corner of her mouth and shook off her mother’s sable, holding it out
     toward me.
    “Fuck off. I like mine better.”
    “The hell you do,” she said. “It’s an ugly piece of shit with duct tape all over it.”
    “I happen to
enjoy
duct tape.”
    “Cocky bitch.”
    “Damn right,” I said.
    She took another drag and put her coat back on. “You know how many people would’ve traded?”
    I