Free Invisible Boy by Cornelia Read Page B

shrugged.
    “All of them,” she said. “Everyone but you, Madissima. So
fuck
doubt. The only thing you need to do is
arise, go forth, and conquer.
”
    “Tennyson. ‘The Passing of Arthur.’ ”
    “We are the best fucking minds of our
generation
,” said Astrid. “And I will
never
let you forget it.”
    She leaned out the window, blowing a plume of smoke into the frosty air before extending her sable-draped arms in a gesture
     of sublime grace, a benediction over those still asleep in the waning darkness.
    “Hear this,” she said into the night, “from Astrid and Madeline: We. Are. The.
Balls
.”
    She declaimed Eliot’s second-stanza blessing, then—softly—across all the campus below:
    “
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night
.”
    Then the sun came up, and, four hours later, the pair of us aced Hindley’s bullshit poetry test: ninety-eight apiece.
    It was hard, now, to remember the two of us—me and Astrid, as children—but harder still to recall the people she’d believed
     we would become.

14

    I got from Jamaica Station to Prospect faster this time around. Not just because I knew my way, but also because the air felt
     a little crisper—there was a nice snap to it, heralding fall. Not enough to make me wish I’d brought a sweater, just adequate
     to walk at a brisker pace, freed from summer’s soggy oppression.
    Cate was just unloading her car when I turned into the little dead-end lane.
    She looked up and smiled. “You’re the first one here.”
    The other volunteers arrived moments later—half a dozen mellow-looking older folk wearing sturdy shoes and floppy hats. They
     might’ve just returned from an Elderhostel rafting trip down the Colorado: no-nonsense, ready for anything.
    Cate jumped right into describing the parameters of today’s
    mission.
    “All we know so far is that the child was three years old,” she said. “So we’re looking for anything that might help to identify
     him or her… clothing especially. Let’s work in pairs this week, and go slowly.”
    The Quakers nodded.
    “If you uncover
anything
other than plant matter,” she continued, “even if it looks like run-of-the-mill garbage, bring it out to the edges of the
     cleared trail and leave it next to the little railings, here.” She pointed to the granite corner-marker of a family plot.
    “Didn’t Skwarecki say we shouldn’t touch anything we found?” I asked her, once the Quakers had paired off and moved away.
    “Her crew’s spent some time here since,” said Cate, “and she thinks if we do turn anything up, the stuff will most likely
     have been moved by animals. She’s coming by later to look over whatever we do find.”
    I tied a newly laundered bandanna around my forehead.
    “Nice,” she said, handing me a machete, gloves, and a garbage bag. “Makes you look like a pirate.”
    “Damn, and here I was going for Hendrix.”
    Cate laughed, picking up a set of clippers, and the pair of us headed off into the bushes.
    Ninety minutes on, we’d filled ten bags and lined up a five-foot, single-file parade of worthless-looking objets-du-garbage
     alongside the central trail.
    Cate topped up one more load, then spun the bag closed and retrieved a toothed plastic closure from her shorts pocket. I reached
     over to keep the bag’s neck shut with my fist so she didn’t have to cinch it one handed.
    She hoisted the load over her shoulder, Santa-style. “Ready for a break?”
    “Thought you’d never ask.”
    I gathered up our tools, slowly scoping out the hacked weeds underfoot as I walked back toward the trail edge. All I turned
     up was a root-beer bottle and a wad of disintegrating newsprint.
    There was nothing obviously connected to a child—no little toys, no tiny sweaters with name tags sewn in, no laminated photo-ID
     cards reading, MY NAME IS————, AND SKWARECKI SHOULD ARREST————.
    We hadn’t found a thing that required a second thought: bent cans