Free The Invisible Enemy by Marthe Jocelyn

bag. Above me, the bunk creaked and then creaked again as Alyssa turned over. So, she was still awake, too. Here we are, I thought—fire-breathing enemies sharing a bunk bed. In a movie it would be funny. Only it was real life, and never in a million years would I have invited Alyssa to sleep over. In fact, I was supposed to be ignoring her, according to my New Year’s resolution. But here she was, practicallymoving in with me! This is
not
what I meant when I vowed to make new friends! Jean-Pierre, on the other hand …
    “Alyssa? Are you asleep?”
    “No.”
    “Why did Jean-Pierre call?”
    There was a thump from above. I wondered if the blankets were invisible. Are things still invisible in the dark? The streetlight outside cast a glowing moon on my ceiling, but otherwise, the room was dim.
    “What did he say?” I asked again.
    “He wouldn’t tell me,” she said at last. “He said it was private.”
    “Private? He said private?”
    “Are you—you know—are you a couple with him?”
    “Give me a break, Alyssa. He’s been in the school for five days!”
    “Yeah. But he asked you out, right? Today, before Hubert showed up.”
    “Not really.” I wasn’t sure how much she’d overheard. “He’s just got a French way of making friends, maybe.”
    “Well, I’d go out with him in five seconds,” she said.
    “Go where?” I asked, pretending to be dense.
    “Oh, don’t be dopey. If you’re going out, it just means you talk more on the phone and stuff. Doesn’t he have the cutest accent?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    Maybe she wanted me to talk some more, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t feel so mad by now, just tired. Tired of having her around. Tired of the whole stupid situation. You’d think if someone was invisible, you’d see less of them, but Alyssa was with me more than ever.
    An ambulance siren started in the distance, coming closer and closer down Broadway, turning into a wail. Hearing a siren at night always sort of scares me. It sounds so full of panic, and there’s no way to know if it gets wherever it’s going on time. I held my breath as it roared past our building and out of hearing.
    “Did you like it when you were invisible?” Alyssa suddenly asked. It sounded like she was leaning over the side of the bunk. “Was it fun?”
    “Yeah, it really was, at the beginning. Firstthing I did was scare the underpants off Hubert. I sneaked up on him in the cafeteria, and he nearly choked on a tortellini.”
    Alyssa giggled.
    “Then I skipped out of school and went for a walk around the neighborhood. It was totally fun; I even went on a movie set. I went to Dean & Deluca and saw a pickpocket. Then, when I got back to school, I—” I stopped short.
    I’d almost accidentally told her the highlight of being invisible, which had been getting revenge on Alyssa. She’d stolen Hubert’s topic of China for the fifth-grade class project, so I ruined her final presentation by sprinkling just enough powder over her notes to make them vanish. She got up to talk, and she had nothing to read. She couldn’t rely on her memory because she’d copied the work in the first place without paying attention. I’ll never forget the look on her face when she flubbed in front of everybody.
    Now that I was thinking about it, it sounded pretty cruel. I mean, she was my enemy and everything, but maybe humiliation in public was going too far.
    “Yeah? Then what?”
    “Well, nothing, actually. I came back to school. Being invisible didn’t really fit in with my life, you know? It’s fun for a while, but it’s kind of inconvenient. There’s lots of stuff you can’t do.”
    “So then what? How did you reappear? Really? Can I get normal tomorrow?”
    Now that she was asking in a nice, ordinary way, I felt like I should tell her the truth. I mean, of course she’d want to know. I’d want to know if I were her.
    “You said before, it was a scientific procedure,” said Alyssa. Her voice went low. “Does it