Invisible Girl Read Online Free PDF

into the outfield. “A client, then he’s a lawy—”
    I don’t get to finish my question. A tall man in a dark blue suit with hair graying slightly at the temples walks in and looks straight at me. “Welcome, Sean O’Hagen’s niece.”
    I know I’m supposed to say, “Thank you, it’s good to be here,” but I’m starstruck. I’m looking straight into the face of Carson Drew.
    I’m torn between wanting everyone to get up and leave so that I can sit alone and question him, and having them stay and keep him talking, just so I can stare at him. I finally smile and say, “Hi, Mr. Sullivan.”
    He says, “Call me Uncle Michael,” then kisses his wife and says, “Queen Anne” with a little bow to Annie, who rolls her eyes at me. He walks down the table and tickles Megan under the chin before kissing her and saying, “Princess Megan.”
    He makes his way all the way around the table, gently cuffing his sons on the head as he goes. When he gets to me, he kisses me on the top of my head and I feel pleasure zinging from my hair follicles into my toes. I glance across at Annie, who’s rolling her eyes again, so I immediately hide my happiness.
    While Uncle Michael settles into his seat and puts his napkin on his lap, Annie leans across the table and whispers to me, “My dad is such a spaz.”
    I feel a lightning flash of rage at her and I pray he didn’t hear her say that and think on any level that I invited it. He seems fine as he says, “So tell me, how is your uncle Sean?”
    I say, “Fine,” then watch spellbound as he goes around the table asking about everyone’s day and then telling a funny story about court. Annie doesn’t even know, as we get up from the table to go upstairs, that I’ve decided to steal her father.

CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
     
     
    Lights sparkle from houses on either side of the dark road. I listen to the excited rise and fall of Annie’s voice as we walk down the hilly streets of her neighborhood. I study everything she does. The thought of walking with a friend is as heady as a dream. I nod when she nods. I laugh when she laughs. I think, I’m doing it, I’m doing it.
    She walks fast but not too fast. Her hips swing out. A mom from one of the houses calls for her son, Ronnie, and Annie giggles wildly so I join in and wonder who or what we’re laughing at. She speaks almost nonstop, filling me in on “the gang,” her cluster of girlfriends whom she sees at the club every day and speaks to, texts or IM’s until almost midnight every night.
    I force myself not to express surprise at her wealth of friends, comforts and freedoms. I nod when she pauses at various points, to suggest that I, too, live in a world of endless gossip and Internet fashion consultations.
    While she speaks, I feel a wide flicker of emptiness ride up my legs and settle in my stomach. Hazy images of desires I’ve felt all my life come into sharp focus. I want her friends, her pool, her breasts and her parents. I want to be so secure in knowing my father cares about me that I could roll my eyes when he says something and warn a friend that he’s a spaz.
    As we climb up the hill, I look down at the glittering lights in the valley below. The wind brings more new fragrances that twirl up my nose and burst into wildly colored flowers in my brain. I watch Annie out of the corner of my eye as she speaks, trying to memorize how she opens her eyes bigger to emphasize a point and how she flips her hair over her shoulder with an impatient flick of her wrist at the end of a statement.
    We stop at the end of Annie’s street, which, she tells me, turns into “Mulholland.” I roll the word around my tongue and see it in my head in big strong letters followed by hardmuscled twenty-year-old boys in bathing suits with dark tans and flashing green eyes.
    We walk down Mulholland. The houses stop and dirt and woods rise to our right. Annie grabs my elbow and jerks her head toward the woods. A light flickers ahead of us, off