Invisible Identity

I was at the Story-Telling Contest, listening to the storytellers when the current speaker, a flustered-looking Lenny, suddenly dropped his bundle of papers he had been clutching. He scrambled to pick them up, saying, "I... seem to have lost my place..."

    "I lost something once! I lost something I couldn't live without!" I said, standing up suddenly. "My identity!" No one seemed to notice except the few near me.

    "It all started last week, Monday morning to be exact," I said louder. People started to stare at me. "The day I lost my identity."

    The Lenny dropped his papers again.

- - - -

    Well, the whole thing actually started on Sunday, but it seemed better to blame it on Monday, because that's when the whole thing really happened, and Monday's such a bad day anyway, it doesn't really matter when the whole thing really started.

    "Can I be painted?" I asked my owner. That was on Sunday, and I was just a plain blue Zafara then. Good times, good times.

    She just stared at me for a very long time. I thought she had gone deaf or dumb or something of that nature. Then she fell out of her chair in a faint. Well, perhaps that should have been my first warning of the impending doom, but I was more concerned of finding a bucket of ice water, which of course, is the proper thing to find when someone faints.

    I found it in the back yard, right out in the sun. I guess it was weird to find it there, but weird things happen all the time, so I wasn't bothered by the weirdness of it all. I threw the bucket of warm ice water on her, and she woke up - Mad and Wet. It was a few hours before I could climb out of the laundry basket and risk asking the Question again.

    This time she stayed quite conscious and said to my great surprise, "Sure, I don't care."

    I told her my desire to be Invisible. She stared at me again for the longest time, and I was starting to worry that I'd have to find another bucket of warm ice water, before she finally said that that particular color was fine.

    Well, you could've pushed me over with a feather, I was so shocked. You would've had to have pushed really hard, but over I would've gone.

- - - -

    It was another few hours before Hayley (my owner) came back with - nothing. She withstood my cries of rage and punches of fury before smacking me in the head with nothing she held in her hand. Then I understood. Clutching the invisible brush as tight as I could, (why they make the Invisible Brushes invisible, I'll never understand), I raced to the Rainbow Pool (which was very hard, seeing how I had to run across the ocean to get to Neopia Central from Roo Island) and jumped into the warm ice water.

    The first reaction I got when I had finished painting myself was completely unexpected.

    "AHH! A water ghost!" screamed a little pink Usul. She pointed at me and ran away, screaming at the top of her lungs.

    I looked at myself in the water, not sure what I was (or wasn't) going to see. I suppose that to someone who didn't know much better, I did look like a water ghost. I was still dripping with warm ice water from the Pool, and I was a watery outline, a glistening surface of a Zafara - like a bubble. I shook most of the water off, and then I saw nothing, but a few drops of water that still clung to my fur floating in the air. Well, the brush worked at any rate. I just hadn't realized that, transparent or not, I was still solid and the elements worked against me.

    Getting back home was another problem. I decided that running across the ocean was too tiring, and this time, I wanted to ride a boat. I hadn't brought any money with me, but the Bank was nearby, so I went there.

    It was surprisingly empty, and the only problem I faced was convincing that fat green Skeith I was a Pet and not a Ghost.

    "Just wannered to bee sure," he said, still frowning as he handed me a few dozen Neopoints.

    Muttering to myself, I stormed out of the Bank, gripping the small bag of money in my hand and headed for the docks. Some idiots cried out about floating money and I had to yell at them a few times to show them that I, an Invisible Zafara, was in fact, holding the money and it was not Ghost Money. After I paid, I got in line for the boat. But then people kept cutting in front of me for no reason! It took a few toe smashes on my part, for me to remember fully that I was invisible and people obviously couldn't see me.

    "Well, you should wear a sign or something!" said an indignant Uni, who had really hard hooves, and I had no sympathy for her.

    "That kind of defeats the purpose of being invisible!" I yelled after her.

    Getting on the boat was another mess. I tried to get into the boat among the streams of people, but they were too thick for me, and in a moment my poor heels were being trodden upon. Then when I had finally managed to get a seat, people kept sitting on me!

    "Maybe you should wear a sign," said a particularly large Grarrl, rubbing his side where I had angrily poked him.

    Roo Island at last came into view, and this time I was smart enough to wait until everyone got off before I got off myself. It had rained the previous night, and the ground was still muddy. It was a few more screams from frightened girls before I realized I had gathered mud all around my ankles, which looked like floating beads of dirt. I also had a hard time walking as I couldn't see my feet. After stumbling quite a few times (and creating more floating dirt blobs), I managed to get home (I solved my walking dilemma by not looking down as I walked).

    Of course Hayley yelled at me for taking so long to get home, getting mud all over the clean carpet, taking money out of the Bank without permission, and coming home a bruised mess. Then she kindly asked me how I liked my new color. I was still rubbing my ears in pain from the verbal onslaught and didn't answer her. She looked around frantically.

    "Are you still here?" she asked, voice rising to an unnatural pitch.

    "Yeah," I said, confused.

    Hayley fumbled around for me, before finally brushing against my tail, and pulling me into an embrace. "You'd better not run off when I'm yelling at you!" she warned.

    The thought hadn't even crossed my mind. I smiled evilly, and was, for the first time today, glad I wasn't seen.

 - - - -

    The next day changed my mind. It was Monday, the worst day of the week. Never had there been such pandemonium.

    First of all, I got a detention simply for irritating the teacher. Apparently, I thought it was "humorous that I didn't warn the teacher of my recent paint job, and pulled a malicious prank on her with my new invisibility." So not true! Okay, so I didn't tell Miss Flores that I had been painted Invisible, and yeah, I did pretend I was absent until she called my name for roll.

    "Griffin?"

    "Here."

    "Where?"

    "Here."

    "Don't play jokes, Kemp."

    "I didn't, Miss Flores! Griffin is here!" said the Red Lupe who sat behind me.

    "I don't see him, so therefore he must be absent, and so therefore you are lying to me, young man."

    "Or I am here, and you are lying, Miss Flores," I said in the sweetest, most guilty voice.

    Miss Flores turned bright red with embarrassment (which actually looked more orangey than red because she's a yellow Wocky). Then after a few minutes of explanation, she wrote me a detention, and told me to keep my invisible mouth shut, unless I had something decent to say.

    Several agonizingly boring subjects later, it was Math time and Miss Flores appointed Kemp (who was still upset at being reprimanded for nothing) to pass out the worksheet. He passed me by, not giving me a paper. That made me mad, and I said loudly:

    "Miss FLORES! Kemp didn't give me a paper because he's still mad at you for yelling at him because you thought that I was absent and that he was saying 'here' for me and so now he's mad at me for not explaining to you that I'm invisible and so now he's not giving me the worksheet because he's mad at me!"

    I said that all in one breath, the whole time wishing I had a bucket of warm ice water to dump on him. Kemp grimaced and turned back to my seat. I grinned widely and waited. Kemp mumbled a not-very-convincing sorry, staring intently at my left shoulder, where he presumably thought my face was. Then the enormity of my predicament hit me with full force.

    I. Was. Invisible.

- - - -

    "Yeah, we know that! Get to the point!" someone very rudely yelled at me. I paused in my story and glared at him.

    "When exactly did you lose your identity?"

    "And why are there so many buckets of warm ice water?"

    "Patience, good people! A good story can't be rushed," I said, ignoring the questions. "However, I will skip ahead to when I got back home."

- - - -

    I was lying on my bed, aching from head to toe because of various people crashing into me all day. I was thinking about the mess I had gotten myself into. I had thought that being invisible would be so awesome! I could sneak up on people and scare them half to death. (By the way, what happens if you get scared half to death twice?) I could also run away from people and they couldn't find me. I could totally rock at Hide-n-Seek. But all this also meant that I was ignored and forgotten. It seems that people need to see in order for their brains to work. Basically no one knew I existed. And the sneaking up on people wasn't working so well. Either someone hit me on accident before I could frighten someone else, or they heard me coming. (I'm not very subtle, I guess.) I had tried to sneak food out of the kitchen after school, but Hayley was in there, and she has abominably sharp hearing for a human, and she beat me out of the room with a surprisingly accurate broom.

    So now there I was, a pathetic loser, trying to see a ray of light out of this despairing tunnel of darkness.

    "Don't be so dramatic," Hayley said, amused. I looked up. She was standing in my doorway. I hadn't realized I had been talking out loud.

    She crossed the floor and sat down on a squashy armchair. I guess the blankets were depressed where I was lying, so she must've had a good idea where my face was, because she looked right into my eyes.

    "Tough day, huh?" she asked, though she seemed to already know the answer.

    "No kidding," I muttered.

    "Never expected those invisibility problems, eh?"

    "Nope."

    There was long pause. Hayley was never one for coming to the point.

    "We can fix it," she said slowly. I sat upright. Her eyes followed my presumed movement, though she didn't quite get it right, and was staring at my right ear.

    "How?" I asked stupidly.

    "With - you'll never believe it - a paint brush!" she said, voice very sardonic.

    I felt like grabbing the bucket of warm ice water next to my bed and tossing it on her, but then I remembered that she would be getting the new paint brush and I stopped my drifting hand.

    "But I don't have enough money to buy you another color just yet," she said.

    Well, talk about a dousing. Why bring it up then? I was about to retort with a cutting reply, when she spoke up again.

    "I do still have a Blue Starter Paint Brush from the Starter Kit I got when I was a Newbie," she said.

    Well, you could've knocked me over with a pillow full of feathers, I was so surprised.

- - - -

    The next day, I got the day off of school and Hayley and I headed down to Neopia Central (we took Eyries this time) to the Rainbow Pool. I enjoyed my last few moments of invisibility by yelling "BOO!" into people's faces when they came near me, while Hayley went and got the Brush from her Safety Deposit Box.

    When she returned, I stepped into the cold boiling water and ran the Brush all over my body. When I climbed out of the Pool, I was just a regular Blue Zafara again. And you know what? I felt great. Maybe a little twinge of remorse that I was no longer invisible, but at least people didn't run into me or scream and call me a "water ghost." They didn't sit on me or stomp all over my feet.

    Life was good again.

- - - -

    "Well, that's my story," I concluded. I looked around expectantly. Someone yawned.

    "Well, you managed to kill eleven minutes," said the Lenny on the stage, looking at the clock.

    "Thanks!" I said, and sat down.

    "Ow!" someone said loudly.

    "Sorry! You should wear a sign or something!" I said snappishly to the invisible Pet I had accidentally sat on.

The End