Stella Lennon - Invisible i

“No, you look, Hal. I am talking about a serious act of vandalism. I want you to tell me what you know and I want you to tell me now."

Mr. Thornhill was so angry a vein bulged on his neck. I

actually felt a little afraid of him. This time, when I glanced over at Nia, she was looking at me, and I knew the What the hell? look on her face was mirrored on my own.

“Why don’t you tell us what you know?” said Hal. His voice was calm, soothing. Like he thought Mr. Thornhill was crazy or something.

Which, given the circumstances, didn’t seem so impossible.

Mr. Thornhill leaned forward and jabbed his finger in Hal’s direction. “Don’t you condescend to me, Hal Bennett. You all know what Amanda Valentino did this morning. What I want to know is, why has she implicated the three of you in her crime?”

Okay, this was so weird. I mean, I’d just been thinking of Amanda when Mrs. Leong called me into Thornhill’s office, and now he was mad at me for something she’d done. But still, what he was saying made no sense. I mean, Amanda and I were friends, but Amanda and Nia and Hal weren’t. Nobody was friends with Nia, except maybe some of the other weirdos in Model Congress or Mock Trial or whatever lame clubs she belonged to. And as hot as Hal may have been, he still only hung out with a few other dorky guys whose names escaped me. But not Amanda.

“Look, obviously you’re not going to believe us if we say we’re innocent. So why don’t you just ask her yourself? She’ll tell you,” said Nia, and the crazy thing was that now her confidence didn’t remind me of Cisco so much as of Amanda, the only other person I knew who never backed down in the face of authority.

Vice Principal Thornhill got up and walked around to the front of his desk. Then he leaned back on it and crossed his arms, staring at each of us in turn.

“That’s a lovely idea, Nia, and I’d be happy to comply. There’s just one problem with your plan. As the three of you know perfectly well, Amanda Valentino has disappeared.”

I felt as if Mr. Thornhill hadn’t spoken so much as he’d just slammed me in the head with a piece of wood from my dad’s workshop. Amanda had disappeared?

“But—” I was about to say that Amanda hadn’t disappeared, that she’d just been over at my house yesterday, but before I could finish my sentence, Nia cut me off.

“But you don’t seem to understand, Mr. Thornhill. None of us is even friends with Amanda Valentino.”

I jerked my head to stare at her. On the one hand, I knew Nia was telling the truth. I knew it. How could Amanda have been friends with someone so … well, so weird? And she’d never even mentioned Nia, not once. Of course they weren’t friends.

But there was something about the way Nia’s face was whiter than the school mascot and how tightly she was clutching the arms of her chair that made it seem as if she were lying. Which would mean she and Amanda were friends. Only that was …

“Impossible, Nia,” said Vice Principal Thornhill, and now he sounded almost tired. “That is simply not possible.” He walked over to the window and opened the blind. “First of all: look.”

The sky had cleared after last night’s rain, and the bright sun on the wet pavement of the parking lot was nearly blinding. I squinted against its rays as the three of us stood up and went over to the window.

“What are we looking at?” asked Hal, and I realized I was so lost in my own thoughts I hadn’t been looking for anything to look at.

“My car,” said the vice principal.

As soon as he said it, I saw which car was his. Which car had to be his. Parked slightly off to one side of the faculty parking lot, it was the brightest thing in sight. Actually, it could have been the brightest thing in the entire world. Even from a distance, it seemed to throb with color—I couldn’t decipher all the designs,

but there was a gigantic rainbow that extended from the front wheel to the back wheel and a huge peace sign covering most of the driver’s side door. I could just make out what looked like a group of stars on the back door and a bright yellow sun on the hubcap below it.

The whole thing was so outrageous that I suddenly burst out laughing. I couldn’t help myself—it was like the car was some huge joke of Amanda’s. Only, once I started laughing, I couldn’t stop. I was sure everyone else was going to laugh, too, but they didn’t, and I started to get freaked out, like maybe I was getting hysterical or something. I almost wished someone would throw a glass of cold water in my face.

“I’m glad you find this funny, Callista,” said Mr. Thornhill.

It wasn’t a glass of cold water, but it worked like one. As if I had an on-off switch, I stopped laughing immediately. Mr. Thornhill left the blind up, walked back to his desk, and sat down. I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to sit down also, but since neither Nia nor Hal made a move to go back to their chairs, I stayed with them by the window. I didn’t look back at the car, though. I was afraid if I did I’d just start laughing again.

“Even if Amanda did paint all over your car,” said Hal, “what makes you think we had something to do with it? Like Nia said, we aren’t even, you know, friends with her.”

I was about to open my mouth to correct Hal and tell Mr. Thornhill that I was friends with Amanda even though obviously Hal and Nia weren’t, when Hal looked directly at me with his startlingly blue eyes and added, “We don’t know her at all.” Was it my imagination or was he trying to tell me something?

Or trying to tell me not to tell something?

“If you aren’t friends with her,” said Vice Principal Thornhill, “then why, in addition to vandalizing my car, did she spray-paint a symbol on each of your lockers?”

Amanda had spray-painted something on my locker? I was about to ask what, but before I could say anything, Mr. Thornhill continued.

“And perhaps you’d like to tell me if she left something inside your lockers?”

She’d gone in my locker? Why would he think she had gone in my locker? Anyway my locker was locked, and nobody but me knew the combination.

As if speaking my thoughts, Hal said, “How could Amanda even have gotten inside our lockers?”

For the first time since we’d entered his office, Mr. Thornhill smiled. “An excellent question, Hal,” and he slipped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “Why don’t you tell me?"

“I just like having them, knowing somewhere there’s a lock and I could open it if I wanted to.”

Outside it was pouring, a freezing February rain that seemed as if it might continue forever. The rain only made my room, which I generally love anyway, feel even cozier, like a tiny haven that the wet and cold could never penetrate. Even the fact that the silence from my dad’s workshop meant he was probably drinking and not working didn’t bother me when Amanda started talking about something cool, like why she collected keys.

“They’re not worth anything,” I pointed out. As usual, my mind was quick to turn to money. It’s funny how when you don’t have any, suddenly all paths seem to lead to it.

“True,” said Amanda, fingering the tiny, ancient-looking key she always wore on a ribbon around her neck. “But I like their symbolic value.”

We were sitting on the floor, Amanda resting her back against the big armchair and me facing her, my back against the bed. We were both wearing a pair of slippers from the basket by the front door, and I had my comforter wrapped around my legs. The day before, Amanda had cut her hair short and blunt, but today she was wearing a long, platinum wig. I’d asked her if it was because she didn’t like the cut, but she’d said, “No, I like it. Why do you ask?” in this way that made it seem like wearing a wig the day after you get your hair cut was just something anybody would do.