Invisible by Pete Hautman Page A

Andy. I didn’t mind taking them. Eventually the Morrows returned from their vacation, and school started again, and my parents let me go out on my own, and I didn’t see any reason to keep popping those little blue-green pills.
    So I stopped taking them. The next morning, everything changed. I got As on every test at school, I stayed awake eighteen hours a day, and I got serious about building that bridge. The pills had been holding me back. I remember sitting in my window telling this to Andy.
    â€œIt’s like the air cleared up,” I told Andy. “School is easier, and my bridge is going great, and now I’m not sleepy all the time.”
    â€œDo your parents know you quit taking them?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThey’ll find out.”
    â€œNot if I don’t tell them.”
    Anyway, I feel bad that my parents have to pay for pills I don’t take and for therapy I don’t need. But there is no way I am going back into sleepyland. For onething, if I were taking the pills, I would never be awake enough for my late night missions to Woodland Trails.
    Melissa Haverman’s room is completely dark when I arrive at my post. It is 10:17. It is possible she went to bed early, or she could be watching TV, or she might not be home. Some nights she will stay out as late as 11:30. I turn up the collar of my jacket and settle into the crotch of the old oak and begin my wait. I can be very patient.
    I wonder what happened to her night-light. She usually has her night-light on, even when she is asleep. Maybe it burned out.
    I think about her face in the lunchroom, yelling at me, little droplets of spit flying from her mouth. What would it be like to touch those pink lips?
    I wonder what she does every night after she closes her blinds.
    I imagine myself crouching on the deck outside her room. How hard would it be to climb up there? Would I be able to see past the blinds?
    Suddenly the branches are starkly lit by a bright yellow light from below.
    A man’s voice shouts, “All right, you sick pervert, come on down!”
    I turn my face away from the light and duck behind a thick branch.
    â€œClimb on down now!”
    I climb, keeping the big branches between me and the light. My heart is pounding so hard, I can’t breathe.
    â€œThere’s no place for you to go!”
    He’s wrong about that. I scramble along a branch quick as a squirrel, away from the light. I hear the crunch of big feet on leaves. There’s only one guy. I think it’s Melissa’s father. He’s lost me for the moment—it’s a big tree, and it still has most of its leaves.
    â€œI’m not fooling around here!”
    The branch I’m on is only about fifteen feet above the ground. He is circling the tree, raking the branches with the beam of light. Any second now the light will find me again.
    Now or never. I let go of the branch and drop. I land on my feet and roll, leaves flying, then scramble to my feet and take off running. I hear shouts. Flashes of light hit the trees on either side of me. I run full speed through the greenway, zigzagging through the trees the way Andy weaves his way through a football field full of opponents. I am over the wall and out of Woodland Trails within a minute, but I don’t slow down. I keep on running until I get home.
    As I climb through the window, gasping for breath, I hear Andy’s voice behind me.
    â€œI told you you’d get caught, Dougie.”

20
OUTRAGEOUS LIES
    I am in my pajamas in bed with my eyes closed when the doorbell rings.
    â€œI am asleep,” I whisper, lying to myself now. “I’ve been in bed for an hour.”
    I hear my father’s slippered feet stomping angrily from his bedroom to the front door, then voices. At first I can’t hear what they are saying, then my father’s voice cuts through the walls.
    â€œI am telling you, he is asleep in bed . He does NOT go OUT at NIGHT!”
    I hear