Let's Get Invisible by R. L. Stine Page A

go to school and terrorize Miss Hawkins,” Lefty said, snickering.
Miss Hawkins is his social studies teacher. “She’s been terrorizing me ever
since school started. Wouldn’t it be cool just to sneak up behind her and say,
‘Hi, Miss Hawkins’? And she’d turn around and there’d be no one there?”
    “That’s the best you can do?” Erin scoffed. “Lefty, where’s your imagination?
Don’t you want to make the chalk fly out of her hand, and the chalkboard erasers
fly across the room, and the wastebasket spill everything out on her desk, and her yogurt fly into her
face?”
    “Yeah! That’s way cool!” Lefty exclaimed.
    I laughed. It was a funny idea. The four of us could go around, completely
invisible, doing whatever we wanted. We could wreck the whole school in ten
minutes! Everyone would be screaming and running out the doors. What a goof!
    “We can’t do it now,” Lefty said, interrupting my thoughts. “Because it’s my
turn to beat the record.” He turned back to April, who was standing tensely by
the door, pulling at a strand of her black hair, a worried frown on her face.
“Ready to time me?”
    “I guess,” she replied, sighing.
    Lefty pushed me out of the way. He stepped in front of the mirror, stared at
his reflection, and reached for the string.

 
 
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    “Lefty!” a voice shouted from behind us. “Lefty!”
    Startled by the interruption, I uttered an alarmed cry. Lefty stepped back
from the mirror.
    “Lefty, tell your brother his friends have to leave! It’s dinnertime. Grammy
and Poppy are here. They’re eager to see you!”
    It was Mom, calling up from downstairs.
    “Okay, Mom. We’ll be right down!” I shouted quickly. I didn’t want her to
come up.
    “But that’s not fair !” Lefty whined. “I didn’t get my turn.”
    He stepped back up to the mirror and angrily grabbed for the string again.
    “Put it down,” I told him sternly. “We have to go downstairs. Quick. We don’t
want Mom or Dad coming up here and seeing the mirror, do we?”
    “Okay, okay,” Lefty grumbled. “But next time, I get to go first.”
    “And then me,” Zack said, heading toward the stairs. “I get a chance to beat
your record, Max.”
    “Everybody, stop talking about it,” I warned as we all clomped down the
stairs. “Talk about something else. We don’t want them to overhear anything.”
    “Can we come over tomorrow?” Erin asked. “We could start up the contest
again.”
    “I’m busy tomorrow,” April said.
    “We can’t do it tomorrow,” I replied. “We’re visiting my cousins in
Springfield.” I was sorry they’d reminded me. My cousins have this humongous
sheepdog that likes to run through the mud and then jump on me and wipe its
hairy paws all over my clothes. Not my idea of a good time.
    “There’s no school on Wednesday,” Zack said. “Teachers’ meetings, I think.
Maybe we could all come over on Wednesday.”
    “Maybe,” I said.
    We stepped into the hallway. Everyone stopped talking. I could see that my
grandparents and parents were already sitting at the dining room table. Grammy
and Poppy liked to eat promptly. If their dinner came one minute late, it made
them real cranky for the rest of the day.
    I ushered my friends out quickly, reminding them not to tell anyone about
what we’d been doing. Zack asked again if Wednesday would be okay, and again I
told him I wasn’t sure.
    Getting invisible was really exciting, really thrilling. But it also made me
nervous. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it again so soon.
    “Please!” Zack begged. He couldn’t wait to get invisible again and beat my
record. He couldn’t stand it that he wasn’t the champ.
    I closed the front door behind them and hurried to the dining room to greet
my grandparents. They were already slurping their soup when I came in.
    “Hi, Grammy. Hi, Poppy.” I walked around the table and gave them each a kiss
on the cheek. Grammy smelled of oranges. Her cheek felt soft