He wondered whether giving up now was worse than being dragged out of a pile of trash. He could explain. He hadn’t done anything. It was the other guy. The guy with the gun. But that didn’t matter. Victims who looked like him were rarely believed.

  But someone had fired at him. They would understand that.

  Maybe.

  All they knew was that there had been a gunshot, and then a half-naked kid running.

  If there had been a moment to talk it out, that moment had vanished. Maybe if he hadn’t run. Maybe if he had gone to ask the cop for help. But would that have saved him? It hadn’t saved others. He tried to swallow. His throat was dry as old bone. He wondered if Win Keegan would be a hashtag. He wondered if anyone cared enough to make him one. What happened to people who died without any family to scream out their names on the news? What happened to people who died when the cameras weren’t rolling?

  He felt sick. He needed to stop somewhere. Get his head right.

  The cops had split up, going up and down the rows of cars. It was only a matter of time before they got to him. Coal moved toward the dumpster. It smelled of rotting food and the tang of dog poop. Whatever else was in there, it was better than what was out here.

  Coal began to pry open the dumpster lid, then paused. Opening it wide enough for him to get inside would call attention to his position. He closed the lid again—quietly so the cops couldn’t hear it—then crouched as close to it as he could get. He dropped his head to his knees. He was toast.

  His phone buzzed with a message from Door. Coal switched on Airplane Mode as fast as he could.

  Another cross-swipe of flashlights. They were getting closer.

  There was the narrowest space behind the dumpster. He could squeeze back there. He’d still be found, but it would buy him a little more time.

  For what?

  Didn’t matter. He’d have more time. More was better. More was the only thing he had.

  Coal flattened himself out as much as he could against the concrete wall and shimmied, legs first, behind the dumpster. Halfway behind it, he got stuck. He was out in the open on the cold concrete parking lot floor. The cops were walking straight toward him. He was a specimen on an examining table. Pinned. Alive. Awaiting dissection.

  Coal had never felt absolute fear before. Not that he remembered anyway. There must have been moments when he was being taken from one family to another, but he might have been too young then to understand what was happening. Now he knew that every pore in his body could constrict with terror. He was prey.

  His skin felt electrified. In seconds they would spot him there on the ground. He wondered if the bullet would hurt.

  “Did you see him?”

  “He couldn’t have gotten out.”

  “Check the dumpster.”

  “Inside? He couldn’t have opened it without us seeing.”

  “No. Behind.”

  “I doubt he could get in there.”

  “He’s a skinny kid. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  The cops were right in front of Coal. He could smell their sweat over the dumpster stink. Or maybe that was his own sweat. He opened his eyes. One of their shoes was right next to his face. Black. Orthopedic. Beat shoes. He looked up. The man was looking everywhere but at him. What kind of game were they playing?

  The second cop came over. “There’s nowhere he could hide.”

  “So how?”

  “No idea.”

  They retreated slowly. As they departed, their flashlights swept the dismal lot, but their bodies were more relaxed now. All the tension from the chase had seeped out of them. When they got out into the street, one of them looked back. He looked directly at where Coal was. He seemed to be looking him right in the eyes. But then he shook his head, and they both left.

  Coal waited a few seconds in case they doubled back. He was sure it was a trick. It had to have been. Then he waited a few more seconds. And a minute or two after that. It was only when the streetlights came on and he remembered what Aaron had told him about getting back that he decided to get up. He pushed himself out from behind the dumpster and looked at his palms to check for scrapes and dirt. Only there were no palms. Or arms. Or a torso. His pants were standing on their own.

  “The hell?”

  Coal looked around. He’d spoken louder than he would have liked. But there was no one there to hear him.

  He moved his hands. They felt like they were there, they just weren’t actually there. He touched his face. He felt his fingers on his cheeks. He squinted at where his arms were supposed to be. He could see their barest outline, with a slight blur at their edges.

  “What is happening?” Coal whispered. “How is this happening?”

  He tried to think. To breathe. To slow his heart rate.

  He sat against the cold concrete wall. He felt its roughness against his skin. He was still there. His heart eventually slowed. He caught his breath. His skin started to tingle, like a light electric current was using him as a conduit. He watched as his body came back in patches. It looked like fire eating through paper in reverse. It wasn’t a trick of the light. His skin was changing back to its usual deep brown, regaining color and texture. A few seconds later, Coal was back to normal.

  He had been invisible.

  It had saved him.

  5.

  In the history of teenagers arriving home late on a school night, and having to give an excuse, Coal was certain there never had been an excuse that came anywhere close to what his would be if he decided to be truthful. But of course, he could not. No one would believe him. He wasn’t exactly sure he believed it himself. There was no possibility that went invisible would be acceptable. Even shot at by rando stranger and chased by police was sure to get him returned to the social worker. He imagined every likely reaction by Doc and Jackson, none of them good. By the time Coal got back he had decided he would lie.

  When he entered the open front door, every voice in the McKay house seemed to be talking over the next one. He hesitated in the hallway and noticed that his backpack had been placed on a freshly hung new hook next to everyone else’s. He took off his shoes, lined them up neatly with the rest, and stepped into the crucible of light that joined the hallway with the dining and living rooms.

  “He’s here!” Jackson shouted. “You’re here!” he added, a little less loudly.

  There was simultaneous commotion and sighs of relief. Doc entered from the back of the house where her office was, cell phone in hand. Mari and Hannah leaned over the second-floor railing to look. Aaron moved off the couch, and Jackson set down his car keys and moved toward Coal.

  “What happened?” he asked. “Are you all right?” He sounded scared and relieved at the same time.

  “Yeah.” It was the first word out of his mouth since the moment on Diallo Lane. His throat was still bone dry.

  “You’re filthy,” Doc said. “Something happened. Do you need water?”

  Coal shook his head. Jackson brought him a cold glass anyway.

  Doc took his wrist and checked his pulse. She looked at Jackson and raised her eyebrows almost imperceptibly.

  “Have a seat,” Jackson said. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

  Coal sat at the dining table with the glass of water in his hand. The coolness of it felt good against his palms. Palms he could see. He shook his head to get the thought of his invisible hands out of his mind.

  “What is it?” Doc asked.

  “Do you ever check your messages?” Aaron asked.

  Coal fished his phone out of a pocket and looked at it. “I don’t have any.”

  Aaron grabbed the phone from his hand and looked at the screen.

  “Aaron,” Doc said sternly.

  Aaron handed the phone back. “You have it on Airplane Mode.”

  “Sorry,” Coal croaked. “I must’ve done it by accident.”

  Jackson motioned to Coal to take a sip of water. He did.

  “Did you get lost?” Doc asked.

  “I guess I got turned around a little,” Coal said.

  “You have GPS, though,” Aaron said.

  “Okay, son, that’s enough,” Jackson said. “We’ve got it from here.”

  “You weren’t that gentle with me when you grilled me about why I let him walk off by himself,” Aaron said.

  Doc inhaled deep and exhaled. “Aar, can you make sure your sisters are getting washed up for bed, please?”

  “Yeah, sure.” He made his way down the hall with heavy footsteps.

  Jackson and Doc waited a few seconds before they turned to Coal again. “Okay,” Doc said. “So what happened?”

  “Nothing,” Coal said. “I went for a walk.”

  Jackson took up a position behind Doc. He was a full head above her, so Coal had a little adjusting to do to look at both of them. “You’ve been gone for two hours. It’s dark. You’re sweaty and filthy and you smell a little like vomit. Why would you put your phone on Airplane Mode?” His voice was even and steady but a little strained.

  “That was on accident,” Coal offered weakly. It was all he had. There was no truthful thing Coal could say that wouldn’t get him in trouble. His brain felt rigid. Every thought threatened to crack him wide. He had been drawing. In chalk. On a public road. A man had pointed a rifle at him. Shot at him. Then the police showed up. Chased him. He had gone invisible. Then he became visible again. He had no idea how that could happen, how it happened, or what he was supposed to do about it. Jackson and Doc were staring at him. Waiting. “I don’t feel well.”

  “Okay,” Doc said. “How about you get cleaned up and then I’ll check you out?”

  Coal went upstairs. In the bedroom there was a new chest of drawers next to his bed. It was the same dark polished wood as Aaron’s chest. His duffel was sitting on top of it, he guessed, for him to empty its contents into the drawers. He inhaled the wood scent deeply, let his eyes close, then opened them quickly again to check his skin.

  Still normal.

  For now.

  When the bathroom freed up, he took a quick, hot shower. It wasn’t exactly calming but he used the time to come up with something of a strategy. There would be questions he couldn’t dodge. After he got changed, he found Doc in the kitchen.

  “Sit,” she said.

  He took one of the tall stools near a window counter.

  “What are you feeling, exactly?”

  Terror . . . confusion . . .

  “I just feel a little off,” Coal said. “Achy.”

  “Anywhere in particular?”

  Coal shook his head.

  “Could be a fever coming on,” she said. “I noticed you got hurt.” She turned both his palms upward. They were scraped up from when he tried to shove himself behind the dumpster. “How’d it happen?”

  “I tripped and fell on the pavement.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Not sure,” Coal said. “There are a lot of little streets around here.”

  Doc nodded. She rubbed something on the scrapes. They burned, but Coal didn’t flinch. Then she checked his pulse again. “Better,” she said. “You were scared before.”

  “I wasn’t sure how you would react to me getting in so late,” Coal said. “And I ran.”

  “From where?”

  He cleared his throat. “Tom’s house.”

  Doc let out a short burst of breath. “Hmm. We figured it might be something like that. Jackson went over there looking, but he didn’t find you.” She relaxed back against another of the barstools. “Look, if there are things you need from the house, I’m sure we can figure out some way to get you back in so you can get them. I know you lived there a long time.”

  “I should’ve thought of that,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “If it’s that you need information on Mr. Goreau and how he’s doing, I told you, I can find out that stuff, too,” she said. “I just haven’t had a chance to check yet.”

  “Thanks,” Coal said. He focused on a spot on the floor.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a lot of changes in a short time, you know?” He looked up at her for just a second, then back down.

  “You know I’m a psychiatrist.”

  “I know.”

  “And I know that we’ve just met, so maybe you don’t trust me. But I’m here to talk whenever you need to and I might even be able to help.”

  “Okay.”

  “Which means that whenever you’re ready to tell me what really happened tonight, I’ll be available.”

  Doc had one eyebrow cocked and her lips were zipped together.

  “I wasn’t—”

  She held up a hand. “I’m a trained professional,” she said. “It’s my job to know when a kid is lying.”

  Of course it was.

  “So maybe you want to start with a small part of what happened tonight,” she said. “Not the whole story. Just the piece you think you can safely tell me about, and we’ll work our way up to the rest of it when you’re ready.”

  Coal looked down at his hands.

  “Did something happen with your hands? Besides being scraped up by dirty concrete?”

  “Not just my hands, my whole body,” Coal said.

  Doc looked alarmed. “Can you describe it?” she asked.

  He considered how much he could say, and started slowly, thinking through each word. “It felt a little like there was a shock, a current, or something, going right through my whole body, and then my skin . . . it looked strange.”

  “Strange how?” She checked him out from head to toe.

  “Discolored or something.”

  “Is that when you fell?” she asked. “You felt something in your body, you noticed a change in your skin, and then you were down on the ground?”

  “No, I was already on the ground,” Coal said.

  Doc put her palm on his forehead. Her hand was soft and warm. “You’re not running a fever. Sometimes when your temperature is off, you’ll have aches in your body and feel a reaction in your skin,” she said. “You might be coming down with something.”

  “You think I could be sick?”

  “You might be sick. But it could be a reaction to stress. You’ve been taken from an environment you know, dropped into a new one . . . it’s a lot to process.” She smiled nervously. “When your brain is in overdrive it can make your body feel tired, react differently, even make you physically ill.”

  “Instead of mentally ill,” Coal said.

  Doc tilted her head. “You know what happened with Tom isn’t something you can catch. That’s his illness. Not yours.”

  Coal stiffened. “I didn’t mean Tom.”

  “Okay,” Doc said. “Is something bothering you? I’m sorry. I should rephrase that. What’s bothering you right now?”

  Coal looked at her for a couple of seconds and decided he still couldn’t trust her.

  “The total upheaval of your life in the space of a few hours is enough. I understand,” she said.

  Coal shook his head. “So what now?”

  “Now you rest,” Doc said. “It’s the best thing for your mind and your body. You sleep and we’ll see how you are when you wake up in the morning.”

  “Thanks.” Coal got up to leave. “What if there’s something really wrong with me?”

  “Then it’s a good thing you live with a doctor, huh?” Coal trudged up the stairs.

  “Did you have any homework?” Doc asked.

  He did, but he couldn’t remember what it was, and he didn’t care. He shook his head.

  “So go straight to bed, then,” Doc said. “I can give you some melatonin to help you relax and fall asleep. You’ll be surprised how much a good night’s sleep can help you.”

  Coal knew sleep would not do anything to help him. His head swirled with questions.

  “Sure,” he said. “That sounds good.”

  Doc went back to the kitchen and returned with a bottle. She shook two pills into Coal’s hand. “I promise whatever it is will look better in the morning.” She watched as he put them in his mouth.

  Coal smiled and continued upstairs. He stopped in the bathroom, spat the pills into the toilet, and flushed. Then he went to lie down and as Aaron watched, pretended to fall asleep.

  It seemed like hours before the house was perfectly still. Coal got out of bed and went to the bathroom. He opened the browser on his phone and typed invisible people. Hundreds of articles flooded the screen about people who were marginalized: immigrants, refugees, people living in poverty. He searched again, this time for invisible skin, which brought him to a few boring scientific papers about synthetic compounds that cover and heal skin damage, a few articles about burn victims, and what seemed like thousands of products about making your skin look better all being hawked by stock-photo doctors. Invisible boy led him to a book called Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, and a bunch of posts discussing it, plus two movies titled The Invisible Man, one from 1933 and the other from 2020.

  The internet was simultaneously helpful and garbage. He got up to stretch his legs and knocked over a bottle of lotion. As he tried to catch it, he banged into the side of the sink and yelped. He froze. All the sounds from that evening filled his ears at once. The cat purring nearby. The rustle of moving leaves and branches overhead. Then the creak of a porch screen door swinging open. He had heard it. He hadn’t registered it, but he had heard it because now it came back to him like an early warning. He even heard the man’s bare feet slapping against the wood of the porch. Not long after . . .

 

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