Vanishing Act, page 1
Dedication
For all the kids taking the road less traveled . . . I’m proud of you.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Laura Martin
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
When I was little, I used to love playing hide-and-seek. I had three older brothers who were 100 percent normal, so they’d hide in normal places. Eddy would squeeze behind couches, Phil liked hiding under tables, and Charlie had a thing for curtains—you get the idea. I, however, would simply disappear. One second a scrawny kid with floppy blond hair would be standing there. The next second the only thing visible would be whatever clothes I happened to be wearing, which is probably why I got in the habit of ditching my clothes at a very young age. What was the point of being invisible if your T-shirt and shorts gave away your location?
If I was having a good day, I could make all of me disappear for the game. However, I didn’t have good days very often, so usually just a chunk of me was invisible. If it was just a small chunk that wouldn’t go invisible, like a hand or a toe, then I’d just jam the visible bit into a flowerpot or the dog food bowl. If it was something bigger, like my entire leg or head or something, I’d use everything from the trash can to my mom’s favorite soup pot. Which, for the record, worked great until she tried turning the stove on underneath the soup pot. At which point I jumped out howling, only visible from the shins down, and got grounded for a week. Apparently, no one wants their kid hanging out naked in the same pot they make chili. After that, my mom tried to add rules to hide-and-seek, but you aren’t allowed to add rules to hide-and-seek, even if “no naked kids in the soup pot” is probably a good one.
The games were epic, and I got pounded on for winning a lot. I didn’t mind, though. When you’re the youngest of four boys, getting pounded on by your brothers is just par for the course. Even when Charlie went to college, the first thing we’d all do when he came home to visit was play hide-and-seek, although I was the only one who hid these days. It was fun, but I didn’t want to play today. It was a bad day. It was a day where I didn’t exist.
Okay, that was being a bit dramatic, which, according to my mom, is one of my many talents, but still. She should try disappearing for an entire month and then we’d see who was dramatic. One month of looking in the mirror and not seeing myself look back. One month of getting tripped over by everyone in my family. One month of not being able to go out without getting stared at or terrifying the general public. If only my mom would let me tag along naked to the grocery store and the movies, it would be fine. No one would even know I was there, so no one would stare or scream or faint. Plus, as an added bonus, she wouldn’t have to buy me a ticket.
“Please? I’m begging you,” I said, folding my hands in front of me and dropping to my knees in front of my mother. She, of course, couldn’t see the hands. Today I was just a walking-talking pair of Nike shorts and a blue T-shirt. Nike shorts and a blue T-shirt can’t win anyone over.
“No,” she said as she rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead. It was unusually hot for May in South Dakota, and my dad refused to turn on the air-conditioning.
“But why?” I whined. “I’ve been invisible for weeks. I’m not going to just become visible again this afternoon for the one hour we’re at the mall. I promise.”
“You can’t promise that,” Phil chimed in from his spot at the kitchen table. Of my three older brothers, he was the closest to me in age at seventeen, and he took a special pleasure in making things hard on me. I think he was still bugged about losing his status as the youngest when I’d come along unexpectedly thirteen years go.
“I don’t need your help,” I said, and stood up. If kneeling on linoleum wasn’t helping my cause, I might as well stand. “Come on,” I begged. “I leave for camp tomorrow, and I still need a bunch of stuff.”
“Should have just ordered it all online,” Phil said around a mouthful of pizza. I reached over and swiped a slice off his plate. Thanks to my invisible hand, it took him a solid five seconds to realize it.
“Give that back!” he said, and made a swipe for it.
“I already licked it,” I said, “but fine, here ya go.” I tossed it back on his plate. He made a face and shoved it away from the rest of his un-licked pizza.
“Mom!” he said.
“I didn’t actually lick it,” I said when Mom stopped unloading the dishwasher to stare daggers at me. Well, not so much at me, but at the spot where she knew my head was probably located. She was really looking right through me and giving the rooster clock on the wall behind me her signature Mom glare, but that didn’t make it any less effective. She nodded and Phil pulled the offending piece of pizza back onto his plate and grumbled something that probably wasn’t overly complimentary.
“Mom!” Phil said around his next mouthful. “I think I’d like to go to the mall. You know, just to browse. I’ll be back by dinnertime.” With that he stood up, jingling the keys to his new jeep in that obnoxious way that made me want to smack him, and taking his pizza with him.
“How is that fair?” I said, anger bubbling inside me as I watched Phil saunter across the driveway toward his car.
“No one said that you couldn’t go,” my mom said calmly, “but you have to go with clothes on. I don’t feel like I should have to explain this to you again.”
“You don’t,” I said. I folded my invisible arms across my chest and stood at the window, debating with myself. I glanced over at the tree where I used to set up the Mountain Dew cans for the squirrels. They’d really loved the stuff, but Dad had made me stop. Sometimes having a veterinarian for a father was fun, like the time he’d brought home a box of kittens for us to bottle-feed, and sometimes it was annoying, like when he lectured you about not giving soda pop to the wildlife. In my defense, I had no idea the crazy critters would get cavities.
“Can I go to the mall with Phil?” I finally asked.
“Sure,” she said. “But if I hear about you going naked to fly under the radar, I may just call off camp.”
“Whoa,” I said, turning from the window. “You don’t mean that. I have to go back to camp. The guys are counting on me to be there.”
“And I’m counting on relaxing this afternoon without any phone calls from the mall security,” she said, matching my tone perfectly. I was about to tell her about how my friend Emerson had accidentally floated all the way up to his mall’s ceiling and that they’d needed four security guards and the fire department to get him back down again, but the roar of Phil’s jeep interrupted my thoughts, and I realized that my ride was about to leave without me.
“Bye, Mom!” I said, grabbing my flip-flops off the mat by the door and spinning to go.
“Hold it,” she said. I froze and turned back to look at her.
“Forgetting something?” she prompted, and I hurried over to give her a quick peck on the cheek. She managed to wrap her arms around my invisible shoulders and give me a quick squeeze before I was out the door and racing after the jeep that was already making its way down our driveway.
“Wait up!” I yelled, but Phil just kept going.
The kiss Mom rule was really going to mess things up for me this time, I thought grimly as I doubled my speed.
“Hey,” Phil said, without even looking back as I finally vaulted through the open back of the jeep. “That took you longer than I thought.”
“You could have slowed down,” I wheezed as I fumbled with the seat belt.
“Could have,” Phil agreed. “Didn’t want to. You took your sweet time leaving the house.”
“Kiss Mom rule,” I said.
“You mean the Hank Rule,” Phil corrected me. As the youngest, I should have been able to fly under the radar a bit more than I did. However, as the only family member who had a RISK factor, the government’s clever acronym for Recurring Instances of the Strange Kind, I wasn’t allowed to avoid any radars—mothers’, governments’, or otherwise.
Mom had instituted the rule after I accidentally got broadsided by my oldest brother’s four-wheeler, and they’d had to spend two days in the hospital trying to instruct doctors how to stitch up my invisible bleeding head. Life was short, life was fragile, life wasn’t guaranteed, so you’d better kiss your mother before you leave the house. Period. All my brothers had quickly renamed Mom’s new mandate the Hank Rule, since it was obviously put in place for me. They were 100 percent visible all the time and much less likely to die a horrific death. At least in theory, I thought grimly as Phil took a turn faster than was probably safe. Phil drove this jeep like he’d stolen it, and I wondered how long it would take the paramedics to realize there was another, invisible person in the car if he bent it around a tree.
Our family’s farm was a good twenty minutes from the nearest mall, and I settled back in my seat as Phil turned up his radio. My hair whipped around my face and into my eyes, and I quickly snagged a baseball hat off the floor of the jeep and jammed it on my head to keep my hair out of the way. Yet another side effect of prolonged invisibility was the inability to get a haircut. Phil had offered to take his clippers to it and just shave the whole mess, but after the lost eyebrow incident two years ago, I wasn’t going to allow that to happen again.
I reached into my pocket to pull out the list of supplies I still needed to get before camp the next day and felt the familiar thrill of excitement as I pictured the next few months.
Camp Outlier was my favorite place in the entire world, and after nine months of waiting and preparing, it was almost time to go back. I unfolded the paper and smoothed it out on my leg. It consisted mostly of sunscreen, bug spray, and some new shirts and hoodies. I’d never cared much about my wardrobe, but since it was literally the only thing people could see, I thought I might want to move it up the priority list.
I then pulled the other list out of my pocket, the list of requirements I’d given the guys at the end of camp last summer. I’d instructed them to destroy their list upon memorizing it, but I’d kept my original copy since my memory was absolutely horrendous. My dad always joked that it was lucky my RISK factor didn’t involve detachable appendages, or I’d have lost my arms or head years ago. He was probably right. This paper was much more wrinkled and crinkled than the other one, since I’d crammed it in my pocket about a hundred times.
Red Maple men:
Before next summer you MUST, and I repeat, MUST have completed the following items.
Write me an email. Here is my email address. LifeListsRule127@gmail.com. I will then send around everyone else’s email addresses so we can stay in touch. Oh, and if you have a cell phone, send me the phone number too. I don’t have one anymore after getting grounded for a prank-calling binge last year.
Be able to hold your breath underwater for at least two minutes. I have a capture-the-flag plan for next summer. Two words. Sneak attack. (Murphy, I know you crossed this one off your list already. Which is actually what gave me my brilliant plan. Thanks!)
Learn to juggle.
Murphy made me add this one. He wouldn’t say why, but apparently, it’s important that we can all run a six-minute mile. So start running, men. Gary—this includes you.
Learn how to dance. Not like lame dancing either. Go to YouTube. The Monarch girls won’t know what hit them.
Age at least fifteen years by the time I see you again. I have my list of where you all left off, so no cheating.
Start lifting weights. No more string-bean arms for us. Chicks dig muscles, so I hear.
Learn how to quack and waddle like a duck. Kidding. Just wanted to see if you were still paying attention.
Start brainstorming an initiation night for when we’re in Red Wood, and we get to harass the new Red Maple boys. It’s going to be hard to beat eighties prom dresses. Although you have to admit, I looked good in mine.
Check out the picture I stuck in your envelope. I pulled some strings and had Chad make enough copies for all of us, you know, just in case you forgot how fabulous we looked.
Sincerely,
Hank
PS After you’ve read and memorized this letter, either flush it or eat it. Whatever floats your boat.
I didn’t need the picture in front of me to remember the glory of those eighties prom dresses. Mine in particular had been spectacularly horrendous, and I was kind of sad that I’d forgotten to bring it home from camp. It was going to be hard to top that initiation night, but I was looking forward to the day I got to welcome the Red Maple cabin into the brotherhood of camp by dragging them into the middle of the woods and forcing them to bond on their trek back to camp. The thought actually brought me up short, since the entire school year I’d been thinking about how great it would be to be back at camp and be a Red Maple man again, but I wouldn’t be in Red Maple this year, would I? We’d all be moving up to the White Oak cabin. The thought made me a little sad.
Aging in real life had a bittersweet feeling that aging on a Life List didn’t. A Life List, which was like a bucket list only way less depressing, was a way I’d come up with to really squeeze the most out of my life. A Life List was a list of everything from the challenges I wanted to tackle to the places I wanted to visit to the talents I wanted to acquire, and for the last couple of years I’d dutifully checked things off my list. Each item that I successfully checked off counted as a year in my Life Listing life. I was an old duffer in Life Listing years, well over a hundred, and I had no intention of stopping.
I pulled my Life List from my pocket. The list spanned five pieces of paper that I’d stapled and then re-stapled together more times that I could count. I ran my finger down the things I’d crossed off this past school year, and felt a bit smug about a few of the more daring items on the list. The thing with the snakes at school had been particularly tricky. I wondered if the other guys had held up their end of things and aged the fifteen years I’d stipulated in their letters. Murphy would for sure, although now that he’d lost the I’ve got nothing to lose since I time travel and die before summer ends mentality, he was probably a bit more cautious these days. Zeke and Anthony were also pretty reliable Life Listers, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they aged double the required amount. Gary? Well, Gary was a grump and a half, partially because he routinely got himself stuck to inanimate objects and partially because he had the personality of a constipated toad. Sometimes when you told him to do something, it just made him not want to do it. I was pretty sure Emerson would follow through. He’d left camp a different kid than the one I’d met in the parking lot on the first day of camp. I smiled as I pictured my friend who’d gotten the double whammy of uncontrollable floating and a puke-inducing fear of heights.
At the beginning of camp, he’d reminded me of one of those ponies at the carnival that spent their life walking around in circles giving pony rides and had no idea what to do with themselves when they were finally freed. Emerson had been clunking around in shoes essentially made out of bricks and the look of a lost puppy, and I’d immediately liked him. So much so that I’d helped him out and chucked his shoes in the lake on our first day at camp.
I was so engrossed in the list that I didn’t notice that we’d pulled over until Phil snatched my list out of my hand.
“Hey!” I said as I tried to swipe it back.
“I thought so,” he said, nodding as he handed me back my list. “You still haven’t managed to cross cow tipping off your list.”
“So?” I said. I quickly refolded my list and crammed it back in my pocket. My brothers refused to buy into the whole idea of Life Listing, and it would bug me until the day I died.
“Well,” Phil said slowly, running his hands through his blond hair so it stood up in all directions, “wanna cross it off?”
I looked up to see him grinning at me in the rearview mirror. In front of him was a large field full of cows.
“You have to tip cows at night,” I said. “You know, when they’re sleeping and they lock their knees.” I’d done my research on this particular endeavor, since death by cow didn’t sound like a dignified thing to have on your tombstone.
“Odds are that one of them is sleeping out there,” Phil said, jerking his head toward the field.
“This isn’t some ploy to get me in trouble, is it?” I said, remembering how he’d helped me get out the ladder so I could sled off the roof two years ago, only to also help me get grounded for a week by telling Mom about it before I could actually do the deed. In his defense, I probably would have broken my neck.
“It’s not,” Phil promised. “I just kind of want to see you sneak up on a sleeping cow. It’s too quiet around here in the summer now that you go to camp and Ed and Charlie stay at college to work. Consider this my parting gift.”
I studied him for another long minute and then I quickly shucked off my T-shirt and shorts before vaulting out of the back of the jeep. Mom had said that I couldn’t be naked at the mall, but she hadn’t said a thing about naked in a cow field. It wasn’t until I was halfway across the field, my eyes on a giant black heifer snoozing in the shade, that I heard the engine of the jeep start and Phil’s laughter as he pulled away and left me standing, naked, in a field of cows. Sometimes, I really hated having older brothers.
