What Not to Do If You Turn Invisible

Then he presses a button and the car becomes invisible.

You know what? Up to right now, I would have said that that was just silly. The clip itself was in an internet list called Top Ten Bond Baloney.

But now?

Now I’m not so sure.

If it can happen to me, why not a car?

What I have managed to work out is that there are two ways that something could be invisible.

Are you ready for this?

I’ll keep it simple.

First you have to understand how we see stuff. Things are visible because light rays bounce off them and go into our eyes. So if there’s a tree in front of you, the light hits the tree and is reflected onto the back of your eye, and after some nearly instant clever stuff in your brain, you see a tree.

So the first way to make something invisible is to cover it with a ‘cloaking device’. This makes the light bend round the tree and keep on going, like sticking your finger in a stream of water from a tap: the water bends round your finger, and carries on below as a single stream.

Lots of scientists say they are very close indeed to developing cloaking devices, especially for military purposes. I suppose they mean making invisible tanks, or ships or planes or even soldiers, which would be pretty cool, actually.

Are you still with me?

OK, the second way is to make the light pass straight through the object. This is how glass works and if you’ve ever walked into a glass door like I did once at the Metrocentre, you’ll know how effective it is.

If you look at it straight on, glass is invisible.

It’s also how X-rays work. X-rays are a particular type of light, which can pass through some substances but not others. They’ll pass through your flesh, but not through your bones, so doctors can see inside you.

So it must be the second one that is causing me to be invisible. Light is passing through me, so even though I am still here, it looks as though I am not.

Not that knowing this helps me much.

I’m playing the sequence of events back in my mind: getting onto the sunbed, setting the timer, falling asleep, being woken by Lady nudging her bowl, and …

Lady. Where is she?

I last saw her running off out of the back door. Standing there, looking out, I call for her, then whistle, then call again.

It’s like: have I not got enough to worry about at the moment without a lost dog to add to it?

I’m thinking of the rash of Missing Dog posters on lamp posts lately, and I feel sick. Everyone has been talking about them.

There used to be one or two a year taped to lamp posts: lost dog, lost cat, have you seen it? That sort of thing.

Just recently there seems to have been about one a month. Gram mentioned it the other day, telling me to keep a close eye on Lady when I took her out.

‘You never know, Ethel,’ she said. ‘There’s some funny people around.’

What if someone has taken Lady? Lady is so friendly she’d go with anybody.

I need to find her, and to do that I need to go outside: probably to the beach as that’s where I would go if I was a dog.

It’s a risk. It’s a massive risk, in fact, but sometimes the only alternative to a risk is to do nothing at all, and that is not really an option right now.

I’m going to have to go outside, while invisible.

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I add some clothes to those I already have on. Socks and trainers, a polo-neck sweater that covers up my invisible throat, a long-sleeved hoodie, and already I’m looking slightly less weird – kind of like one of those headless shop dummies, if that qualifies as ‘less weird’.

In my bottom drawer is a pair of gloves, which leaves only my head to sort out.

There’s a plastic crate in the garage with old dressing-up gear. In it I find a sparkly wig from some school show I was in and a plastic mask with a clown’s face. I hate clowns, but still: it does the job. With the hood of my sweater up, I look like … what?

I look like some weird kid who’s decided to go around wearing a clown mask. Odd, definitely, but not totally mad.

I’m halfway to the front door in this get-up when my phone pings with an incoming text message.

From: Unknown Contact

Hi Ethel: Is now a good time 4 me to work on my beach bod? I’ll stay out of ur way. With you in 2 mins. Elliot

And there you have it, in one single text message, why Elliot Boyd grates on you so much. Pushy, presumptuous, in your face and a dozen other words that mean ‘total pain in the neck’ are all going through my head as my fingers compose a reply.

NO. Not a good time. Just on my way out. Try me later. Ethel

Why, why, why instead of saying ‘just on my way out’ did I not say, ‘I have gone out’? If I had, I could have pretended not to be in when the doorbell goes.

Which it does – seconds after I press ‘send’.

I’m in the hallway. I can see his outline in the front-door glass, I can even hear his phone when he gets my text, and then he sticks his fingers through the letter box and calls through the opening.

‘All right, Eff! Good job I caught you! Open the door, eh?’

What choice do I have?

I open the door.

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We both gasp when we see what the other is wearing.

‘Whoa!’ he says. ‘You never told me I had to come in fancy dress. What’s that all about?’

‘What about you?’ I say.

I may be in a bizarre outfit of sparkly wig and mask and gloves – but Boyd? He looks like he’s heading to Florida: vast baggy shorts, a Hawaiian-style shirt decorated with sharks, sunglasses (unnecessary today), and a baseball cap sitting on top of his springy hair. He’s carrying a beach bag and I can see it contains a towel and various tanning lotions.