SOME PEOPLE THINK THE CICADAS bring trouble when they come to town. I don't think that's true. I think trouble finds its way without any help at all.
The cicadas are everywhere. They came back to Olena two days ago, after seventeen years of hiding in the ground and waiting. Waiting to climb into the sunlight. Waiting to climb the bushes and trees. Waiting to sing.
They waited so long. Then, thousands of them crawled out of the ground and up into the trees and bushes in just one night. Their song sounds like electricity buzzing on a power line, getting higher and higher and louder and louder until the air nearly explodes from the noise.
There are a hundred cicadas on the oak tree outside Mrs. Kirk's sixth-grade classroom. I stand at the window watching them buzz from branch to branch. Their bodies are thick and clumsy, and I wonder how they can fly at all with their thin, little wings.
Then I see the cicada on the bookshelf next to me. It stares at me with its black marble eyes, and I stare back. I'm so close, I could thump it off the shelf if I wanted.
I could, but I don't.
At first, no one else notices the cicada. The other kids are hunched over their spelling tests, ready to spell entangled or fearful or mottled or some other word.
This week's words are adjectives, but Mrs. Kirk picked the wrong ones. She should have chosen words like sweaty or noisy or stifling. Stifling would be a good word today. It's so hot, it feels like July and the buzzing of the cicadas squeezes into the room and pushes out the air until no one can breathe. It's stifling.
I stare at the cicada, but even without looking, I know what's going on behind me. In the front row, Judy Thomas is wound up like a tiger ready to pounce on the next spelling word. She presses her pencil so hard against the paper that the lead nearly breaks. When Mrs. Kirk says the next word, Judy will spell it as fast as she can in her perfect handwriting, and then look around to make sure she's the first to finish. Of course she will be. She always is.
In the back row, where the hopeless cases sit-where there's a desk with my name on it-Rose Miner is cheating off Tommy Burkette. Mrs. Kirk knows they're doing it, but she's too hot and too tired to care. Besides, the only person in the whole world who spells worse than Rose is Tommy, so it doesn't make much difference anyway.
After a while, the cicada on the shelf starts buzzing and Rose screams like it's Godzilla or something and Ricky Fitzgerald stands up and yells, "It looks like the cicada that got my grandma!"
Ricky Fitzgerald has told the story about the cicada that got his grandmother about a hundred times in the last two days. He says the last time the cicadas came around, one flew into his grandma's hair and made her run crazy around the yard until Ricky's grandpa came out with the sheep shears and lopped off half her hair.
I've seen his grandma's hair. She has one of those beehive hairdos that's tall and round and really hard from all the hairspray she uses. I can see why a cicada would land there. A hair cave like that would be a great place to get out of the sun.
That's what I think, but Ricky says it attacked his grandma to suck out her brains and make her into a zombie.
Ricky Fitzgerald is a dork.
Mrs. Kirk sighs the same way she has about ninety-nine times since the cicadas showed up and Ricky started telling his story.
"Thank you, Ricky," she says.
But before Ricky can say another word, Mrs. Kirk says, "Bobby, would you get rid of it, please?"
I could reach up and touch the cicada without trying, but Mrs. Kirk doesn't ask me. Bobby Bowes gets up from his desk and walks right in front of me. He grabs the cicada in one hand and opens the window screen with the other. He tosses the insect outside, closes the window screen, and sits down again without a word. He doesn't say, "Move, Lily," or anything. He doesn't even notice me standing there.
He doesn't notice because I'm invisible.
Most people would say that's a lie. They'd say that I'm not invisible because they can see me as plain as day. Most people are wrong. It's not my skin that makes me invisible. It's my silence. My silence and the trick I do with my eyes where I never look anybody in the face.
You can tell everything about a person by looking in their eyes. I don't want anybody to know anything about me, so I look away.
I've been invisible for two years now.
At first, everyone tried so hard to make me talk. They talked really loud to me and grabbed my face with their hands so I had to look at them, but I just shifted my eyes away and looked at the floor or the ceiling or something else. Anything else.
Almost everybody got tired of talking to me after a while. That's when I faded away. They can still see me, but I'm like an old table to them. Just something to step around. Something to keep from knocking over.
Everyone gave up on me after a while. Everyone but Dad, who can't. And Fern, who won't.
It's been two years, and it's getting hard to remember when I wasn't invisible. Sometimes I wonder if I'll fade so much that I won't even be able to see myself.
After Bobby gets rid of the cicada, Mrs. Kirk goes on with the spelling test, but I don't stick around. I walk past Judy the Spelling Tiger and past the rows of kids scribbling wildly on their papers and out of the room. I walk down the hall with adjectives trailing behind me until I can't hear them anymore.
… speckled… tangled… futile…
I go into the school library and let Mrs. Todd's fan blow hot air over me while I stare at the Nancy Drew books. I never let anyone see me read one, and no one thinks I can anymore. But of course I can. I can do everything I used to do, but I don't let anybody know it.
I've read all of the Nancy Drew books at least fourteen times-except The Haunted Showboat. Some low-life book-thief stole that one. Bookthieves are the lowest form of criminal. I would never steal a book, but I put them in protective custody sometimes, and take them home and read them late at night when no one will see me. Of course I bring them back to school the next day.
If I think a book is really in danger, I hide it and keep it safe until I'm done reading it. I hide it in the gap behind the Encyclopaedia Britannicas that runs all the way from ORS to VEN. It's the perfect place to hide a Nancy Drew mystery. Or a Hardy Boys mystery, but who likes them?
Even with Mrs. Todd's fan, it's too hot to be in school, so I leave. I grab The Clue in the Old Album from the shelf and stuff it under my shirt and walk down the hall. Nobody says a word to me as I go. Nobody even notices the twelve-year-old girl walking out the front door of the school in the middle of the day.
I walk to the cottonwood tree at the edge of the school property. Out in the shade, there's nobody to get freaked out by the "brain-damaged girl" who can suddenly read.
I can just imagine what would happen if someone saw me.
"It's a miracle!" they'd say.
A miracle.
The cottonwood is enormous, and it stretches its branches like arms in every direction and dips its roots into Swift's Creek, which is a pretty funny name because there's no water in it. It's not swift. It's not even a creek.
I sink into the V between the giant roots and pull out my book and start to read. A cicada lands on my shoe and I let it rest there for a second before it flies off to look for its true love in another tree.
Dad says that the cicadas are so loud because they are looking for love. Every one of them is trying to sing the song that will attract the perfect mate, but it's hard to do when everyone else is so loud.
Dad tells me stuff like that at dinner when it's just the two of us alone together. He talks without waiting for an answer because he knows there won't be one. He talks because if he doesn't, the silence will eat him alive.
And all the time when he talks, his left hand is at his side, patting the hip pocket of his overalls like he's done a thousand times since he got up in the morning. His hand brushes the denim so lightly he doesn't even know he's doing it, but the denim is softer and lighter from his touch, and there are places where the threads are frayed from the hard edges and points of the keys in his pocket. He touches his pocket a thousand times a day to make sure he hasn't lost those keys.
When we are alone together, Dad talks about everything. About nothing. He talks because he can't stand the way I stare at my food. At the floor. At anything but him. Then, after a while, he stops talking and looks too hard at his grilled cheese sandwich and stirs his Campbell's tomato soup more than he needs to, scraping his spoon along the bottom of his bowl with hard, even strokes like the world depends upon it. I don't know. Maybe it does.
It's the hardest when I'm with Dad.
Hardest to stay invisible. I want to tell him all kinds of things. Small things, like about Ricky Fitzgerald's story and how someone stole The Haunted Showboat. I want to, but I can't.
If I start talking to Dad, I won't ever stop until it's too late.
Until I've told him everything.
Until I've told him about Pete.
Then Dad won't ever love me again.
How could he?
Pete and I stand at the edge of the road waiting to start our race to Fern's barn. We are racing for the Olympic gold medal, and I'm going to win.
Pete cups his hands around his mouth and calls out, "Racing for the United States of America in the three-thousand-meter dash is the reigning gold medalist, Pete Mathis."
He raises both arms up into the air and waves at the cheering crowd. Then he cups his hands again and announces, "Racing for the Republic of Dorkonia is the World Champion Dork, Lily Mathis. Booooooooo."
I stick my tongue out at Pete, but I'm not going to waste my energy getting mad. It's time to race.
Pete narrows his eyes and grinds his back foot hard into the dirt. He gets down low, but I don't get so low. He says it's because I'm a girl and I don't really know how to run. I know it's because I'm scouting out the best way through the cornrows. He's trying to make me mad so I'll lose. But it won't work.
It never does.
"Racers, take your mark!" he says. "Ready… Set…"
And Pete takes off running and leaves me ten feet behind before he yells, "GO!"
Pete is such a cheater, but he has to be if he wants to beat me. I'm two years younger than him, but I'm almost as tall and I'm a lot faster than he is. I'm a lot like Dad that way. He's a good runner, too.
Dad says that Pete is more like Mom with his coal-black hair and green eyes, and the way they could both laugh and make you laugh, too-even when there's nothing funny to laugh at. I don't know if that's true. I don't remember Mom. Pete says he remembers her with purple flowers from the garden. It must be true because I've never seen purple flowers in the garden.
I race after Pete between two rows of corn that are almost up to my knees. The leaves scratch my legs a little, but I don't pay any attention. I'm catching up.
When Pete sees me out of the corner of his eye, he jumps out of his cornrow and into mine to stop me from passing, but it doesn't work. I know he's going to do it, so I jump into his row and run right past him. I stick my tongue out at him as I go.
I'm almost to the barn when a corn stob sails over my shoulder and lands right in front of me with a thud and a cloud of dust. I turn around and see Pete ready to bomb me with another one.
There aren't many stobs left in the field after this season's plowing and planting, but I find a good one and pull it out of the ground. It has about eight inches of dried cornstalk left and a big wad of roots and dirt stuck to the bottom, and it sails through the air like a missile right at Pete's head.
He ducks and then he gets up and throws another one at me really hard, and while I'm ducked down, he runs for the barn.
I get up and run as fast as I can, and we both hit the barn door at the same time and both of us are laughing so hard, that we can't either of us call the other one "loser."
Pete reaches into his overalls pocket and pulls out keys tied together with baling twine. He took them from the hook in the kitchen when Dad wasn't looking. Pete doesn't think Dad would mind, and he's probably right or Dad wouldn't leave the keys hanging around like that. Besides, we have to check that no gangsters are using the barn as a hideout. That's important. Fern wouldn't like gangsters hiding in her barn.
Pete unlocks the side door of Fern's barn and we step into the cool darkness. It still smells like hay, even though Fern hasn't had horses for years.
There isn't much in the barn. Just a dead plough, some busted crates, and two old cars. They belonged to Fern's husband who died a long time ago.
Mr. Fern loved his cars and always took good care of them. He kept them covered up and out of the rain. Fern loved Mr. Fern, so she keeps his cars covered up, too. Fern doesn't even know how to drive.
I go to the red sports car and pull back the cover. Nancy Drew's car was blue, but I like to think it was just like this one. It's a fancy car and I think maybe Nancy was a little bit spoiled.
And lucky.
Pete likes Mr. Fern's black sedan best because it reminds him of all the 1940s gangster movies he watches late at night on Channel 11. He loves those shadowy gray movies with tough guys and fast cars.
Pete pulls the canvas tarp back and bunches it up on the trunk. Dust flies into the air and gets caught in the shaft of light coming down from the hayloft window.
I love the way each speck of dust dances through the light, and then disappears in the shadows.
Pete opens the door of the sedan and slides behind the wheel.
"Hop in, toots!" he says. "I'll take you for a spin."
More than anything in the world, my brother Pete wants to drive.
"C'mon, toots!" he says again and he winks at me.
I jump into the convertible, which is right behind Pete's sedan. I see Pete's eyes narrow in his rearview mirror as he squeezes the steering wheel.
"You'll never take me alive, copper!" he yells and he makes a squealing sound like tires make on a hot road.
"You can't get away from the law, Bugsy!" I yell back. The chase is on. We race through the countryside all the way to Chicago, where there are lots of other gangsters with fast cars. Pete grabs the stick he always keeps in the front seat. He shoots over the backseat at me. He makes a really good tommy gun sound, too.
"Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh!"
After a while, I get kind of bored and I yell, "You win this time, Bugsy, but I'll get you next time! You can't run away from the law!"
He yells, "See ya around, sucker!"
After that, I twist and turn the heavy steering wheel and I head down an old road that will lead me to a Haunted Showboat or the Inn of the Twisted Candle with my chums, Bess and George. We drive along looking for mysteries to solve until I hear Dad's tractor pass by Fern's barn and it's time to go home.
