Simulation

Chapter 2: The Invisible Girl

I should probably explain the significance of said notebook. In a nutshell, It's pretty much the worst thing I could ever have fall into the hands of a person like Claire.

Every year around the same time 9th grade takes their annual Sparksfield Labs trip, all the 7th graders volunteer for a day at the senior center. The notebook was something I started the day after my visit.

About half an hour after arriving, everyone gets separated into rotating groups. There's the lunchroom group that helps to cook and serve the food, the comfort pets group that involves "training" the most adorable animals ever invented, and the entertainment group that puts on pre-rehearsed skits and songs for the seniors.

I had tried to hide the field trip forms from my mom, mostly to escape being in the entertainment group. I hated the idea of getting up on a stage and telling stories to a bunch of old people. Of course, my mom and her psychic powers found the forms and made me go, saying I didn't have enough friends and that the experience would "help" me.

To be completely honest, it really wasn't that horrible for the first two rotations. First I helped cook breakfast, which was even fun because Jamie was in my group. After about 30 minutes of being forced to listen to our head cook's boring explanation about what tools we could and could not touch under any circumstances, the tornado of Ezri Foxe was released in the kitchen.

It occurred to me after about five seconds that I really shouldn't be allowed within 10 miles of the preparation of anyone's food, unless of course said person wants a whole egg dropped into their omelet, shell and all. This, of course, was exactly what happened, followed by Jamie's slipping on the bottle of oil I had knocked over and crashing headfirst into some lady's salad.

After being banned from the kitchen by a very displeased head cook, Jamie and I wandered over to the comfort pets station. We got to help train the new service puppies by dangling treats in front of their noses and telling them to "Sit! or "Stay!". This stint was a lot more successful than my short and painful one in the kitchen, and before the rotation was up, I couldn't believe just a day before I'd dreaded coming on this trip.

The joy instantly wore off when I got to the entertainment station and everyone else had rehearsed skits. I begged our teacher to let me sit out and watch, but she forced me to go on anyway saying if I didn't have a skit, that was my problem.

I remember standing up on that stage, throat dry and eyes on the brink of tears. Everyone in the crowd was staring at me. At me, not through me like they usually did. An old man in the back of the room coughed loudly, breaking the still silence, and I wished I could be invisible.

Invisible.

Like a fuse had just been lit in my brain, an idea came to me. Maybe it was the panicked adrenaline coursing through my veins that gave me the courage to do it, maybe it was the idea of how much longer I would have to stand there in front of everyone. All I know is that whatever it was, it worked.

I opened my mouth and whispered one sentence. My voice scraped along the inside of my throat, sounding quiet and scratchy and maybe nobody else heard it but I did, and that was all that mattered. "Once upon a time, there was an invisible girl", I said.

From there it grew.

Like a balloon that could only go up and up until it popped, my story grew. I was on that stage for 17 minutes, and in 17 minutes the invisible girl traveled everywhere. To the center of the earth to fight the evil fire-beast lurking there, to the amazon jungles to find a golden horn that would lead her to her long-lost brother, to the hidden universe she could get to only through a golden door at the bottom of the ocean. The invisible girl lived a whole lifetime in those 17 minutes.