Invisabeth:

Outline:

I. Childhood:

1. Elizabeth arrives at Samantha’s school and she’s invisible to all her classmates. Elizabeth and Samantha become friends.

2. Elizabeth invites herself over to Samantha’s house then avoids telling her mother and hides when it’s time to go home. The next time Elizabeth is at school, she has a burn on her shoulder.

3. Elizabeth and Samantha go trick or treating. Samantha notices a cast on Elizabeth’s arm. Two boys try and steal the girls’ candy and Elizabeth uses her invisibility to punch one of the boys and get away. Samantha tries to ask about the cast and Elizabeth uses her invisibility to slip away.

II. Adolescence:

1. Samantha reconnects with Elizabeth, who has become more visible than when they were kids. Elizabeth has a rebellious streak now and is dating Eric, a boy from another school, who is bad news.

2. Elizabeth and Eric take Samantha to a 7-11 they plan to shoplift from. Samantha nearly gets caught and Elizabeth helps her escape but they find their getaway car and Eric are gone. Elizabeth helps Samantha hide from the 7-11 clerk.

3. At school, Elizabeth confronts Eric for ditching them and breaks up with him, claiming he doesn’t see her for who she is.

III. Adulthood:

1. Samantha reaches out to Elizabeth and convinces her to come to their high school reunion.

2. At the reunion, Samantha and Elizabeth catch up and meet Timothy, a classmate of theirs in the 2nd grade. Samantha asks Elizabeth about her mother, whom Elizabeth says is in an assisted living facility with early onset Alzheimer’s. Elizabeth says she hasn’t visited her mother since she put her in the home. Samantha urges Elizabeth to visit her mother before it’s too late—if only to say how she feels about the scars she has.

3. The women leave the reunion and arrive at the retirement home. It is after hours and Elizabeth lets them in through a side door with a cipher lock. They do not notice the ambulance that’s idling by the main entrance. At Elizabeth’s mother’s room, the women find an empty bed with a deep hollow in the mattress as if someone were lying there. Elizabeth steps from the room back into the hall saying, “I can’t see her! I can’t see her!”

We were sitting in class learning about the seven continents when the invisible girl came to school.

The classroom door opened and a lady poked her head inside. Ms. Avery waved to the lady and said, “Oh, good. You’re here.”

The lady said, “Goodbye, sweetie. Have a good day. I’ll pick you up after school.” Then she kissed the air in front of her because there was no one there with her. We all sat there and heard footsteps going toward Ms. Avery’s desk. Ms. Avery had just hung up her ghost decorations for Halloween and the footsteps went right past them where they were tacked on the bulletin board. The ghosts’ smiles weren’t so friendly anymore.

I think my mouth was open. Julie Lipscomb’s sure was.

Ms. Avery said to the air in front of her, “Elizabeth, why don’t you take a seat right over there.” Then Ms. Avery pointed at the empty desk right in front of me. The footsteps got closer to me and then stopped. Then the empty desk in front of me scooted an inch across the floor with a loud scrape. I jumped. “Class, we have a new student joining us today,” Ms. Avery said. “Please help me give a warm Hooper Elementary welcome to Elizabeth.”

We all sat for a second until Ms. Avery waved her arms like a conductor and said, “Hello, Elizabeth.”

Then we all said, “Hello, Elizabeth,” to the empty desk.

I don’t think I ever learned what the seven continents were because I kept watching the desk in front of me. The textbook slid across the desk and flipped open on its own. A pencil floated in the air and wrote, ‘Elizabeth Montgomery’ in the box that says, Pupils to whom this textbook is issued must not write on any page or mark any part of it in any way, consumable textbooks excepted. (Which I always thought was weird because you have to mark it to put your name in there.) Then the pencil drew a kitten next to the name Elizabeth.

I got brave then and whispered to the desk, “Hi. My name’s Samantha.”

The air in front of me whispered back, “Hi.”

When we went out for recess, I asked Elizabeth if she wanted to play foursquare. She said that she did, but her voice came from behind me. I blushed and turned around and told her I was sorry. She said, “That’s Ok. It happened a lot at my last school.”

We started playing foursquare. Elizabeth beat me a bunch of times. I couldn’t tell when she was going to hit the ball back to me until it bounced out of the empty square where she was. Timmy Withers and a bunch of the other boys came over to watch. “Hey,” said Timmy. “How come we can’t see you?”

“I don’t know,” the empty foursquare space said. “Grownups can, but kids can’t.”

“Did you go to the doctor?” asked Peter Butler.

“Yeah, but he said it was my imagination. He said most kids feel invisible when they’re in a new town.”

“That’s too bad,” said Emily Chambers.

“Yeah, but it can be fun too,” Elizabeth said.

“Yeah, how?” I asked.

“I’m the best at hide-and-seek!” That made us all laugh. “If I want, I can go to school naked.”

All the boys’ mouths dropped open and they started to giggle. “Are you naked now?” asked Timmy. He was picking his nose.

“No,” Elizabeth said.

Jason Humphrey, a kid from Ms. Bixler’s class, came over to the four square court and asked who we were talking to. Emily told him we had a new girl in our class. He looked at the foursquare court as the ball bounced out of Elizabeth’s empty square and said, “I can’t see her.”

“Wow!” said Timmy. “You’re like a superhero! You’re Invisible-Elizabeth! You’re…you’re Invisabeth!”

When Elizabeth started taking the bus, she and I would sit together. Her stop was right before mine. I would let Elizabeth sit near the window so other kids wouldn’t try to sit on her, thinking the seat next to me was empty.

We both had just seen Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on the ABC Sunday Night Movie and we took turns pointing to things we passed on the bus and pretend they were made out of candy. The leaves on the trees were mint, the telephone lines were black licorice, and the traffic lights were green, yellow, and red M&Ms.

“Can we go over to your house?” she asked me right as the bus turned onto her street.

“I dunno,” I said. “I guess so. Shouldn’t you tell your mom?”

“I can call her from your house,” she said. “We don’t have any homework. C’mon...please?” The bus had stopped at Elizabeth’s stop and the other kids from her block were already off the bus and running home. Elizabeth didn’t move.

“Okay,” I said as the bus driver shut the door and drove off.

Elizabeth really like to play with the Glamour Gals Cruise Ship I got last Christmas. We played with it so long, she forgot to call her mom.

-- When Elizabeth invites herself over, she eventually calls her mom, who comes over to retrieve her. Elizabeth suggests the girls play hide and seek and tells Samantha to be Seeker first. Elizabeth, of course, hides so that Samantha can’t find her. Elizabeth’s mom arrives and is irritated that Elizabeth invited herself over and is dawdling about coming home.

-- Maybe the hide-and-seek scene takes place at Elizabeth’s house. But when Elizabeth hides, she does it so well that Samantha can’t find her. We learn that Elizabeth’s mom was on the warpath and Elizabeth was hiding from another beating.

-- Maybe we never see Elizabeth’s mom. Maybe she’s only a disembodied voice on the phone, who Samantha can hear yelling when Elizabeth finally calls home. Maybe she still plays hide and seek to avoid going home until the last minute. Maybe Elizabeth’s mom honks the horn and never gets out of the car. Maybe Elizabeth has a bruise or a burn on her shoulder and Samantha only finds out about it when she accidentally bumps into Elizabeth and causes her to cry out. Then Elizabeth says it has something to do with the cat—the burn on her shoulder from the curling iron had to do with the cat. Maybe Elizabeth doesn’t come to school for a few days after playing at Samantha’s and then has the burn on her shoulder.

The next day at school I cornered Elizabeth. It wasn’t easy; I had to wait in the girls’ bathroom until I heard the stall next to me open and close, but no feet were underneath. I went and blocked the stall door and said, “Lizzie, I know you’re in there. We need to talk.” The toilet flushed and she said. “Can I wash my hands first?”

“Sure,” I said and moved away from the stall. I thought of all the things I wanted to ask her like, why did you hide from me yesterday? and why was your mom yelling like that on the phone with you? and why are you wearing the same shirt every day this week (I can tell, I felt the sequins on the sleeves.) But when she asked me what was so important, I just said, “What are you going to be for Halloween?”

Elizabeth the ghost showed up at my house on Halloween night and rang to doorbell. I was Fred Flintstone Samantha is dressed in a store-bought Fred Flintstone costume made of cheap nylon with a portrait of Fred on the chest and a plastic mask with a coin slot for a mouth that has sharp edges that cut her tongue.

“How come I can see your costume?” I asked. My mask was too tight so the little coin slot that was the hole for the mouth cut my tongue. “Your clothes are always see-through.”

“It’s my mom’s sheet,” she said and twirled around for me to see. “If I wear other people’s stuff—especially grown-ups’—you can see it, but not mine.”

“Won’t you get in trouble for cutting holes in your mom’s sheet?”

“Yeah,” she said. “C’mon,

-- What if when Sam & Lizzie are trick or treating Sam notices something under Lizzie’s sheet—something rigid that extends from her elbow to her knuckles.

-- What if Sam discovers that Lizzie has a cast on her arm when they go trick or treating? Lizzie was easily able to hide it until the distinct shape of a cast appeared beneath her ghost costume. Maybe as Sam is asking Lizzie how it happened and Lizzie is making up an obvious lie that she tripped over her cat and fell down the stairs, a group of older boys try and steal the girls’ candy. Lizzie takes off her ghost costume and disappears then whacks the boys with her cast and drives them off. Afterwards when Sam tries to bring up the subject of her arm, Lizzie disappears (literally) and leaves Sam to trick or treat by herself.

“Lizzie?” I asked. “What’s that on your arm?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“No, really,” I said and felt the sheet where the hard part had been. It was long and round like she had a piece of tree branch under there. Then I felt the edge where it stopped and her fingers poked out from one end of it. “Is that a cast?”

“Yeah,” she said and pulled her arm away from me. “I tripped over my cat and fell down the stairs.”

“You have a cat?”

Just then, we heard a Boo! from the bushes at the side of the road. We both screamed and before we knew it, Tommie Miller and Dylan Walker jumped out at us and grabbed our Trick-Or-Treat bags.

I pulled hard on bag like we were in a tug-o-war. I wasn’t going to lose all my candy after Trick-Or-Treating through four neighborhoods. Tommie was a year older than me, but he wasn’t that much stronger. Dylan was able to snatch Elizabeth’s bag, but he hadn’t run away yet because Tommie couldn’t get me to drop mine yet. He stood there, holding Elizabeth’s bag and his, looking at Tommie pulling at my bag.

“C’mon, Tommie, she’s just a girl,” he said. That’s when Elizabeth’s ghost costume fell to the ground.

“Whoa!” Tommie said and let go of my bag. “Where’d she go?”

“What the—?” said Dylan right before his head snapped back and he fell down on the sidewalk. Elizabeth’s Trick-Or-Treat bag barely hit the ground then rose up all by itself. I felt Elizabeth grab my hand and we started running down the street.

We didn’t stop until we were near my street. I was sure out of breath and my Fred Flintstone mask came off somewhere behind us, but I had my candy. Elizabeth had her candy, but her mom’s sheet was still back on Elm Street. “Did you hit Dylan?” I asked between gasps.

“Yeah,” Elizabeth said, also out of breath. “I bonked him with my cast!”

“The cast,” I said, “that you got from your cat?” Even if I couldn’t see Elizabeth’s eyes, I knew when she was lying.

-- Then, describe how the two girls grow closer and have secret names for each other that no one else knows.

-- How does Elizabeth get the name Lizzie? Is it something that only Sam calls her? Is Sam Lizzie’s name for Samantha?

​​*

Until we were in high school, I didn’t see much of Elizabeth. Well, I guess that’s obvious, considering she’s invisible. Or at least she was invisible back when we were in second grade.

Back when we were best friends.

The years between grade school and high school were filled with circumstances that came between us. Summer camps for me and visits with her dad for Elizabeth. Different classes and different teachers; different lunch hours and different recess schedules conspired to keep us apart. Before we knew it, we were teenagers with acne and periods, first kisses and BO. That time in life when all you want to do is get through your day without being embarrassed—when you don’t want to be seen.

You see, by the time we were in tenth grade, Elizabeth has become less invisible. She appeared wispy and see-through. Like a ghost.

It was weird, seeing her for the first time—I mean, really seeing her.

She wore a black leather jacket with Siouxsie and the Banshees, Patti Smith, and Kim Deal buttons pinned on it. Her faded blue jeans were ripped in several places and showed black fishnet stockings underneath. On her feet were bright red Doc Martens that were scuffed at the toes.

She had thick, black hair that she let hang around her face and you could just see enormous silver hoop earrings peeking out of the dark locks. Her face was, actually, really pretty—or, it would be if she’d pull her hair back and stop hiding behind it. She also had lots of dark eye makeup on and black lipstick.

“Your hair’s really pretty,” I said, for lack of anything better.

“Thanks, I guess,” Elizabeth replied and glanced down at her shoes. “I’m thinking of shaving it all off, though.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I dunno; something to do.”

“I see you’re less invisible nowadays.”

“Well, that’s pretty redundant,” Elizabeth replied.

“Huh?”

“Re-Dun-Dant,” she said putting emphasis on each syllable like she was talking to a slow child. “You said the same thing twice: I see you’re less invisible.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Well, everyone’s a little invisible sometimes,” she said and tossed her book bag into her locker. I hugged my algebra text closer to my chest and looked at the floor. “Do you have lunch this period?” she asked and I nodded. “C’mon, it’s pizza today and I’m starving. We can sit together, if you want.”

Elizabeth uses a lot of dark eye makeup and lets her hair hang in front of her face to hide bruises.

Elizabeth had lately hooked up with Eric Mackey. He was a kid who’d transferred from Central High School halfway through the year. He was good looking and a fast talker who would debate standing for the Pledge of Allegiance with his homeroom teacher. By the First Period bell he’d convinced half the class to join him in his ridiculous protest.

I hated him.

And it was weird watching them make out. I’d come to walk with Elizabeth to Biology and stood beside her locker while the two of them went at each other. They were hurried and desperate—like they were racing the clock before the bell rang and cut them off.

I could see Eric’s tongue through Elizabeth’s transparent cheek—almost like it was poking around and tasting the air in front of him. (I had an uncomfortable thought about other things poking their way into nothing.) He groped desperately at her, but if I squinted, it looked like he was petting nothing.

One of Elizabeth’s dark eyes opened and spotted me standing there. I caught a glimpse—right as she came up for air—of a faded bruise, yellowing as it healed, splayed across her cheek beneath the dark eye makeup she wore a lot of nowadays.

She pulled away from Eric’s slurping face and nudged him to stop, which he finally did and looked my way.

“Hey, Sammie, what’s shakin’?” he asked me.

“Don’t call me that,” I said.

Elizabeth and Eric planned the day to shoplift the 7-Eleven just right. There was a teenage kid who worked the register on Thursday afternoons. For about an hour, while the manager went to lunch at the Denny’s across the street, the kid would be the only person in the store.​

He, of course, couldn’t see Elizabeth as well as an adult could. She would stand in front of life-sized cardboard cutout of Mia Hamm advertising Gatorade so she was camouflaged. If she stood in front of a blank wall, the kid might spot her. Elizabeth also couldn’t be the one to take the stolen stuff out of the store because the teenager might see something floating out the door. The plan was for Elizabeth to take the stuff and put it in my backpack while both my hands were engaged with something else. Eric would be waiting outside in his Toyota.

All this so they could steal two bottles of cheap wine, a dozen Slim-Jims, and a Zippo lighter.

“Hey! Stop!” shouted the kid behind the counter. I froze (I was always one to do what I was told) and turned sheepishly around toward the kid as he lifted the gate in the countertop and stalked over to me. He looked me up and down, squinted, and said, “What have you got in your bag?”

That’s it, I thought. There goes my National Honor Society membership. No one with an arrest on their record can be a member. And I can just kiss any scholarships goodbye. Shoplifting and alcohol possession. This was one stupid move, Sam.

The kid folded his arms across his chest, flush with his newfound authority. He would’ve looked more intimidating if not for his sloppy hair, ACDC t-shirt, and jeans that were too big for him.

I didn’t say anything and started to slip my backpack off my shoulders. Just then, I saw the ghost of a blur in the corner of my eye and the kid’s pants dropped to the floor. His thighs were the color of cottage cheese and speckled with acne and his earthworm of a penis peeked out from a thicket of hair that was every bit as dog shit brown as the thatch on his head.

He shrieked and doubled over to hide his crotch with his t-shirt. I stood transfixed, my backpack dangling from my hand. I stared at the kid as he shuffled his way back behind the counter with his jeans shackling his ankles. It was like watching a car accident or eye surgery—horrifying but impossible to look away. That’s when I felt a hand grab my arm and pull me out of the store.

-- Maybe it’s Eric who pressures Samantha to join in their shoplifting trip. Maybe Sam thinks she can keep an eye on Elizabeth and try and keep her out of trouble.

-- Or maybe Sam just finds herself along for the ride when they shoplift the 7-Eleven. Maybe she’s riding with Elizabeth and Eric in Eric’s car when they pull into the 7-Eleven and Samantha suddenly finds herself a party to the crime. Maybe Eric says he’ll be waiting for them outside, but sees them confronted by the cashier and ditches them.

-- After Sam and Elizabeth escape the convenience store they just robbed and realize their getaway car has ditched them, Sam says, “Why do I keep getting ditched when I’m with you?”

-- Maybe during their teenage years, Elizabeth doesn’t ditch Samantha at the convenience store, but both of them are ditched by Elizabeth’s boyfriend who takes off in his car before the two of them get outside. Elizabeth grabs Samantha’s hand and drags her into a nearby nail salon (Sally Beauty Supply or lingerie store), where Elizabeth rightly guesses the convenience store clerk won’t follow them.

-- Maybe Elizabeth has a fight with the boyfriend from the make out session above. In it Elizabeth rails at him that he’s just into her for sex. He doesn’t see her for who she really is.

​​*

I remember Elizabeth and I furiously writing in each other’s senior yearbooks as if we were Brontë sisters.

get signed with, “Call me sometime” or “Best Friends 4-EVA” but no one ever does or is. The phone numbers change, the distances become too wide, the paths too divergent.

-- Fast forward twenty years to present day. The narrator is on Facebook and considering attending her twentieth high school reunion. She takes a chance and looks up Elizabeth and friends her and connects with her. Timmy is about forty pounds heavier and jovial and a father of three girls. The narrator finds Elizabeth at the reunion and notices something that no amount of makeup could make invisible: a bruise above her left eye.

-- When the narrator meets Elizabeth at the reunion, Elizabeth says, “Nice to see you.” The narrator responds, “You too. Literally.”

-- What is Elizabeth’s profession now that she’s an adult? Is making her a social worker or custody lawyer or some other advocate for the abused too cliché?

-- If Elizabeth’s abuser winds up in a nursing home, who becomes the invisible one? Does she become invisible again, but to her abuser and not her friends? Or: does her abuser become the invisible one?

I took a chance and direct messaged her: “Hi Elizabeth. Sam (Henderson) Adams here. How you been?” I hit enter, then wrote: “Are you going to our 20th hs reunion?” Then I put my phone on the coffee table and propped my Kindle in front of my face so I couldn’t see it and wouldn’t keep checking.

Twenty minutes passed then my phone buzzed and I grabbed it. “Hi Sam,” it said. “Im good. How’re u?” I stared at the message and jumped when a moment later it buzzed in my hand. “I wasn’t planning on going. But if you are I might.”

“How’s your mom these days?” I asked.

Elizabeth peered down into her drink and fidgeted with the swizzle stick for a moment. “Not so good,” she replied. “I had to put her in assisted living.”

“You mean, a...?”

“Yeah, a nursing home.” She took a healthy swallow of her rum and Coke and drained it. “She has early onset Alzheimer’s.”

“How old is she? She must be only...”

“Sixty-four.”

“Oh my God.”

“It started about two years ago with, y’know, little things at first. She would misplace her keys about twice a week and need to call me to help her find them.” I took Elizabeth’s empty glass from her and nodded to a server to come refresh our drinks while she continued. “Then, about six months ago, I got a call from a Walgreens outside Springfield. They got concerned after my mom had been browsing in their store for about four hours with seven pregnancy test kits in her basket. They took her to the clinic in the back and sat her down and found my number in her phone.”

“Jesus,” I said, for lack of anything better. The server came back with fresh drinks for us. Elizabeth took hers with a grateful nod and drank deeply.

“That’s when I knew she couldn’t be on her own anymore.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, which I broke by asking, “How did they not see her for four hours?” Elizabeth peered at me over the rim of her glass and I knew the question had been a stupid one. But, of course, I plowed on. “I mean, a Walgreens isn’t a very big place.” Elizabeth lowered her glass and blinked at me. “It’s not...like, big...like...a Costco...or something.”

Elizabeth crossed her right arm over her stomach and lowered her glass even further, as if she’d had enough of it. “Maybe she just became invisible,” she said.

-- Maybe as an adult, Elizabeth hasn’t seen or spoken to her mother in years. She tells this to Samantha at their high school reunion when she says her mom is in a nursing home. Maybe Samantha encourages Elizabeth to go to the nursing home and make peace with her mother. “C’mon, Lizzie, you’ll hate yourself once it’s too late. You’ll think about her all alone, forgotten in that home, with no one to come see her.”

“Jesus,” Elizabeth said as she took her drink from the server and used the accompanying napkin to dab at the corners of her eyes. “I can’t believe I’m unloading like this on you. Here it’s been--what--fifteen years since we last saw each other?” She sniffed and crossed her arms tight across her chest like she always did (at least when they were teenagers, for all Samantha knew. Who could tell if she did so when they were kids?).

“Forget about it,” said Samantha. “It’s like no time has passed. Unload away. What are friends for?”

Timmy, always the class clown, said, “Invisabeth! We’ve got to stop seeing each other like this—Buh-duh-bomp!”

-- Do Sam & Lizzie leave right from the high school reunion to the nursing home? If Sam encourages Lizzie to visit her mom in the nursing home and plans to meet her there the next day, there’s a chance Lizzie will chicken out.

“You mean you’ve not been to visit her?”

“No.” Elizabeth said and cast her eyes down at her shoes like she used to do when they were both fifteen.

“C’mon,” said Samantha, with an uncharacteristic burst of spontaneity. “Autumn Leaves Rest Home is only five minutes away. I’ll drive.”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” said Elizabeth with a furtive glance around. “We only just got here an hour ago.”

“Right, like you give a shit about this reunion.” Elizabeth stared at Samantha nonplussed as she went on. “I sure don’t. I only here came to see you. Well, you and maybe Timmy, but we’ve seen him now.”

Elizabeth blinked and downed her drink. “OK,” she said. “You drive.”

-- Maybe the story ends with Samantha and Elizabeth going to the nursing home. Elizabeth is really, really anxious. They get to the room and Elizabeth peeks in. Then she ducks back into the hallway saying over and over, “I can’t see her.... I can’t see her....”

-- The pregnancy test kits in her mom’s purse at Walgreens are a hint at the reason behind the abuse: Elizabeth’s mom found herself pregnant with a child she doesn’t want and alone. Elizabeth’s dad ditched them and she blames Elizabeth for his leaving.

-- Elizabeth arranged for her mom to go into a skilled care memory unit and then stopped visiting her—figured if her mom couldn’t remember the visits, what did it matter if she never went?

-- Elizabeth’s cell phone dies at the reunion and the nursing home can’t reach her to let her know her mom has passed. When she and Sam arrive, Elizabeth has a moment of doubt and says, “I can’t see her.” Then, after Sam convinces her to go into her mom’s room, the bed is empty with a depression in the mattress as if someone invisible was still there. (How would they get into the facility without seeing a staff member? After hours and they get in with a cypher code? Nurses are attending to other residents and not at the nurses’ station? Emergency vehicles are on the other side of the building at the main entrance—can see their lights flashing, but it’s not unusual to see emergency vehicles at a nursing home?)

-- Does Elizabeth try to tell Sam at the reunion that she was abused and Sam tells her she’s always known?