Looking Up

About fifty percent of people who are asked about their preferred Superpower would choose invisibility. As an individual actually in possession of said Superpower I can’t for the life of me figure out why. Apart from being able to listen in to private conversations, sneak into the houses of famous people and move around undetected in general, there really isn’t anything glamorous about it.

The truth is, it is one thing to be able to become invisible at will, quite another to be invisible one hundred percent of the time. You could quite rightly question whether that sort of a person exists at all. But I do exist. In fact, I could even describe to you what I look like. Yes, the irony! I am visible to only one person in the whole world – myself.

I don’t know how old I was when I first realized other people couldn’t see me. If it wasn’t my mother, nobody would not even know I was born. She was quite certain she had given birth – people are rarely ambiguous about that sort of thing – but when all the pump and circumstance was over and there was no baby to be seen anywhere, things got a bit confusing for a while. Fortunately for me, my mother had been forewarned that something like this might happen. 

See, about a year before my arrival, my mother visited a certain wizard. She had been previously told by a doctor that she would never be able to have children and had been quite heart broken. Desperate, she told her friends who in turn told her about the wizard called Steven. My mother hadn’t taken them seriously at first, as it was clearly impossible for any respectable wizard to be called Steven. All the other wizards my mother had met until that time had had both a proper wizard name as well as lived in a wizarding community, like they were expected to. But Steven had been different. Mother told me later that it was most likely because he was only half a wizard. His mother had been a witch and his father a car salesman, also called Steven. But apparently this wizard-Steven had been given a gift of being able to tell whether someone would be able to produce offspring with special abilities. Those who were, were often first deemed infertile by the regular doctors. Luckily, mom’s best friends had encouraged her to seek a second opinion. So along came wizard-Steven.

He had been quite adamant, my mother told me, that not only would she be able to have children, but that those children would most likely have some sort of superpower. What kind, no one was able to tell beforehands, but since mother’s family on her father’s side had had some weird periodical disappearences here and there, Steven told it was possible the future children would inherit something like that.

The thing is, the individuals in my mother’s father’s side of the family who had been able to disappear had also been able to become visible at will. I wasn’t. I had never been able to show myself to anyone, not even my mother. I had drawn myself to her instead. Standing in front of the gaudy, golden-framed mirror in my mother’s bedroom, holding a sketch book and number two pencil in my hands I had drawn as accurate and honest a picture of my roundish face, my green eyes that were just a little too close to each other and a little slanted, my messy blond curls and stick-thin body that at fifteen years old did not hold any curves or any signs that I wasn’t a little girl any more. Not that anyone would know, obviously. But I knew, and the tragedy of tragedies, I was terribly vain and worried about my looks.

My mom had cried when I showed her the picture. “You look just like your Auntie Anne when she was your age!” she had exclaimed. Auntie Anne had gained a saint-like status in the family after she married a real lord and moved to the English countryside. I did get that this was a huge compliment. I had never met Auntie Anne myself, and there was only one photo of her that I knew of. She had been closer to forty in that picture, holding her twin boys in her arms and was wearing a pair of riding pants and what looked like an expensive silk blouse. She was pretty, I supposed, but didn’t look particularly happy. It was like looking at someone who was extremely disappointed at how life had turned out to them. I decided that I did not want to look like her in that regard. I would make my life something I wouldn’t have to feel disappointed about later.

After drawing the picture I realized that this was my one way of communicating with the outside world. My mother started to find pages of hastily sketched pictures of my face wearing expressions of tiredness, anger, elation or thoughtfulness depending on the mood I was at that very moment. From those pictures she was able to tell, whether I needed company or not. There were also days no pictures were to be found. Those days my mother knew I really wanted to be invisible.

When I was a toddler and just about able to move around, my mother tied a tiny bell on my ankle so she’d knew where I was. Any clothes I was wearing turned invisible while I wore them but once they were removed they turned visible again. For some reason it was very important to my mother that her invisible baby wore matching outfits and looked presentable, even though she wasn’t able to present me to anyone.

To my extended family I was a freak of nature. Any pride they might have felt for a relative able to turn invisible at will clearly didn’t apply to my case. There was an unspoken code of conduct within my special family that no eavesdropping or breaking-in was to be done to any family member you visited. Apparently, my inability to turn visible also put my morals and family loyalty into question. If I was never able to show myself, I clearly didn’t want that enough.

There were thousands and thousands of scientific studies made of us Special Folk (or “Freaky Folk”, as we were jokingly and not so lovingly called by some) and our abilities. The hereditary aspect and genetic mutations behind the mechanisms that made some of us “Special” were quite well understood by the scientists by now, as were the many phenotypes of different superpowers. Although, I thought privately, the fact that special abilities were still called “Superpower” meant that there was still something lacking in the general consensus. At least in my case there was nothing powerful in what I was. To the vast majority of the world’s population, even to the people living on my street, I did not exist. Once or twice I had started to talk to a person sitting on a park bench next to me or at the bus stop and scared them half to death. It was considered rude and indecent to publicly use your disability. Public indecency, that’s what it was. The fact that I walked around scaring innocent bystanders apparently without any shame made sure that I didn’t have too many friends. I only had one, to be honest, if you didn’t count my mother. And no fifteen-year-old does.

Having been home schooled I didn’t meet anyone of my own age group too often. Mom, however, had heard of a peer-support-group for Special Teens and had signed me up on the spot. I didn’t mind, although it bothered me that the fact a teen was Special apparently automatically made her someone in need of support, peer or other.

Beth was Special like me, of course, but she had never been able to utilize her Superpower. She came from a long line of Flyers but was herself deathly afraid of the heights. As a baby the Superpower had manifested in her on occasion by accident as it often does when a child is still too young to use it properly, but after turning four years old she had absolutely refused to leave the solid ground for even a little bit, no matter how much her mother had cried, father raged and threatened to ground her for being obstinate and even though her granny had tried to bribe her with sweets and little gifts.

We made quite a pair. I couldn’t turn off my Superpower no matter how much I tried and Beth wasn’t able to turn it on. The irony of our friendship didn’t escape anyone and my mother thought it was the best joke she had heard in ages. I myself was only ecstatic that I finally had a friend. I had drawn my picture to Beth and after exclaiming “I knew you would be a blond!” she asked if I wanted to become an artist. The thought had never occurred to me, to be honest. I had not wanted to spend too much time thinking what I would want to be when I grew up since there was so much I wouldn’t be able to do. But drawing for a living – there was a thought!

I loved watching people’s faces. The fact that they couldn’t see me looking at them meant that people were often more unguarded in their expressions and showed their emotions more openly. Whenever they knew someone could see them, the mask snapped back on. But I could see what others couldn’t and maybe, if I practiced enough, I would be able to someday draw people like I saw them, when they thought nobody was looking. The mother who was so exhausted that she wanted to cry when her toddler screamed his head off in the shop floor and the passers by looked at the scene judgingly. The store clerk who turned to find something from behind the desk and was, for a brief moment, able to drop the smile permanently glued on even for the hardest of customers. The school-boy standing alone in the corner trying to hide from his bullies, wiping furiously at his tears and trying to steel himself to endure the rest of the day amongst his tormenters.

Because nobody could see me, I was able to see it all. And maybe through my art I would be able to show other people too. Beth thought this was a brilliant idea. She also wanted to know what was the weirdest thing I’d seen someone do while they thought no-one was looking. I flushed a little at that. It wasn’t that I intentionally went to people’s homes and watched them. I didn’t. But I had definitely seen more than my share of covert butt-scratching, nose-picking and other disgusting, private things people did while nobody was around. The fact that everybody knew there were people with ability to see while not being seen themselves did not stop them from acting like they were the only people around.

“Have you ever seen any celebrities do those things?” Beth asked when I told her this, sounding more excited than I thought was appropriate. “Like anyone from ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ or YouTube stars?”

“I think those people share everything with the public anyway, I doubt there’s much anyone hasn’t seen already,” I mused. For someone reason, for most people the really exciting thing about famous people was the fact that they were like anyone else. They ate cereal, yelled at their kids, were embarrassed by their parents, fought with their significant others and yes, went to bathroom. Some of them had a little bit more money than the rest of us, but that was really it. People were mostly boring, in the most fascinating way possible.

“If I were you, I would SO spy on the 1D-guys,” said Beth dreamily. “I bet their lives aren’t anything like ours. I bet their mothers won’t ask them to jump from the rooftop just ‘to see if the necessity made your phobia disappear’”. I laughed. “I don’t think I need to eavesdrop any of them to be quite certain that you’re right about that”. After a while added: ”Would you really like to witness Liam go to potty at the middle of the night or Niall scratch his armpit hair?”

Beth made a face at me and told me I was no fun. “What would you do if you could fly like the other members of your family?” I had always wanted to travel abroad, but the thought of getting lost and not being able to show up to anyone even to ask for directions scared me to death and made sure I never left the city, let alone the country.

“I suppose. But I don’t think I’ll have to learn to fly to do that. There are airplanes, you know.” She shuddered at the thought and the, after a minute, added: “There isn’t really much I would do different that I’m doing now. I quite like that outside my own freak of a family I’m very much seen as normal when the rest of the world is considered.”

“Wouldn’t you want to learn though?” I asked. I, personally, desperately wanted NOT to be invisible. To be not Special, like my father, who had died when I was a baby, to be looked and judged unfairly by outsiders and being called pretty or having my outfits commented on.

“Meh…I suppose. It would be easier with my family if I did get over my phobia. But then I would be forced to spend even more time with them and that I would not want.” She looked at my general direction. “I wouldn’t mind being able to disappear every now and again, though,” she said. “Not just to break into 1D’s houses and being able to steal memorabilia to sell online – which I would definitely do, by the way! – but just to…not be bothered for a while. By my family, mostly.”

I didn’t say anything but set my sketch book on the pavement between us so Beth could see it. It was a picture of her, flying above the houses and treetops, wearing her school uniform and looking exhilarated – like I imagined anyone feeling when they were able to experience the absolute freedom of leaving the solid ground when ever they wanted. Below her, right at the bottom of the paper was the school building. I had included the tiny, indistinct figures of the school children looking up at her. Beth picked up the paper and looked at it closely. Then she laughed and turned to me. “Are you serious? I would never be able to wear a that while flying, you know Trevor and Billy would totally look up my skirt!”