The Invisible by Amelia Kahaney Read Free Book Online

conversations, they talk shop. Today it’s no different. Inside the apartment at last, they’re discussing (as usual) some detail of the stadium project Fleet Industries is doing. They both sound irritated. Also pretty usual.
    “I sent another letter. Why don’t you get Phillip to follow up about the stadium jobs proposal, take it to city council?”
    “You’ve said this three times today, Leenie.” My dad sounds defensive. “I told you I’m handling it, and I’m handling it.”
    “Fine. I just . . . Lyndie wants to move on another press release because of the protests, she said—”
    “Next week it’ll be done. You have my word.” My father’s tone is sharp, designed to close the subject.
    “Great,” my mother says tightly. When they come into the kitchen she gives me a kiss on the part in my bunned hair and heads straight for the wine cooler under the counter, to her chardonnay.
    “Smells good in here,” my father says, brightening for me and Lily the same way he always does, wiggling his thick eyebrows and doing a little jokey shuffle-dance.
    I used to like this little act. Now it just seems rehearsed.
    “No hello for your pop today?” he says pointedly, a lock of his dark hair escaping its gelled formation and springing down across his forehead.
    “Hi,” I say, ducking as he tries to grab my bun and twist it—another of our old games.
    “Crab cakes.” Lily opens the oven and dons a silicone glove to pull out the metal tray warming inside it.
    My stomach emits a loud burbling growl as the platter hits the counter. My mother pulls the cork out of a wine bottle with a pop—
    But at the exact moment the cork is released, we are all plunged into darkness.
    Out the window, one by one, the blocks sprawling out in all directions from where we are in Fleet Tower go dark. All the way to the Midland river, where the darkness bleeds into the inky black of the water.
    And beyond the river, the normally muted South Side suddenly looks brighter, as if the power outage on this side of the river is because the South is getting more wattage somehow.
    We haven’t blown a fuse. The whole neighborhood has.
    “Uh oh,” my mother says. Even in the dark, she is pouring the wine. I hear it glugging from the bottle into her glass.
    It’s a new moon, and the only light we have to see by is the faint glow coming from two miles away, the intermittent street lighting of the South Side.
    “I’ll just go and get the candles in the pantry,” Lily says, and I move toward the sound of her voice to follow her.
    When we return, our arms piled with boxes of candles and a big box of kitchen matches, the TV built into the wall of the kitchen—one we hardly ever use—is now on, displaying only black-and-white static, buzzing loudly.
    “Why does that work?” I ask. “And not the lights, I mean?”
    “It turned on by itself,” my father mutters. He rummages in the kitchen junk drawer under the counter. “Where’s the damned remote?” His voice is edged with panic.
    “But why . . .” I start as Lily lines up votive candles on a piece of tinfoil on the counter and strikes a match. “Lily, have you ever seen . . .”
    “Course not,” she whispers, her green eyes wide in the glow of the static from the TV. “Because it’s impossible.”
    But then the static stops, replaced with that same drawing of the eye. Placid, unblinking, unfeeling, watching. Invisible . My skin begins to crawl as an assault of pictures moves across the screen, these more disturbing than the ones I saw this morning. Pictures from the Bedlam Riots—a rash of violent clashes that broke out in the city when I was a baby. By the time I was one, they’d been squelched by the police crackdown that’s continued until now. Doubling the amount of police in the force and giving the police more power ended what I’ve always been told were the scariest months the city has ever seen. The images are horrible, mesmerizing: A young woman lying on