The Invisibles by Hugh Sheehy Read Free Book Online Page A

of the crowded skating dome, got a locker and put on my skates, then glided around thepolished wooden floor to sounds of campy eighties hits. On the white walls of the rink, echelons of colored light spots slowly rotated against the flow of disguised skaters. The deep voice of the deejay, hidden away in his booth, announced specially themed skates. All around me boys and girls coasted together, five and six years younger than me, already oblivious to me. It was fine, that had been my childhood, and for a while I had fun being nobody, soaring along to the music. I could do and think anything, be anyone, the only catch being that I had no one to share it with. That’s when I noticed the man watching me from the rail of the rink floor, back behind the bathrooms, near the fire exit.
    He was tall and strong-looking, leaning over the rail on his elbows, staring directly at me once I’d noticed him. He’d brushed his long blonde hair behind his ears, revealing his ruddy face. He lifted one hand and waved at me. His attempt to smile only seemed to worsen his mood. A person like that you could never touch, only brush against, and never truly speak with, only at. At this moment I became sure that my friends were dead. I bent my knees and somehow avoided wiping out on the hard, hot floor. I neither waved back nor turned my head abruptly away, but he continued to watch me as I passed him. He would move his face over, as if to push it into my line of vision, and wink at me.
    I tried to think of some way I might slip off the rink floor and telephone Detective Volmar without chasing off the man at the rail. I wanted not only to escape him but to see him hauled off by the police. Nothing short of a complete victory would be acceptable. Under my mask I wanted to cry but knew I had to keep moving. As long as I kept skating, I could find a way out, call for help, and do what I could. I skated until the man relaxed and let his hands hang limp over the rink floor, as if to say he would wait on me. Then I skated through a large group of angels and, with that blockade behind me, coasted off the floor at thefar end of the rink. I skated out into the lobby, where I found the crabby traffic cop eating a soft pretzel as he peered into a vending machine that flattened pennies and stamped them with winged roller skates.
    Once I’d pulled away the bandages and sunglasses he remembered me. Because I was so upset, he hardly needed to hear my story to come running with me around to the back of the rink. It was difficult to run on my skates, but I was afraid of being left behind, isolated in a space where no one could see me, the only kind of space where I’d be vulnerable to the man I’d seen next to the rink. The traffic cop barked into his radio as he ran ahead of me around the corner into the empty back lot. I nearly lost my balance when I saw there was no maroon van waiting for us.
    The officer didn’t need to think twice. “We’ve been looking for that van. He’s probably driving something else.” He pulled open the emergency exit door of the rink and ushered me inside. “Come on. Show me where you saw him.”
    We hurried into the red light that filled the domed room, and from the rail along the rink scanned a hundred masked faces for the one I’d seen watching me all night. I looked out on the floor, along the tables by the concessions area, among the few arcade games on the far wall. There was no place where the man could have been hiding, not really. The traffic cop dashed into the men’s room and then the ladies’ room. A group of little girls came running out, then the cop, looking frustrated.
    A minute of confusion passed before the rest of the police came running in. The music was stopped and the children were herded off the floor so the cops could search the premises. The situation quickly became humiliating and inexplicable, with a lot of adults scowling, tweeners complaining. The