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There’s this thing I can’t let go of. It’s this comparison of me to this girl I’ll never be. The IT Girl that everyone wants to be friends with, the one who isn’t invisible.

Every morning I put on my Arizona jeans and know they aren’t the True Religions she would wear. And every time I curl my eyelashes I wonder what’s the point as they’re scrawny and clumpy when I coat them with Extralash Maybelline and know hers would be longer, lusher much prettier coated in beautiful, shiny mascara by Mac. And the worst part? Every time I get a crush on a guy, usually an IT Guy, I know she would know the perfect thing to say because Mr. IT would not only see her, unlike myself, but she’d know how to speak his language. The language if IT.

It’s like I have this curse on me that makes me invisible and I’ve been spending all of high school trying to find a cure. No matter what I’ve done in the nearly four years I’ve gone to Blossom Hill High School my IT factor never changes, my invisibility factor remains the only steady, constant in my life. You might want to know why I want IT so bad. Why can’t I just be happy without IT and hang out with my brigade of friends who are equally invisible. There’s two reasons really. The first, besides the fact that I don’t really fit in with them either as they are all in band and I’m not, is because everyone, even the invisible want to feel special in some way. And the second is because I love, or I should say used to love, a challenge. But the real, deep down reason? I decided when I was a Freshman that I didn’t want to sit home, all alone on Senior Prom Night. If that ever happened I’d be invisible for a lifetime.

Two weeks before Senior Prom I gave IT up. When I knew no one would ever ask me. That was the day I went to Aunty Anne’s House of Beauty and asked her to cut my hair in this super-super, short cut and everything changed.

Afterward, when the floor was covered in huge mounds of wiry, auburn fluff, Aunty Anne said, “Abagail, your eyes, they’re, they’re beautiful.” She smiled just like me, the kind of smile like looks like a “v” with kind of crooked teeth we have down low and hide pretty well because only our top ones show.

All I thought about at the time was how much I hated the name Abagail but not as much as Abby, which is what everybody called me and I just knew that the she-I-wanted-to-be would have some way-more exotic name like Cassandra or Veronica and then my Aunt said it again.

“Your eyes are beautiful.” With tears in her own.

I hugged her and thanked her even though I pulled my hoodie up over my head first chance I got when I was out of her sight, waving from her shop window, on my walk home. I ducked my head down. But as I walked through town it was like a hurricane blew around the corner of Garfield and Lincoln, my hoodie flew off and what was left of my hair couldn’t flop in the breeze and I stood face-to-face with Troy Randall. An IT boy. THE IT boy. And his eyes went wide with what I thought was horror at the sight of my hair but when the whirlwind stopped he said, “Abby?”

I just nodded and words wouldn’t leave my lips. IT happened. It finally happened. An IT guy, THE IT guy I had a crush on ever since we worked side-by-side in the middle school kitchen in seventh grade in our cooking class baking pretzels together and I over salted every one, saw me, the invisible one. Troy even made my name sound good. I froze. He’d just left Froman’s Drug Store and I

Here in Fangorn, as the estimable Kelly F. so aptly described it, folks are slowly returning from the abyss of fever and illness.

I am feeling better but my voice has assumed either a basso timbre or gasping squeak reminiscent of small animated animals. Therefore I am forgoing speech altogether this morning or as Treebeard pointed out to Entling no. 3, "Be alert, she's using sign language."


This has reminded me of the time I totally lost my voice when I was librarian-ing full time.

As each class came in I seated them and began to write on the board that I had no voice and they would have to follow written directions for our lesson that day. I don't recall exactly what I had them do but I had the directions on the overhead projector and I revealed each step as we proceeded.

Amazingly, as I was silent, so were the kids. They read my instructions (and interjections, "Horatio, stop tipping your chair) aloud as I wrote them on the board but as they realized that I was truly voiceless, they lowered their own voices to the point where everyone was whispering. I daresay the effect would not have lasted an entire day but for the 45 minutes they were in the library, we experienced some of the quietest lessons and browsing ever in my usually noisy and boisterous library.


Ha, I just pointed to my coffee cup ="please refill my coffee!" and Entling no. 3 did so, whispering, "here you go, Mom."