Invisible Inkling

Anyway, I first notice Inkling that day at the end of the summer in Big Round Pumpkin. There’s nothing for me to do while everyone is setting up because two days ago, Wainscotting moved away to Iowa City.

Forever.

Against his will.

I don’t know how I’m going to face fourth grade without him. We have been in the same class together since pre-K.

But I don’t want to talk about Wainscotting. It makes my throat close up.

I want to tell you about Inkling.

It’s hot that day. Sweaty, smelly, New York City Labor Day weekend hot. I open the freezer and lean my face into the cold. “Hank, please,” says Mom as she puts fresh bags in the recycling bins.

I close the freezer and just lean against it.

Then I go into the kitchen and lie down on the cool tiles near the big sink.

“You’re underfoot, little dude,” says Dad as he makes his way from the fridge to the front of the store. He’s got a large tub of ice cream under each arm.

I know I am underfoot.

But I am so, so bored.

I don’t know what to do.

I roll over onto my stomach and press my cheek against the floor.

Oh.

There is a Lego propeller underneath the sink.

My Lego propeller that I have been looking and looking for. My City Rescue Copter can’t be complete without it.

I reach for it—and my hand touches fur.

Fur.

It is so weird a feeling that I snatch my hand back.

Look around. Squint at the darkness under the sink.

Nothing furry there. Just the pipes and a bucket with a sponge in it.

I put my hand back.

Fur.

Definitely fur. Silky soft. Like—like the tail of a fluffy Persian cat.

“Ahhhhhh!” I jerk back and stand up. There is fur that I can’t even see! What is happening?

I stumble as I stand and knock over a stack of

metal bowls on the counter. Bam! Caddacaddacadda—they crash around me with a clatter. Pumpkin-colored sprinkles cascade down my legs and skid out across the floor. “Ahhhhhh!”

Dad comes rushing in. “Hank, you okay?”

“There was fur under the sink!” I yell. “I knocked the sprinkles over!”

I am feeling a little insane right now. That was so, so strange, feeling fur that wasn’t there.

“What fur?” Dad asks.

“Fur! Under the sink. I felt it but I couldn’t see it.”

Dad looks at me. Then looks under the sink. “Little dude, I’m not seeing any fur.”

“Invisible fur!”

“I cleaned under there this morning.”

“But there—”

“And even if there was invisible fur,” Dad continues, “that’s no reason to make so much noise about it.”

“You don’t believe me!” I cry.

Dad sighs. “I believe you. It’s just—can you please keep your voice down? The shop is open now. We’ve got customers out there.”

I stand there, stupidly. The metal bowls surround me on the floor. Sprinkles are everywhere.

Of course Dad doesn’t believe me.

It sounds crazy, what I’m saying.

It sounds like a goofy thing a bored kid with an overbusy imagination would invent, just to get attention.

“Sorry,” I say. “I must have imagined it.”

Dad almost never loses his temper. “That’s okay, Hank,” he says, scratching his scraggle beard. “Just clean up the sprinkles.”

He hands me the broom, but I don’t use it right away. I sit down on the floor and stare at the underneath of the sink.

Either something was there, or it wasn’t.

If something was there and I can’t see it, then I need to get my eyes checked. Last year my teacher read us this book where a girl went blind on a prairie. Ever since then, I’ve thought it could happen to me. I could go blind, and then I’d have to work on my Lego airport purely by sense of touch and go to school with a Seeing Eye dog.

I don’t know what makes a person go blind, actually. But maybe it is something like eating too much cookie-dough ice cream. In that case, I am in serious danger.

On the other hand, if nothing was there under the sink and yet I felt something, then maybe I have some nerve disease that makes my hands feel fur when really it’s only tile. Bit by bit everything will feel furry to me. I won’t be able to tell the difference between a china cup and a banana. They will both just feel like medium-size piles of fur. I will be the only person ever to have this kind of nerve problem. I’ll have to drop out of school so scientists can do tests on me. I’ll never learn to type or play the piano.

“Hank!” Dad is back in the kitchen, fetching a carton of milk. I can hear the espresso machine whirring outside. “I asked you to clean up the sprinkles. We can’t have the kitchen floor like this. One of us could fall.”

I forgot about the sprinkles. Like, I couldn’t even see them while I was thinking about the fur. That’s how my brain works.

Overbusy.

I get the dustpan. Clean up the sprinkles. Make sure every last one is gone from the kitchen floor.

Then I feel around under the sink. Nothing.

Nothing.

Pipe, tile. Bucket, sponge.

No fur.

But I am thinking: That fur was there.

I mean, I am almost sure it was really there.

It didn’t feel like my imagination. It felt real.

We Sounded Like

Secret Agents