Nathan
Chapter 1
He had no body hair, but then again what thirteen-year-old has body hair? He had head hair, but it’s not like anyone would see it anyway. Nathan had been invisible for years. He really didn’t notice it at first. This sort of thing could have been going on his entire life, but, slowly and surely, he began to realize that he couldn’t be seen with the naked eye.
He would pass his parents in the hallways of their modest suburban home and would very nearly be bowled over by them. One time his father succeeded in that endeavor. They had been passing each other in the kitchen. Nathan’s father, trouncing away with his giant steps, walked right into Nathan, sending him reeling to the floor. All the while, his father simply muttered under his breath and kept walking, leaving Nathan hurt and confused.
Nathan really began to notice he was a figment of the eye the previous Thursday when he was at the family breakfast table. His Mother and Father had both been prattling away about their lives, their problems, their blah, blah, blah.
His father spoke, as usual, in his loud and thundering tones. The vein on his forehead grew and pulsed with fury, appearing as if it were on the verge of bursting, which unfortunately would have killed him instantly. Nathan laughed at the thought of naming the vein Henry and giving it a voice like Mickey Mouse’s.
“Don’t let me die Nathan! Not your dear friend Henry!”
His father droned on and on about how the world had gone to shit, that it was all the fault of the Democrats. Oh, how if the GOP were in control of the Senate again, “They’d whip this country into shape, come hell or high water!”
Nathan’s mother, as of lately, only talked about the new neighbors, the Talmons, and how they seemed a little too “ethnic” to be living in the neighborhood.
“God, I hope they don’t bring down our property value,” she mumbled, her eyes leering through the kitchen window shades, quietly calculating and judging the people who had made the horrible mistake of moving into her neighborhood.
“It’s not our fault they are on the earth the way they are or that they moved in next to us. The neighborhood committee can’t punish us for that, can they?” She sighed crossly, “I mean, just look at them: seven children…seven! It’s appalling! Running around unattended, carrying who knows what kind of germs. She has a free range of future delinquents.” She glared vigilantly out the window, stirring her coffee methodically. “I can’t stand children.” She smiled and took a sip, leaving a heavy lipstick ring on her mug--a deep ruby red.
Nathan was relieved to know that he, as a thirteen-year-old young adult, was no longer considered a child and the object of his mother’s irritation. It really didn’t matter though; even if Nathan had still been a child at that moment, she would have gone on openly like this anyway, as if Nathan hadn’t been in the room at all. After a moment, his father’s upstart voice broke the stillness that floated like a cloud beneath his wife’s words.
“That’s what I mean by going to hell. Those bleeding-heart Liberals want us to pay for every illegitimate child. I wonder if any of them are legal.”
Nathan never could understand what his father didn’t like about these so-called “aliens.” Nathan was pretty sure that he had never met one, let alone knew of any story in which his dad had ever even seen an alien. Rather than call his bluff, Nathan decided to change the subject.
“We’re going to the life museum today for a field trip. The whole seventh grade will be there,” Nathan sputtered. The excitement built in his voice so much that pieces of corn flakes flew from of his mouth and onto the floor. “The exhibit is on dinosaurs and the Jurassic period.”
A long silence held in the air. Only the whirr of the central air coolly whispered through Nathan’s ears, blowing softly through his hair and down the back of his neck. His mother continued to glare out the window. The focused morning light filtered in through the lavender shade. She slowly and casually turned on her heels to face the table. “Do you think they have any pets? The Neighborhood Committee only allows two pets per household, and if these people collect animals like they pump out children, then we are in for a lot of trouble.” She delicately traced her finger over the rim of her mug, streaking the lipstick around its ceramic surface.
“I think you should go fuck yourself,” Nathan said, his eyes never leaving his mother. “You and your elitist view of the neighborhood should just go right on fucking yourselves.”
His father looked up from his paper. “What?” His face flushed red with anger. Nathan didn’t speak or even flinch. He only sat, waiting for them to notice, to speak at all. All of a sudden, his father rose out of his chair and slammed his fists against the Community section, the table’s legs nearly buckling under the sudden force. “And now they want to give gays the right to marry! What is this world coming to?!”
His father had been reading the local paper again, another article on different people expecting the same rights as everyone else. Those were the kinds of things that bothered Nathan’s father, things like change and difference. Nathan didn’t care either way what people wanted to do with their lives; he just wanted them to see him.
“And you have never even seen an alien.” Nathan said. His father just licked his thumb, smoothed the wrinkles on the newsprint, and turned to the next article.
To be fair, being invisible had its perks, Nathan guessed as he quickly grabbed his backpack and headed for the door. On his way out he lifted a handful of twenty-dollar bills from his mother’s open purse and stuffed them deep into his pocket. If they aren’t going to listen, they might as well pay for my time, he thought to himself while running up the sidewalk to catch the school bus.
