Out of Sight (5 page)

She closed her eyes and wished for some Cheetos, and then, as a joke, instead of making them appear in Malik's outstretched hand, she used her transcendental conjuring skills to make the bag levitate next to his head.

“Ha-ha, very funny,” he retorted as he tried to grab them three times before Sophie finally stopped.

“Just trying to show you how much work I did last night.” Sophie grinned before shooting him a hopeful look. “So I don't suppose you got any news about where this mysterious Manny is when you were playing golf?”

“Sorry, not yet,” Malik said between mouthfuls of Cheetos. “But my buddy Eric did leave me a message on Twitter to say that he might've spotted him. Of course, Eric once thought he saw Godzilla before discovering it was actually just a mouse in some good lighting.”

“You fill me with confidence,” Sophie said as she hitched her backpack over her shoulder. “Anyway, I'd better go to my homeroom, but Malik, if you hear anything, please let me know
immediately
.”

“Of course I will.” Malik looked offended, as if he had never forgotten to tell her something before. Sophie ignored him as she opened the door of the janitor's closet. She was just about to step out when she saw Melissa Tait leaning against Sophie's locker, stroking her perfect blonde hair in an ominous fashion. Great, that was all she needed.

S
OPHIE STEPPED BACK INTO THE CLOSET AND LET
out a long groan. Melissa Tait was waiting for her out in the hallway, which, in Sophie's experience, was
never
a good thing. Especially considering that her little effort to help Melissa yesterday had apparently been a major fail. She turned to where Malik was busily upending the Cheetos bag to get the last of the cheesy goodness into his mouth.

“Okay,” she gulped. “We've got a problem. Melissa Tait is standing in front of my locker, and while the positive thinker in me would like to think it was just some weird coincidence, I'm pretty sure it's not.”

“She is?” Malik asked with interest as he poked his head through the closed door, leaving only his body inside the closet. “Wow, you're right. That is a problem,” he called out from the other side of the door in a disembodied voice. “She looks mad. Is this because of the whole ‘you made her boyfriend dump her' thing?”

Sophie sighed and shook her head. “Actually, I think it's more of the ‘I tried to help her with her history assignment by conjuring up some extra books for her in the library' thing. I only did it to make her stop texting Jonathan so he could ask me to his parents' anniversary party. Unfortunately, I don't think the books were there, so now she's annoyed with me.”

“Again?”
Malik added as he pulled his head back into the closet and rolled his eyes. “You really do have a habit of annoying her.”

“I know. It's uncanny, and since I've already tried the ‘let's be friends' approach, which didn't work, I think I'm going to have to completely avoid her. Unfortunately, I have no idea how. I mean, from the looks of it, she's going to stay at my locker until the bell rings. What am I going to do?”

“Well, personally, I would take that as an excuse to sit in here and watch
High School Musical
on an iPad,
but
,” he quickly added as he paused in the midst of pulling an iPad out of the ugly man bag that was slung over his shoulder, as if catching Sophie's annoyed glare. “In your case, let's look at your options. You could always blow up your locker. That would make her move.”

“Malik,” Sophie growled.

“Okay, so no blowing up lockers. Let's think. You could do a memory wipe on her so that she won't be able to remember the most recent annoying thing you did. That's fun. Oh, or my personal favorite, you could create a mini-tornado that—”

“Do you have any suggestions that don't involve blowing up the school or messing with her mind? I mean, all I want to do is get past her.”

“Well,” he said in a disappointed voice, “I suppose you could just use your invisibility patch. I mean, it's not really what I would call a classic, but then again, you're probably not classic material. I, on the other hand, am pure classic. I remember this one time when I needed to create a diversion, and it was so successful that they still talk about it today. In fact, I don't like to boast, but they called it ‘the Malik' and—”

“Wait. Back up,” Sophie cut him off and wrinkled her nose. “What are you talking about? What's an invisibility patch?”

“Oh, did I forget to mention them? I got you some yesterday when I was playing golf—because that's just the kind of considerate, generous djinn guide that I am,” he said as he pulled a piece of paper out of his man bag.

“But what is it for? Why do I need an invisibility patch?” Sophie asked. Instinct told her that it would probably make her invisible, but experience had taught her that trusting her instincts when Malik was involved wasn't always a good thing.

“For your flying lessons, of course. You don't think I'm going to let you fly around in your backyard so that people can actually see you? In case you haven't noticed, humans don't like anything out of the ordinary. Especially when it comes to ugly flying carpets.”

Sophie chose to ignore his comments about her beautiful carpet. “So how do invisibility patches work?” she asked.

“Simple. You just put one on your arm and activate the magic, and next thing you know, you're invisible. See,” he added before disappearing from sight, as if trying to prove his point. Then he reappeared and took a bow. “So what do you think? Do you want to use a patch to sneak past Melissa?”

“Of course I do,” Sophie agreed, narrowing her eyes. “But Malik, before I put one on, you need to think very, very hard. Is there
anything
about these patches that you're forgetting to tell me? Like that if I use one I will suddenly grow a tail. Or turn pink. Or turn pink and
taily
.”

“You wound me with your words.” Malik pressed his hand to his chest as if he had been mortally injured. However, when he realized that Sophie didn't seem to care about his fake injury, he just shrugged. “No. There are definitely no side effects. Unless you count the awesomeness of being invisible. Eventually, of course, you'll be able to turn invisible on your own, but right now, for a noob like yourself, a patch is the best way. Plus, since you're going to need them when we start the next stage of your flying practice this afternoon, you might as well get used to them.”

“Okay, I'm in. How long will it take for it to work?”

“About one second,” Malik said; he peeled a black dot off the page and pressed it to her skin. A second later it brightened in color before disappearing entirely. “There, now that it's embedded, all you need to do is click your fingers and say ‘invisible.'”

“And?” Sophie prompted, but Malik just looked at her blankly.

“And nothing.”

“Yeah, right. As if it will work just because I click my fingers and say ‘invisible,'” Sophie said, doing just that. “Because—” But the rest of her words died on her lips as a small ripple flashed through her body, leaving a weird twittery feeling in her fingers.

She hurried over to the small chipped mirror hanging up in the closet. No reflection stared back at her, though when she glanced down at herself, she could still see her body clearly. Sophie rubbed her eyes and stared into the mirror again. Nothing. She still couldn't see her reflection. She lifted up a finger and poked herself in the face. Ouch. She could feel it but not see it. Malik, who was looking at her with interest, and could obviously see her despite the magic, just gave a casual wave of his arm.

“You were saying something?” he inquired in a polite voice that was at odds with the slightly smug expression on his Zac-like face. Sophie widened her eyes.

“How come I can still see my body, but when I look in the mirror, there is nothing there?”

“How should I know? I'm not an alchemist who deals with matters of science and magic. All I know is that you need to trust the mirror. If it says you're invisible, then you're invisible. So? What do you think?”

“I think it's amazing,” she said, while privately congratulating herself on spending half of fourth grade practicing how to snap her fingers. She knew it would come in handy someday. She finally dragged her gaze away from her invisible reflection and turned back to Malik. “Okay, so what else do I need to know?”

“Two things. First is that while no one can see you, they can definitely hear you, so no heavy breathing or talking. Well, not unless you want to freak them out—and trust me, nothing is more embarrassing than thinking that you're invisible when you're sniffing someone's hair and then you discover that they can hear you panting.”

Sophie stared at him for a moment before deciding that there was no answer to that statement. “And the second thing?”

“The second thing is that when you want to turn back to normal, you just click your fingers and say ‘visible.'”

“Right.” Sophie nodded as she ticked off her fingers. “I can remember that.” Then she checked her reflection in the mirror one more time (phew, still invisible) and slowly opened the closet door so that she could peer out into the hallway.

Melissa was looking even more annoyed than ever as she leaned against Sophie's locker, while her Tait-bots hovered just to the left of her. If this didn't work, Sophie was going to be in big trouble, and for a moment she considered just staying in the janitor's closet until after class had started. The only thing stopping her was the fact that her mom would freak if she got into any more trouble at school.

“Hello, someone could grow old and die in here,” Malik said with a cough from behind her, obviously a lot more used to being invisible than Sophie was. She took one final deep breath and stepped out into the hallway. The moment she did so, Terry Richards, a sixth-grade band guy, almost knocked her out with his oboe case. Sophie only just managed to scramble out of the way in time, and she put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from squealing out in protest. Once she regained her composure, however, she realized that the reason he had almost knocked her out was because he couldn't see her.

Nice. Sophie tentatively walked toward her locker, her confidence growing as she stepped past the Tait-bots. None of them even blinked at her, which was a first. Finally, she reached her locker and stood in front of Melissa. Sophie paused for a moment and waved her hand up and down in front of Melissa's perfect (but sour-looking) face. But instead of even noticing, Melissa merely turned to her Tait-bots and snapped her fingers.

“You know, nothing annoys me more than having to wait for idiots who don't even have the decency to show up.” The seventh grader pouted as she and her friends swayed off in the other direction. The minute they were gone, Malik turned up beside her.

“Seriously, did you
see
that?” Sophie demanded as she waved her arms in front of a group of kids who were walking past her. None of them even noticed her. “It worked.”

“Well, yeah. I mean, otherwise you'd just be the girl who was walking around putting your hand in everyone's face,” Malik said as the bell rang. Sophie reluctantly stopped her arm waving.

“Sorry, but you've got to admit that it's pretty cool.” She grinned.

“You don't have to tell me,” Malik assured her as he walked over to a sixth grader and plucked one of the M&M's out of his packet and grinned.

“So what now?” Sophie asked, trying to ignore Malik's blatant theft as she caught sight of Harvey and Kara walking toward them. “Are you going to stay at school today?”

“Are you kidding me?” He shuddered. “I mean, it was fun watching you mess with Melissa Tait, but I would rather have my eyeballs pulled out and pickled than have to sit through any more of your classes. Especially since most of your teachers seem like complete imbeciles. Anyway, I thought I'd go and catch up on a spot of shopping.”

“Er, okay,” Sophie started to say, but before she could finish, Malik disappeared in a puff of Cheetos crumbs just as Kara and Harvey came to a halt next to where Sophie was standing.

Kara wrinkled her nose as she looked right through her. “Okay, that was weird. One minute Malik was here, and then he just disappeared.”

“I know. And where's Sophie? Why would Malik be at her locker when she's not around? It's not even like it's lasagna day in the cafeteria,” Harvey added, just as Sophie said, “Visible,” and snapped her fingers.

She then watched her friends yelp in surprise.

Kara's face drained of color, and she tentatively reached out and poked Sophie's arm to check that it was real. Next to her Harvey just stared.