Once upon a time, there was a little girl who discovered that she could make herself invisible. It wasn’t very hard; most people don’t notice little girls anyway. Each day she would go to school, dressed just like everyone else, and she would talk just like everyone else and eat the same things for lunch and play the same games and slowly, she started to disappear. It was wonderful at first. She was never bullied, or told off by the teachers. She was good, but not too good, and smart, but never too smart and it was almost as if she didn’t exist at all.

The little girl grew a bit taller and they sent her to a new school. It was then she realized that being invisible was something that was hard to stop. Each day she faded a little more in to the wallpaper until her hands became transparent, her feet translucent, and even she could no longer see herself. Once, when she looked in the mirror she saw nothing at all, just the bare green wall behind her. Now as girls are wont to do, when they grow a bit taller, she fell in love. The problem was that by now she was so invisible she could not get his attention. She tried everything. She wrote letters, drew pictures, sang songs, and he could see all of these but he could not see her, she was too good at being invisible and she didn’t know how to stop.

Eventually, she lost him, and her little heart hurt so bad that she ran away. She ran away from everyone and everything and she cut off her long long hair. She learned to write stories, her story, a thousand times over, recorded on paper, in print, so that it may never be forgotten. She threw out her clothes and changed her name and carved herself a new identity and after a while, bit by bit, she began to be seen again. Not just seen, but noticed. They told her she was interesting, they told her she was clever, they told her she was beautiful and she didn’t believe them for a moment but she was so happy to be visible again that it didn’t matter what she looked like.

From then on she wore different clothes and said different things and played her own games and ate her own lunch and sometimes she got told off and bullied, but even that was worth it.

One day, years later, she met him again. He called out her name, her new name, from the other side of a crowded room. She did not see him, or hear him at first, and when she did, she simply smiled and walked away.