The Invisible Girl
Step into a wildly imaginative world with an invisible girl, a flying boy and where being weird is brilliantly wonderful! A magically fantastical story from American author, Laura Ruby.In a vast and sparkling city where nearly everyone can fly, 12-year-old Gurl is trapped. Orphaned and lonely, she believes she is nothing more than a flightless "leadfoot", until one fateful night when she discovers that she has the power to make herself invisible.But even with this newfound talent, Gurl can't hide from a giant rat man with a taste for cats, a manipulative matron with a penchant for plastic surgery, and a belligerent boy named Bug.Gradually, Gurl learns to control her power and teams up with Bug to figure out who and what she is. Their quest takes them on a wild ride where they confront mind-bending monkeys, an eccentric genius with a head full of grass and a pocket full of kittens and the handsome but lethal Sweetcheeks Grabowski – the gangster who holds the key to Gurl's past…and the world's future.
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The Invisible Girl
Laura Ruby
For Anne, who has kittens in her pockets And for Gretchen, the original Answer Hand
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 The Girl Who Wasnât There
Chapter 2 Blue Foot, Blue Foot
Chapter 3 The Chickens of Hope House
Chapter 5 Attack of the Umbrella Man
Chapter 6 Mrs Terwiligerâs Monkeys
Chapter 8 Sweetcheeks: A History
Chapter 9 Outsides and Insides
Chapter 12 The Richest Man in the Universe
Chapter 14 The Queen Said âOuchâ
Chapter 16 The Face in the Mirror
Chapter 17 Never Trust a Monkey
Chapter 19 Whatâs It To You? Has His Say
Chapter 24 The Big Fat Hairy Fib
THE CHAPTER BEFORE THE FIRST
IN A VAST AND SPARKLING city, a city at the centre of the universe, one little man remembered something big.
He was very old, this little man, his full name forgotten over the years. He called himself The Professor. His specialities were numerous and included psychology, criminology, mathematics, history, aerodynamics, zoology and gardening. He also collected beer cans.
Other than the delivery boy who left his groceries at the back door, The Professor hadnât seen anyone in at least ten years. It was just as well, since a hair-growing experiment had left him with a head full of long green grass. Also, he didnât like clothing, so he wore ladiesâ snap-front housedresses and rubber flip-flops with white socks. He spent much of his time fiddling in his workshop, feeding the many kittens that popped out of his pockets and looking things up on eBay.
Today he stood in front of his blackboardâwhich was covered with mathematical equationsâtugging at a dandelion that had poked up through the lawn on his scalp. Suddenly, his eyes widened. He scrawled a few more equations. Yes! He saw it. Right there, in his many calculations.
A child.
He stared at the figures dancing across the board, his forehead creased with annoyance. How on earth he could have forgotten that such a thing, such a person, existed, was beyond him. But The Professor simply didnât like people. Not their company, not their conversation, nada. Anything having to do with people made the roots of his teeth pulse with irritation. And here on his blackboard was proof that a very particular sort of person had been born into a cruel and stupid world filled with cruel and stupid people.
Frankly, The Professor wanted nothing to do with any of them.
But facts are facts and The Professor liked to keep his straight. Shaking his head at himself, he sat down at his lab table, pulled his notebook from underneath a large tabby cat and made a few notes. âApprox. once every century or so,â he wrote. âWall. Usually, but not always, female.â
After scribbling these notes, The Professor smoothed out a rumpled map. âOne lived here,â he muttered to himself, putting a dot on the map, âanother here. This one was born there and moved here.â When he finished plotting points, he connected the dots, then took out a protractor to measure the angles between. Lost in thought, he tapped his teeth with his pencil. Something wasnât quite adding up. Where could this girl be?
After working for two frustrating hours, he walked over to a filing cabinet, unlocked the bottom drawer and pulled from it what looked like a human hand mounted upright on a black marble stand. The Answer Hand. He did not like to consult The Answer Hand and very rarely did. The Hand, being a hand, could not speak and was therefore difficult to comprehend. (It knew the sign language alphabet but had to spell everything out. And then it talked in circles.) The Professor could not deny, however, that The Answer Hand often had the answers to perplexing questions, which was exactly why The Professor had purchased it (on eBay of course, from some guy in Okinawa).
He put the mounted Hand on top of the table, pointed at the equations on the blackboard and then to the map. âWhere?â he asked.
The Answer Handâs fingers drummed thoughtfully on its marble base. After a few moments, The Hand began rambling about a number of irrelevant topics: the average rainfall in Borneo, the merits of California wine, the fat content of hot dogs.
âFocus!â barked The Professor, pointing again at the blackboard.
Insulted, The Answer Hand made a waving gesture at the map. When The Professor still didnât understand, The Hand bent at the wrist and finger and crawled across the table, dragging its heavy base behind it. It grabbed the pencil from The Professor, scrawled a star on the map and gave the pencil back.
There, thatâs where, The Hand signed. Happy now?
âIâve got to hand it to you,â grumbled The Professor sarcastically. He had the distinct feeling that this recent discovery was only going to cause him trouble. Plus there was the fact that one of his cats, Lavernaâstrong willed, even for a catâhad somehow escaped the safety of his apartment and, despite the flyers he had paid a company to hang around the city, no one had called. In his book, wandering girls and wayward cats added up to a whole lot of unhappiness.
