Invisible Lines

  MARY AMATO is an award-winning writer, whose previous books include The Naked Mole-Rat Letters and The Word Eater. In addition to her novels, she also writes songs, plays, and musicals. Mary is a cofounder of Firefly Shadow Theater and regularly performs in a vocal/guitar duo called Two-Piece Suit. She lives in Maryland with her family. Visit her online at www.maryamato.com.

  Ball in again. Now Juan is on fire. He scores.

  “Where did he come from?” Langley asks.

  “Let’s get it back,” I say.

  Now it’s like Langley and I are connected by an invisible line and we can read each other’s minds. I steal the ball, and Langley positions himself just right. My pass is high, but Langley jumps up and heads it in.

  We get one more in before the whistle blows. Four to one.

  I break into a victory dance. McCloud and Musgrove!

  Sometimes life is so good it feels like you’ve got joy running inside your veins instead of blood.

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  First published by Egmont USA, 2009

  This paperback edition published by Egmont USA, 2011

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 806

  New York, NY 10016

  Text copyright © Mary Amato, 2009

  Illustrations and sketches copyright © Antonio Caparo, 2009

  All rights reserved

  www.egmontusa.com

  www.maryamato.com

  www.antoniocaparo.com

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Amato, Mary.

  Invisible lines / by Mary Amato ; illustrations by Antonio Caparo.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Coming from a poor, single-parent family, seventh-grader Trevor must rely on his intelligence, artistic ability, quick wit, and soccer prowess to win friends at his new Washington, D.C. school, but popular and rich Xander seems determined to cause him trouble.

  eISBN: 978-1-60684-529-5 [1. Social classes—Fiction. 2. Middle schools—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Single-parent families—Fiction. 5. Moving, Household—Fiction.

  6. Washington, D.C.—Fiction.] I. Caparó, Antonio, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.A49165Inv 2009

  [Fic]—dc22

  2009014639

  CPSIA tracking label information:

  Random House Production · 1745 Broadway · New York, NY 10019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  v3.1

  For the Trevors I have known.

  —M.A.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. Musgrove

  2. Ka-ching

  3. Mr. Fungus

  4. Goal

  5. Dad

  6. Cleats

  7. Pieces

  8. Shoe Business

  9. Underground Intelligence

  10. Juggling

  11. Save the Children

  12. Wayne

  13. Decisions

  14. McCloud and Musgrove

  15. Tryouts

  16. Celebrate

  17. Xander

  18. Framed

  19. Frosty Pod Rot

  20. Losing It

  21. Throwing Punches

  22. In Need of Major Surgery

  23. Juan

  24. Begging

  25. News

  26. The Big Day Begins

  27. Nerves

  28. Unexpected Blow

  29. Guilty Until Proven Innocent

  30. The Dregs

  31. Diamond

  32. Help

  33. Mom’s Reaction

  34. The Real Criminal

  35. The Notebook

  36. Mom

  37. The Meeting

  38. Results

  39. Breaking Through

  Acknowledgments

  1.

  MUSGROVE

  If there’s one thing I’m good at it’s making people laugh because when I’m standing up I’m what you call a stand-up comedian, and when I’m sitting down, I’m just plain funny.

  We’re sitting on the bus. I’m on one side, sandwiched between two big women, and Michael and Mom are on the other side with Tish on Mom’s lap. Michael and Tish are whining, which means my mom is ready to explode, so I suck in my cheeks and bug out my eyes like I’m a hot dog being squished to death by the bun and they all laugh.

  The bus stops, and I whip out my fine point and draw a squished hot dog on Michael’s arm so he can keep looking at it.

  “Me!” Tish says, and holds out her arm.

  “Stop doing that, Trevor,” Mom says. “That ink is gonna sink in like poison.”

  But she knows Tish will have a fit if I don’t do one on her, so I give her a quick little hot-dog tattoo, and Tish grins.

  We’re still not there.

  The bus rumbles over a pothole, and everybody settles back into being quiet. Mom gets tense and sad again, but I’m not because I have decided that it’s going to be my year. The year of Trevor Musgrove.

  When the bus stops again, I draw my name graffiti-style on my shoe. Michael takes his thumb out of his mouth and asks, “What does it say?”

  “It’s our last name. Musgrove.”

  “How come you’re writing it on your shoe?”

  “What?” My mom snaps into focus. “Don’t scribble all over them shoes, Trev.”

  Tish takes her eyes off her new tattoo to see what we’re talking about.

  I pretend I don’t hear her because I’m not scribbling. It’s a masterpiece. I wave some air over it.

  “You drying it?” Michael asks.

  Musgrove. It’s going to be my year.

  I do the other shoe by the time the bus pulls over, and Mom says, “This is it.”

  Lights are flashing in the parking lot—four police cars, one ambulance—and a crowd is gathered around some Dumpsters that are blocked off with yellow tape.

  It takes us a while to get off the bus because I’ve got three garbage bags, and Mom has a big box, which means she can’t carry Tish. The driver is leaning over the wheel, head on his arms, eyes closed, like he’s ready to lie down and die.

  Finally we make it out, and Michael takes his thumb out of his mouth.

  “Why’s they here?” he asks, looking at the police.

  “It’s a welcome parade ’cause we’re moving in,” I say, and my mom laughs.

  “Come on. We’re over here,” she says, and starts leading the way.

  Tish pulls on my shorts. “Me up.”

  “Me can’t,” I say. “See me hands? Me hands full. Come on, Little Cavewoman.”

  I call Michael “Little Man” because he’s so serious, and then I started calling Tish “Little Cavewoman” because she talks like one, which I think is cute. She’d probably hate it if she were older, but she doesn’t even know what a cave-woman is.

  We pass a sign for the complex: HEDLEY GARDENS APARTMENTS. Somebody has scratched out Hedley and written the word Deadly above it. Mom steers us clear of the Dumpsters, even though Michael keeps asking what’s going on, because she doesn’t want us to hear
about anything bad. But then a skinny girl who looks about my age says, like she’s the mayor of the city and it’s her job to fill us in, “They found a baby in the Dumpster.” She says it loud and clear, like she’s got a microphone. “A real baby somebody throwed out. It’s a he, but he don’t have a name.”

  My mom hustles us on, but another guy who is walking up asks the skinny girl what’s going on.

  “High school girl had a baby and throwed it in the Dumpster.”

  “Man, she should’ve let it be adopted,” he says. “Rich people pay ten thousand bucks for a baby.”

  “Maybe her daddy would kill her if he knew she was having it.”

  I want to find out if the baby is okay, but Mom is speed-walking.

  “This one is our building! Hold on! Be careful, Tish! Trev, watch Tish!” she says because there’s broken glass on the steps, and her voice is sounding funny like it’s about to break, too. “We have to walk up,” she says.

  No elevator. No surprise.

  It’s okay. Every time I take a step, I see the new Musgroves on my shoes. Looks like they came from the store that way, all professional, if I do say so myself.

  “Floor number five,” she says.

  “That’s me,” Michael says. “I’m five.”

  “You’re right!” Mom says. “You’re my big kindergartner. Doing a good job with that backpack, too.” She’s using her fake happy voice.

  “Me five,” Tish says.

  “You is not. You’s two,” Michael yells.

  Tish stands still and glares at Michael with her perfectly round little face all fierce. “Me five!”

  She cracks me up. “Keep your pants on, Little Cavewoman,” I say. “You’re five in your mind, right?”

  “Me five.” She nods.

  “You is not,” Michael says, and I promise to play Superheroes with him later so he’ll shut up. Then I have to watch Tish because she wants to pick up every piece of trash along the way.

  “Yuck.” I grab each thing out of her hands, except for a piece of blue chalk that she buries in her fist.

  “Looks like somebody else likes to scribble on everything,” Mom says. “Don’t you go getting any ideas, Trev.”

  She’s ahead of me, so it isn’t until I turn on to the next floor that I see the graffiti. Just F-words and random lines and skulls. That’s scribble.

  Number 513. Mom unlocks the door. Two rooms: tiny and dirty and empty and hot. Hole punched in one wall that nobody bothered to fix.

  Michael takes his thumb out of his mouth and plugs his nose. “How come it stinks in here?”

  “Look! A nice big window! Why don’t you open it and get some fresh air in, Trev.”

  I open the window. “Guess what we got a view of?”

  “What?” Michael asks.

  “Don’t matter,” Mom says. “Come here and help me get this stuff out, Michael.” She opens a garbage bag and pulls out the orange shoe box with our photos and important papers in it.

  She doesn’t want him to see the Dumpster crowd because he’ll ask what’s going on again. Ambulance guys wearing bright blue gloves are carrying an orange shoe box to the ambulance.

  “Hey, Mom. They’ve got the same shoe box.”

  “Shut up, Trev,” she says. “I don’t want to hear about it.”

  I can tell by the way they’re holding the shoe box that the baby is inside and still alive.

  Michael takes his thumb out. “Can we go home now? I don’t like this place.”

  It’s like that old-time story about the little kid who blurts out what everybody else is thinking. The emperor has no clothes! Except in this case it’s: This place is trash.

  Mom doesn’t want to hear it. She sits on the floor and pulls Michael to her. “Baby, this is home now. We’re living here.” She kisses him, and Tish squeezes in for a kiss, too.

  People start yelling at each other in the apartment directly below ours. Michael stares at the floor as if at any minute their voices are going to explode through it. Outside, the siren of the ambulance begins to wail.

  My mom’s eyes fill up with water and she holds herself real still like somebody put her on the edge of a cliff and she’s afraid she’ll fall if she moves. She does this when she’s upset. She turns herself into a statue and she doesn’t blink because she doesn’t like to cry.

  “You know what we need to do?” I say. “We need to do us a little decorating. We need a picture on the wall.” I pick up the stick of blue chalk that Tish found.

  “Make a tree picture,” Michael says.

  I’ve always been especially good at drawing trees.

  Mom gives me this “don’t you dare” look, but I start to draw on the wall.

  “Trev, you can’t do that—” she says, but she’s too tired to stop me and we both know it’ll wash off.

  “Ta-da!”

  Mom starts laughing.

  Little Cavewoman waddles over, takes the chalk, and starts scribbling on the wall.

  “No, Tish!” Mom jumps up, still laughing, and she wipes her eyes real fast and takes the chalk away. “That was a joke. It’s called laughing just to keep from crying. We got to wash it off, baby. We don’t draw on walls. See what you taught her, Trev?”

  “I don’t want to wash it off,” Michael says, but Mom is already digging in the box for a sponge.

  Outside, the crowd is almost gone. There’s only one police car left. It bothers me that the baby doesn’t have a name. Everybody should have a name.

  Michael walks over and leans on the windowsill, sucking his thumb.

  “Let’s think up a name for that little baby,” I whisper.

  He pops his thumb out of his mouth and whispers back, “Charlie.”

  Charlie it is.

  With the blue chalk I write CHARLIE on the inside of the windowsill, where Mom won’t see it. “Shh, don’t tell,” I whisper to Michael.

  “What does it say?”

  “Charlie.”

  “Why you writing it?”

  “Putting a name down is important. It makes a person official. Charlie.”

  “Put my name down,” Michael says.

  “If you stop sucking your thumb.”

  Michael’s thinking about it.

  I write Tish’s name. And Mom’s. And mine.

  Michael takes his thumb out of his mouth.

  I write his name.

  “Now we’re all imported,” he says.

  “Important. Not imported. We want to be important.”

  “Yeah,” he says. And then he sticks his thumb back in his mouth.

  2.

  KA-CHING

  Bam. School starts. It’s weird because even though Deadly Gardens is a giant step down, this school is definitely a step up. It’s in the rich-looking neighborhood on the other side of Branch Road. Buckingham School. Clean and spiffy. Gleaming blue lockers. The locker number assigned to me is number 333. Straight-up lucky number.

  I’ve got it written on a yellow card, and I’m trying to find the three hundreds when I see the Manchester United guys. They have on Manchester United jerseys—the real deals, not fakes—and new Nike shoes. They look like they jumped out of a soccer catalog. One is real strong and tall and has light brown hair cut short. He’s holding up his cell phone and a little crowd is watching some kind of video on it. The other one looks fast and loose. He’s got long wavy red hair in a ponytail that could look stupid, but he pulls it off. Everybody cheers at something on the phone, and then the red-haired one acts out this routine where he’s getting hit in the head slo-mo style and everybody’s laughing.

  Juan, this quiet guy who was on my bus, is walking by, so I ask him who the guys are.

  The tall guy is Xander Pierce, and the one with the long hair is Langley McCloud, he tells me. Xander is short for Alexander, which is too cool. Wish I had a name like that. “They’re in the Summit,” Juan adds. I want to know what that means, but he has already walked on.

  I’m planning on getting a look at what’s on the phone
and slipping Xander one of my funny comments to score a solid first impression when that skinny loudmouthed girl—the one from Deadly Gardens who broadcast the news about the Dumpster baby—comes walking down the hall with a friend, singing like she’s the next American Idol. “If you love me, baby, set me free!”

  Xander groans and calls out, “It’s too early for torture.”

  “That’s why I’m not looking at your face,” the girl says back.

  Langley laughs.

  Xander gets in another one right away. “Looks like the janitor forgot to pick up the trash again.”

  “When I’m famous, you’re gonna regret you said that,” she says, “ ’cause you ain’t getting my autograph.”

  He’s saying something back, but she recognizes me and steers her friend over like she’s coming to talk to me. Last thing I need is to be identified with her. I turn my back and glue myself to locker number 218, even though it isn’t mine, and start working the lock in the hopes that she’ll see I’m busy and leave me alone.

  “Hey,” she says. Her voice is as loud as a truck. “How come you didn’t say hi to me on the bus? This is my partner, Celine. I’m Diamond. We’re gonna be a famous female recording duo.”

  “Stop telling everybody that!” Celine laughs and hits Diamond. “I’m gonna chicken out.”

  “You can’t chicken out,” she says to Celine. Then she turns to me. “We’re signing up to audition for the talent show.” She leans back and lets it rip. “If you love me, baby, set me free!”

  I pretend like I don’t hear her, which would be a major miracle if it were true, because it’s like this girl swallowed a microphone at birth and the batteries are still working. Xander and Langley have walked away, which is good.

  “You having trouble with that?” Diamond asks.

  I’m thinking about throwing out some signs like I’m deaf, but that would be hard to pull off. “Nah. I’m cool,” I say.

  “Oooooh, he’s cool,” Celine says.

  A skinny kid who looks like a mosquito zooms in from out of nowhere and says, “Um. I think that’s my locker.” He sticks his yellow card with the locker number in my face.

  Diamond whips my yellow card right out of my hand and reads it. “You’re 333. I’m 327. It’s right up here.” She pulls my arm and starts singing. “If you love me, baby, set me free!”