Invisible Ellen by Shari Shattuck

meeting Temerity again made her eat more enthusiastically than usual, and as she chewed, she watched her bed in the corner. She could get back in it, take a sandwich even, and pretend the blind girl had never happened. Comfort and sanctuary beckoned, but she felt oddly restless, too distracted to ignore Temerity’s summons. So she dressed and hurried to the bus stop.
    She prepared to get off at Temerity’s stop by standing and moving to the double exit doors. But when the doors opened, she found herself blocked by the girl in person. Temerity felt for the opening,stepped up onto the platform, and called out in an exaggerated whisper, “Ellen, you here?”
    Ellen glanced nervously around. Absolutely no one on the almost empty bus was paying Temerity any attention. “I’m standing right in front of you,” Ellen whispered.
    â€œCool,” Temerity whispered back.
    Relieved to see that she had left her lighthouse of a hat at home, Ellen sat in one of the open rows, trying to scoot as far over to the window as possible to make room for Temerity, but her size made it impossible to avoid contact as the girl slid in next to her. Shivering lightly from the unfamiliar human touch, Ellen tried to condense herself into a smaller shape. It didn’t work. It never did.
    â€œHey,” Temerity whispered. “Anyone paying attention to us?”
    â€œNo,” Ellen told her after a look around.
    â€œGood, I didn’t want anyone to think I was talking to thin air. On the other hand, who could blame me?” Temerity laughed. “And how would I know if somebody was looking at me like I was crazy?” She cackled with laughter at that.
    Ellen considered this. It was true, Temerity couldn’t see condemning or pitying looks, so she had no need to respond to them. Once again a light dusting of jealous snow settled on Ellen’s stomach, but Temerity’s elbow struck her in the ribs and the sprinkling of resentful green flakes didn’t stick. “Okay,” Temerity said conspiratorially, “so I checked the bus route. We’ll have to switch to the twenty-three, and then the crosstown local. But if you want to take a cab, we could do that.”
    As much as she dreaded the likelihood of a long walk from the bus stop to, and then through, the mall, and the resulting strain on her laboring heart, not to mention the inevitable chafing of her thighs and her basic distaste for entering a public building, Ellenwas far more fearful of personal contact with cabdrivers. “No, it’s okay.”
    Temerity smiled. “I wonder what she’ll be like.”
    Automatically, Ellen shrugged, and this time, since their shoulders were lightly touching, it wasn’t wasted on the blind girl.
    â€œI know, right?” Temerity said. “We have no idea, that’s why we’re doing this. So, any news about Cindy?” Her voice was eager and interested, but it lacked the predatory lust of the Crows’ intrusive meddling. Instead, there was real concern in it.
    â€œJust that she was looking at a baby magazine this morning.”
    Temerity whistled a long, descending note. “So . . . she isn’t quite as copacetic with this adoption as she might pretend.”
    Ellen wondered whether to ask what “copacetic” meant—she didn’t remember coming across it in any of her reading but deduced that it must mean some form of “okay.” “No. She cries all the time, and I mean
all
the time. And the other day, after the Newlands left, she made this sound.” Ellen thought about how to describe the audible pain: “Like wind through dead tree branches. Really”—she searched for that word she’d read somewhere that seemed right and found it—“desolate.”
    â€œKeening,” Temerity said with decision. “It’s called keening, and it’s something people usually only do when someone they really