Well, I guess that’s one way to get his attention.

“Okay,” I say, and he starts, swiveling his head at the sound of my voice. “Okay, please don’t freak out or anything but...it’s Alice. You just, um. Can’t see me right now—I promise I’ll explain—but I’m right here.” I pinch the fabric of his left sleeve between two fingers and pull it once, lightly, just to show what I mean.

He goes completely, utterly still.

“Alice?” he repeats, and I hate how much posher my name sounds on his tongue. How elegant. “Is this a joke of some sort?”

In response, I tug at his sleeve harder, and watch the series of emotions flicker over his face like shadows: shock, uncertainty, fear, skepticism, even a hint of annoyance. A muscle spasms in his jaw.

Then, unbelievably, his usual mask of calm falls back into place.

“How...strange,” he says after a long silence.

I roll my eyes at this severe understatement, then remember that of course, he can’t see me.

Great. Now I can’t even spite him properly.

“It’s more than strange,” I say aloud. “It should be—I mean, this should be impossible.”

Henry takes a deep breath. Shakes his head. His eyes search for me again, only to end up falling on some random spot above my collarbone. “But I saw you less than half an hour ago...”

Heat spikes through me at the memory of our last exchange. I will it away. “Well, a lot can change in half an hour.”

“Right,” he says, drawing the word out. Then he shakes his head again. “So how exactly did”—he makes a motion in my general direction—“happen?”

To be honest, I thought he’d give me a much harder time about this—at least demand to know why I came here, out of all places. But he simply snaps his laptop shut, pushing it back so that, whether on purpose or by accident, it’s covering the old photo of us, and waits for me to speak.

So I do.

I go over everything, from the brief cold spell to Andrew She knocking me over, careful not to leave out any detail that might serve as a clue to what the hell is going on. Well, everything except for my little meeting with my parents before the assembly; no one at school really knows about my family’s situation, and I intend to keep it that way.

When I’m done, Henry suddenly leans forward, his hands clasped over his lap, dark eyes thoughtful. “You know what?”

“What?” I say, trying not to sound too hopeful. I’m expecting something profound, scientific, maybe a reference to some recent social phenomenon I haven’t read about yet, but what comes out of his mouth instead is—

“This is an awful lot like The Lord of the Rings.”

“What?”

“The part with the invisibility—”

“Yeah, no, I got that,” I splutter. “But how—why—okay. Wait a second. Since when were you into high fantasy?”

He straightens in his seat. “In a few years,” he begins, which sounds like a very long-winded way of answering a straightforward question, “I’ll be the CEO of the biggest tech start-up in all of China—”