They Pretended I Didn’t Exist for Twenty Years… So I Disappeared Chapter 09

They Pretended I Didn’t Exist for Twenty Years… So I Disappeared Chapter 09

Two months later, I still hadn’t seen any of the four of them.

The day I moved out of Daniel’s apartment, I stood in my new place and pulled every curtain

open.

Sunlight flooded the room.

Daniel leaned against the doorframe, watching me with the faintest smile.

“Happy with it?”

“Yeah.”

I turned toward him.

“Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me.”

He walked over and placed a key in my palm.

“This is the key to your new place. My apartment will still be there for you too. You can come back anytime. You don’t owe me anything.”

I closed my fingers around the key, and my throat suddenly tightened.

“You were always like this, even when we were kids. The day everything happened to my family, everyone surrounded Lily. You were the only one who came over to me. Then you moved away, and it took me a long time to get used to you being gone.”

Daniel was silent for a moment.

“I came back too late.”

“No.”

I looked up at him and smiled.

“You’re not late. The Invisible Game is over. I won, and the prize was my freedom.”

Later, I heard through friends what had happened to them.

Ethan drank himself into the hospital with a stomach bleed.

His company kept going downhill, and he didn’t seem to care.

Ryan quit his job and went to teach in a remote mountain community.

Mason cut Lily out of every social circle they shared.

But he withdrew from everyone too.

People said he spent his days locked in his office, going through old photographs.

Lily fared the worst.

All the opportunities and resources she’d gotten over the years through the Bennett family and Ethan disappeared.

The dance company removed her from its roster.

The house her parents had left her was taken to settle debts.

Eventually, she moved into a shared apartment in a run–down neighborhood.

Someone saw her working at a cosmetics counter in a mall, smiling at everyone she saw.

Her smile was still as sweet as it had always been.

But no one fell for it anymore.

By the time those stories reached me, Daniel and I were out on the balcony having barbecue.

The grill crackled while cold beer cans sweated on the table.

Daniel handed me a freshly grilled chicken wing.

It was grilled perfectly,

I took a bite, then teased him.

“Do you remember when we were kids and said we’d open a barbecue place when we grew up?”

He paused, then smiled softly.

“I remember. You said you’d do the eating and I’d do the grilling.”

“What about now? Does the deal still count?”

Daniel looked at me.

The glow of the coals reflected in his eyes.

“It counts,” he said. “For the rest of our lives.”

I lowered my head and took a bite of the chicken wing, unable to hide

My phone lay silent on the table, its screen dark.

Those four names never appeared on it again.

From age five to twenty–five, I’d spent twenty years being invisible.

Now, at last, I was bringing color back into my life, little by little.

my smile.