Invisible Seat

[SQUEAK]

Front-row chair.

It complains when I sit like it knows I don't belong this close to the teacher's desk.

Study hall. Door open. Twenty minutes. Ms. Carter said no disappearing into the window.

The window is right there anyway?courtyard, fountain, kids who already know how to be loud on purpose.

I open the make-up packet. Fractions. Clean lines. No asteroids allowed.

My pen hovers.

In my head, the Vanguard's nav map tries to bloom across the numbers.

I flatten it. Hard.

Ms. Carter grades something at her desk, not watching me every second, which somehow makes it worse. Being watched is a targeting lock. Being trusted is a test.

Leo sits two rows back?close enough to mouth You got this, far enough that he can't take the hit for me.

I solve one problem.

Then another.

Problem three fights back. I breathe, redo the steps, refuse the doodle that wants to save me.

My knee wants to bounce. I pin it.

For twelve minutes I am almost a person who does the ordinary thing on time.

Then a pair of sneakers stops in the open doorway.

Ryan?tall, new shoes that always look unopened?leans in like the classroom is a hallway annex he owns.

"Ms. Carter, can we grab Dave for the history project groups? We're short one."

He says my name like he borrowed it.

A couple kids behind him snicker. Soft. Deniable.

Ms. Carter glances at the clock. "Five more minutes here. Then yes."

Ryan's eyes flick to my make-up sheet, then to my torn bag slumped by the desk leg.

"Oh," he says, smiling with too many teeth. "Didn't know you had? detention vibes."

"It's not detention," I say, too quiet.

He shrugs. "Sure."

They leave.

The open door keeps their laughter for a second longer than it needs to.

Ms. Carter doesn't comment. She just taps my packet once. "Finish this one. Then go."

I finish it.

Ink steady. Brain loud.

[RING]

Hallway.

Group project means World History again?Silk Road fallout, posters, collaborate.

In the library corner assigned to us, four chairs wait. Three are already claimed by Ryan's orbit: him, a girl named Maya who highlights everything in pastel, and a boy who only ever says bro like punctuation.

The empty chair is slightly farther out, like someone nudged it off the formation.

I sit anyway.

"Okay," Ryan says, spinning a marker. "We need maps, facts, and someone to present. Maya's on design. I'm talking. Bro's on? support."

"Bro," says bro, helpfully.

Ryan looks at me. "You can do? research? Quiet work. You're good at quiet."

It isn't a compliment.

It's an assignment to stay invisible with permission.

I nod, because my throat is full of better sentences that won't launch.

Maya slides a laptop toward the center without sliding it close enough for me to type. "Just send bullet points in the chat. If you want."

If you want.

I want to say I can present. I want to say I know the trade routes better than I pretend. I want to say the Silk Road vanished under sneakers and I still remember the chalkboard white.

Instead I pull out my notebook and write neat bullets like a secondary systems officer filing a report no one will read.

Across the room, another group laughs?easy, overlapping. Someone gets called over by nickname. Someone else high-fives.

My pen pauses.

Leo appears at the end of the stacks, searching, then spots me and brightens?then dims when he reads the formation.

He can't join. Different class section.

He gives a tiny two-finger salute anyway, the same one from the classroom aisle, and mouths lunch.

I salute back half an inch above the table so nobody sees.

Ryan notices anyway.

"Aw, your little co-pilot."

Maya snorts into her sleeve.

Heat crawls under my collar. In my head: shields up, countermeasures, witty comeback that leaves a scorch mark.

In the real world: I stare at my bullets until the words blur.

"I can draw the map," I hear myself offer, surprising us all.

Ryan considers. "We already have Maya."

"I can help," I say. Smaller.

"Yeah, maybe later." He turns the laptop. Conversation closes like a hatch.

I disappear on purpose this time?fold into the chair, fold into the notes, fold into a quiet so complete it almost feels like choice.

It isn't.

[THUD]

Lunch trays.

Cafeteria roar. Leo saves the end-of-row spot. I sit. My bag zipper grins its jammed metal teeth at the floor.

"They being jerks?" Leo asks.

"They're being efficient."

"That's a yes."

I pick at my sandwich. "Ryan called you my co-pilot."

Leo's jaw tightens, then he forces a grin back on?the same patch job as the hallway. "Then we make co-pilot mean something scary."

I almost laugh.

Almost.

Around us, tables rearrange by gravity: athletes, phone-film crews, the kids whose backpacks never tear. A girl from math?the almost-glance from the courtyard?walks past with her tray.

She slows.

My mouth opens.

"Hey?" I start.

Her friend hooks her elbow. "Come on, the good seats."

She goes.

The word hey dies in the air between us like a missed radio ping.

Leo saw it.

He doesn't pretend he didn't.

"You wanted to talk to her," he says, not accusing.

"I don't even know her name."

"You can still want to."

I shrug like it doesn't matter. The shrug is a lie with good posture.

After lunch, lockers.

Mine is low, slightly dented, the kind nobody photographs. I kneel to jam books past the torn pocket. The make-up packet sticks out like a white flag.

Behind me, Ryan's group passes in a knot.

"Invisible seat strikes again," someone murmurs?Maya, I think?and they laugh like it's an old joke I somehow starred in without auditioning.

I keep my head in the locker.

Count to five.

When I turn, they're gone.

Leo is there instead, holding out a controller sticker that peeled off his bag. "For luck," he says. "Put it on your packet. Ugly armor."

I stick it on the corner. A tiny defiant emblem.

"Tonight we finish make-up early," Leo adds. "Then a short mission. Then you sleep like a person who has Friday."

"Friday," I repeat.

Jump coordinate.

Last period, the project chat pings on the shared doc. Maya typed: dave still sending bullets?

Ryan: if he shows up lol

I type three clean sources with page numbers.

Seen.

No thanks.

No reply.

Just the cursor blinking like a waiting enemy.

On the bus, rain starts again?thin, after yesterday's clear stretch of sun on puddles. Window rattles. I watch droplets streak and turn them into incoming tracers, then force the fantasy off because study hall taught me I can.

Leo bumps my shoe. "You went quiet after lockers."

"I'm always quiet."

"Not with me."

That sits between us, warm and heavy.

I want friends.

I want the fountain nickname.

I also want to vanish the second anyone looks too long.

Both true.

I almost tell Leo about the girl and the dead hey.

I don't.

"Dinner first," he says as my stop comes up. "Then my place. Short mission. Then we finish the packet for real."

"Captain's call?" I try.

"Engineering override."

[HISS]

I step down into the wet, bag strap digging in, sticker armor already ugly on the packet corner. Bus pulls away with Leo still on it, two stops farther toward the duplex.

Home gate. Kitchen light. Mom asks if school was okay.

"It was school," I say, which is cowardice dressed as comedy.

Dad lowers the newspaper just enough. "How's the tactical genius?"

"On a make-up trajectory," I say, and he smiles like that counts as a start.

I eat fast without looking like I'm escaping. Mom still notices.

"Leo's?" she asks.

"Homework," I say. "Then maybe ten minutes of saving the galaxy."

"Ten," she repeats, amused. "I'll believe eight."

After dinner I walk the familiar route to the squeaky gate. The dog greets me like a boarding party again. Inside: popcorn ghost-smell, old carpet, controllers waiting.

We patch a hull and don't talk about Ryan until the menu screen returns.

"Invisible Seat," Leo says suddenly, tasting the words like bad fuel. "We don't accept that designation."

"Easy for engineering to say."

"Then promote me to morale officer." He tosses me a controller. "One more burn. Then fractions. Then sleep."

I play.

I study.

I do both like someone practicing not disappearing.

When I walk home later, the sticker on the packet catches a streetlight?ugly armor, tiny and ridiculous and mine.

I touch it once, like a lucky switch.

In my room, I lay out the packet and the notebook bullets nobody thanked me for. For a second I imagine presenting?voice steady, map clear, Silk Road alive.

Then I imagine Ryan's smile.

The two images collide.

Before sleep, I replay the doorway moment?Ryan's teeth, the word detention, the way the class didn't defend me because there was nothing obvious to defend.

I whisper the answers I didn't give into the dark.

They sound braver with no audience.

Then I set the alarm early on purpose, like arming a system before the fight starts.

In my head, a new warning light: Invisible Seat is a name now. Names stick.

Tomorrow the group will need a presenter.

Someone will look past me again.

And somewhere in the noise, there might be another almost?another open channel?if I don't disappear first.

I don't know yet which thruster I'll fire.

But I know the couch was there tonight, Friday is real, and Leo won't leave the grid.

One burn at a time.

Even when the burn is being seen.