Invisible Inkling Read Online Free

table as soon as Nadia comes back,” I whisper.
    â€œNow then!” he says. “Cheesy goodness!” The entire pie starts scooting across the table again.
    â€œNo!” I reach for it, but Inkling’s too fast. The pizza flops onto the floor and zips across the tile, under two tables and several chairs, around a cooler full of drinks, and into the darkest corner of Giardini’s.
    In seconds, it is gone.
    All that’s left is the slices on our plates.
    â€œHank, my man,” says Nadia, returning. “Way to hog the pizza. You eat that fast, you’ll make yourself sick, you know.”
    â€œIt wasn’t me,” I say. “It was—”
    She squints her eyes at me. “It was what ? Your invisible friend?”
    I start laughing, because it’s true. And my life has become so strange and so happy so quickly that I can’t stop. I laugh and laugh until Nadia has to hit me on the back and make me drink a glass of water.
    At home that night, Inkling tells me I have to keep him secret. Over the years, humans have endangered bandapats by trapping them and locking them in hush-hush science labs. The scientists are searching for the source of bandapat invisibility, but it’s never been found. And in the labs, the bandapats waste away and die from sadness. “Promise me you won’t say a word, Wolowitz,” Inkling begs. “Because I can’t have that happen to me. I can’t be a science experiment. It would break me.”
    I promise, and tell him we also have to keep him secret because of Mom’s “no pets” policy. “Never, never” is the rule. She says seven hundred books, two kids, and Dad all together in our apartment—that’s already more than she can handle.
    We shake hands on it, Inkling and I. It is strange shaking hands with an invisible creature. His paw is rough on the bottom and divided into pads.
    What does he look like?
    Fluffy.
    Stout.
    Soft ears, a large tail, and padded feet with hard little claws.
    That’s all I can tell, so far.
    Maybe he’ll tell me more, later. Maybe he’ll let me touch his face.
    While Mom, Dad, and Nadia are on the living room couch watching E.T . that night, I make Inkling a bed in my laundry basket. I feed him a bowl of cereal and some leftover broccoli for dinner. “That rootbeer didn’t hurt me any worse than a kangaroo I fought once,” he says, munching.
    â€œYou fought a kangaroo?”
    â€œOh, they’re all over the outback of Ethiopia,” Inkling says. “I dropped on one that was hopping home with a huge, yummy-looking pumpkin. Waited in a tree and just dropped when the roo was least expecting it. There was big-time combat. She defended her pumpkin to the very last. But in the end, no bloodshed. Just aches and pains.”
    Of course he’s for-serious lying—hello? Kangaroos don’t come from Ethiopia, and last time he mentioned home it was in the Ukraine—but it’s more fun to listen to him than to call him on it.
    â€œWho ate the pumpkin finally?” I ask.
    â€œMe, of course. Bandapats nearly always win in combat. Invisibility gives us an advantage.”
    I can’t resist saying, “Except maybe with dogs, huh?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDogs, and their sense of smell. They can always tell where you are.”
    â€œI don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    â€œRootbeer!” I say. “She can tell exactly where you are. Even when you’re up in a tree.”
    â€œThe rootbeer’s not a dog,” says Inkling.
    â€œYes, she is.”
    â€œListen, I have traveled all over the world, and I’ve seen dogs and dogs and dogs. This rootbeer is nothing like a dog. Her face is all squashed in and she has ears like a bat.”
    I laugh.
    â€œI’m fine with dogs,” Inkling claims, “but the rootbeer is another story. I have to steer clear of her. ” He eats