Transparent

You discover that going to university is both better and worse than invisibility. It improves your parents: they are cities away and out of your life — but, unfortunately, there are other people you have to interact with.

Your roommate plays music and wants you to come party please come party because she doesn’t want to go alone.

After a few weeks of ignoring her, she leaves you alone.

Boys stare and think they’re discrete. They’re not. They’re a heavy weight.

Tutors want to meet; discuss; interact.

You meet advisors because their work on Australopithecus africanus fossil specimens from South Africa is fascinating, and please if they’re looking for more grad students you would love to join their lab.

But you can be invisible walking between lecturer theatres. And, if careful about the space around you, you can disappear in lectures.

The gift manifested in your teens. Your parents were arguing in their bedroom and they would soon come for you, their prop, their instrument of war. Which of us is right, which do you love? — only when they came, neither could see you.

Invisibility can’t solve all your problems: hiding from your parents made them angry at you, made them fight more. So you left.

Invisibility does solve some problems: fewer people to interact with, fewer people to leave.

Field work, digging up bones far from society, being alone, that sounds like magic. Until then, while you need people, you have your dreams and your ability to hide.