Fiction | Short Story

Reflections on an Invisible Girl

People wanted to see the girl who’d disappeared and come back. They wanted to see Romy—who insisted she could not be seen.

“I’m not saying miracle,” the doctor told Romy. “But I will say it’s the closest I’ve seen.”

He smiled as he said it, and for a moment she thought that was the strange thing. In sixteen years, how often had she seen a doctor smile? The scrunch of the pitying mouth, the pursed calm, the resigned shake of the head. All this was familiar to her. A smile felt out of context. Unexpected, vaguely unsettling.

But no, she realized a moment later, as Dr. Gable accepted her grandmother’s hug. It hadn’t been his smile. It had been the way that he looked at her—right at her—as his expression brightened. Like you can see me, she wanted to say. She would have said it, if it didn’t sound so obvious. If the fact that he could see her—they could all see her—wasn’t the whole point.

Afterward, Nona took her to a café, a hole-in-the-wall with dusty, crooked prints and decent pastries. The last time Romy had been inside, her kicking feet had dangled off the chair. She thought of the scones Nona had brought her, every Saturday for years, the crinkle of the bag, the pastry no warmer than her hands.

I can order it here, she thought. I can order it here and eat it warm, and no one will bat an eye.

And it was true. When the bell above the door announced their entrance, a couple nearby glanced up and glanced away. Romy watched them, shoulders tensing, as she pulled her chair from an empty table. They continued the conversation, unmoved.

“You order,” Nona said, slyly, and Romy’s heart tumbled through her ribs again. She bounced over to the register.

“Hi,” said the girl behind the counter, pushing her glasses up her nose. “What can I get you?”

Romy laughed and flushed and stared at the pastry case. Then she ordered a cheese Danish and pointed at a pastry she’d never had before. The barista followed her finger, rang it up. Romy had just ordered a Danish for the first time in her life. And she was about to eat a morning glory—warm—just because she’d pointed at it, just because she liked the name.

*

I’m starting you in the middle. I should know better. I should know I have to explain why things matter or they won’t matter, at least . . . not the way they did to Romy. Or, I guess, to me. I need to go back, give context. But you have to understand, in those early days after her reappearance, it was the last thing Romy wanted. To go back.

Back: The blood pressure cuffs, the thermometers, the stethoscopes, never quite in place. Reaching—as quickly and nonchalantly as she could—to adjust them herself. The slight jump of the doctor, the nurse, the tech—covered immediately with an unconvincing smile. The smile delivered to her grandmother, like Romy was a pet who’d startled them, an outlet that had sparked.

Before: Her classmates calling her Casper, pulling the chair away from her desk. “My bad, thought this was empty.” In fourth grade, Jimmy Shaw managed to lodge fourteen spit wads in her hair before Ms. Munch finally told him off. “I was just making sure she was still there,” Jimmy insisted. “I worry,” he said earnestly, and everyone laughed.

“That’s enough,” Ms. Munch said, but Romy heard Jimmy mutter under his breath—“What if she disappears?”—and the snickers of his friends made Romy’s face burn so red, she was sure the heat waves would be visible.

But they weren’t. They weren’t.

What if it’s only possible to be seen when I’m not here?

Before: Miss Amy sitting the day care class in a cross-legged circle, saying, “We have someone very special joining us today. Her name is Romy, and she’s not exactly the same as you or me, but I know you’ll all be very good friends to her.”

A buzzing in Romy’s ears that muffled the speech, so she caught only individual words—condition, different. She locked on a freckled kid nodding intently while relentlessly picking his nose. Romy couldn’t tear her eyes away until—“Wait, is she a ghost?!”

“She’s not a ghost,” said Miss Amy.

“My mom says I’m not supposed to talk about ghosts, and you’re not either because they’re just made up to scare people.”

“Is she gonna haunten us?” asked a little girl with saucer eyes.

“Romy is not a ghost. And it’s not kind of us to call her that.”

“Be kind,” said the saucer-eyed girl, punching the nose-picker in the arm.

Miss Amy sighed. “She’s not a ghost. Just because we can’t see her—”

“She’s imaginary!” shouted a girl in purple overalls. “Right, Miss Amy? My little brother has an imaginary dog because he can’t have a real one because our daddy’s got allergies.”

The circle exploded. One girl wanted to know if the dog could come for show-and-tell and another wanted to know if imaginary meant lie, and the freckled kid started crying because he was afraid of dogs.

Finally, Miss Amy settled them by sending everyone off to play.

“I’m a ghost and I’m gonna haunten you!” one kid shrieked as they raced from the room.

“I’m sorry,” Miss Amy said, crouching down near Romy. “I think they just need time to understand . . . Okay?”

She reached a hand into the empty air, and Romy deftly stepped two paces to the right, so it landed on her shoulder. Miss Amy flinched, ever so slightly.

“Okay,” Romy said.

But already she knew better.

Before-before: Toddling out of her room, swinging Callie-doll beside her. Some vague notion of juice. Callie surrendered to the kitchen tile while Romy wrapped her arms around the fruit punch bottle. Wrestling the loose cap, trying to lift the jug, the sloshing red liquid, her mom in the doorway, Romy’s smile, her mom’s scream, the punch jug slipping from her startled hands.

Nona’s voice from the hall: “What? What’s wrong?” and the bad words pouring from Mommy’s mouth as she backed away. “What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?”

*

You’ll want the details. People have wanted the details all her life.

Fact: On her second birthday, Romy disappeared. She woke up, walked downstairs, and tried to pour herself a drink. Invisible.

Fact: Romy had not been seen since, which—you should know—is not the same as saying she’d been gone.

Addendum: Romy had not been seen, except by her own eyes. Ghost jokes aside, the girl had a reflection. Looking down, she saw her freckled arms, dimpled knees, flat feet. At least, she says she did, and I believe her.

Fact: Sixteen years have passed since either Romy or her grandmother laid eyes on Romy’s mother, Lisa. This, you should know, is not to say she disappeared.

Fact: At present, there are fourteen known cases of sudden-onset invisibility (SOI), worldwide. Of these, four have lasted over a decade. Of these four, one has been recorded with a further complication known in the literature as “the Midas effect.”

Fact: You don’t need me to name the one.

*

Voice memo from Romy McNeil, four months after filming

You asked once why I said yes, even though it wasn’t always great before. With the media, I mean. To be honest, I didn’t really think about it. I was sitting in our kitchen; Nona was making breakfast. I guess it was breakfast, even though it was almost noon. Nona sleeps in later than I do; she always says it’s a stereotype that old ladies are up before dawn.

Anyway, she told me she’d gotten some calls. From reporters and whatever. She kept talking about a call from Buzzfeel, and I kept giving her a hard time—“It’s BuzzFeed, Nona”—but she didn’t care. And then she was like, “Oh, and there’s this filmmaker who wants to make a documentary.”

I laughed. She didn’t. She said you weren’t much older than me, but you’d had a movie in Sundance. I noticed she got that name right.

I was confused. I didn’t even understand how you knew, how any of you knew. This had all just happened; it still didn’t even feel real. Nona told me Dr. Gable thought people needed to know. Other doctors, researchers. I think he tried to keep my name out of it, but there’s so few cases, so it’s like . . . it’s not exactly hard to figure out.

Nona said she hadn’t given you an answer, that you were waiting to talk to me. And I don’t know if it’s being, like, a teenager or having SOI, but that meant something to me. It felt different than when I was little, like, this time it would really be me. Me on camera, me talking. It felt like that mattered. Maybe that sounds super narcissistic. I don’t mean it like that. I don’t know what I mean.

And . . . I probably shouldn’t even tell you this part, but, when Nona brought it up, she kept looking at this thing she has, this little plastic octopus? The tentacles hold bills. And it’s not like it’s full or anything, but it’s not not full. I guess I’m . . . expensive or whatever. Even though my mom—people don’t really know this, but my mom sends money every month. She sends blank cards—like actually blank, she doesn’t write in them—with cash inside. But my grandma refuses to spend it. She just holds on to it all. Keeps it in this giant pickle jar in her closet because she doesn’t trust banks.

Don’t tell her I told you that.

So I don’t know, really, why I said yes—if I thought we’d, like, make bank, like movie stars, or if I just wanted to see how it felt to have a camera focused on my face. I’d been trying, all week, to make myself record a video on my phone, but I hadn’t been able to. I felt like one of those old-timey people, convinced the camera would steal my soul. Or maybe just, like, I wanted it too much, so it couldn’t go well. I had it in my head that if I tried to record myself, I’d disappear again.

Silly me, right?

Yeah. I know.

*

It shocked me, honestly, how fast Romy and her grandmother agreed to the film. Not even two weeks after her reappearance, I’d gathered a small crew, rented equipment. We caught a break between summer storms, sweating in the high humidity as we carried lights, mics, and cameras into their home. I kept staring at the spotless carpet, paranoid I had mud on my shoes.

After a while, we settled in Romy’s room. It was suspiciously tidy, down to the bright linens on her bed. Matt started shooting some B-roll: the college-acceptance letter on her bulletin board, the peeling narwhal sticker on her bedroom mirror, the snapshots—strung up with clothespins—none of which she was in.

I picked up a pair of surprisingly fancy headphones.

“You an audiophile?” I asked.

Romy shrugged. “I don’t know. I mostly listen to podcasts.”

I smiled. Same. We traded our favorite titles awhile, chatting easily while we outfitted the room.

Nothing about her bedroom looked like my room growing up. Still, I felt strangely at home there, like I was back on the bottom bunk, trying to tune out my sister long enough to finish a storyboard. Comics, then, not films. Not yet.

It helped, feeling at home, because honestly, I was still stunned that this was real. Me, in Romy McNeil’s bedroom, with Romy McNeil’s grandmother, with the actual, visible Romy McNeil.

Before: Three different screen recorders downloaded, my first semester at college, in advance of Romy’s ABC appearance. Like I couldn’t trust the news to upload it. Couldn’t trust the footage—the last before her “reappearance”—to stay online.

Before: Hours searching the internet for every last interview with Romy, about Romy, related to Romy. My sister’s hair falling, like a grass skirt, over the edge of her bed, as she leaned down to demand the return of the laptop. “Why are you so obsessed with that girl?”

Before: A thousand unimpressive comics drawn on paper lifted from my parents’ printer: A girl who disappears and enters a world without bodies. A girl who disappears and comes back as a boy. Two twins, trying to reach each other, trapped on opposite sides of a mirror.

Then: Standing in Romy’s bedroom, her grandmother, Gloria, offering us drinks. I asked the others to join her, to help carry them back to the room. I wanted some time alone with Romy, for the cameras to feel less alien, for both of us to settle.

I still checked we were recording, just in case.

“So,” I said, adjusting an angle. “You ready for your close-up?”

Romy rolled her eyes but laughed.

“Oh, totally,” she said. “You already know me so well.”

*

Fact: There are no pictures of Romy after age one. Although several news agencies reporting on her initial disappearance sent photographs and camera crews, there are no photos of the initial phase of her invisibility, when—her mother and grandmother claimed—you could still see her clothing, her pacifier, the toys grasped (presumably) in her tiny, chubby hand.

“Like the outline of her,” Lisa told reporters. “Like a bubble that said, here. Here’s where your child should be.”

Within a month, Romy had disappeared completely. The onset of the Midas effect (a phenomenon still disputed by many SOI researchers) meant the immediate disappearance of anything and anyone she touched. Clothes, slipped over her skin, seemingly ceased to exist. Her doll, clutched to her chest, evaporated.

“It feels perfectly normal to touch her,” her grandmother told a reporter, outraged. But the story quickly cut to Romy’s mother, who disagreed.

“It’s eerily normal,” Lisa said. “The same as it was, the same as it is to touch anyone. I keep thinking it’ll be like some ghost story. That my hand will just go through her, that it’ll be like plunging my fingers in ice. Or—nothing. But every time she touches me, it’s just her hand. My hand disappears, but I can feel her fingers, normal fingers. And it’s almost like—it’s worse, I think. To have something so wrong feel so normal. It makes it worse.”

(A Swedish woman whose mother developed SOI at sixty described the sensation as “Akin to phantom pain in a missing limb. She’s not there, but I still feel this itch.”)

Fact: By the time Romy turned three, the Midas effect settled into permanence. Anything and anyone she touched disappeared for the duration of the hold.

Her mother disappeared more permanently, on the eve of Romy’s third birthday, the anniversary of her condition. Like the rest of the world, Lisa hasn’t seen her daughter in sixteen years. Unlike the rest of the world, she hasn’t tried.

*

“I have this memory,” Romy told me, our second week filming. It was late morning; I was already calculating whether I could convince everyone to get Chinese for lunch for the third consecutive day. “Maybe it happened more than once, maybe it never happened.”

Something in Romy’s tone pulled me back. She’d been bright the whole morning, the whole shoot honestly, excited to share her experience on her terms. But that time, she started plucking at loose strands on her quilt, the way she had when she told us about day care, about school and that asshat Jimmy Shaw. I zoomed in on her hands, panned back to her face.

“Mom and I were standing on the sidewalk, waiting to cross the street, and I guess the light changed.” Romy shrugged. “So she reached for my hand, and then I guess she realized she couldn’t, you know, find it. I put my hand in hers, but she didn’t move. She just stood there, staring at our hands. And she started to shake. It was like she was shivering, but it wasn’t cold. And now I know that when I touched her . . . she couldn’t see her hand. But at the time— People had explained it to me. But I was little. I still couldn’t understand.”

I tried to follow up, to tease out a little more. Romy’s voice started shifting in a way I’d come to recognize, even two weeks in. It grew wooden, further away.

Like she’s here and not here, I thought. I shook it off.

Suddenly, I felt protective. She could have been my little cousin, sitting there, spilling her guts through open ribs.

“Let’s take a break,” I said. “Get something to drink.”

Romy looked up, nodded. I had what seemed, in the moment, like a jolt of inspiration.

“Hey,” I said. “Do you want to see some of the footage?”

And Romy smiled, one last time, before everything fell apart.

*

CBS News, eight years earlier

“I won’t have this made about my daughter,” Romy’s grandmother told the camera.

“Do people tend to make it about her?” the anchor asked.

Gloria sighed. “What happened to Romy happened long before her mother left.”

“So you don’t think that experience played a role? Exacerbated things?”

“Children are raised by their grandparents all the time. Millions of kids. There aren’t even twenty cases of this in the world. And those cases aren’t all kids, let alone kids in Romy’s situation.”

“What about her father?”

“Excuse me?”

“His absence . . .”

“His death. He died before she was born.”

“Could that have played a role?”

“No. No.”

“But what if—”

“Listen. You can’t— You can’t know what it was like for us, early on. My daughter, she had a child and then . . .” Gloria sighed.

“You lost both of them.”

“I didn’t lose my granddaughter. She’s with me. Every day.”

“Can I ask— What do you think Romy looks like?”

Gloria sat back, considering. “I— I don’t know. But I guess I imagine her . . . a bit like her mother. I guess—I know—she’s beautiful.”

*

“No one likes how they look on camera,” I joked, taking a step toward Romy. Matt went to grab her a drink, but she was still staring at the camera, shaking slightly. I flashed on a pot of water, shimmering as it prepared to boil.

I reached for her shoulder. Romy pulled away.

“It’s almost universal,” I said, but she wouldn’t meet my eye.

“What’s going on?” Gloria popped up like a Whac-A-Mole between us. Concerned.

“I’m not sure yet,” I said.

“The footage,” Romy said and pointed. Gloria looked at the frozen image of her granddaughter. “The footage is wrong.”

“Wrong how?” Gloria asked.

“Show me,” I said.

I rewound the footage, let it play. Romy’s face crumpled, watching it. She bit her lip so hard that it turned white.

“Let’s take a breath,” I said. Instinctively, I moved between Romy and her image. “This must be a lot. I know . . . the first time I saw footage of myself, I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I could see every hair in my nostrils.” I felt . . . a lot of things. “I thought people were going to be disgusted.”

But Romy shook her head again.

“I know your situation’s different,” I added. “I can only imagine what it’s like to see yourself, after all these years.”

“You’re beautiful, honey,” Gloria said, resting hands on Romy’s shoulders. “To me, you are beautiful.”

But Romy shook her head again. She pulled away, rubbing at her face with both hands. I saw her eye makeup smear; I felt my insides plummet.

“Tell me what we can do,” I said.

“There’s nothing you can do,” she said. She pointed at the close-up of her smirking face. “That—” She gestured at her image. “That—there. That’s not me.”

*

And just like that, the film—practically unstarted—stalled. I spent weeks trying to reach Romy, to convince her to let herself be seen.

“It’s not me,” she kept insisting. “It’s not me.”

She texted me, sporadically, and I told myself that was a good sign. Her grandmother called on occasion. There was hope.

I learned the facts, such as they were, in fits and starts.

Fact: For nearly eighteen years, Romy had been able to see herself. For sixteen of those years, only Romy had been able to see herself.

Like the rest of the world, Lisa hasn’t seen her daughter in sixteen years. Unlike the rest of the world, she hasn’t tried.

Fact: Four weeks earlier, Gloria had dropped her coffee mug when she turned and saw her teenage granddaughter for the first time.

Fact: Gloria had taken Romy to Dr. Gable, who’d tested vitals, taken photos, tried to understand.

No one could understand. So Romy and her grandmother had given up trying and simply celebrated.

Addendum: They’d celebrated, until they hadn’t.

Fact: In the first weeks after her reappearance, Romy avoided cameras, convinced the click of the shutter would shatter her good luck.

Fact: Romy hadn’t disappeared when the cameras started running. I’d seen her, down to the heat flushing her neck. (“Is that what you see? Is that what you see? Tell me you’re messing with me. You are, right? Please.”)

Fact: According to Romy, the person the cameras capture, the person we see, does not look how she looks.

Fact: Upon seeing the footage, Romy had refused further filming. And without her, we had no film. People wanted to see the girl who’d disappeared and come back. They wanted to see Romy. I wanted to see Romy.

Romy, who insisted she could not be seen.

*

Dateline, four weeks after filming.

“I noticed you’re not using her name,” the anchor said. “It’s a matter of public record, isn’t it? There’s footage from the interviews after her disappearance. You’ve published articles.”

“She’s not named in those articles,” Dr. Gable corrected. “She’s my patient and a minor. She has a right to privacy.”

“So you’d prefer we not use her name?”

“I’d prefer you honor her requests.”

“We reached out to her. Several times. It seems she’s uninterested in media appearances. Doesn’t that seem strange to you? She’s been invisible all this time, and now she doesn’t want to be seen?”

“I think you’re missing the point. Her response— She’s not the story here. Her SOI has gone into remission. How? Why? How can we facilitate this for people who are still suffering or who will suffer in the future? That’s the story.”

“You called it a remission. Are you not convinced her condition’s permanently reversed?”

“It would be premature to guess. I hope the change is permanent, but I’m a skeptic. I’ll always be concerned.”

“Is Ro— Is the patient concerned that this won’t last?”

Dr. Gable’s face fell.

“She . . .” he trailed off, then added simply, “No.”

“No?”

“No. I think, right now, she’s more concerned it will.”

*

I emailed Romy, I texted her, I even made myself call. I was rehearsing my carefully crafted voicemail when she picked up.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” I said.

And even though I told myself my main concern was her well-being, that this wasn’t about my film or me, I ended up rambling in her ear, telling her way too much. About the screening at Sundance and how I felt myself growing smaller watching myself that big. About the praise that felt like coming into sunlight, until it felt like starting to burn.

“I know it’s not the same—”

“Have I told you, when I was little, I used to draw comics—”

“I’m not trying to sound like a stalker—”

“I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I don’t know what’ll help, if anything. It’s just . . . I believe you. I want you to know I believe you.”

Romy didn’t say much in response, and my mouth went dry. The goodbye stuck in my throat. But later, she asked me to send her some of the footage from the film. She still couldn’t bring herself to open a camera.

“Not much,” she requested. “Just enough to see.”

Not long after, I got an email:

Hair texture: Mine is thinner than this. Hers is thick.

Hairline: Hers is higher in the middle. More steeply angled.

Eyebrows: Hers are lighter than mine, bushier, slightly more curved.

Eyes: Both brown, but mine are darker. She has longer, lighter lashes.

Cheekbones: Mine are higher, more noticeable.

Nose: Hers is shorter, pointier. Mine is longer, more round.

Mouth: Her bottom lip is thinner and her top is thicker than mine. Her smile kind of curves to the left. Mine doesn’t do that.

It went on that way: her chin, her neck, her shoulders, collarbone, chest, stomach, hips, legs, feet. She had assessed herself top to bottom. And she’d assessed the girl she’s not.

I read it, more than once, before responding.

I almost feel like I can see you, I wrote back.

After that, Romy started sending me voice memos, rambling, stream-of-consciousness style: “I don’t know why I’m talking to you except you said you wanted to hear it. The reappearance—everyone wanted to know if I wished for it. But how do you wish for something impossible? Everyone expects me to be grateful—‘It’s a miracle, Romy’—but how do you tell them you finally got your miracle, and it’s . . . wrong? I wish it were less off, obviously, that I’d come back and come back right. But if not that, I wish—I guess I wish I’d come back wronger. Is that even a word? I just mean, I wish it were obvious to everyone else—‘This isn’t her; she can’t look this way.’ Or I wish I hadn’t come back. I don’t know. How effed is that? To feel this, like, unreal? I keep thinking, Maybe I’m like wind and people can only see me by the shit I move. Sorry, does that sound insane? I can’t tell anymore. I just— What if it’s only possible to be seen when I’m not here?”

*

On her eighteenth birthday, Romy disappears.

Gloria calls me, her voice brittle with panic.

“She’s gone,” she says. “Romy. Have you seen her? Tell me you’ve seen her.”

I’ll need to be clearer. Let me be clearer. In the early light of her eighteenth birthday, Romy—who has been visible for nearly three months—takes a pickle jar of cash from her grandmother’s closet and disappears into the morning. She leaves her grandmother a scone from their favorite café, but no note.

“She’s been holed up in her room,” Gloria tells me. “She won’t talk to me. I tell her she’s beautiful, she’s beautiful, it doesn’t matter. I don’t know what else to say. Now this. She’s never done anything like this before.”

“I haven’t seen her,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”

I tell Gloria I’ll keep an eye out, a promise that feels meaningless. I’m not even in town anymore. Frustration bubbles through me.

So, what, I try to film you, and you disappear? And still, something like hope or pride itches at the edge of my awareness. Keep going, kid. Keep going.

I imagine her booking a hotel or renting a place, counting out bills that smell of must and brine.

A week later, I hear from Gloria again. Her voice has settled, calmed.

“I just wanted to tell you not to worry. About Romy,” she says. Like I wouldn’t know.

“Have you seen her?” I ask.

“Not exactly,” Gloria says. “But she’s okay.”

I try to ask more, but she dodges, then says she wouldn’t keep me, even though I’m the one pushing to keep talking.

Where is she? I want to ask. Is she even still . . . here?

Months pass. I take a job producing special features for the public television station while I try to figure out my next project.

I’m an hour into editing a story (a riveting piece about a giraffe at a nearby zoo, who might be—wait for it—lonely) when the first text comes in. Romy’s still using the same number.

Have you ever thought about making a podcast? the first text says.

I couldn’t pay you much.

If you do something with it, will you let me hear it first?

After that, my notifications erupt with a flood of voice memos. They range in length from five minutes to two hours. I scroll up to the first one she sent, press play, and close my computer on the lonely giraffe.

I listen for a while, then—paranoid—make sure the files save. I text her back.

I’ll listen.

She sends a thumbs-up.

Where are you? I text.

She responds with a small ghost emoji, sporting what looks like one black eye. Its pink tongue lolls out; its round white arms are raised. Haunting or celebratory.

A moment later, she seems to think better of it.

I just needed to get away for a while, she writes. Listen . . . okay?

And I do. I spend the night listening. I make black tea at 2 a.m., carrying Romy’s voice to the kitchen in a Bluetooth speaker. The signal blips, I finish my tea, and I return us to my makeshift studio. Here, she comes through clear and strong.

The recordings vary. Some of them feel like stream of consciousness, like the messages she sent me after she nixed the film. Some are crafted stories of experiences growing up. A few sound like letters: Dear Nona, Dear Miss Amy, Dear Mom.

I duplicate the files, playing around with edits. It’s a series of false starts. I insert my own voice, narrating, framing. I delete it and try again. I’m not making my movie or even my podcast. I try to see myself as not making anything. See myself as simply standing next to her, holding a mic.

Romy: “When I was little, I’d spend hours looking in the mirror, trying to draw what I saw. It pissed me off that all I could make were these squiggly smiley-faced things. I’d show them to my grandma, and she’d say stuff like, ‘Is that a bear? That’s such a good bear, Romy.’ Which, you know, was not what I wanted to hear. I stopped trying to show her, and then I stopped trying to draw myself, and to be honest, by the time I saw myself on film, I’d spent a good while not really looking at my reflection. It’s tiring, seeing something no one else sees.”

Romy: “Everyone acts like it’s so straightforward. There’s the way I look and there’s the way I think I look, end of story. I disappeared and I came back, that’s it. But sometimes it feels like I didn’t come back at all. What if the me that looked like me disappeared, and the one that came back, the one everyone sees, is some other person? Or what if I was never invisible at all, and something just happened to everyone else that made me so hard to see?”

Romy: “What’s worse, do you think? To be invisible or to be right here and be seen . . . wrong?”

In every recording, Romy talks directly to the listener. It feels like she’s daring me to pay attention. I want to pay attention. I spend too much of each day listening to her, force myself to work in between. I start sending her questions.

What are you listening to these days? What was your favorite color when you were three? How do you sign your name?

I reach out to friends I can pay in favors. They mock up logos, mess with sound design. I edit obsessively, which amounts—more often than not—to undoing my own edits.

Finally, I send her an episode. And then another. And another.

My radio voice is hilarious, she says. But all I hear is my.

A month later, I send her the final episode. I don’t know where she is, if she’s back with her grandma or staying somewhere else. I don’t know if she regrets sharing these with me, but I feel like she doesn’t. I’m trying to ensure that she doesn’t. I send her the final episode. I wait.

I don’t know why you did this, she texts. But . . . thanks.

I ask if I can post it.

Yes? she says. Then: Yes.

I do some light publicity, lay the groundwork, tease the release. Mostly, we premiere quietly. A few media requests trickle in, each of which Romy refuses. We will never be number one on any platform, but she finds a following. Small and loyal. It feels like a fit.

I’d spent a good while not really looking at my reflection. It’s tiring, seeing something no one else sees.

The last episode airs on the anniversary of Romy’s “reappearance.” That night, my phone rings. A video call from Romy. I nearly drop my phone. The call connects, but Romy doesn’t join me. Her video stays off.

Of course.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” she says. “It just felt like we should celebrate or something. Or at least . . . I should say thanks.”

“You’ve said it,” I say.

“I guess,” she says.

I wait.

“I saw your film,” she says. “The old one, the one that won that award.”

As if there’s more than one.

“I watched it twice,” she says. “The first time, I was too busy with my phone.”

“What did you think?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I want to say, like, I liked it. But that seems dumb. I guess, just, it made me feel like I knew you, watching that.”

I think about late nights with Romy’s recordings, mug rings on my outlines as I edited.

“I like that review,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. And in the silence that follows, I wish I had something for her. Not a red carpet or an award statue, obviously, but something—like she said—to celebrate.

I feel the click of an idea, starting to come together.

“Romy,” I say. “Can I call you back in a few minutes?”

“Um,” she says. “Sure?”

I disconnect. Call a friend from art school, Nia, who laughs when I tell her my plan.

“You’re overcaffeinated,” she says.

“I’m excited,” I say.

“Now?” Nia asks.

“Please?” I say. “Before I start thinking of all the ways this might be a terrible idea.”

“What the hell,” Nia says. “Netflix will keep.”

I open my laptop and start a new video call with Romy, add Nia. Romy’s black box lights up as she offers a confused hello.

“This is my friend Nia,” I explain. “I called her because she’s an artist.”

“You called me because I’m a sellout,” Nia laughs. “I’m a sketch artist. I do forensics to pay the bills.”

“Like wanted posters?” Romy asks.

“Like from witnesses,” I say. Nia nods.

“Okay,” says Romy.

“Romy,” I say. “If you describe a face for her, she can draw it. She can get it . . . right.”

There’s a pause. I hear Romy take a breath.

“You don’t have to do this,” she says.

“Oh, I’m five minutes into this,” Nia says. “I’m invested now.”

We laugh. Nia clicks to let her computer fill the screen. She pulls up images of faces, and Romy selects hairlines, eyebrows, lips, which Nia tweaks as needed. Romy’s voice relaxes as she answers Nia’s questions. I imagine her back in her bedroom, staring into the mirror.

It takes an hour for the sketch to come together. It’s my first time seeing Romy in nearly a year, or my first time seeing Romy ever. She looks . . . familiar.

“We good?” Nia asks, when all her questions are asked, all of Romy’s edits applied.

“It’s incredible,” Romy says.

“Cool,” Nia says. She drops her number into the chat. “Text me your address, and I’ll send you a copy.”

She waves at the camera and clicks off the call.

“I can find another way to get it to you,” I say. “We can figure something out.”

“I could . . . probably send you my address,” Romy says. “That’s . . . probably something I could do.”

“I’d like that,” I say. “No rush.”

We sit in silence for a minute. And then the black box shifts. Romy has taken a screenshot of Nia’s drawing and uploaded it as her userpic. It fills her half of the screen, and my own reflection smiles, seeing it.

“Nice,” I say.

“Thanks,” she says.

And something passes between us, like an opposite Midas effect. The longer I look at her, the more we both come into view.