Kim removed her thumb from my forehead, and I opened my eyes.
"I guess we were both right, child," she smiled. "You are quite suggestible. But for some reason, I can't hypnotize you."
I exhaled, torn between relief and disappointment. I looked around. "Sorry, everybody."
Nods, shrugs. Smiles. It was no big deal, it seemed. I relaxed.
It was a party. One of my old college friends had gotten engaged to another one, and they'd thrown open their apartment in celebration. So, some of the guests were people I had graduated with, just a couple years ago; and some others were friends, relations, coworkers -- people of all ages -- some that I knew and some I didn't.
One of the "didn't" was Kim. A striking woman in her 30s who seemed slightly Asian -- exotic, anyway -- and had a piercing way of looking at me. Through me, almost. (I'm kinda short, with mousy brown hair and glasses, and I'm used to people looking through me, but this was different. Usually they look through me like I don't matter. But she looked *inside* me ... like I *did*.)
And as the party went on, and the crowd thinned, as most of the old folks went home and the guests that were left got looser, somehow it had come up that Kim knew a little about hypnotism. And somehow it was suggested that she demonstrate on a few people. They'd placed a chair in the middle of the room, pushing the coffee table out of the way, and while friends had perched on or leaned against all the available furniture to watch, she'd made a guy raise his arms, pulled by imaginary balloons, and made a girl forget her own name for a few hilarious minutes. All in good fun.
And then she'd pointed at me.
I'm not ... really comfortable being the center of attention. But I also have this thing where I hate feeling like I'm letting people down. So, even though I was pretty sure it wasn't going to work on me, I let my slightly tipsy friends good-naturedly push me toward the chair. I was willing to play along. Heck, being hypnotized did sound kinda fun, and the ratio of friends to strangers had shifted toward friends over the last couple hours, so I was a little less of a wallflower than sometimes.
In any case, nothing had happened. I was a little disappointed (and surprised by that reaction!). But I was also relieved. Now maybe it could be someone else's turn in the hot seat.
"I'd like to try a different game, if that's all right, Kara," Kim said kindly, as if she wasn't concerned at all about her failure. (And how I envied that poise. I think I would have slunk away in embarrassment, but she was so confident and relaxed!) "Have you ever thought about superpowers?"
"Superpowers?" I asked. I'd been about to get up, but it seemed I wasn't finished yet.
"Yes, the classic question. If you could have one superpower, what would you want it to be? I'm sure you've thought about it bef --"
"Invisibility." It just tumbled out of my mouth, before she'd even finished speaking. Kim raised her eyebrows. There was a murmur through my assembled friends.
"Invisibility? And why is that?"
"Omigod, it just seems so ... I mean ... I think about it all the time, honestly. Like I've thought about time travel a few times, and of course everyone considers flying, but ... Being invisible. You're just. Like. No one would be looking at you! You know? No one sees you, no one judges you, you can do your own thing and be left alone ... Go where you want, see and do what you want? And not have to make conversation, or even worry about what your hair looks like? Omigod, it would just be so ... so --"
"Freeing," she said with me.
"Yes!" I sagged back in the chair. I'd said a lot of words very quickly, like a spaz, but for the moment at least, I wasn't thinking about that. It felt good to say it.
She was looking at me very intently. "And how would that make you feel, do you think? How do you think being invisible would change you?"
It was a way of asking the question I'd never heard before, or considered. "I'd be ..." I said, and paused to think. "Fearless," I decided. And smiled a shy smile.
She didn't smile back. Just watched me for a moment. Then nodded, once, as if she'd come to a conclusion.
"Then I think I have a little gift for you." She half-turned, without standing, and gave orders that didn't sound like orders. "Bill, be an angel and hand me my purse. Jill, pour me a half glass of that delicious wine. The white. Thank you, dears." She rifled through her bag for a moment, and produced a small clear vial, like a bottle of eye drops. Or a nasal decongestant. It was unlabeled, and half full of a clear liquid. She handed her purse off to someone without looking and held the bottle up so I could focus on it, and her.
I was peripherally aware of our audience leaning forward, rapt at the moment she was creating, but I couldn't tear my eyes away to look at them.
