In the school cloakroom, Antek discovers a power that makes his hands disappear. Before he can understand it, Kuba walks in and something even stranger appears on the floor.
It happened after school, when the cloakroom was nearly empty and the air smelled of wet coats and floor polish. Antek stopped at his locker, adjusting the backpack cutting into his shoulder, and stared at the scratched glass in the door.
At first, he thought the mirror was lying. His reflection was there, but the hands at the end of his sleeves were wrong. They looked blurred, as if the light had smudged them away.
Antek lifted his arms.
His hands lifted with them.
He blinked hard, then stared again. The fingers at the ends of his wrists were turning pale, see-through, like someone had drawn them with a weak pencil and then rubbed them out. In a breath, they faded completely.
Antek gasped and nearly dropped his bag. "No way," he whispered.
He spread his arms, then clenched his fists. Nothing showed beneath the cuffs of his jumper, yet when he reached for the locker handle, his invisible fingers closed around it just fine. He could feel the cold metal. He could even move it.
That was worse somehow.
A floorboard creaked in the corridor.
Antek froze.
Someone was coming.
He jerked his hands behind his back, as if that could hide them, and backed away from the locker. The cloakroom door opened with a slow, complaining squeak, and Kuba stepped inside.
Kuba was taller than everyone else in their class and had a way of looking at people as if he already knew something embarrassing about them.
"I heard voices," he said, scanning the room. His eyes landed on Antek. "You hiding from someone, Antek?"
Antek's mouth went dry. If he said nothing, Kuba would get suspicious. If he said the truth, Kuba would never let him forget it. The invisible hands behind his back felt suddenly heavy, as if they were waiting for him to choose.
Then Antek looked down.
On the tiled floor, beside his shoes, a second shadow was forming. It wasn't his. It was longer, thinner, and it had fingers too many joints long, stretching toward him across the tiles like it had a mind of its own....