I got the formatted copy of Wish YOU Were Here from the publisher and was given two weeks to check it over one more time.

Before this, I stressed over making changes for the final-final draft. After I turned that in, I was told to send in another copy if I made any further changes by whatever date it was. (Making a mental note to remember that’s an option when I’m stressing over Book 3.)

I waited until the day before this new date to look at my final-final draft because I never learn. Did I make changes? Yep! A bunch of them but didn’t have time to make it through the entire book. That bugged me.

But now I have a chance to make final-final-final changes, which meant repeated texts to Mark on a Saturday night, interrupting the MarTar Manor cards and cocktails tradition with my quibbling over commas and “in” vs. “into.”

It could have been super annoying, I’m sure, but Mark seemed to take it with aplomb. He even showed me a pic of what was spinning on the record player–Stone Temple Pilots. (I approved.) And I showed him a picture of my laptop with a shot glass of peanut butter whiskey propped dangerously above the keys. (He approved. Maybe not of the recklessness, but of the drink choice.) And this is why we’re friends.

Perhaps it was the whiskey that made me decide that maybe, juuuuusssstttt maybe, I don’t need to make this book perfect, that, indeed, it can never be perfect. And so, even though I made notes for changes on the official sheet from the publisher, I deleted the quibbly minor ones. Why annoy the poor man like I did for Book 1, though most of those changes, frighteningly, were legit, even that late in the game. (That time, 44 changes. This time, only 10.)

Plus, the sooner I turn this back in, the sooner I get ARCs (Advance Reader Copies). That’s important because two middle school girls have repeatedly asked when the next book comes out. One looked about to cry when I said, officially, March. Even my 40-something male Jiu-Jitsu friend was displeased with that long of a wait time. With any luck, I’ll have my ARCs in December.

I also received the new cover.

Thanks to a couple of people who showed interest (many of you are rockstars who have already read the full book), I will continue the story of Wish *I* Was Here.

Special thanks to newcomer Outrageous Monk, who seemed the most intrigued, and who hasn’t yet proven himself to be a robot. Sorry, but one never knows these days–and I hate that that’s a true statement.

And so…

Story Time, Part 2

Isaac’s street was a cloud-covered ghost town when I pulled up after school. I used the spare key he’d given me sophomore year to let myself in and locked the door behind me. All the lamps on the main floor were off, giving the orange light echoing up from the basement an ominous glow.

I headed downstairs. “Hey, Isaac. Are you going to tell me what’s go…” I stopped, my feet glued to the step. A suitcase stood next to the fire extinguisher at the bottom of the stairs, a piece of T-shirt poking out between the case’s zippered teeth.

“You going somewhere?” Without me? “Spring break is next week. Couldn’t your parents have waited a couple more days?”

“My parents aren’t going,” he said as I reached the bottom step. Another suitcase, this one filled with worn spiral notebooks, lay open on a wooden table in the middle of the room. Isaac’s tools, gadgets, gears, and metal parts from clocks, maybe, or engines, or who knows what, were shoved off to the side instead of taking their usual place at center stage.

“I guess traveling on your own is technically legal now and all.” I waited for him to say something. Instead, he collected more notebooks from around the room—stacked on top of books and between his homemade robots that could scratch his back, open and hand him pop cans, or pick things up off the floor. One of them could probably defuse bombs if Isaac wanted it to. He grabbed a notebook from the top of Einstein’s empty cage. Though the rabbit’s musty odor lingered, he must’ve set his pet free.

Fear shot through me at what that implied.

“How long are you going to be gone?” I said in a quiet voice. When he didn’t answer, I said, louder, “Isaac. What’s going on?”

He pushed his hair away from his eyes to look at me. “I’ll make this quick. I don’t know how much time I have.” His movements were jerky, agitated as he piled more notebooks into the suitcase.

My heart started pounding.

“Last night in the chat room, I sort of got into an argument with Apple Pi.”

I nodded. He’d mentioned the cutesy username a few times. I imagined Apple Pi as a middle-aged balding man with a beer gut. To me, these Basement Builders, as I called them, were just a bunch of guys trying to one-up each other.

“I have a strict policy of not revealing anything of importance online,” Isaac continued, “but he pushed me too far. He was bragging about some stupid hovercraft he built, as if that weren’t an elementary project.” Isaac spat the words. “Then he accused me of not being a scientist of any real value.” He paused, exhaling through his nose. “I got mad. He got the better of me, and I…” He looked at me and drew in a breath. “I showed him Einstein.”

When he didn’t continue, I said, “So?”

Isaac dumped some rabbit food on the table. He set the empty cage near it and opened the door. I looked at the table and back at him.

A sound like bits of gravel scraping against each other reached my ears. I squinted, listening hard. It was more like crunching. Chewing. My gaze darted back to the table. I blinked.

The food was disappearing.

I clamped a hand over my mouth to silence a scream.

“I opened a video feed and showed Apple Pi this last night,” Isaac said in a defeated tone.

At least I think that’s what he said. The blood pulsating in my ears distracted me from hearing straight. And apparently seeing straight.

“What’s happening to the food, Isaac?” I whispered.

He grabbed my wrist. “Feel.” He held my hand, palm down, above the table. At first there was nothing and then, a slight tickling as though from fur. He lowered my hand, and I felt the movement of the rabbit, the soft fur slipping in and out between my trembling fingers as its muscles bunched and relaxed.

I snatched my hand away and stepped back, shaking my head. “I don’t believe it. How’d you do this?”

“I’ve been experimenting with cells, messing around with different hormones, blood samples.”

I grimaced.

He held up a hand. “Just listen.”

I nodded more times than I intended to.

“The first step was Einstein’s blood, transmutating his neuropeptides and neurotransmitters. Then I injected some oxytocin, manipulated the RNA, added cuttlefish DNA for its adaptive camouflage properties…”

My forehead screwed up. “What?”

“Basically, I found a way to create a sort of shield around Einstein’s cells.” He mimed forming a ball, as though that helped. “It’s like a transparent glass wall. He’s still there, but you can see right through him.”

Fumbling for a chair, I sat, gasping for breath as though the air had been sucked from my lungs.

I glanced back to where Einstein was eating. My chair toppled when I jerked upright.

Part of the table had vanished.

I pressed a hand to my throbbing chest as the table reappeared.

“Einstein must have drooled,” Isaac said so casually it was annoying. “Even his saliva can make things disappear.” He walked around the table, gesturing with his hands as he spoke. “The invisibility atoms move at elevated speeds, bouncing into molecules of other objects, causing a chemical chain reaction of invisibility. But, as you can see, once his saliva dried, the table became visible again.”

“Well, of course.” Sarcasm became my coping mechanism.

Isaac righted the chair, and I sat down just in time for him to say, “Now theoretically for humans—”

There went the chair again. “Pardon? Did you say humans?”

He nodded, this time stepping over the chair on his circuit around the table. “Because of our sweaty, oily skin being in direct contact with our clothes, they’d turn invisible with us.”

“How nice.” Again with the sarcasm because this couldn’t actually be real. Yet he kept going.

“Even the edge of your sleeve, being part of a piece touching your skin, would be affected, as would anything you touched.”

Am I supposed to be taking notes?

“Einstein doesn’t have that effect because he’s not an oily animal.”

“Yay for him. But, uh, is it… permanent?”

“He’s been like this for two days.”

“Two days? And I’m only hearing about it now?” I wanted to knock over another chair.

He grabbed Einstein’s food dish and sprinkled it with several drops of clear liquid from a vial. “He’ll go back to normal so long as he eats this soon. The antidote only works if taken within one week of turning invisible.” He put the dish in the cage. “Otherwise, he’ll be this way forever. That could mean insanity or death, so I hope this stuff doesn’t taste too bad.”

He turned to his suitcase and started counting the notebooks inside as though he hadn’t just said something completely bonkers that would make members of PETA faint.

“You mean he might die? Your beloved rabbit?” I grabbed my head with both hands. “But wait. One shock at a time. How could you not tell me about all this?” There was no hiding the hurt in my voice.

“I’m telling you now,” he said simply. “Oh, and one more thing. Any rabbit that’s related to him can still see him. It has to do with shared genetics.”

My fingernails dug into my scalp. What was he talking about? And could this get any weirder?

“After so many years, so many failed attempts, explosions, dozens of potentially toxic ingredients in a hundred different molecular combinations, and in the end, it all seemed so simple.”

“If you say so. Wait, toxic? Explosions?” I shook my head to clear it and let my arms fall. “I can’t believe you’ve been working on this for years and I never knew. I thought we shared everything.”

He looked up and sighed. “I didn’t want you to get involved.”

I met his gaze. “When it comes to you, I am involved.”

He held my look for a moment then went back to his blasted notebooks. “It’s important that no one else finds out about this,” he said.

My brain kept flip-flopping between irritation and disbelief. It was disbelief’s turn. My eyes, unfocused, darted around the room but saw nothing.

“Listen to me, Ana. No one can know. Do you understand?”

My eyelids slid shut as I hugged my arms to myself.

“Ana.” His tone was sharp. “Do you understand?”

I rapid-fire blinked, trying to focus on his face. “Yes, yes, I understand.”

“You’re the only person I trust with this. Promise me you’ll keep it secret. Under no circumstances should you tell anyone.” His voice matched the intensity in his eyes.

I stared back at him.

“Ana,” he yelled.

I jumped. “Right. Tell no one. Got it.”

“Good.”

I closed my eyes again, wishing this was just one of my characteristic daydreams. When I opened them, Isaac was on his knees, reaching to the back of a large double-door metal cabinet. He yanked on a steel box, stuck to the underside of the bottom shelf, until it slid free in his hand. A thick magnet lined the top of the padlocked box. He unlocked it with a key from around his neck. Inside was a black velvet ring box. He stood as he opened it to reveal a single capsule. It looked like an ordinary, oblong pill, speckled with various shades of gray, dull yellow, and larger red spots.

“All you’d have to do is swallow it,” he said, his voice low and serious. “You’d be invisible in a matter of seconds.” He handed me the ring box.

I looked from the box in my shaky hand back to him. Is he asking me to use it? Does he want me to be his human guinea pig?

Is he nuts?

“You should go. Quickly.” He broke his gaze and turned back to the suitcase, clasping it shut. “Take that with you, and keep it safe, please. For me.”

“Where are you going?” My voice cracked.

“I have to—”

The front door crashed open.

Isaac spun and grabbed my arms. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want this to happen to you.”

The fear in his eyes made my heart crash against my ribs. “What’s going on?”

“Remember this one thing—you hold the key, okay? Remember that.”

“Hold the key to what?”

Three burly men, wearing gloves and black ski masks, burst into the basement.

Oh, the cliffhanger! I’m so sorry, but this excerpt was long enough. You can, of course, just read the full thing here or better yet here or request a signed copy from me below. Thank you for reading along.

Old Q: My favorite line from the previous story time was “Once economics passed in a haze of supply and benefits, costs and demands, I eagerly entered the chemistry lab.” That one dude who knows my book well, of course, got it right.

This was nearly a tie with “Even in April, Miss Mendle still had that new car smell.” Well done to Outrageous Monk (please be a real person) and John.

Honorable mention to Herb for “When I rejoined him, he seemed tense, like a jack waiting to spring from its box.”

To my faithful few: Any favorite lines or parts from this excerpt?

A normal trivia question for the rest of you: In the 1780s, setting national policy, Thomas Jefferson said that the US should wait “till our population can be sufficiently advanced to gain it” before dismantling this country’s empire piece by piece.