To be Unseen

I practice my smile one more time before re-entering the hall. Immediately, I’m blanketed by the warmth of familiar voices jumping up from pockets around the room.
Under the twinkling string lights draped from the ceiling, the group on the dance floor moves with one heartbeat to the pounding drum vibrating under foot. I find myself lingering on the lip of the swaying crowed – wanting to join them but unsure of how to. I notice my cousin circling the edge and offer her a wave. Her eyes pass right over me as she pushes into the swell and is absorbed with welcome. I make to join her but the crowd reforms; an impenetrable wall of shifting bodies with one clear message – no entry. I guess I don’t feel much like dancing anyway.
Instead, I find an empty seat next to my sister. She’s lost somewhere in the space between her beer and the conversation my uncle has her trapped in. He’s telling the story he always tells, the one about the dog chewing up his lucky socks on the morning of his wedding. I already know what he’s going to say, that he thought it was a sign he should take the car and flee, but I laugh anyway. I throw my head back, crinkle my eyes and flash teeth in all the right places. My sister shrugs into a one-sound chuckle, still lost in a place far from here. My uncle doesn’t seem to notice, his heavy fist pounding the table. The cutlery and glasses jump, tinkling with approving laughter.
“That one never gets old!” I support.
“It never gets old, does it?” He echoes.
I laugh tensely, a jagged sound that I hope cuts through to my sister.
My uncle stands from the table, his chair scraping against the dark oak floors with a squeal. He’s already snared his next victim with that booming voice.
I slice the silence left in his wake with a snarl, “How much have you had to drink?”
My sister doesn’t meet my eyes or my question. Typical. I don’t want to waste my night arguing with her – not tonight.
I leave her behind and make my way towards my approaching brother-in-law, “Could you make sure that-”
The sentence stalls in my mouth when he walks through me.
Not past me.
Right through me.
His shoulder glides through my neck as if it’s no more than air. I stumble backwards with a gasp, tripping over my own feet and falling into the path of my best friend’s chair. She pushes back from the table, the legs of her chair sliding straight through my stomach and protruding there like spears. Not a speck of blood spills from my body, but a primal fear bursts from the imagined wounds.
The scream leaps from my throat before I have time to register it as my own. It bounces off the walls and ricochets in my ears. A sound that should have had everyone on their feet; eyes wide and hearts racing.
Except not one head turns in my direction.
“Help!” I cry, my plea lost to the chatter between party goers.
“Time for cake!” A muted voice breaks through the ringing in my ears.
The floor shudders with the stampede of feet moving towards me. Cutting through me. I scramble to get out of the way, not that it seems like I was in it to begin with.
The crowd forms with their backs to me as I stand on shaky legs. I want to run after them but the beginning of their ritual freezes me in place. Arms thrown around shoulders and heads bowed together. Their distinct murmurs come together, stretching into the beginning of a serenade until the buzz of noise becomes a melody. Choruses of Happy Birthday pour into the room and fill the empty space where no one stands to receive it. The commotion of their claps and hip-hip-hooray’s blow out the candles. I watch, paralysed under the glittering light, as they slice the cake that bears my name.
The knowing settles heavy on my heart. From back here, I can see it. The way that their movements are laced with an assuredness I’ve never been able to master. How they come together naturally, without practicing smiles behind closed doors. Glancing between them, I notice the way that they see each other and I understand it now. I’ve always looked this way to them.
Invisible.