The Boy Who Faded Out

Once upon a time is such a cliché way to start a story, but here we are. Once upon a time I had a best friend, but he disappeared under mysterious circumstances. On June 4th, 2015, a boy named Tommy Jamison faded out. He was my best friend. Sorry I said that already. He was only ten years old when it happened, and so was I, at the time.

We had ridden our bikes to Cambridge park and left them by the pond so we could explore the creek by the dam. I've told the police this story a thousand times, so here it is again: he faded out. He stopped walking and stared at the sky. Suddenly the color of his skin and his clothing all turned gray, then for a moment he was transparent. Then he was gone. Not a trace. Nobody believed me at first, but luckily the park had security cameras and they captured this event. Still the police and dozens of FBI agents questioned me for days.

Every nut-job on the Internet has a theory about how I committed the perfect crime, have a link to aliens, or created an invisibility cloak like Harry Potter.

But they’re all wrong, he just faded out. Someday somebody will figure out what happened, and hopefully it won’t happen to me in the meantime.

I don’t want to fade out.