Invisible Son

On April 5, Grandma J asks Andre if he’s excited to start school again. All the schools have transitioned to remote learning.

Sierra is going home soon, and Andre is not excited. The Whitakers have kept sending over care packages, though Andre is reluctant to accept anything besides food. He doesn’t want to feel indebted to the family. He is also trying to figure out Mr. Whitaker’s motivations for lying. He concludes that the Whitakers must know where Eric is.

Andre struggles to log in because his computer is so old. He sits in on the classes he shares with Sierra, but he feels like he won’t be able to access the online classes he needs. Sierra goes home that night.

The next morning, Mrs. Whitaker comes over wearing protective gear, and she hands Andre a new laptop with a hotspot. Andre thanks her. Before she leaves, she adds that Sierra won’t be able to come over anymore because they’re trying to keep contact with other people to a minimum since Brian has asthma. Andre feels like Mrs. Whitaker is trading the laptop for Sierra, and he tries to give it back. He says that he doesn’t want her to feel bad for him. She emphasizes that they need to take care of each other.

On April 6, Terry calls Andre and says that he can keep doing his community service at Parks & Rec by watching the building. He can also start his pool workouts again, as long as he does the maintenance on it too. Andre promises to not let him down.

The next day, Andre goes to Parks & Rec. Terry meets him at the door. Seeing that Andre is wearing a mask, Terry asks if he’s okay. Andre says that his mom suggests that everyone wear them. Terry agrees that people should but says that it’s unlikely that a lot of people will agree.

At the pool, Andre loves being back in the water, feeling like pieces of him that were missing are coming back. When he gets out, he notices Phil, who’s on the cleaning shift, staring at his ankle monitor. Soon after, Andre runs into Cowboy Jim, who says that Andre disappeared from their signal, so he came to check it out. Phil let him in.

Marcus appears and says that the signal is back. He says that Andre can adjust how he swims to make sure that the ankle monitor sends a signal every once in a while. Marcus suggests that Jim leave, saying that this isn’t his case. When he’s gone, Marcus turns back to Andre and says that he knew Jim would come by when he saw Andre’s GPS go dark. He wasn’t worried, but he wanted to catch Jim bothering Andre. He’s going to report him, even though it likely won’t change anything.

Afterward, Andre sees that Terry’s office is open. Despite knowing that getting caught could mean that he compromises his ability to be at Parks & Rec, he logs into the computer. Terry comes in soon after, and Andre says that he was there to clear the server but forgot how. Terry upgraded it. He adds that the police stopped by after going through Andre’s locker. There was no footage since it was erased on the New Year’s Eve shift.

Eventually, Andre admits why he was really in there. Assuming that Terry is going to fire him, he says that he’ll tell Marcus that he needs to find a new place for his community service. As he leaves, Terry says that he’s always seen Andre carry the same tattered backpack and that it’s different from the one found in his locker.

Andre goes to the high school. When he greets the science teacher, Mrs. Peters, for their meeting about lab ideas, she jumps. She apologizes for being scared, and Andre feels like it’s because of him, not because of the virus. She had meant that they would meet on Zoom. He gives her some ideas for making the labs better over Zoom. Before he leaves, he says that he doesn’t have time to be her lab assistant anymore, feeling sad that she was afraid of him.

Andre rushes home for class. He turns off his camera and mutes himself. He and Sierra call each other so that they can chat about class. He explains things she doesn’t understand, and she repeats something when he misses it. They talk all the time, agreeing to meet secretly when her parents go to bed. He goes out of the window and meets her outside, keeping six feet of distance between them. They talk for a while, though Sierra forgets that Andre is experiencing a different type of lockdown because of the terms of his release.

Andre thinks about how the world responds differently to the pandemic. Counties in Europe are stricter about lockdown; he thinks that death isn’t taken as seriously in America because someone always profits from someone else’s loss. He worries about his grandfather.

Sierra comments that she thought that the summer would be great, but they know that things probably won’t be back to normal by then. Andre wonders what would’ve happened if he hadn’t gone to juvie. They’d kissed for the first time shortly before he was arrested. He says that he and Sierra should keep an eye out for each other.

Sierra asks if he thinks Eric is okay, and Andre responds that he isn’t sure. He thinks that Eric ran away to protect himself. He asks why Eric started stealing things in the first place. She suggests that it gave him a thrill. She goes on to say that she coped differently, even as people treat her poorly because she’s Black. She feels like there’s expectations about her hair, her body, her looks, and her behavior. So many people think that Black girls and women are aggressive. Andre says that she’s beautiful. He thinks about how he is able to fit in as a guy in a way that she can’t because beauty standards are so high for Black girls and women.

Later in the night, they decide to do a music marathon, playing each of their top five songs to see who wins. Each returns to their room, and then they go live.

Views pile on to their live stream, and he sees that some of their comments are about his relationship with Sierra. By six o’clock in the morning, he’s exhausted. He looks at his email and sees that he has a notification about YouTube account promotions. He’d signed up to have ads run on his videos before he’d gone to juvie, but he didn’t think he’d make any money. Over the course of the night, he raised $1,000. He’s shocked.

Andre tells Sierra about it first, and then he calls Boogie. After they talk about the ads, he asks how Boogie has been. His aunt passed away, and no one is allowed to attend the funeral. Andre feels like the virus is spreading more and more.

On April 20, Andre rides through Portland on his way home from Parks & Rec. The city is a ghost town, and he wonders if, just as prison can change someone’s brain in isolation, people are changing too.

When he gets home, he joins Grandma J on FaceTime with Grandpa. They know that it won’t be long before he passes away, and they talk to him. They’re going to take him off of the ventilator, and Grandma J says that “[i]t’s time” (197). They log off of FaceTime while they take the tubes out, but Andre’s mom calls back when that process is over. They stay on until Grandpa stops breathing. Grandma J cries, and Andre hugs her.

They add Andre’s dad to the call; he hadn’t been ready to watch his father pass away. However, he emphasizes that Grandpa will always be with them. Andre sees how tired his father is and how he’s still sick. He decides to figure out how to get the bookshop up and running again. It doesn’t matter if he has to put off going to college.

People drop off food and cards in mourning, and the amount becomes overwhelming. Andre has been helping with funeral planning since his parents haven’t been home. The funeral is that day, and when his dad arrives, he hugs Andre, telling him how proud he is.

Andre wears one of his grandpa’s suits for the funeral. It doesn’t feel right that there are so many people absent.

On May 13, Sierra taps on Andre’s window, but he texts her and tells her that it isn’t a good time. He turns off his phone and hides under his covers. However, she knocks at the front door, and someone lets her in. She comes in and gets into bed with him. Then, she starts kissing him, and he pulls her close. However, she pulls away when she realizes that he’s crying. He retreats, and she apologizes, feeling like he can’t balance love and loss. She starts to leave when he tells her to wait. She apologizes again, saying that she wanted to take away his pain. They agree to start over and start joking.

Andre promises to get up, and Sierra leaves the room for him to shower and get dressed. When he emerges, she’s making tea for Grandma J. Marcus then arrives to check on Andre. He asks if Andre’s monitor is working, and Andre realizes that he must’ve taken the charger out of the wall by accident when he plugged his phone in. He sees that the plug is bent, and Marcus fixes it, warning him that he’d have to pay for a new one. Andre is already charged per day for the use of the monitor. It’d be $800 to fix it, and Andre says that he’ll make sure it doesn’t break. Andre also asks him for help looking into Eric’s disappearance, and Marcus agrees.

Andre goes back into the house, explaining the situation with his ankle monitor. Sierra points out that it took him all night to come by and that Andre might have more freedom after curfew than he realizes. However, he doesn’t want to risk it, and when he explains this to Sierra, she agrees. He adds that the police might be looking into the other robberies.

When Sierra leaves, Grandma J reminds him that he should’ve worn a mask with her in the house. She emphasizes that following the rules means that they’re being careful. It’s what his grandpa would’ve wanted.

It’s May 25, and Andre has carved out a routine for himself where he works through the bills at the bookshop, using his YouTube money to pay them. He doesn’t want his father to notice.

Sierra texts him to tell him that Paul is willing to meet, but it’s after Andre’s curfew. He decides to take advantage of his ankle monitor dying. They meet in Albina Park, which, when Andre was a kid, was filled mostly with other Black folks. As gentrification occurred, more white families moved in and began treating their Black neighbors as lesser. Slowly, more and more Black families were pushed out by rising prices. White people would quickly turn on Andre if they thought he didn’t fit in.

Andre spots Kate, Brian, Sierra, and Paul. They decide to play a game called “fugitive,” which involves one person being a fugitive and chasing others around. Andre says that he’s playing his “Black card” so that he won’t be the fugitive. He picks a number between one and 100 and types it in his phone. Brian is closest.

Everyone disperses, but Andre lets Paul catch him. They talk, and Paul reveals that he tried to cover for Gavin and Eric because he was interested in Sierra. Paul says that he wanted to make it seem like a one-time theft so that it didn’t get out of hand, but Andre points out that he went to juvie anyway. Paul says that he thought Andre was in on it with Eric and Gavin.

Kate finds Andre and suggests that they sneak away, flirting with him. Mentally, Andre recounts how he once kissed Kate because he was drunk and didn’t realize that she wasn’t Sierra because the room was dark. He never told Sierra. In the present, he tells Kate that it’s not okay that she went after him when she knew that Sierra was interested, and she apologizes. He runs home.