lizabeth knew she was losing her mind right at that moment. It had happened to her sister and mother; her mother with her eccentricity and wild girl nature and Saoirse with her drinking problems and complete detachment from life. Now it seemed it was Elizabeth's turn. For the last few days she had felt incredibly insecure, as if someone were watching her. She had locked all the doors, drawn all the curtains, set the alarm. That probably should have been enough, but now she was going to go that one step further.

She charged through the living room straight toward the fireplace, grabbed the iron poker, marched out of the living room, locked the door, and made her way upstairs. She looked at the poker lying on her bedside locker, rolled her eyes, and turned her lamp off. She was losing her mind.

Ivan emerged from behind the couch and looked around the dark living room. He had dived behind it, thinking she was charging toward him. He heard the door lock after she stormed out. He sighed loudly, feeling a disappointment he had never experienced before. She still hadn't seen him.

I'm not magic, you know. I can't cross my arms, nod my head, blink, and disappear, and reappear on the top of a bookshelf or anything. I don't live in a lamp, don't have funny little ears, big hairy feet, or wings. I don't replace lost teeth with money, leave presents under a tree, or hide chocolate eggs. I can't fly, climb up the walls of buildings, or run faster than the speed of lightning.

And I can't open doors.

That has to be done for me. The grown-ups find that part the funniest, but also the most embarrassing, when their children do it in public. So I can touch a door, but I can't open it? There's no explanation for it, it's just the way it is. It's like asking why people can't fly, yet they can jump and allow two feet to leave the earth.

So Elizabeth needn't have locked the living room door when she went to bed that night because I couldn't turn the handle anyway. Like I said, I'm not a superhero; I can't see through walls or blow out forest fires with one breath. My special power is friendship. I listen to people and I hear what they say. I hear their tones, the words they use to express themselves, and most importantly, I hear what they don't say. Sighs and silences and avoided conversations are just as important as the things you do talk about.

So all I could do that night was think about my new friend Luke. I need to do that occasionally. I make notes in my head so that I can file a report for admin. They like to keep it all on record for training purposes. We've new people joining up all the time and in fact, when I'm between friends, I lecture.

I needed to think about why I was here. What made Luke want to see me? How could he benefit from my friendship? The business is run extremely professionally and we must always provide the company with a brief history of our friends and then list our aims and objectives. Naturally, I was very good at identifying the problem straightaway, but this scenario was slightly baffling. You see, I'd never been friends with an adult before and I'm not jumping the gun here, but whenever anyone can sense me in any way it means that they need me and that we're supposed to be friends. It's my whole meaning for existence, trust me, I know. Anyone who has ever met an adult would understand why I've never been friends with one. There's no sense of fun with them, they stick rigidly to schedules and times, they focus on the most unimportant things imaginable, like mortgages and bank statements, when everyone knows that the majority of the time it's the people around them that put the smiles on their faces. It's all work and no play and I work hard, I really do, but playing is by far my favorite.

Take, for example, Elizabeth; she lies in bed worrying about car tax and phone bills, babysitters and paint colors. If you can't put magnolia on a wall then there are always a million other colors you can use, if you can't pay your phone bill then just write letters telling them. I'm not playing down the importance of these things, yes you need money for food, yes you need food to survive, but you also need sleep to have energy, to smile to be happy, and to be happy so you can laugh, just so you don't keel over with a heart attack. People forget they have options. And they forget that those things really don't matter. They should concentrate on what they have and not what they don't have. And by the way, wishing and dreaming doesn't mean concentrating on what you don't have, it's positive thinking that encourages hoping and believing, not whinging and moaning. But I'm veering away from the story again.

I worried about my job a little the night I was locked in the living room. It's the first time that ever happened. I worried because I couldn't figure out why I was there. Luke had a difficult family scenario, but that was normal and I could tell he felt loved. He was happy and loved playing, he slept well at night, ate all his food, had a nice friend called Sam, and when he spoke I listened and listened and tried to hear the words he wasn't saying but there was nothing. He liked living with his aunt, was scared of his mom, and liked talking about vegetables with his granddad. But Luke seeing me every day and wanting to play with me every day meant that I definitely needed to be here for him.

On the other hand, his aunt never slept, ate very little, was constantly surrounded by silence so loud that it was deafening, she had nobody close to her to talk to, that I had seen yet anyway, and she didn't say far more than she actually did say. She had heard me say thank you once, felt my breath a few times, and heard me squeak on the leather couch. Yet she couldn't see me, nor could she stand the thought of me being in her house.

Elizabeth did not want to play.

Plus, she was a grown-up, she gave me butterflies, and wouldn't know fun if it hit her in the face, and believe me, I'd tried to throw it at her plenty of times over the weekend. So you'd think I couldn't possibly be the one to help her.

People refer to me as an invisible or an imaginary friend. Like there's some big mystery surrounding me. I've read the books that grown-ups have written asking why kids see me, why they believe in me so much for so long and then suddenly stop and go back to being the way they were before. I've seen the television shows that try to debate why it is that children invent people like me.

So just for the record for all you people, I'm not invisible or imaginary. I'm always here walking around just like you all are. And people like Luke don't choose to see me, they just see me. It's people like you and Elizabeth that choose not to.