This is the story of a girl named Valerie Nemo.

Kyle and his small group of friends were isolated at the beginning of the story because everyone knew them as the nerd group. It was, in a way, isolation through notoriety. They had a reputation they hadn't been able to shake. Valerie had spent her entire life isolated because nobody noticed her at all.

She was naturally quiet, and her natural coloration was muted. She didn't like to wear loud colors. And she was the kind of person happy to sit for hours reading, happier doing that than sitting at a table chatting with a bunch of people. So she'd sat, and read, and after a while she'd just...faded away. Present, but completely unremarked.

It hadn't been terrible, exactly, but somewhere along the line it occurred to her she might have missed something. She started wanting friends. Unfortunately, she had no idea how to get them. And when she decided to try and get noticed, the first person to notice her was Danny O'Brien. Not the greatest introduction to socializing.

But then the second person to notice her had cared enough to throw an apple, and draw Danny's attention. You know, all the way back at the beginning of chapter one.

After that, Valerie was impressed and a little starstruck. She'd started paying attention to Kyle Anderman. And what she saw, from her perspective, looked like a superhero. She was aware she had a crush on him, and also aware he had a girlfriend. That was okay, she wasn't lost in romantic fantasies. She just wanted someone to talk to. And she had the perfect in. All she had to do was thank him! A built in conversation starter!

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But she couldn't find a time that felt good to actually do it. Until one night she was staying late at school to work on a project for class, and found out he was staying late too to work on a chemistry project. Perfect opportunity right? But by the time he'd gone to meet him, something outside had exploded, and he was running down the hall. No one noticed her running behind them, and when she saw the freaky monster she actually hit.

The backlash from Kyle's blast against the efreet had knocked her unconscious, where she had stayed until the following morning. She stumbled home, deciding to take a day off from school to process things. She was surprised her mother didn't say anything about it, but it wasn't until dinner that night, when she couldn't get anyone to look at her, that she realized something was very, very wrong.

Like the others present, Kyle's uncontrolled magical explosion had opened up her dormant nodes. Her one titanic node. But in her case, she had inadvertently spent a lifetime honing her aura to one purpose, one result. She had been training herself to have one power all her life. It was in many ways the central fact about her.

Nobody noticed Valerie Nemo.

And so, quietly, she'd vanished from the world. Not completely. Her papers and tests were graded, though professors couldn't ever remember seeing her in class. They didn't think much of it, she'd been a vague blur in their consciousness from the beginning. And every once in a while the spell would break for her parents, when they began to worry about where she was, but only for the few moments it took them to realize their daughter was alive, and then she would fade from their consciousness again.

For a lot of people it would have been hell...but Valerie had been living pretty much like this already. So she adapted. Use self checkout, the cashiers couldn't perceive her. Do her own laundry. Habit made her parents buy and cook enough food, so she wasn't going hungry.

And when she had the time, she followed Kyle Anderman, and learned all kinds of amazing things. Not completely. In bits and pieces, scraps of information. About a secret world of magic, and genies, and some kind of government conspiracy. It was all very fascinating...but she couldn't get any details, because she couldn't talk to anyone.

And then she had overhead two people talking about killing Kyle Anderman. The person she thought of as her one link to the world. She couldn't let that happen. So she'd found him, and tried to talk to him again. For over an hour she screamed in his face and tugged at his clothes.

Until finally, she broke through.