My Best Friend Is Invisible

infobox Book
name = My Best Friend Is Invisible
orig title =
translator =


image_caption =
author = R. L. Stine
cover_artist = Tim jacobus
country = United States
language = English
series = Goosebumps
genre = Horror novel, Children's novel
publisher = Scholastic
release_date = July 1997
media_type = Print (Paperback)
pages =
isbn =
preceded_by = The Curse of Camp Cold Lake
followed_by = Deep Trouble II

My Best Friend Is Invisible is the 57th novella of R. L. Stine's "Goosebumps" series.

Plot

Sammy Jacobs has a "friend" named Brent Green, who is believed to be the ghost of a dead boy named Jeffrey McCraw. However, Brent is actually a living boy who is invisible. Brent wants Sammy to be his best friend. People think Sammy is crazy when they hear about his "invisible friend". Brent is ruining Sammy's life and Sammy wants him to leave. Sammy tries to get rid of Brent by turning up the heater in his house, making it unbearably hot. Brent disappears for a short while, but returns when Sammy turns down the heat. Sammy's parents try to take Sammy to a doctor (Dr. Krandall) to help Sammy with his "problems" but Sammy runs up to his room with a machine to make Brent visible....and it also reveals Brent is a human boy and we learn that Sammy and his parents are aliens.

TV adaptation

The television version of the story follows the book version, but it ends on a more ambiguous note after Brent is revealed to be one of a few humans left behind on Earth after Sammy's species invaded. All other humans were sent to live in space colonies.

In the book, Sammy is known as Sam. Sammy and the other characters are depicted with multiple eyes, tentacles, heads, legs, and lips and varying colored skin, while in the television version they simply have an extra pair of eyes and an extra mouth in the back of their heads. It is not revealed what happens to Brent, but Sam and his parents gang up on him menacingly. Also in the book it says Sam tries to get Brent out by warming up the air in the room, but this wasn't used in the TV version. Simon and Brutus Sammy's cat are absent. Sam calls Roxanne Roxy and Rox sometimes in the TV version. And Brent is mean to Sam.

Related article

In the book it is said that Sammy and his friend Roxanne were going to see the movie "School Spirit" but in the television adaption they do not.