How to Disappear (7 page)

“If you’re that sorry, maybe you should have found some words.”

She sits down on the couch as if I’d pushed her. “Don’t try to get back at me by demolishing your own life, all right? I understand you’re furious. I understand why. But I’m not about to roll over and say this is all right. This isn’t just monumentally stupid—what about memories you’ll want later? Grad night, marching with your class at graduation—”

“I want the memory of seeing Las Vegas in the rearview—tonight.” I say this with so much conviction, I almost believe it. “I’ll use Manx money if I have to.”

This would be the money my father left. My mother thinks of it as tainted. I see it as restitution. Before I turned eighteen, it was her choice. Now it’s mine.

“Jack, no!”

There, I’ve brought my mother to the verge of tears. I feel like warmed-over crap. “It’s mine, and he owes me.”

I’ve never said things this harsh or true to her before.

She hugs me, but she’s shaking. (Even in the dream, I feel her shake.)

• • •

I’m not getting back at her, I’m saving her.

• • •

She steps away, and her hands find their way to her hips as if she’s about to let me have it. “I’ll spring for the tent and all the gear. You don’t need
his
money. But I want your itinerary, and I want you to answer your phone. Do you hear me?”

I feel nothing but relief with her back in the mom groove and me in the kid groove—but for now, it’s all a lie. “Loud and clear. Thanks for the tent.” As for the gear, there’s no way she’s going to know about the gear I’ll need for this trip.

She half whispers, “These are the words. I didn’t see what I didn’t want to see. I was a terrible mother. I’m trying to make up for it.”

I’m not a guy who cries. I start to apologize, but she interrupts me. You would think that asleep in Kansas, in the realm of wish-fulfillment, I’d get to finish apologizing and feel like a stand-up son, but I don’t.

She says, “I think you wanted to tell me how angry you are.”

“I’m not an angry guy!”

She touches the side of my head. “I hope being in nature feeds your soul, Jack. Tell me what you need, and I’ll take care of it. Within reason.”

Screw my soul, no one is going to touch her. No one is going to get so close, they can switch off the security and take her down in her own laundry room. I won’t let it happen.

I’m going to take a road trip and track down this killer bitch Nicolette and, one way or another, I’m going to solve the fucking problem. I don’t care if it takes my mother’s money and the Manx money—each dollar of which might as well represent a bullet through somebody’s head—and every penny I earned, and was forced to save, from three summers of lifeguarding.

I’m going to do this.

I wake up at dawn, hunched over the steering wheel, back aching, filled with nausea and resolve. A couple of goony little kids pound on my window. My first impulse is to slam the car door into them. Instead, I wave and make a funny face.

Between being awakened and yawning, I’ve imagined knocking little children over with a metal door.

I’m not that guy.

Nevertheless, my mind turns to destruction. Those are my thoughts.

A thousand miles from Nevada, and the beast is off leash.

Frat row at South Texas Tech, Galkey, is two blocks long but intense. Big wooden houses with torn-up lawns in front. Every one of them having a party.

People cutting across the front lawns, hanging off the porches.

I stash the bike and the zombie-apocalypse preparedness kit between a Dumpster and a broken bookshelf the frat boys are throwing out instead of fixing.

Back home, we fix things. Me, Olivia, and Jody, nine years old, in my room in pajamas after we collapsed my bed by jumping on it. Steve trying to figure out how to put it back together. Us telling him how sorry we are. Him telling us if this is the worst thing we ever do, there’s nothing to worry about. Only don’t do it again.

Must. Stop. Thinking. About. Home.

It’s been so much worse since I called up Olivia. I thought it would make it better, but it didn’t.

Must. Get. Head. In. Game.

Now.

All right, I’m in love with this Goodwill halter dress. It’s the exact kind I like. And these cute fake-leather heels. The whole outfit looks better than it was supposed to, but what was I going to do? Show up in grungy sweats and ask a guy to do me favors? Good luck, Bean.

Everyone looks so far gone, I figure they’ll all be blacked out by two a.m. I won’t even be a dim memory.

That’s what I tell myself to quell the fear.

That I look like the Little Mermaid with this mass of red hair.

That I’m unrecognizable, only as cute as I have to be to get a couple of drunk frat guys to point me to someone who can scare up some nice-looking fake ID.

I pick Theta Chi. They’re the loudest. Lots of girls moving to the music inside, so you figure this is the cool party.

What they say about Texas girls with big hair? True. Only these girls look good. They look top-of-wedding-cake good, if brides danced down the aisle dressed in Forever 21.

The first guy to hit on me is dark and cute in an ROTC kind of way. He asks me if I need a beer (or some sentence with
beer
at the end; it’s noisy in here). I need to avoid beer, but I say yes just so I’ll get to follow him outside to the keg.

I’m not what you could call a party novice.

I take the red cup. “I wish I could get some Jose Cuervo, but I don’t have ID.”

“You want tequila? Come with me. I’ll grant your every wish. And we’ve got limes.”

I need to avoid tequila even more than I need to avoid beer.

He puts his hand on my waist and starts to kind of dance with me. People are making out all over the yard. I press my face against the guy’s neck so I seem friendly but with an unavailable mouth.

He says, “You’re so pretty.”

“You aren’t bad, either.” This makes him pull me closer, breasts smashed against his chest. Not a romantic feeling if you like to breathe. “What’s your name?”

“Clark.”

I don’t want to lose him, so I take his hand. I pull him toward the back porch, which opens to a room with guys playing pool. It’s a hundred degrees and smelly in there, like boy armpits and moldy Doritos.

“You play?”

“Prepare to be impressed.” He pushes up his sleeves and goes to work. Every time he drops a ball into a pocket, I act enthusiastic.

When he goes out to get more beer, I trot along next to him. It’s quieter in the backyard now. I say, “Hey, Clark, do you know where a person could get an ID?”

“From your big sister?” He’s perplexed and completely unhelpful.

“I need one with my name on it. Don’t even ask. I was an idiot.”

He shakes his head and takes another drink. Looks more perplexed. “I know someone at UT who
might
.”

He smiles at me, white teeth, green eyes. And it’s not like I’m waiting for a knight with a pool cue to rescue me, because I’m not. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel something. Like the tiny filaments of hair on my arms rising in unison. Like I should have
DON’T
shellacked on my fingernails.

He hands me his cell phone. “Give me your number and maybe he’ll call you.” Leaning in. “Maybe
I’ll
call you.”

This is when it wallops me: I have to stop acting like this is a
party
party. If I don’t start acting like this is my opportunity to get what I need, I’m dead. Not the wink-giggle-my-daddy-will-kill-me-if-I-climb-into-your-backseat metaphorical kind of dead. The literal kind.

I’m walloped like, Clark can’t help you, and it’s disappointing, and it feels like there’s a boulder on your chest when you think about how doomed you are.

Do
something, because nobody is coming to the rescue. Stop flirting and
go
!

Get in.

Get what you need.

Get out.

Xena, Warrior Princess would.

It’s after midnight: Any minute it will be too late. The whole night’s risk will be a waste.

I ditch Clark. He’s gazing at a knot of college girls (so hot they make me look like a redheaded panda bear) and doesn’t notice when the Little Mermaid swims off. Upstairs, doors are open, people hanging out smoking (not cigarettes). People are on the beds and slumped on the floor. Girls too out of it to notice where their bags are.

Girls too out of it to notice where their bags are.

Bags with drivers’ licenses in them.

All along the dark, smoky corridor, I search for short white girls with brown eyes. (Good luck determining the eye color of passed-out girls.) I have to find a girl who looks enough like me so the photo on the license I slide out of her wallet could
be
me. Then I have to find her bag and snatch it.

I mumble, almost to myself, “Where’s my bag?” Then I scoop a tiny rectangular clutch off the floor and take it into the bathroom. It smells like fresh barf in there. It’s no wonder there’s no line.

The bag belongs to a 5'10'' girl named Zoe. I’m too short to pass as her.

By the time I come up with a girl who looks right—lying on her back across a bed more out of it than sleeping—I have to wait while her friend tries to get her up and staggers off in search of a third girl to drag her out of there.

All I can do is pray that when I pry open her eyes, they aren’t blue.

Brown! According to the license in the Prada wallet in the Kate Spade bag. And she’s 5'4'', close enough.

Also, she just went to the ATM.

The first bang on the bathroom door stops my heart. I yell, “Wait up!”

Because talking yourself into something this bad takes a little time.

I tell myself she’s rich. There are Mercedes keys in there. There’s a Platinum American Express card like Steve has.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter how rich she is, I’m going to be punished for this. That God is watching and bookmarking all this for divine reprisal. Then I try to talk myself into the idea that I was sent to this party by the universe to punish
her
, to teach her a lesson about getting passed-out drunk.

Sure I was.

I vow, if I make it out of this alive, I’ll track her down and pay her back. How many girls named Catherine Grace Davis from Tulsa, Oklahoma, can there be?

Then I open the door, and it turns out I was right about who’s getting punished the first time.

Standing on the other side of the door is Piper Carmichael, Summer Carmichael’s older sister that I’ve known since I was ten years old, no doubt sent by an avenging God to out me.

“
Nicolette?
What are you doing here?”

I have the little Kate Spade bag under the halter of the backless dress, which is, duh, my signature party attire. Oh God, oh God, oh God, what was I thinking? Idiot.

I try to look confused, as opposed to shocked and white and shivering.

I say, all Texas drawly, my insides turning to ice, “I have that kind of face. Everyone thinks I’m someone else. I’m Kelly Hill.” I slur the words as best I can. I might have said Callie Hale or Kaylie Hull or anything but the name Piper Carmichael has called me since I was in fourth grade with Summer. When she showed us how to put on lip gloss but made us give back her mascara.

Piper’s hands fly to her lips, ten flashes of the bloodred nail polish she favors.

“You’re
who
?”

She knows who I am.

I run.

Cotter’s Mill, Ohio, has a main street with a couple of sad-looking mom-and-pop stores intersecting a side street with a strip mall and Cotter’s Mill Unified High, where Nicolette attended before she started practicing her knife skills on people.

I cruise past the hamburger joint where Olivia works weekends. I might come off as a stupid prep tourist, but at least I have the sense not to lead my life online. Olivia, on the other hand, records each minute of every day for the general public. I know when she’s on early shift and when her boss, Maxine, reschedules her last-minute. More to the point, I know when the chef leaves, the place is deserted, and she’s behind the counter reading a library book: now.

Olivia is even better in person—brown-haired, brown-eyed,
perfect skin, and built. I try to lock in to her eyes to avoid distraction. I order a burger, rare, and a Coke for an excuse to be there.

“The cook leaves at two. Sorry. Just ice cream and pie.”

“Olivia?” I pretend to look at her name tag for the first time. “You’re not Nick Holland’s friend Liv are you?”

Nick, that seems like a nice touch.

There’s a quick intake of breath before she starts smoothing nonexistent wrinkles out of her white waitress apron. Maybe I didn’t play this right.

“Wow,” she says. “How do you know
Nick
?”

No question, I didn’t play this right. “Yeah,” I say, hoping I’m guessing well. “She wasn’t too happy when I called her that, either.”

This gets the beginning of a cautious smile. “I’m pretty much the only one who gets to call her that.”

“Sorry.”

“And we don’t have Coke. Just Pepsi.”

“I’ll have root beer.”

“I
know
,” she says. “No Coke. So moronic.”

“Who drinks Pepsi?” I say. “Listen, is Nicolette around? We were in touch for a while, and then she just . . . stopped. But as long as I’m here . . .”

Olivia is making a big show of wiping off the counter. It’s already spotless.

“Come on. I’m trapped at my uncle’s for the weekend. On the lake.”

“Your uncle has a place on the lake?” she says. “Who is he?”

The smallness of this town is evident. I don’t have this down. “Frank Burris,” I say, pulling a name out of my butt. “He’s renting.”

“He’s renting a summer place in Cotter’s Mill?”

“It’s closer to Kerwin.” This is two towns over, but she probably knows everyone there, too.

“I’ll
bet
it is,” she says. This girl can make anything sound questionable.

“Is there something you know that I don’t know?”
Such as where Nicolette is? Just tell me, and I’ll get out of your hair.
“Is Nick pissed off at me?”