Don't Try to Find Me: A Novel (6 page)

THERE’S A TV THAT
gets thirty channels, tops. And no computer, since B. takes his laptop to school with him. And no phone. Not that I have anyone to call besides B. Sasha’s okay, I don’t really have a problem with her, but she is still Trish’s sidekick. I pretty much hate Trish. The way she made such a big deal about my being drunk after I’ve seen her go home drunk a bunch of times—she is such a hypocrite! It made me think she’d been looking for a reason to get rid of me. I’d become geographically inconvenient. She likes to be worshipped up close.

Not that I ever really worshipped her. That was Sasha’s job. I think it’s why even when we were supposedly all three best friends, they were the true best friends. If Trish had been the one to move, Sasha would have been devastated. With me, she was sad for a while, but she wasn’t in mourning.

The irony is, Trish has made a lot of this possible, without knowing it. Without knowing anything about B. Well, that’s not exactly true. I said something about him a long time ago, but I didn’t even use his name. It was when he first wrote me through Facebook, and I told her about him offhand, not like he was important, because he wasn’t, then. There’s no way she’ll remember any of that, self-absorbed as she is. That’s finally come in handy.

Handier still is her old cell phone. It was B.’s idea for me to swipe
it and mail it to him. After Trish got her smartphone with a new number, she kept the old phone as a backup. I knew exactly which drawer it was in, and that was a big part of why I slept over her house that last time. I figured that by the time she noticed it was gone, she’d think she was the one who’d lost it. She wouldn’t connect it to my visit, and she wouldn’t say anything to her parents because she always likes them to think she’s perfect.

I don’t try to look perfect for my parents. It would be too much work. I’d have to get A’s in my math class, for one thing, and that would make my dad so happy I couldn’t stand it. He gets his way all the time with my mom; I feel like it’s good for him to lose sometimes. So I’m his loser.

When I have thoughts like that, I like to text B. But I can’t, because he took Trish’s cell phone with him. What does he need it for now? He has his real cell phone, the one he couldn’t use with me because I didn’t want his number showing up on the phone bills. If he had left Trish’s phone, I could be texting him right now. But he probably just forgot he had it on him. Still, it’s crazy to think that I have less access to him now than I did when we were thousands of miles apart.

In my planning stage, I found out that there’s no GPS tracking on that model of phone, and I made sure that her parents hadn’t put a chip in. The Internet’s incredible. It makes it so much easier to disappear.

My parents must be losing their shit right about now. Well, my mom definitely is. It’s not that my dad wouldn’t care; it’s that I can’t picture him ever freaking out or breaking down or doing anything but EXCELLING at emotional control. That’s his word, “excelling.”

I’m not the excelling type. They tried to enroll me in every sport, handed me every musical instrument, gave me every advantage academically, and nothing’s really stuck. I can write, but not in a very linear fashion, and I haven’t even been doing much of that except to B. I’m this basically average, somewhat overweight person. Even
being a little bit overweight is average. Much of the country is, supposedly. We’re a Fritos nation, haven’t you heard?

That’s not really true of where I grew up. Everyone’s so fit, it can make you want to throw up. I don’t mean that in the eating-disorder way, just in the sense of its being revolting. Even the moms are all fit and MILF-like. I’m kind of hoping that the people in Durham will be more average.

I’m pretty sure that my dad’s moving us to the farm was a sign he’d given up on my ever being exceptional. Oh, he can’t make it too obvious. He has to keep asking about my math tests. But I went from a top school system to an average one, which means he’s finally admitted the truth to himself about who I am and where I belong. Plus, Mom and Dad used to encourage me to try every extracurricular activity, but this year, all they’ve said is that maybe I should join the school newspaper. They’ve been content to let me do nothing, and if that’s not giving up, I don’t know what is.

“It should be easier for you to shine here,” Dad said after the move. As in: Everyone’s more mediocre, so here’s your chance!

But he’s pretty much my father in name only, as far as I’m concerned, so who cares what he thinks?

I probably was more comfortable in that high school than I would have been if I’d gone with Trish and Sasha. It’s okay to be mediocre when you’re anonymous; not so much when you’re best friends with the Queen Bee. If we hadn’t moved, I would have felt college pressure from the first day of ninth grade, that place is so achievement-oriented. Every year, their valedictorian gets a full ride to Stanford.

It’s not like I was actually happy in the land of meager expectations. How could I be happy anywhere but with B.?

I just need something to do, that’s all. I feel antsy, being so unplugged from everything and everyone. Dr. Michael used to say too much idle time is bad for me, but he doesn’t really know me anymore.

I’m trying not to think about the bus ride, but it keeps bub
bling up. I mean, how did Hellma become Hellma? How does that happen to a person? Someone probably loved her once, and now she’s shooting up between her toes on a bus, calling her daughter’s name. I wonder where they are now, all the other passengers. That couple is probably in some cheap motel, beating the shit out of each other. That military guy, he had so much anger inside him—where will it go? So much desperation and hate, it’s just out there. Or is it inside all of us? Is it in me and I just don’t know it yet?

See, this is why I’m not supposed to have so much free time.

It’s a fight not to go through B.’s stuff. He’s seemed more removed than I expected. And less goofy. He doesn’t seem like the guy who tweeted all that silly poetry for me (“You’re the one I’m forever picking / I love you more than fried chicken”) or the one who was so open about his past, who told me all about his parents abusing him and the girls who screwed him over. “I need you, Mar,” he used to say. One night, he texted it to me ten times right before bed and called it a lullaby.

Since I got here, he hasn’t once told me he needs me.

I’m tempted to dig around and see if I can recognize him in his possessions. But he trusts me. I don’t want to see him later and know that I violated that. Also, he might be able to smell it on me. He’s really alert for betrayal. I’m sure I’d be like that, too, if I had a dad like his and ex-girlfriends like Staph.

I can look at his bookshelves. They’re right out in the open. He has a ton of books, which is one of the things that attracted me to him. I like that he’s a reader and a thinker. He runs deep. People my age are way too shallow. They’re like wading pools, and he’s the whole ocean.

Would Ms. Finelli like that analogy? Or is it a metaphor? I get those mixed up.

She always said the way to become a better writer is to read more. So I select one of B.’s favorite books:
Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison. He read it last semester and raved about it.

Maybe he’s too smart for me. That could be one of the things he’s realized now that I’m here. That I’m fat and I’m not that smart or interesting.

I better start reading. Dr. Michael’s right. I need to keep my mind occupied.

OUR HOUSE HAS BECOME
a command center. It’s a hive with the buzz of volunteers donating their time to find a girl who might not want to be found. Might not? Try definitely not. She led with that in her note:
Don’t try to find me.

Unless that was opposite-speak, a possibility that became much less appealing once I translated that final line. I don’t think it’s wrong to want to believe that she loves me rather than hates me. But I wouldn’t want to place a bet on it. It seems pretty hateful to take off and go six days with no communication.

She has to know it’s killing me. Her father can depersonalize and go into work mode. His new job is finding Marley, and unlike the police, his resources seem infinite. That’s not true of me.

I can’t believe how quickly Paul has gotten FindMarley.com up and how professional it looks. One of the web designers from his tech company put it together. So now Marley’s eighth-grade graduation photo is center stage, her smiling face encircled by specs about her disappearance: when she was last seen, what she was wearing, which police department is investigating. It’s a Wanted poster, really, but with lots of digital embellishments and links. People can download the flyer, print it out, and put it on lampposts and bulletin boards wherever they are. Paul’s put his cell phone number out there for all the world’s quacks to find.

He wrote a little essay (credited to both of us) that talks about what a sweet girl Marley is, that she’s smart and funny and well-read and well loved. He said it’s there to “humanize” her. Who thought she wasn’t human, just because she’s missing?

Paul’s in his element, running the show. He used LinkedIn to connect with a private investigator as well as a PR specialist, a comely twentysomething named Candace whose auburn hair seems perpetually backlit like all the world’s a shampoo commercial. She strides around, high-heeled boots clacking, as she pitches us to San Francisco media. There are three people—strangers, volunteers—gathered around our dining room table, all talking on their cell phones. It’s like Marley disappeared and the volunteers materialized in her place.

I keep revisiting the last morning I saw her. Her backpack was bulging as she followed me to the car, but I was too stupid to notice.

No, it wasn’t only stupidity. I was preoccupied. I’d gotten that text, and my mind was elsewhere. I spent so much of this last year elsewhere. I took her for granted, assumed she’d be here with us until the day we drove her to her college dorm.

She seemed a little edgy. I can recognize that now and understand why. She didn’t want me to go back into the house—more specifically, into the kitchen—and see her phone and her note. She didn’t want me stopping her. “Can we go, please?” she said. “I can’t be late.”

We’re often late. It’s not always me and not always her, but it’s always someone. We both got the late gene, as we call it. It didn’t skip a generation.

I knew I was going to be late anyway. The text superseded work.

I should have asked: Why can’t you be late? What’s going on? It would have shown interest in her life. If she heard something in my voice, that might have made the difference.

I put the car in reverse. She was sitting with her head low, her hair hanging down and blocking her face. She didn’t want to be seen, I suppose. Didn’t want her expression to give anything away. But she sat like that a lot.

I was frazzled, thinking of that text and planning my next move. Meanwhile, ironically, my little girl was planning her next move, too.

Why didn’t she talk to me? I’m approachable, I think. If she’d said she was unhappy, I would have gotten her help. If she needed me to be different, I would have tried.

Paul and I have done our best to maintain a united front when it comes to Marley, and we’ve always been cordial to each other. But Marley told me, months ago, apropos of nothing, “I wish Dad would get angry already.” It stood out, that “already,” as if she thought he’d been waiting his whole life to explode. I know she thought he was disappointed in her. She wasn’t “excelling” in school. Maybe I should have gone ahead and undercut him in front of Marley, let her know that I disagreed with him. I thought she was already excellent.

I wish I’d come up with something better that last morning than “When’s your next math test?”

But it’s not like she was under tremendous pressure either. Paul didn’t make an issue of every bad grade. He talked to her about how he could “incentivize” her school performance. She could have earned anything. She just had to name her price. That’s what she ran away from?

I think back over the years, and I know Paul and I made mistakes, but Marley didn’t want for love or attention. I read her
Green Eggs and Ham
six hundred times, experimenting with my silly voices until I found the ones she liked best, and when she said, “Again,” even if I’d gone hoarse, I complied. We took her on a tour of amusement parks in five states because she loved roller coasters (even though Paul and I hated them and waited for her on benches). Paul showed the patience of a yogi while teaching her to ride a bike—it took practically an entire summer. But when she finally got it, after she pulled up in front of the house, he lifted her high in the air, and her laughter was infectious. We were all cracking up, the three of us, like we’d done something great, together. I have the pictures. All that was real; it should count for something. Shouldn’t it?

“I don’t know,” she told me that last morning. “Mrs. Dickens hasn’t announced the next test yet.”

“We could get you a tutor,” I said, offering yet again.

“I won’t need one.”

I’m pretty sure that’s how she said it, that definitively. Not “I don’t need one” but “I won’t need one.” She wouldn’t need one because she wouldn’t be around.

We pulled up in front of the school. She got out of the car and hoisted her backpack onto her shoulder. Her hair was caught underneath one of the straps. She leaned back in the car and met my eyes and said, “Bye.”

I’ve held that “bye” up to the light and turned it around, like a prism. But I don’t know anymore if I’m hearing what I want or what was actually there. It could be an auditory hallucination by this point. I think she said it like she loved (loves) me, like she was sorry.

Her note didn’t say sorry.

I’m fairly positive I told her I love her and to have a good day. Standard-issue mom fare, but still.

I meant it.

OKAY, SO B. IS
asleep, and I can record everything. He doesn’t know I’m keeping this journal. He probably wouldn’t like it. If we got found out, it could be evidence against him. The idea that he’s taking that risk for me—sometimes it blows me away.

B. treats college like a job: He leaves before nine and comes home after five. I asked him about his schedule, if there are breaks between classes when we can hang out, and he said that he does all his studying and writes papers in between. That way, he said, when he’s with me, he can be 100 percent with me.

Makes sense, but he came home in a shitty mood, which was disappointing since I’d been looking forward to seeing him all day. I set my feelings aside because sometimes you have to take care of other people. You have to help them through their bad moods. It’s not all about me now. I have someone to love.

“I brought you fried chicken,” he said.

“Really? Thanks.” I wished he’d asked first, but then I remembered he didn’t have any way to call me, since he took Trish’s phone. Again.

I like fried chicken, who doesn’t (well, maybe vegetarians), but I’m trying to avoid fried foods. He might be more into me if I were thinner. I know I would be.

“It’s the best fried chicken in town.” He wasn’t smiling when he
said it. Normally, when someone says they brought you something, they look happier. They look more invested in your happiness. I hoped he’d quote his poem but he didn’t.

He was in the kitchen, which is pretty small. It has no table, and all the counters and appliances and everything are made out of what looks like cheap aluminum. The bathroom’s no better. It has a lot of rust-colored stains on the floor and the tub is practically gray. The mirror is cracked.

Anyway, B. got us some plates and loaded them both up. Biscuits and gravy and mashed potatoes and fried chicken and more gravy . . . My plate must have carried three days’ worth of fat.

But I wasn’t going to complain, not when B. was looking like a thundercloud. We sat down at the dining room table (this cool chrome, edged with red, like in an old diner) and started eating. In silence.

“It’s good,” I finally said when I couldn’t take it anymore. “I’ve never had real Southern fried chicken before.”

“You can’t find it in California.” His eyes were on his food.

Why wasn’t he looking at me? I put on makeup and did my hair. I looked way prettier than when he said I looked pretty, and he’s not even paying any friggin’ attention. Am I invisible, even to B.?

That’s like the worst thought ever.

“Did you have a bad day?” I asked. Please, let it be that. Don’t let him regret me.

He nodded, his eyebrows knitting together. Then, after a minute, they drew apart. It was like he realized what a jerk he was being, and it required manual effort to pull himself out. “My dad called.”

“Yeah?” I said, filled with relief. So it wasn’t me.

“You know how he can’t do a lot of stuff around the house because of his emphysema?”

The emphysema he brought on himself by smoking two packs of cigarettes a day—in front of B.—that emphysema? Like he’d never heard of secondhand smoke? I bet B.’s dad would have been one of
the trolls in the back of the bus, sucking on cigarettes like they’re crack pipes. “Yeah, I know about the emphysema.”

“Part of his fence had rotted away and he wanted me to come fix it. I skipped class and went over there.”

He’d skip class to fix his dad’s fence but not to be with me?

But I could see how much it had hurt him, how much his dad kept on hurting him. It was like B. couldn’t help himself. I remember Dr. Michael saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This was B.’s form of insanity. We probably all have one.

“And while you worked, your dad stood over you, criticizing?” I said. It was easy enough to guess. The stories always ended the same way.

B. nodded, staring at his plate like he didn’t even recognize what was on it. He was in pain, and I was going to heal him. I reached out and touched the back of his hand, really lightly, and he jumped. The fork went clattering. “Shit!” he shouted. Yelped it, actually, kind of like a wounded animal. I need to heal him.

“It’s okay,” I murmured, and it was like I could see him settling down again, back into his chair, into his skin. “I’m right here.”

I think there might have been tears in his eyes. I’m not sure, because he still didn’t want to look at me. B.’s ashamed of his family and of their power to hurt him. To control him, that’s what he calls it, and then he goes back for more, always hoping for a different result.

“You’re so lucky that you got to leave your parents behind,” he said. “Just cut the ties and move on. It’s the best way.”

I wanted to say my parents aren’t like his, but it’s not that simple, really.

“Did you like the chicken?” he asked, hopeful, like a little boy.

I was touched that he seemed to care so much. Yeah, he’d started out in a bad mood, but he stopped himself, and he told me why, and even after that run-in with his dad, he’d wanted to do something nice, something welcoming, and he picked up a special dinner on the way home just for me.

“It was the best chicken I ever had,” I told him. So what about the fat. He loves me the way I am. He loved me before he even met me.

Which could mean there’s nowhere to go but down.

No, it’s not going to turn out like that. Not with the way we’re smiling at each other.

“So,” he asked, “what did you do today?”

“I’m reading
Invisible Man
.”

He grinned. “What did you think?”

I couldn’t tell him what I really thought, which was: Sure, the writing’s good and all, but what does it have to do with me? It wasn’t about being my kind of invisible, it was about being disempowered in a racist society. I don’t know anything about that. I wouldn’t think B. would either, being a white male.

So I talked about the things I would have written in an English paper. About the themes, and character development, and the question of what’s real. He nodded approvingly, like he thought I was smart, which was what I was going for.

“I would love to be the writer that Ellison is,” he said. “Able to say all these weighty, important things in such simple language. Able to make a particular experience universal, you know?”

I almost told him about my journal, how good it feels to be writing—not because my parents are encouraging it but because I want to. Something stopped me, though. What if he told me it’s too dangerous for me to do that, in case we ever got caught? Or what if he asked to read it and thought I suck?

“You managed to read a lot today,” B. said.

“I didn’t have much else to do.”

“There’s a TV.”

I almost said, “With basic cable,” but I didn’t want to sound like a spoiled rich kid, the ones he complains about. “I wasn’t in a TV mood. Do you think you could leave Trish’s phone tomorrow?”

By his reaction, I saw that it wasn’t an accident, his taking the phone with him. “Who did you want to call?”

“I wanted to text you, like we always do. It feels lonely, not being
able to reach you.” It was like I was trying to sell him on the idea. But I shouldn’t have to. I’m a runaway, not a hostage.

He’s probably just scared. I made my voice so soft it was like purring. “I’m not going to do anything stupid and give them any way to trace us. I want to be here.” And if I stopped wanting to be here, I would go back and never let anyone know who I’d been with. I’d never get him in trouble.

But it’s true: I did want to be here. I do. I just want him to start touching me already, before I go crazy with horniness. I didn’t even know girls could get this horny; I thought it was a guy thing. What’s the female equivalent of blue balls? I tried masturbating today, but I couldn’t pull it off. I couldn’t forget it was my own hand.

“Maybe I can leave the phone tomorrow,” he said.

I didn’t like the “maybe” all that much, but I didn’t force the issue. It would make B. more suspicious, like, Why does she need the phone so badly? I need to go slow with him, like he’s going with me. It makes me a little sad, though. We’re supposed to trust each other completely.

We hung out on the couch after dinner, and he said he had this “thing he wanted to try.” I got a little nervous and excited. I’d be up for anything, really, since it’s B. Then he said he’d always wanted to read out loud to somebody, and have somebody read out loud to him. He had this book picked out and he wanted us to trade chapters. It was kind of nice, soothing but also geriatric. We were on opposite sides of the couch but the sides of our legs were touching, so that’s a step in the right direction.

After we got in bed and he curled away from me, like always, he heard me sniffling a little. “Are you crying?” he asked, rolling over.

“I guess so.”

“Is it about your parents?” I didn’t say anything. “You have to remember what you told me. Even Dr. Michael thought your dad was an asshole, and your mom’s a phony who—well, you know what she did. It’s not like I need to say it.”

“I know what she did,” I said quietly.

“You don’t need to miss them.”

They’re my parents. I’ll miss them if I want to. Not that I do.

He moved toward me a little, his eyes steady on my face. “This is all that matters. Here. Us. The people you choose, not the people you get stuck with.”

“Why haven’t you touched me yet?” I said, barely above a whisper.

“I haven’t?”

“No, you haven’t.”

He fell silent. I wished I knew what he was thinking. All our talking this past year, and I had no idea. I guess words really are meaningless. But I don’t mean our words—B.’s and mine. We’re supposed to be the exception.

He reached out and traced my cheekbone. I closed my eyes. It felt crazy good, that one simple motion. I can’t even imagine what the rest of it will be like, if we ever get there.

“Please, Marley, don’t cry.”

My eyes snapped open. “But don’t you—” I stopped myself. It’s too pathetic to ask a guy if he wants you. If you have to ask, there’s your answer.

“I want to kiss you. I just”—he looked down at the sheets before finishing his sentence—“haven’t had sex in a long time. I want it to be good with you.”

My heart surged. It was because I’m TOO special. I’ve never been too special before. “I told you I’m a virgin, remember? I wouldn’t know the difference.”

I could tell by his reaction it was the wrong time to make a joke. It was like everything closed back up again.

“Sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t making fun of you.”

“I know you wouldn’t make fun of me.” He smiled. “You’re Marley.”

“Not for much longer.” I smiled back. I probably won’t choose the name Vicky, even though it came to me so naturally. B. and I could have a lot of fun picking my new name.

“To me,” he said, “you’ll always be Mar. It’ll be our secret.”

“Exactly.” I tilted my head up the slightest bit in invitation, but he didn’t move. Didn’t make a move. It was going to have to be different with him, more overt. This is B. He won’t reject me. “Could you, maybe, kiss me?”

I could see that he was torn. “I feel like once I kiss you, I won’t be able to stop. Even if we want to. It’s happened before.”

So much for being too special.

“I’ve never loved anyone this way. I’ve never told someone all the things I told you.”

Then why, I wanted to ask, do I sometimes feel like I don’t know you at all, now that we’re finally in the same room?