How to Disappear (3 page)

But the image that keeps interrupting is a cheerleading Nicolette bouncing around with pom-poms, so compact, so deceptively delicate, doing cartwheels in a lit-up stadium during a night game.

I make myself see her kneeling on the linoleum floor next to Connie’s corpse, swishing her crazy hands in Connie’s blood and laughing, getting blood on her pom-poms. I stalk her, catch her from behind, drag her away.

Shit.

I can’t do this. I can’t pretend I’m going to do this or let Don think for five more minutes that I’m doing this.

I’m bolt upright on a broken-down lounge chair, with a death grip on a pointy stick. Concealed between old, disgusting mattresses and bloated garbage bags in a vacant lot rimmed with trees.

The stick is for rats (saw them) and snakes (didn’t). But it feels like a hundred degrees, and it’s Texas, and don’t rattlesnakes crawl out of the ground to cool off and bite people in weather like this?

I would.

If Olivia were here, she’d be weaving together strips of plastic bag. Making us a tent and matching shoulder bags. She’d be distracting me with ghost stories. I might be the bouncy one with the pom-poms, but she was the one who was with me
24/7 when my mom died. The picture she drew of my mom with a sparkle-marker halo and wings, sitting on a cloud, looking down at me and waving, had a permanent place under my pillow. Until Steve steamed out the wrinkles and framed it.

I want my friend.

I want my picture.

I want to be home, where I can never go again.

If I were in Cotter’s Mill right now, I’d be at Olivia’s house, listening to Katy Perry. We’d be copying each other’s math.

At twilight, I’d run home along the lake. Yellow light would be pouring out of my house like the steady beam that glows from a lighthouse. Rosalba, who cooks for us, would pile food onto my plate, complaining that I’m too skinny. And when Steve got home late, I’d cut myself a thin, tiny slice of the tres leches cake Rosalba and I baked. Sit with him. Feed Gertie tiny scraps of meat off his plate while Steve pretended not to notice.

I force myself not to let images of home eclipse the landscape where I actually am. This works for about thirty seconds.

Then I start torturing myself with mental tours of Cotter’s Mill Unified.

These are the trophies from when cheer squad took second at State twice in a row.

That’s the dark stairwell where my first kiss with Connor happened. And happened. And happened.

Here’s the principal’s office where Steve had to show up
and use the phrases “harmless prank” and “Of course I take this
very
seriously” more than once. While I pretended to be contrite, also more than once.

After we made over Maura Brennan in the locker room and her mom had conniptions that I dyed her hair blue-black and pierced her ears twice each. (“Stop saying how good she looks!” Steve said. “What were you thinking?”)

After we cut and went ice-skating on the lake all day. (“So if this Connor does something,
anything
, you do it too?”)

And when Mr. Kirkbride decided that doing our math homework together was
plagiarism
??? (“There’s going to come a time when I can’t fix things for you.”)

It’s like some part of my mind is stuck, acting as if the worst thing I ever did is make Maura Brennan look good.

As if it didn’t happen.

But this is now. It happened. My hair is caked with blood, my stomach screaming for me to put something in it
now
.

And between now and when (if) I come up with a plan more immediately workable than buying a new face and fingerprints and passport (hatched in the cement pipe), I need water and a Hershey bar, a sun hat, and a place to hide.

And as basic as those things are, I have no idea how I’m going to get them.

Steve always says to have faith, and the universe provides. This is what you’d expect from a guy who got from Havana to Miami Beach on a raft that was basically a tabletop.

I used to believe him.

But the obvious fact is, I have to provide for myself. I can’t just sit here forever, slamming the ground with a stick whenever I hear the sound of rodents. It’s not like I’m going to spear one and eat it for lunch.

I peer out at the street through the wall of trees. Pickups going eighty miles an hour billow dust to waist-high clouds, skidding around curves.

Across the street, there’s a Five Star Gas and Mini-Mart.

I run into the street like a crazed squirrel. Trying to make it through the door of Five Star’s mini-mart without getting spotted, run over, turned in, or shot.

It seems like a whole lot of trouble for candy. But what’s the alternative?

The guy behind the counter takes one look, and the obvious question of how I got this way might as well be printed on his forehead.

I say, “No bike helmet. Stupid, huh?” That’s the best I’ve got. Flirting is out of the question in my current situation. “Could you please tell me how to get to downtown?”

Even though I don’t know what town it is yet. I only know it’s Texas from the license plates.

The cashier points and tells me only to hitch with the ladies.

I thank him by lifting four supersize Almond Joy bars out of the rack under the register while he’s distracted. Proving
that old shoplifting skills never die. No matter how sorry you were at the time.

I really was sorry. I was only eight, but I took enough nail polish to open a salon before anybody noticed. And it is like riding a bike—you don’t forget how.

At least last time I took things, everybody thought some variation on the theme that I was filling the void after my mom’s aneurism. The tiny flaw in her brain that killed her. Everyone except for Steve, who said, “You didn’t do this because you’re sad, did you?”

I said, “I like nail polish.”

Steve patted my shoulder, signifying his recognition that he was stuck dealing with me forever. Or so I thought.

He said, “I’ll buy you all the nail polish you want, but don’t ever do this again.”

I didn’t.

Until now.

I have to stop thinking about how nice Steve was to me and how much I want to go home, or I’m not going to make it.

I slide the key off the counter. Drink rusty water out of the sink in the gas station’s bathroom until I start gagging on it. Then I stuff a candy bar into my mouth. Oh God,
chocolate
and
coconut
and
almonds
. Which could be fruit and protein if you leeched out all the sugar.

It does feel morally worse than stealing bread probably would, but try sticking a loaf of bread down your yoga pants.

I say thank you to the universe.

I apologize to the universe for caving to despair (big sin) in case any divine forces are watching.

I don’t apologize for any necessary thing I did or am about to do.

There’s no mirror, but even in the dull reflection of the stainless steel towel dispenser, you can tell my face made contact with a blunt object.

I try to scrape the dried blood off my face and out of my hair with wet paper towels, watching it darken the white washbasin in the already half-dark ladies’ room. I wash with the pink soap in the dispenser and dry off with my hoodie.

It’s not that I’ve never had blood in my hair before. I have. A cheerleading move that I might have pushed too far.

Olivia sitting in the ER, holding my hand while the doctor stapled my head shut. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked, tears streaming down her face. “Summer said it wasn’t even in the choreography. Why do you keep doing this?”

Oh God, Olivia, I don’t know. Not then, and not now.

This time it takes me longer to get the dried blood out of my hair than it took to wreck my life.

That took three minutes.

No more than five minutes, tops, and my previous state of oblivious faith and my family and my face gave way to this. A fugitive girl with a forehead caked in blood.

The whole way driving back to the prison, I’m getting angrier and angrier at everything about Don, and about my family, and the fact that I’m saddled with a last name everybody in Nevada recognizes. I’m saddled with the memory of my dad packing his bag with enough firepower to bring down a cartel.

I slam the steering wheel and mentally shout out rhetorical questions for Don:

Like you think I’m going to track down a cheerleader and end her between prom and graduation—are you out of your freaking mind? You tell me to jump, and I jump on someone’s neck?

Who does that?

I, of all people, know the answer: bad guys who are nothing like me do that. Vigilantes with no respect for the law or human
decency do that. They see blood, and their eyes glaze over as they set off on lethal adventures.

I kissed my dad good-bye when he set out to hunt, waiting for the limo to pull up and take him to the private airport. Because the TSA guys at McCarran International don’t like it if you have too many ounces of shampoo or a sniper rifle in your carry-on. I wasn’t supposed to notice him packing this rifle, but even disassembled, it was hard to miss.

He was just another guy in shades off to neutralize an irritant, solve the fucking problem, kill his prey. My plan was to ignore heredity
and
environment, and become his antithesis. I was the model guy, attending the closest thing to prep school a city that runs on vice can offer, battling Dan Barrons for every honor in the place. I was home on school nights, heating up nutritious dinners my mom left for me as she powered her way through night law school and setting out a striped tie and regulation button-down blue shirt for the next day.

But look at me now.

I’ve got the shades, and I know where to find Don’s gun in Mom’s garage. I’ve got good marksmanship, penmanship, grades, and skills with a bow and arrow, a fencing saber (useful if someone dressed up like Zorro comes at you with a sword), a harpoon, and, right, my bare hands.

I have years of Krav Maga to thank for that—starting at six years old, jamming my fingers into the teacher’s eyes, crying because I was afraid that when I pulled my thumbs out, his eyeballs would be stuck on my thumbnails like two candy apples on sticks.

My dad smacked me on the butt. “Don’t cry, Jack. That’s just stupid.”

You want stupid? Stupid was taking the envelope when Don first handed it to me. I wish I’d buried it out in the desert. I lock it in the glove compartment before I pull back into the prison parking lot.

I tell the lady at the sign-in, “I didn’t use my time up. Please?”

You have to look pretty pathetic for Yucca Valley Correctional to cut you a break.

They bring Don back out. He has his slack-jawed, superior face on. I hate the part of myself that wants to smash him.

I tell him, “I can’t do this.”

Don shrugs. “Can’t or won’t?”

This is another gem from our dad.

“Either way, it’s not happening.”

Don’s eyes get squinty, like on the kind of animal you don’t want in your attic. I know his eyes don’t glow red in the dark—I’ve shared a bedroom with the guy—but they look as if they would. He shakes his head, and this time he looks smug.

“It’s not just me you have to worry about,” he says. “You want to be an orphan? If this girl doesn’t disappear, I’m not the only one Yeager’s coming after.”

What?

I level my gaze into the center of his pinprick pupils. I can’t tell if he’s lying or juggling half truths, or why this is happening, but I’m shaking like winter in Alaska with no parka.

Dead Don is one thing, but my mom?
Not
my mom.

“Shit, Don.
What did you do to piss off Karl Yeager?
”

Don waves for the guard.

I say, “Stop! What the hell? You can’t drop that and disappear. Explain.”

I reach for the pocket where I keep my phone, which isn’t there because they take electronics away from you on the way in.

“Don’t bother calling her,” he says. “You know what you have to do to make it right. If you care what happens to her . . .”

In what universe do I salute him and not call her?

I can’t get my phone back fast enough. In the corner of the prison parking lot, I’m locked in the car, blasting the air conditioner, radio cranked up, trying to noise-bomb fear so I sound normal enough to call home.

“Mom?”

“You’re not holding that cell phone while you’re driving, are you, Jackson?”

I’m so relieved to hear her voice, I’m not even annoyed by what the voice is saying.

“No! I’m parked! And it’s hands-free. I never do that. It’s just . . .”
It’s just that Don just threatened your life?
“It’s just, I’m leaving Don’s late, and hey, is everything okay over there?”

There’s a longer than usual silence. I’m not used to being this afraid, not for years.

“You left some lights on. I wasn’t going to say anything until you got home, but since you asked.” She sighs. “Did you have a nice time with Don?”

There, she’s her normal, Don-loving, deluded-mom, compulsive self. I start breathing again.

“Always nice.”

It’s a stretch to remember a nice time with Don.

“Sweetheart, are you tense? You sound tense.”

I’m so tense, I can hear my neck crack when I turn my head.

“No worries, Ma. I’m not.”

What I am is pissed that I let Don pull my strings. He’s no doubt sitting on his bunk in there, gloating that he made me so frightened that he owns me, counting my false steps down the slippery slope of doing his bidding.

He doesn’t own me. Mom is fine. Don is Don: when his jaws are opening and closing, either he’s eating or he’s lying. And given that there were no snacks, likelier than not, his whole thing was a fairy tale, a campfire horror story to get me to avenge Connie while he’s trapped in there; or to get me to ditch my life and do a random hit that he gets paid for; or to prove he’s the macho king of brotherhood, upping the ante until I said yes.

“Well, drive safely!” my mom says, as if I had to be reminded not to speed through speed traps.