How to Disappear (31 page)

Jack is looking at me like I’m a piece of stinky cheese.

“Jack! She was going to tell everyone I was a
slut
. Everyone was going to
believe
her. She was going to tell my dad and
everyone
. I felt bad for her. I didn’t even want to
look
at Alex again. I wanted her to get in her car and take him back to Michigan and
shut up
. I didn’t want her
dead
, I just wanted her to be quiet.

“So I’m telling him to make her be quiet. Steve’s going to hear. I’m going, ‘Make her shut up!’ and Alex is going, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ and I’m going, ‘You’re freaking Alex Yeager. Think of something!’ ”

Jack says, “Shit, no.”

“Oh God, Jack. There’s so much screaming. I run into the trees to make him stop, but he’s waving his knife at me. He’s covered in blood, like, he’s
dripping
! Then he’s on the phone to some guy to come help him, and he tells me to go inside and
stay in my room and don’t come out and don’t say anything to Steve or anybody or
I’m next. I’m next!
And she’s
dead
.”

Jack’s head is in his hands. He says, “It’s not your fault. It’s
not
your fault.”

“I’m on the edge of the woods yelling, ‘Do something! Make her shut up!’ at Alex freaking Yeager—how is it not my fault?”

When she pulls herself together, she says, “I can’t see you. You understand that, right?”

“We could at least communicate, couldn’t we?”

“I was
in love
with you when you were there to
kill
me.”

She was in love with me? I start to say her name, but she says, “Don’t you want your life back? Talk about something else.”

How do you talk about something else? We go inside and sit in two upholstered chairs facing the window, me stealing glances at her, her not looking back.

I say, “Mendes wants my head, right?”

“Of course he does. But not everyone’s dad kills people, all right? Just don’t show up at my house.”

“I won’t. I’m sorry.”

She brushes against me as she heads for the door, her skin against my skin. I still want her. Maybe she’s not a candidate for sainthood, but what did she do that was anywhere close to what I did? I want to buy that plantation on an island somewhere and take her there.

She says, “It’s going to be fine. You’ll see.”

And then she’s gone.

So here I am in college, spring semester. My life is supposed to be rolling along down the same path as usual, with a minor interruption between the end of high school and now.

I spent fall semester doing a gap thing, built an orphanage in Oaxaca, learned carpentry, went to bed exhausted, and not with anybody. The girls were great, very dedicated, very cute. But they weren’t Nicolette.

I did months of heavy labor. I told my mom I was exhausted and she wrote back,
Be grateful you’re not in prison. Stop complaining and plaster some walls.

I wasn’t complaining, it was a statement of fact. Not only am I grateful I’m not in jail, I’m grateful for all the other things I deserved but I got out of.

Agent Birdwell kept saying, “We have our eye on you,” as if there were a big, disembodied eye that the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation could program to follow me around while I ate refried beans in Oaxaca and beam pictures of my fork scraping across my plate back to headquarters.

But I’m not even on any kind of probation, thanks to Nicolette lying like a rug on my behalf.

My mom keeps dabbing her eyes and saying, “I don’t understand,” about everything she doesn’t want to understand.

“It’s not just Don who grew up in that house,” I say.

She says, “I don’t care if you’re eighteen. You’re on a six-inch leash.”

“One more Manx requiring
careful
supervision or who knows what he’ll pull.”

“Jackson, stop!” She shakes her head, shakes herself (temporarily) out of mourning the loss of her delusional take on Don, looking more furious than I’ve seen her for a while—even at me. “You got exploited because of your last name. Assumptions were made. . . . But listen up.” She’s right in my face. There’s no way to avoid listening up. “You were trying to save me, and Don, and yourself, and this poor little girl. Are you hearing this, Jack? I spent seventeen years with Art, and you’re not like him.”

I wish I believed her.

“I have your future in an iron grip,” she says. This I believe. “Don’t try to throw it out again.”

Thus the heavy labor to pay for my sins. But there’s no way to make up for what I did to Nicolette. Stuck in my head forever is the image of her giving me that heartbroken last look.

Then Esteban Mendes, who had his arm around her, said, “You come near her, you’re dead. You call her, dead. You text, you get a sock puppet to send her a text—dead.”

He said this within the hearing of the police, his lawyer, Nicolette’s lawyer, my lawyer, and my mom. They kept looking at the little pink case he was carrying, the one holding Nicolette’s dog, Gertie, and they didn’t take him seriously. As for me, by the third time the man got to the word
dead
, I believed him.

Don isn’t even in much trouble—for him. He’ll be in Witness Protection prison before being released into the world someday with a new identity. Years from now, my mom and I can meet up with him at a secure, secret location. My mom will go. I won’t.

College is weird but good. I live in the Mercer freshman dorm with a roommate and a resident advisor named Bonnie we’re supposed to take our troubles to. My roommate paints his face for basketball games and puts a sock over the doorknob when his girlfriend is there. As far as I can tell, they go at it with face paint on.

I walked on to the crew team. The coach was pissed I hadn’t shown up in the fall, but he wasn’t going to turn me away. I train harder than anyone. I’m still programmed to go for the fastest time, the highest A, the most outstanding honors.

I might have to get an apartment pretty soon, though, before I bang my head against the dorm room wall so hard, I end up staring down the guys in the next room over and then having to go work through my aggression with Bonnie the RA.

I don’t hold out much hope that I’m getting Nicolette back. She got her real life back, and I was never in it. I keep trying to think of ways to show her I’m a different guy. That now I’m the guy who, when his brother tries to dupe him into killing her, says,
Are you
fucking insane?
and calls the FBI—not the guy the police want to sic a big, hovering eye on.

But why would she believe this? How would I prove it?

Hey, Nick, look at me. I’m through the first three months of my first semester of college with a 3.8, and I haven’t once tried to kill anybody? I’ve returned from the dark side, and now I’m into college sports?

Why should she trust me? I don’t trust me.

But I’m planning to get there.

I’m planning to get there, risk my life to walk past her dad and, if I survive that, talk to her:
I get what I did to you. I’m sorry. I love you.

Now that it’s officially behind me, I can breathe. The untrue story of what happened is such old news, nobody even wonders anymore.

Anytime I get slightly upset, people think I have PTSD. They make me sit down, and they get me a glass of water and a doughnut.

(I say, “Oh no, it’s a frosted doughnut from my hideous past. I’m having a flashback.”

Jack says, “Shut up and eat your frosted doughnut.”

Jack so gets me.

Almost.)

I was a perfect, pure girl for six months.

No infractions.

No detention.

No back talk.

I sent the real Catherine Davis a thank-you card. (Plus her license and four hundred dollars.) For Luna, eight honest
words. “I’m safe. Thank you for taking me in.”

Steve finally relented about Jack. It took a while, but how could he miss that Jack was trying to save me? And that I would never give up.

Five seconds later, I’m on the green burner. I’m pretty sure Jack’s crying. God knows, I am.

Jack says, “Before you say anything, I love you.”

I say, “You better. I’m not loving some guy who doesn’t love me back.”

I’m safe.

Jack’s safe—he doesn’t even know how safe.

We’re all safe, and it’s all kind of over.

Steve says I ought to thank my lawyer for the story of what happened. The one that got me back into Cotter’s Mill Unified High School and straight onto homecoming court. Treated like I was a kitten that got rescued from a drainpipe.

The fake yet useful story.

Which is, Jack Manx has self-control and I don’t.

Which is, I was a total victim and therefore can’t be blamed for anything.

(The part where I was good at hiding, jumped on a flatbed truck, took cross-country buses, hitched, changed my name repeatedly, got jobs, gained thirteen pounds, stole things, disarmed Jack, had a plan—not in the story.
Nothing
that makes me sound like Xena, Warrior Princess made it into the story.)

My part of the action is screaming, “
Knife, knife, knife!
” like an out-of-control wind-up toy. Reaching for the gun because I was scared that Jack would hurt my daddy. That’s what my lawyer keeps calling Steve. My daddy. It makes me sound like a crazed, blameless little kid.

I’m nobody’s crazed, blameless kid.

As soon as I figured out Jack wasn’t lying to me anymore, in the mountains, in California, I knew what had to happen.

Here’s the thing:

When Jack said it was Yeager who wanted me dead, I knew he was right.

It wasn’t Steve sending Jack after me at all. This made me almost happy it was Yeager.

And I knew
which
Yeager.

The one with the reason to want me dead.

Alex.

Not Karl Yeager.
Alex.

“The whole Yeager clan is rabid pit bulls,” Jack said.

“They won’t stop until they stop breathing,” he said. “As long as they’re breathing, they keep coming at you.”

Alex Yeager wouldn’t have quit coming after me until I was dead.

And after Alex disposed of me, he would have found Jack. On Jack’s secret eggplant plantation in Paraguay or wherever.
And Alex’s guys would have killed Jack too for not doing the job. For not tossing me off a cliff.

But with Alex Yeager
gone
, there would be no reason to get rid of me or Jack.

Jack, in his effort to show me how illogical I am, demonstrated how syllogisms work.

Bob is a crow. All crows are black. Therefore Bob must be black.

Alexis Yeager was going to keep coming at me until he stopped breathing. Alex Yeager had to be stopped. Therefore?

Alex Yeager had to die.

And I had to take care of it.

I mean, Jack wasn’t going to—at least not on purpose. Try going,
Hey, Jack, let’s go kill someone who’s really bad on purpose.

His big brother already tried telling him to do that to me, and look what happened. Look at me. Not dead.

I just needed Jack to think it was
Steve
he had to protect me from for as long as it took to get from that ugly California forest to Cotter’s Mill. I thought it was Steve who was after me for so long. Why wouldn’t Jack believe it for a couple of days?

And so I called up Alex. When Jack and I were halfway to Ohio, and I was supposed to be taking an extra-long shower in a motel bathroom. Several extra-long showers.

I said, “It’s me.”

“Nicky?”

“
Zandy
, why are you hounding me? Don’t you know I’d do anything for you—just like what you did for me? You’re
amazing
. I want to
be
with you. Which won’t work if I’m planning my funeral. Don’t you want me?”

“It isn’t me who’s after you,” he says.

Liar.

“It’s my dad,” he says.

Double liar. I heard you whine, “Don’t tell my dad,” so many times while you were digging the hole. Over and over.

“Oh God, Nicky, can I see you?” Alex says.

Bingo.

Come into my kitchen,
said the spider to the guy who stabbed Connie Marino eleven times. When, where, and unarmed because if Steve is there, he’ll take your gun and your stupid SOG SEAL knife right off you. He keeps a pistol loaded in the drawer under the toaster in the kitchen if you need one.

Not.

Steve keeps his guns locked up, not rattling around with bread knives.

Guns versus knives? Guns take it.

Steve’s arm was collateral damage. I’m truly sorry. That was
not
supposed to happen.

Jack was supposed to shoot
just
Alex in defense of me.

Steve was right there. He saw me pitch a fit over a dull knife. He knows his arm getting shot was my fault.

But how could he blame me?

Alex Yeager was going to kill me. And if I turned him in, his dad was going to kill me.
Anyone. Anywhere. Anytime.
Just like Jack said.

But if Alex turned a knife on a five-foot-two-inch high school cheerleader in her own house, how could anybody call out me or Jack or Steve for stopping him?

If all else failed, I would have done it myself.

Terrified teen girl clutches gun, fires wildly, fatally wounds assailant
. Followed by a lot of prayer that nobody who ever saw me shoot the bull’s-eye right out of a target would ask too many questions.

But Alex took the knife.

I screamed.

Jack shot.

Alex went down.

What happened afterward was improv. But all those first responders running around? It was kind of ideal. A great big free-for-all.
Terrible
tragedy. Look around. Arrest everybody in sight. Interrogate us right and left. Call it self-defense and file it. They already knew Alex Yeager was a very bad guy.

I wanted my life back.

The outcome couldn’t have been better. Except for messing up Jack.

Jack feels guilty as hell. Jack thinks that civilization rises and falls on whether he personally follows the rules. He’s going to feel bad about what he thinks he did forever. He’s going to go through life believing he killed someone when it could have been avoided. The exact opposite of what he wanted. He takes this as proof that any minute he could morph into his dick dad.