How to Disappear (11 page)

No
way.

Then he reads my face.

He says, “When I was eleven, I thought it was cool. Then it stuck.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Don’t cringe. Jeremiah. I only got called it one day a year, the first day of school, until I wised up and got to the teachers before they called roll.”

“You’re pretty serious about this.”

“I’m pretty serious about everything. I don’t answer to Jeremiah. Try me. Call me from across the park. I won’t look up.”

“Nerves of steel.”

“Who’s making fun of whom?”

“Whom?”

“English major. I also recite poetry to impress girls.”

This guy is so cute and so close.

I have to lose him.

It would help if I could stand up. But every time I start to lean forward, I get the you’re-going-down feeling in my ears.

“Not me! Plus, sensitive, emotional types can’t even stand me.” Seriously, the lit mag guys treat girls in cheer skirts like a form of plant life. Which doesn’t make a girl exactly long for one of them to throw a sonnet at her.

“Lucky for you I’m so insensitive,” J says.

Not looking at me like I’m any form of plant.

Maybe I do need sugar.

Maybe I could let a nice guy help me out. He’s looking at me so expectantly. Plus, he’s athletic.

“Give it up, J. Go get me an ice-cream sandwich, vanilla inside, chocolate out, okay?”

“No stranger to having guys wait on us, are we?”

“Usually they bring me ice-cream sandwiches on their knees, but I’m giving you a pass. Only because you saved that kid.”

“Only if you tell me your name.”

I’m on such an impulse-driven, plan-defying roll, I don’t even hesitate. “Catherine. I answer to Cat.”

I’m sweaty from running and from tension. There’s blood on both of us. And I want to make out with her.

When I was next to her on the bench, her head of curly fake-brown hair was half an inch from my chest, and I wanted to hold her—not in a choke hold. I wanted her skin to skin, her head under my chin.

I was supposed to look into the eyes of the girl who carved up Connie Marino and want to close them permanently.

Instead, all I’ve got is the outline of Don’s plan (find; kill; go to college) fighting a ruinous instinct that would undo the plan in one syllable. As I hand her the ice cream, I want to yell,
Don’t!
into her ear so loud, it blows out eardrums. Stifling the
Don’t!
is making me grind my teeth:
Don’t run out of the shadows to help the injured girl.
Don’t take ice cream from a Manx. And don’t, for God’s sake, tell him your name—your fake name. Don’t tell him anything. Run.

Instead I say, “Hey, Catherine.”

“Cat.” Her eyes are darting all around me, as if she’s calculating which stand of trees she’ll melt into. “Cat’s better.”

I have a knife in my pocket—not a switchblade, a legal knife, but it could carve up a small animal. One thrust of the blade could reach a human heart. Her hair covers and uncovers a vein in her neck. I know where all the fatal points of contact are just underneath her skin.

She says, “Maybe
you’re
the one who should sit down. You look a little white.”

She takes my arm and I’m down, in the prelude to the hookup with this girl I’m supposed to dispose of. There must be a moral code ancient as hieroglyphics that says you can’t do this, but I stepped off the edge of the moral universe when I turned over the engine in Don’s crap car and rolled out of Summerlin.

“Do you want me to get you another water bottle?” she asks. “I mean, it costs three fifty and it comes from
Fiji
. It probably cures cancer.” She’s pretty cute, actually, planning her escape route while looking out for me.

“Not a fan of designer water?”

But she’s already shot off to the food truck, fast, with a spectacular stride.

I down sixteen ounces. “Thanks. Jesus, it’s hot.” I’m used to a hundred and ten degrees in the shade, but what the hell, it’s conversation. “I thought El Molino was supposed to be balmy.”

“Do you believe
everything
people tell you? Does this feel
balmy
?” She extends her arms, palms up, as if waiting for wads of balminess to land in her hands. She shakes her head. “You might be too trusting.”

I’m drowning in sweat and irony.

Every part of me is perspiring. My hair is perspiring.

My concentration is shredded.

He says, “Do you have a phone number?”

My mouth is dry. My eyes are too dry to blink. It’s distracting to look at him.

“My phone got smashed.” Breathe. “I lost it.” Breathe. “So no.”

He tilts his head the way Gertie does when she’s trying to figure out where her doggie treat went after she already ate it. “It got smashed and then it got lost? This phone has very bad luck.”

Smartass.

“I lost it, like, ‘Oh no, my phone is smashed!’ I’ve lost
the
use
of my phone. My phone is deceased. No phone. Is that clear enough for you?”

I don’t mention that I smashed it under my foot before tossing it down a garbage chute. And then I stomped on the next one. Or that I bought a new one later, but I’m scared to crack it out of its box. Even though the guy who sold it to me swore up and down that it’s an opposite-of-smartphone, with no GPS whatsoever.

“Clear,” he says.

I have to get out of this guy’s force field.

“Thanks for the ice cream.” Licking bits of chocolate sandwich off my front teeth with my tongue. Backing away. “I have to go to work.”

“Thanks for the water.”

My mouth is cold sugar, but the rest of me is burning. My tee is clinging to my skin like a layer of moist shrink-wrap.

He says, “What do you do?”

I have to go. I know it.

But he sacrificed his shirt. He doesn’t deserve a hot mess bitch. “Aide for an old lady. Very glam. I cook a lot of soup.”

Soup-cooker for a demented person. She doesn’t remember who I am when I get back from peeing. The perfect job. I got it from a tiny want ad posted by her son, who lives in New Mexico. Who’s not responsible enough to hire a legit aide for her.

“Could I walk you?” he asks. Undeterred by the obvious fact that I’m backing away. Slowly, with a beauty queen hand
wave, a slight swivel at the wrist. I’m fast, but it would look weird if I shot out of the park like bears were chasing me.

Left him to eat my dust.

And the whole time I’m speed-walking away, I’m forcing myself not to look back over my shoulder. Sliding into Dunkin’ Donuts in the middle of a bunch of girls who don’t even know I’m with them. Cursing the alarm on the back door.

Asking myself how I ended up in the park with a guy, 50 percent afraid he’d catch me and 50 percent disappointed he didn’t.

Why does every impulse of mine have to be dangerous?

If I’d been paying more attention to the end game—avoiding the Nevada sun rising over a pile of Manx corpses—I wouldn’t be running after Nicolette Holland like a bunglng ass in flip-flops. It’s like getting a penalty called on the touchdown you thought won you the game you bet your life on.

I blew the details, and I feel the failure. I should have had
THINK, JACK
tattooed down my arm in block print, not this Maori armband thing. (It was the night I turned eighteen. I was drunk off my ass. I’m lucky I didn’t wake up with Donald Duck on my face.) If I’d thought to wear decent shoes, I could have pivoted on a dime. If I’d thought to wear gym shorts, I could have run in her wake and not looked like a guy sprinting away after mugging someone.

When she came out of Dunkin’ Donuts, I should have been
closer. When she slunk into the alley, I should have figured out a way to stick to her. There has to be a way to follow someone down an otherwise deserted alley in broad daylight without being spotted. But I gave up. I crossed the street and circled to the place where the alley meets the sidewalk around two corners.

I’m standing in the shade in the Food 4 Less parking lot, back turned to the mouth of the alley, acting like I’m texting. All I had to do is stay on her until I figured it out—it’s not climbing Mount Everest—and I’m still standing here.

I’m so pissed off at myself, I answer Don’s call. I’ve screwed up so badly, why not make it worse?

“Have you got her?” This is what he’s taken to saying instead of hello.

“I spotted her.”

“Where is she? Is it over?”

“This isn’t Yucca Valley Correctional. I can’t walk up to her in the shower and shank her.”

“You were that close?”

“Figure of speech.”

“Figure of speech—straight-A student. You lost her, didn’t you?”

I toy with the idea that I lost her on purpose, that I unconsciously engineered this because I couldn’t decide how much of a virus spore I was. If so, it was poor engineering because when I look up, she’s walking out of the alley and right toward me.

“Shit! Gotta go!”

“Oh no you don’t!”

For a second, I’m more scared of her than of Don. It’s one short, cold blast to the gut. It’s dead Connie Marino and the reminder that this girl isn’t who she seems to be. But despite knowing who she is and the blast to the gut that reasonable people know not to ignore, I’m grinning at her. I’m happy to see her. I’m still suppressing the big, silenced
Don’t!—
the syllable that’s struggling to get out and get out
loudly
while I hold my jaw so rigid, it might crack. I’m still freaking turned on.

I shove the phone into my pocket as she crosses the street, step forward to meet her. I say, “Are you following me?” It’s playing with fire, but it’s all I can think of.

“You wish!” she says. But it isn’t nasty, it’s kind of sweet. “How do I know it’s not
you
stalking
me
?”

“I do wish.” Then I patiently explain how stalking works, and how I’m not, and miraculously, she buys it. “Are you sure you don’t want me to?”

She twists up her mouth on the left side, like a cartoon character that’s deep in thought. “I’m pretty sure.”

Even with the baggy clothes and what she’s done to herself, this girl is meant to be on the receiving end of following—and not just by twisted stalkers.

“Okay, lucky coincidence. Can I get you a burger?” She looks taken aback. “When you get off work?”

This is a fail, too much too soon. Her eyes are back to scanning the street. She says, “I’m kind of agoraphobic. Do you know what that is?”

“Isn’t that when you can’t leave your house? You might be cured.”

“Read up. Jeez, do you seriously want to debate this? I think I know what I’ve got.”

“Sorry, rude.”

“So rude.”

I touch her shoulder. “What happens if you get to work late?”

She rolls her eyes. But she doesn’t walk away.

He’s standing in the shade in the Food 4 Less parking lot. Hunched over his phone like he’s afraid it’s going to jump out of his hands.

Then he sees me. Springs up. Comes bounding over. Okay, not exactly bounding. Too puppyish for him. Moving very fast and very intentionally.

Toward me.

I tell myself this is okay. It’s an
I
-found-
him
thing and, therefore, meant to be. This is an example of the universe providing.

I get that it’s providing the exact thing I’m supposed to avoid.

A human guy.

But it’s like stumbling over a lucky penny, shiny and heads
up. The universe doesn’t rain lucky pennies. When it does, you pick one up.

No! Don’t pick him up! Turn! Walk away!

The space between us is closing, like air being squeezed out of a rapidly collapsing lung.

Then he wants to know if
I’m
following
him
.

Way too self-confident.

“You wish!” My head is so buzzing, I’m talking on autopilot. “How do I know it’s not
you
stalking
me
?”

“I do wish.” J frowns. “Why would I stalk you? You’re not that friendly. And stalking entails lurking—correct me if I’m wrong—and there’s no lurking going on.”

“Great. No lurking.”

Then he wants to go out for a burger. I try to tell him how I can’t. How I’m agoraphobic, which I might have gotten slightly wrong.

But it’s obvious I want to.

It’s like my muscle memory of a come-on smile is too much to overcome.

Great.

I’m transforming backward. Turning right back into the self I can’t be anymore. The self who hops into the back of a guy’s car on a quiet country road because she likes him too much.

The self with no judgment and bad taste in boys.

J tilts his head. “If burgers are out of the question, do we want more ice cream?”

“Seriously, why are you here?”

He groans and looks put out. It’s not his worst look. “Because this is the only place other than Starbucks on Hill where I get any kind of reception.”

“What’s wrong with the Starbucks on Hill?”

J shades his eyes with his hand. Makes a big deal of surveying the parking lot. Looks cute. “Is this your personal domain? Cat-landia, is it? Should I have my passport stamped on my way out of the lot?”

“Stay! Jeremiah, I don’t want to interrupt you.”

“Jeremiah!” He hammers his right fist against his chest. “Shot through the heart. Remind me of my name, and you’ll have to make it up to me.”

I’m debating whether it would be weirder to walk away or weirder to stay, act somewhat cold, and induce
him
to walk away. Which wouldn’t be a problem if I hadn’t crossed the street in the first place.

“It’s just more ice cream,” he says. “You do eat, right?”

J, you have no idea how much I eat. I ate potato chips for breakfast. In the past week, I’ve baked Mrs. Podolski three pies, two breads, and snickerdoodles.

He says, “You want a sundae? I have Nutella at my place, and cherries.”

Oh God, Nutella! My favorite food group. And he wants to feed me
cherries
.