How to Disappear(10)

“You have singed hair!”

Someone set my house on fire when my mother was in it.

I want to stash her in Witness Protection—except we didn’t witness anything, and I’d be ratting out my own brother. She’d never let me rat out Don, even to save herself. If I told her, she’d say I was exaggerating or misinterpreting, anything to avoid seeing reality. I’m the good one, but Don’s the son she’d go to the mat for.

Also, if we disappeared, a bunch of guys who knew my dad would figure that my mom had ratted them out and gone into hiding. They’re cool with her being a lawyer who prosecutes industrial polluters. Poisoning rivers isn’t their line of work. But if we vanished, they’d think we’d turned, and they would find us: Anyone. Anywhere. Anytime.

Witness Protection would be suicide. Calling the police would be suicide. Calling out Karl Yeager would be suicide. Anything but saluting my smug shit of a brother would be a trip to the morgue.

I say to the firefighter, “Aren’t you going to check this out?”

“Don’t worry, kid. No one’s arresting your mom for appliance abuse.” He thinks this is funny.

“Isn’t there going to be an investigation?”

He sighs. “Is there something you want to tell me, son?”

“No, sir.”

New plan: I’m going to find Nicolette Holland.

I’ll tell Don. This girl freaking murdered Connie Marino in the bloodiest possible way. She’s a homicidal cheerleader who crossed Karl Yeager. I’m not letting my mother burn while I stand around watching from the moral high ground.

I’m not saying what I’m going to do when I find Nicolette Holland, but I’m going to keep stalling for time while I figure it out.





11


Cat


I keep my head down, look people over fast, and turn my head away faster.

I become a fan of the $4.99 Jiffy Taco lunch special. You can divide it in half and save the cheese enchilada for dinner. I leave money with Luna in quarters and one-dollar bills. The delivery guy never sees me.

I’m hoarding money, for obvious reasons.

Because when I’m not scrubbing up messes and pulling strips of paper that say SPARKLING FRESH across the bowls of newly cleaned toilets, I’m watching crime show reruns about how even if the US Marshals relocate you and give you a new identity, bad guys find you. How even if you’ve been on the lam as a respectable housewife for forty years after blowing up an ROTC building in 1969, the FBI still finds you.

Every TV show I watch bangs into my head what I already know. Short of locating an armed cult and hiding out in their bunker until the End of Days, I’m toast.

Luna keeps saying, “Bean, sugar, can you please send for your birth certificate and get yourself a new ID? Mrs. Bluebonnet”—that’s what she calls the motel’s owner, who lives in South Carolina and shows up for surprise inspections—“is all, ‘Hire Amurrican, y’all,’ and I have to show her something.”

Where do I get an ID that says my name’s Sabina Magyar? (I told Luna “Sabina” because it was the only girl name I could think of with the sound Bean in it. Then she said, “Where’s that from?” And I said, “Hungary,” because why not? Magyar means Hungarian in Hungarian. I don’t even know how I knew that.)

Where do I get any ID?

If I don’t figure it out fast, I’m a lot closer to doom.

I don’t feel that doomed when I’m busy scraping fossilized nachos out of the hallway carpet. But when I need something I can’t get in the lost and found, when my supply of left-behind pink plastic razors runs out, or when I need more quick-change hair dye or tampons or cheap sunglasses that hide half my face, I obsess about whether it’s better to go out after dark (when they can’t see you coming) or in the light (when you can see them coming).

I keep finding South Texas emergency numbers taped up in the utility closet. The number for the battered women’s shelter is circled in red.

Bean says, “I’m not a battered woman. It was just that once, when I was trying to leave. It’s just, if he finds me, I’m dead.”

Luna’s completely into it. “He shows up at the Bluebonnet, he’s gonna hear one or two things from me!”

“Luna, no! Say you don’t know me!”

I feel like an idiot for telling her one tiny fragment of the truth.

“I’ll do you one better. He shows up, I’ll text you the second he turns around.”

About getting texts. I’m not sure how you get a cell phone, but I’m pretty sure you need a credit card and money and a lot of other things I don’t have.

I tell her, “Unless Apple’s handing out free phones—”

“You don’t need a fancy phone does tricks,” Luna says. “The market down by Mickey D’s has burners. And they’re cheap, girl.”

Cheap burner phones.

If I had it in me to walk three blocks without a phalanx of bodyguards, I could call Olivia on a totally anonymous, prepaid burner phone.

This is both reassuring and terrifying.





12


Jack


The homeowners’ insurance guy gets one whiff of the burnt laundry room and offers to put us up in a hotel until he gets us “sorted out.” I want to stay on the Strip because of the security. Vegas is twenty minutes away, but my mom isn’t going anywhere. She hands me a can of room freshener—which is like trying to subdue a rhino with a toothpick—and says, “Spray.”