How to Disappear(18)

I’m walloped like, Clark can’t help you, and it’s disappointing, and it feels like there’s a boulder on your chest when you think about how doomed you are.

Do something, because nobody is coming to the rescue. Stop flirting and go!

Get in.

Get what you need.

Get out.

Xena, Warrior Princess would.

It’s after midnight: Any minute it will be too late. The whole night’s risk will be a waste.

I ditch Clark. He’s gazing at a knot of college girls (so hot they make me look like a redheaded panda bear) and doesn’t notice when the Little Mermaid swims off. Upstairs, doors are open, people hanging out smoking (not cigarettes). People are on the beds and slumped on the floor. Girls too out of it to notice where their bags are.

Girls too out of it to notice where their bags are.

Bags with drivers’ licenses in them.

All along the dark, smoky corridor, I search for short white girls with brown eyes. (Good luck determining the eye color of passed-out girls.) I have to find a girl who looks enough like me so the photo on the license I slide out of her wallet could be me. Then I have to find her bag and snatch it.

I mumble, almost to myself, “Where’s my bag?” Then I scoop a tiny rectangular clutch off the floor and take it into the bathroom. It smells like fresh barf in there. It’s no wonder there’s no line.

The bag belongs to a 5'10'' girl named Zoe. I’m too short to pass as her.

By the time I come up with a girl who looks right—lying on her back across a bed more out of it than sleeping—I have to wait while her friend tries to get her up and staggers off in search of a third girl to drag her out of there.

All I can do is pray that when I pry open her eyes, they aren’t blue.

Brown! According to the license in the Prada wallet in the Kate Spade bag. And she’s 5'4'', close enough.

Also, she just went to the ATM.

The first bang on the bathroom door stops my heart. I yell, “Wait up!”

Because talking yourself into something this bad takes a little time.

I tell myself she’s rich. There are Mercedes keys in there. There’s a Platinum American Express card like Steve has.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter how rich she is, I’m going to be punished for this. That God is watching and bookmarking all this for divine reprisal. Then I try to talk myself into the idea that I was sent to this party by the universe to punish her, to teach her a lesson about getting passed-out drunk.

Sure I was.

I vow, if I make it out of this alive, I’ll track her down and pay her back. How many girls named Catherine Grace Davis from Tulsa, Oklahoma, can there be?

Then I open the door, and it turns out I was right about who’s getting punished the first time.

Standing on the other side of the door is Piper Carmichael, Summer Carmichael’s older sister that I’ve known since I was ten years old, no doubt sent by an avenging God to out me.

“Nicolette? What are you doing here?”

I have the little Kate Spade bag under the halter of the backless dress, which is, duh, my signature party attire. Oh God, oh God, oh God, what was I thinking? Idiot.

I try to look confused, as opposed to shocked and white and shivering.

I say, all Texas drawly, my insides turning to ice, “I have that kind of face. Everyone thinks I’m someone else. I’m Kelly Hill.” I slur the words as best I can. I might have said Callie Hale or Kaylie Hull or anything but the name Piper Carmichael has called me since I was in fourth grade with Summer. When she showed us how to put on lip gloss but made us give back her mascara.

Piper’s hands fly to her lips, ten flashes of the bloodred nail polish she favors.

“You’re who?”

She knows who I am.

I run.





19


Jack


Cotter’s Mill, Ohio, has a main street with a couple of sad-looking mom-and-pop stores intersecting a side street with a strip mall and Cotter’s Mill Unified High, where Nicolette attended before she started practicing her knife skills on people.

I cruise past the hamburger joint where Olivia works weekends. I might come off as a stupid prep tourist, but at least I have the sense not to lead my life online. Olivia, on the other hand, records each minute of every day for the general public. I know when she’s on early shift and when her boss, Maxine, reschedules her last-minute. More to the point, I know when the chef leaves, the place is deserted, and she’s behind the counter reading a library book: now.

Olivia is even better in person—brown-haired, brown-eyed, perfect skin, and built. I try to lock in to her eyes to avoid distraction. I order a burger, rare, and a Coke for an excuse to be there.

“The cook leaves at two. Sorry. Just ice cream and pie.”

“Olivia?” I pretend to look at her name tag for the first time. “You’re not Nick Holland’s friend Liv are you?”

Nick, that seems like a nice touch.

There’s a quick intake of breath before she starts smoothing nonexistent wrinkles out of her white waitress apron. Maybe I didn’t play this right.

“Wow,” she says. “How do you know Nick?”

No question, I didn’t play this right. “Yeah,” I say, hoping I’m guessing well. “She wasn’t too happy when I called her that, either.”