How to Disappear(19)

This gets the beginning of a cautious smile. “I’m pretty much the only one who gets to call her that.”

“Sorry.”

“And we don’t have Coke. Just Pepsi.”

“I’ll have root beer.”

“I know,” she says. “No Coke. So moronic.”

“Who drinks Pepsi?” I say. “Listen, is Nicolette around? We were in touch for a while, and then she just . . . stopped. But as long as I’m here . . .”

Olivia is making a big show of wiping off the counter. It’s already spotless.

“Come on. I’m trapped at my uncle’s for the weekend. On the lake.”

“Your uncle has a place on the lake?” she says. “Who is he?”

The smallness of this town is evident. I don’t have this down. “Frank Burris,” I say, pulling a name out of my butt. “He’s renting.”

“He’s renting a summer place in Cotter’s Mill?”

“It’s closer to Kerwin.” This is two towns over, but she probably knows everyone there, too.

“I’ll bet it is,” she says. This girl can make anything sound questionable.

“Is there something you know that I don’t know?” Such as where Nicolette is? Just tell me, and I’ll get out of your hair. “Is Nick pissed off at me?”

“How would I know?” She’s fiddling with ketchup bottles. “I don’t even know what your name is.”

“Shit!” This is involuntary. “It’s James.” I picked a name that starts with J. If someone says, “Jack,” and I turn around, it won’t be that suspicious.

Olivia, back to me, shovels ice into a glass. “I’ve never heard of you.”

“That’s disappointing.”

She laughs, just a little.

I say, “Maybe her memory was shot. I heard she got hauled to rehab.”

Olivia doesn’t take this well. “Where? In rehab where? And there’s nothing wrong with her memory!”

She has no idea. I’m in Cotter’s Mill giving out information, learning nothing. Even Don would do a better job. He’d show up, put a knife to her throat, and make her spill everything she knows and then some.

I look down because looking someone in the face and hurling bullshit is getting harder, not easier. “Sorry, it’s just what I heard. And I feel bad. I might have encouraged her to drink more than she intended. Shots. I didn’t realize she was still in high school.”

Olivia is holding up a bottle of mustard and glowering at me. “Where did you say you know her from?”

I’m prepared for this. The Internet is a wonderful thing.

“Cheerleader camp. Last summer.”

She gives me an even more disapproving look.

I say, “I wasn’t at camp, she was. In Ann Arbor? I was in summer school. The cheerleaders kept showing up at parties at the Fiji house.”

Olivia tsk-tsks. “You’re a frat boy? You sure you’re not that douche Alex?”

“Independent. Things get looser in the summer. And I don’t know anybody named Alex.” I shrug. “Let me think.”

“Don’t bother. He came, he went.”

Then she stands there, staring at me as if I’m supposed to carry on a conversation about Alex the unknown douche from Ann Arbor. I need to get this back on track. “I just wanted to talk to her. . . . I was in rehab myself once, so . . .”

Olivia squints at me. “You don’t seem like the type.”

I try to imagine myself reaching around her and snapping her neck. I can’t. I’m aware of her chest rising and falling as she breathes, and of her tongue licking her chapped lower lip. She and Nicolette had better not have that much in common, because if I ever find her, I don’t want to stare at her like this.

I go back to being James, the bitter U of M drunk. “Some people in rehab are the type. Others were rich kids whose parents needed a place to ditch them.”

“Which category were you?”

“Not the former.”

Unless Olivia likes guys who pity themselves, the lip-licking isn’t a come-on. “At least you have parents,” she says. Definitely not a come-on. “Not that I’m complaining. I’ve been with the same foster family forever. Like Nick got Steve. We were the girls who ended up with different parents than we started out with.”

How did this go from me trying to pump her about Nicolette to her pouring her heart out?

“Don’t look so upset,” Olivia says. “Mine are pretty great. I’m staying with them after I age out.”

How did this solid girl end up with a bloodthirsty BFF like Nicolette?

I say, “Listen, when does your shift end?” Because this interrogation is not going well, and I need another shot.

“Like, ten minutes ago. We close three to five.”

“You want to get coffee somewhere that doesn’t smell like a grease fire?”

“Watch it, mister. Someday I’m going to grow up and own Cotter’s Mill Shake Shack. It’s my dream.”

I look at her.

“Don’t even!” she says. “You’re so gullible. Nick must have had you twisted around her pinkie like a rubber band. My dream is to be a microbiologist. Someplace warm. Like Florida. Nick can be my accountant.”