How to Disappear(20)

Nicolette Holland is planning to be an accountant?

Olivia finally gives me a full smile. “Wait for me while I lock up in back.”

Her book and bag are on the counter right next to me as if I were the kind of trustworthy guy you could leave alone with your things for five long minutes.

I do what has to be done.

There are two phones in Olivia’s bag. The good one’s in the pocket where I think phones are supposed to go. The burner’s in the change compartment of her massive five-pound wallet. There’s only one number in this burner. I memorize it, put the phone back in the wallet, the wallet back in the bag, and the bag back on the counter before the door swings back open.

I look at my phone, and I lie. “I’m sorry! I’ve gotta head out. Family calls. I obey. Next time?”

She looks disappointed. I did good. “Well, nice to meet you.” Then she reaches for my phone and writes herself into my contacts. She says, “Call me if you get back here. I’ll tell Nick to call you if I get the chance. If she’s up for a drunk rich boy.”

“Very sober, very rich,” I say—both true. “You do that. Give me your e-mail, too.”





20


Cat


I cup my hand over the burner. “Liv, I’m on a bus.” I lower my voice. “Somebody saw me.”

“I know. Piper Carmichael tagged you. And this boy from Ann Arbor wants to know why you stopped talking to him. You should let me call you!”

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

I don’t know if I say, This is worse than I thought, or if I think it. “What did he look like?”

“Super prep. Brown hair. Nice eyes. Knows you from Fiji parties.”

It’s as if everyone I’ve ever met is fanning out across the lower forty-eight waving sticks in front of themselves like volunteers forming a grid to find lost hikers.

“I told Summer it was probably your doppelganger,” Olivia says. “But she didn’t know what that was. So then I said your body double, and she said why would you have a body double, and I said—”

She rattles on. I know she’s trying to be helpful, but I can’t take it in.

“What was Piper Carmichael doing at South Texas Tech? Why would it even occur to her it was me?”

Olivia snorts. “Well, apparently, with red hair, you look exactly like yourself with red hair. And were you wearing aqua eye shadow?”

I’m pressed up against the window, curled into my best approximation of not existing, eight rows behind anyone else so they can’t hear me coming apart.

“I said it wasn’t you,” Olivia says. “I said, really, would Nick be caught six feet under and rotting with aqua eyelids?”

“Lovely image.”

“I said even if it was you—which it wasn’t—she should tell Piper to take it down because you’re supposed to be in rehab and Steve will pitch a fit.” She sighs. “But you know Summer. If it’s not about her, she won’t remember.”

I’m undone by my signature backless dress, and the fact that I had a terrible disguise, and what Piper told Summer. I feel like throwing up. And not because I’m tearing into a bag of Dunkin’ Donuts, Texas toast grilled cheese, and frosted crullers.

“Don’t cry!” Olivia says. “Even worst case, it’s not that bad. You get hauled back to rehab, it sucks, you cooperate with their BS, and you’re out.”

“Olivia, this wasn’t about rehab! I wasn’t in rehab. I lied.”

“What?”

“Just listen. Someone’s after me.”

“Says Miss Bears-False-Witness who lies to her best friend. Forget the Nick Holland show for a minute. Rehab is stupid, but what if you go back and gut it out?”

“Listen to me! Men with guns are after me, all right? I disappear or I’m dead.”

“What?”

“I saw them. I heard them. Please believe me.”

Liv says, “Sweet Jesus Christ!” And it’s not like she’s taking it in vain. It’s more like she’s trying to invoke divine intervention. “How did this happen? Stop wailing or someone’s going to notice you. Focus. If your hair’s still red, you need to get off that bus.”

But my hair isn’t still red, and I’ve been completely focused ever since Piper Carmichael said, “Come on, Nicky. I’m not that drunk.”

Absolute terror will do that for you.

I could hear blood flow past my ears inside my head, could hear myself breathing, could hear the words left foot, right foot, left, right, forming in my head. Directing me out through the front door and into the night.

Picked up my daypack and kept going.

Walked straight into the ladies’ room at the first bar I came to.

Cut five inches off my hair. Buried it in the trash.

Standing there in my bra, I pulled a box of dye out of my pack. Squirted foam through my hair. Spread Vaseline around my hairline. Kept spraying room deodorizer to cut the smell, which could have made birds fall out of the sky.

All I needed was twenty minutes for the dye to set.

I got fifteen, then some girl started rattling the door. It was my night for hogging bathrooms.

I yelled, “Just a sec, y’all!” As if I thought if I said y’all enough, people would believe I was from Georgia. Or wherever I said I was from.