How to Disappear(22)

“And I need to keep the ID.”

“You need it? It’s about to be summer. I need the ID.”

“Who signed your notes?” Calvin is at war with our second-period math teacher. He won’t turn in the homework, which he claims is a waste of time. He got a string of before-school detentions with parental sign-off notes—hence the forgery by yours truly.

I might be a solid citizen, but I’m loyal.

“You need it for how long?”

“Give me a break. I’m hitting the road in the Thing. What if I need a beer?”

“Maybe you should call off your plan. I hear they have beer at senior night. You should come.”

“I hear your mother thinks you’ve been handing in homework all year. Are you going to help me or what?”

Calvin draws diagrams and demonstrates how to use spyware to get into Olivia’s computer for the next three hours. “You get her to download an attachment,” he says. “Make her think it’s a coupon or an invitation or something.”

Once I infiltrate Olivia’s computer, I’ll see everything that comes in or out, every stroke of her keyboard. If Nicolette contacts her from another computer, I’ll see every word and emoticon and link Nicolette sends.

Getting the IP address of Nicolette’s computer is trickier. I have to get her to click on a dummy website, followed by a series of moves I didn’t know existed. But if I do this right, I can get the physical location of Nicolette’s computer, leading me to the location of the back of Nicolette’s murderous, throat-slashing head.

I flip through my notes, most of which were drafted by Calvin when my speed of comprehension was slower than his speed of explanation.

“Could you go through this again, right here?”

Calvin looks at me as if I were a moron.

“Jesus, were you asleep in comp sci?”

But he explains. It’s all in there, my step-by-step guide to tracking Nicolette with marginally legal technology.

Calvin takes hold of my upper arm. He has a wrestler’s grip. “Why are you doing this? The truth.”

“I have to find this girl. Before she gets hurt.”

“Don?”

“What do you think? I have to get to her before . . . anyone else does.”

I watch the light bulb click on in his head. “You have to find her to warn her?”

This is so plausible and benign. Hell, maybe it’s what I’m doing. Either way, she disappears right after I find her. “Something like that.”

Calvin likes answers. Now that he has one, he’s happy again. He says, “May the force be with you.” He throws in a Vulcan blessing to cover all bases.

It doesn’t work. I haven’t even turned the key in the ignition of the shitmobile when a call comes in with an area code that’s probably Helsinki.

There’s static. Then Don says, “Shut up. This isn’t me.”

My first instinct is to toss the phone and floor the car.

My mother told Don that if he got a contraband phone—like half the other prisoners in Nevada who don’t mind jeopardizing their release dates—it was the end of his cigarettes. But apparently, to torment me, it was worth the risk.

“What do you want?”

“Is that what you say to your brother who’s doing you a favor?”

“What favor?”

“You can turn my car around. She’s not in Nowhere, Texas, anymore.”

I say, “Thanks,” trying to sound as if I know what he’s talking about, as if I were already halfway to Nowhere, Texas.

“Word is, guys got there inside of five hours, and they scoured the place.”

“If other guys are looking for her, why am I looking for her?”

His voice goes dark. “You’re doing more than look for her.”

Parked on a side street near Calvin’s house, I surf through all things Nicolette. I find red hair and a blurry face that could be anyone, posted on Facebook by some girl named Piper who goes to Southern Methodist. While I was driving straight through like a madman, this was sitting there online, and forty-three people were commenting.

It’s possible I’m screwing this up big-time.





22


Cat


I stop when I hit the Pacific Ocean.

Union Station in Los Angeles. Cavernous. Beautiful. Crawling with police. I walk out in a parade of ladies trailing wheelie bags into a noon sun so bright, it glints through sunglasses in shade. Rows of palm trees. Sky so blue, it looks fake.

Two miles to the library. I know the exact specifications for where I want to hide out. Four turns on the computer, and I’ve found it and the bus route to get to it.

I sleep at a late-night movie in a mall bordering a commuter college no one I know will ever attend. There are people hanging out at an all-night Mexican place. Every hour until seven a.m., I buy some cheap new thing to keep my table. By morning, there are thousands of students milling around. I’m like Waldo on a two-page spread of ten thousand other Waldos.

If you think I’m going to make the same mistake I made in Galkey, guess again. As if there was just one.

I’m hunkering down until no one can tell that Cat Davis is me.

Not people who saw me once at camp. Not people who grew up down the street from me. Not me when I pass my own reflection in a plate-glass window.