How to Disappear(27)

“All I did was hold her hand.” His foot’s touching my foot. “You did the first aid.”

“Boy Scout,” he says. “Who knew that years later the first aid would come in handy?”

Great. I’ve found myself a hot Boy Scout. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not. That would violate the Boy Scout creed. In fact, I think there’s a bylaw that says you have to get Popsicles for girls covered in blood.”

I start to get up to rinse my hands, to get the blood off me, all of it, now, but I have to sit down again. Dizzy and dry mouthed. Field of vision narrowing. Passing out.

“Are you all right?” He has his arm around me, but I think it might be to keep me from falling over as opposed to uninvited PDA.

Who am I kidding? I like it.

“You don’t look like a Boy Scout.”

“This?” He holds out the tattooed arm.

“I like it.”

I get that Xena, Warrior Princess wouldn’t be cuddling up to this really cute guy in a wife beater in a public park. She’d be home making arrowheads. I get it.

But I can’t catch my breath or blink or move. His heart is beating like crazy too, after his virtuoso moves with the injured kid.

Maybe all I’m feeling is like how, after you get spun upside down on the Colossus at State Fair for what feels like forever, you’re so hyped up, you want to kiss the random guy sitting behind you in your capsule.

Maybe.

Or maybe I actually want what I want, which would mean I’m insane.

He says, “What’s your name? Are you hearing me?”

“Please don’t start telling me to stay with you like that kid. What’s your name?”

“J-j-Jay . . .” The slight stammer gets me. As if maybe he’s got a slightly (less than 1 percent but still endearing) bashful side. “Just the initial.”

No way.

Then he reads my face.

He says, “When I was eleven, I thought it was cool. Then it stuck.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Don’t cringe. Jeremiah. I only got called it one day a year, the first day of school, until I wised up and got to the teachers before they called roll.”

“You’re pretty serious about this.”

“I’m pretty serious about everything. I don’t answer to Jeremiah. Try me. Call me from across the park. I won’t look up.”

“Nerves of steel.”

“Who’s making fun of whom?”

“Whom?”

“English major. I also recite poetry to impress girls.”

This guy is so cute and so close.

I have to lose him.

It would help if I could stand up. But every time I start to lean forward, I get the you’re-going-down feeling in my ears.

“Not me! Plus, sensitive, emotional types can’t even stand me.” Seriously, the lit mag guys treat girls in cheer skirts like a form of plant life. Which doesn’t make a girl exactly long for one of them to throw a sonnet at her.

“Lucky for you I’m so insensitive,” J says.

Not looking at me like I’m any form of plant.

Maybe I do need sugar.

Maybe I could let a nice guy help me out. He’s looking at me so expectantly. Plus, he’s athletic.

“Give it up, J. Go get me an ice-cream sandwich, vanilla inside, chocolate out, okay?”

“No stranger to having guys wait on us, are we?”

“Usually they bring me ice-cream sandwiches on their knees, but I’m giving you a pass. Only because you saved that kid.”

“Only if you tell me your name.”

I’m on such an impulse-driven, plan-defying roll, I don’t even hesitate. “Catherine. I answer to Cat.”





Part 3





27


Jack


I’m sweaty from running and from tension. There’s blood on both of us. And I want to make out with her.

When I was next to her on the bench, her head of curly fake-brown hair was half an inch from my chest, and I wanted to hold her—not in a choke hold. I wanted her skin to skin, her head under my chin.

I was supposed to look into the eyes of the girl who carved up Connie Marino and want to close them permanently.

Instead, all I’ve got is the outline of Don’s plan (find; kill; go to college) fighting a ruinous instinct that would undo the plan in one syllable. As I hand her the ice cream, I want to yell, Don’t! into her ear so loud, it blows out eardrums. Stifling the Don’t! is making me grind my teeth: Don’t run out of the shadows to help the injured girl. Don’t take ice cream from a Manx. And don’t, for God’s sake, tell him your name—your fake name. Don’t tell him anything. Run.

Instead I say, “Hey, Catherine.”

“Cat.” Her eyes are darting all around me, as if she’s calculating which stand of trees she’ll melt into. “Cat’s better.”

I have a knife in my pocket—not a switchblade, a legal knife, but it could carve up a small animal. One thrust of the blade could reach a human heart. Her hair covers and uncovers a vein in her neck. I know where all the fatal points of contact are just underneath her skin.

She says, “Maybe you’re the one who should sit down. You look a little white.”