How to Disappear(31)

All my friends and a couple of disgruntled teachers might have mentioned it.

“Ours was definitely a trailer,” she says. She has it down. “Not as bad as it sounds. But you know what? Homeschooled. We never got out of there!”

It’s a brilliant idea: no Reunion dot com or googling of the graduating class list or having to tie herself to a specific location where any curious person could find out she never was. She is, I realize, driving where this goes, dishonest and hypnotic.

I say, “Is this trailer nearby?”

“No! They disapprove of me. Religious zealots. I had to take off before they shunned me. I can’t go home.” She frowns, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was real. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

She abandons her sundae to walk around the room, pausing at the wall of bookshelves, touching the spines of the books. “You read a lot of poems.”

“This is a sublet. They’re not mine.”

“You’re subletting from a girl, right?”

“And you know this because . . . ?”

“This shelf. Emily Dickinson. Sylvia Plath. In school, when we did this poem she wrote, it was like contraception day in homeroom. You know, boys to the right, girls to the left. Yay abstinence, but if you succumb to sin and personal degradation, say hello to this condom.”

I touch the pocket of my jeans containing my wallet and silently greet the condom.

“Interesting school.”

I watch her remember that she just said she was homeschooled. Her face registers something and then smooths itself out.

“Waaaay down south,” she says, returning to her sundae, blocking her mouth from view behind a heaping tablespoon of mint chip. “I got sent there for part of a year so I’d have a school experience beyond the inside of a trailer before college.”

“Good move.” And I don’t mean her imaginary parents sending her to an imaginary Southern high school.

“This poem,” she says, “it was about how much she hated her father. Which was a lot. The girls were all having fits about how good it was. The guys were all puking.”

“What were you doing while all this puking was going on?”

“Remember me? Educated in a tin can. I’m borderline illiterate.” She looks as thoughtful as a person can when lighting into a quart of ice cream. “If she’d have just gotten herself out of Dodge and hung with people who were nice to her and shoved her dad out of her mind . . . That’s what you have to do sometimes . . . Instead of writing poems about it . . .”

“You do know she killed herself?”

“That’s the stuff I pay attention to, are you kidding me? Did you know she married a guy who, after she killed herself, married another poet who killed herself? So the question is, did he constantly marry suicidal women, or did he marry regular women and drive them over the edge?”

“Is this a quiz?”

“Seriously? Who goes to a party looking for suicidal poets?” She grins. “Unless that’s your type. Ladies who cry a lot?”

Apart from the sick, intrusive flashes of me with my hands circling her neck just above the collarbone, it’s possible that she’s my type.

Scarlett, for all her put-downs, for all the times she came on to Dan Barrons whenever she was pissed at me, at least didn’t kill people. But after spending three hours with this girl, I like her better than Scarlett. I like that she doesn’t take her imaginary self that seriously. I want to off-road with her and Calvin and Monica—despite my reservations about introducing my friends to a girl who could be hazardous to their health. I want to steer into hairpin turns with her thrown against me, riding shotgun. I’m betting she likes to go fast over rocky terrain.

While I’m wondering if I’m genetically impaired in a different way than I’ve thought all along—if the genes I should worry about aren’t my father’s, but my mother’s (the woman who spent two decades with my father, knowing what he was, but loved him anyway)—Nicolette AKA Cat is polishing off the whole mixing bowl of sundae, and smiling at me between bites. It’s that lopsided, endearing, unbearably sexy smile.

I want to rip her clothes off.





32


Cat


Cat is so trampy! She goes to his apartment and starts talking about condoms? Makes fun of abstinence. Plus, factoids about dead poets. Really? Like she didn’t notice they were dead and it was tragic?

At least I got out of there without unbuttoning anything.

But it was as if one of those tiny red Disney cartoon devils—the ones that hover over your shoulder encouraging you to do the wrong thing—was going, Kiss him, kiss him, kiss him. Until it was so loud I had to do it.

Fast, no tongue, antiseptic. Then I’m out the door so fast, it’s like the bad-kiss cops are chasing me.

J’s the one who’s chasing me, going, “Hey!”

I go faster. So does he.

“Hey!” This guy needs to learn one or two things about picking up girls. But not from me.

“Hey! There are rules against kissing and running.”

He’s caught up, and he’s touching my arm for good measure.

“Says who? The sleazy guys’ handbook?”

He breaks out laughing. “Right under the section about aftershave.”