How to Disappear(33)

Lying to Don comes so naturally, it doesn’t feel like lying. “There are three hundred twenty million people in the US. How long is it supposed to take to find one of them who doesn’t want to be found?”

“How long does it take to walk from the laundry room to Mom’s bedroom?”

I’m awake, fighting off the kind of unwanted emotion that makes you put your fist through walls if you don’t lock your arms against your sides. It would be easier if what could happen in the four seconds it takes to get from the laundry room to that bedroom didn’t come to me so easily—if a parent with his throat cut wasn’t already in my mental photo album.

“Don’t push it. Mom and I could disappear and leave you behind for Yeager to carve up like that.”

This shuts him up even though we both know she’d never do it. She’d never leave Don. We both know I’ve been so indoctrinated to take care of him that I took the envelope, and at some point I’m going to have to do something.

Don says, “Don’t crap your pants, but you don’t have much longer.”

“Because you’re God, and you’ll end the world if I don’t bow down faster?”

“Because Yeager is God, and you don’t want to piss him off.” This has the ring of absolute truth.

“Shit. How much time do I have?”

I’m not the only one who knows how to use silence for intimidation.

“How much time, Don?”

He pauses for so long, I’m afraid my cell will cut out before he gets to the point. “Yeager’s getting impatient. That’s all I know.”

The chance I’m falling back to sleep approaches zip.





34


Cat


So great, I told him where I live.

Semi-safe solitary life as wily fugitive versus life of mad kissing.

Score one for kissing.

There’s no point in changing out of a bad-looking outfit to promote the kissing, though. All I have are bad-looking outfits.

Reminders of reality.

The reality in which the safety of bad, brown outfits trumps romance. The one in which loneliness trumps good decisions, and bad impulses trump everything.

I could be packed and gone before he got here.

Race out the door.

Slip down the street.

Duck down alleys and through parking lots.

There are clumps of trees and huge flowering bushes that could shelter a motionless person until it was pitch-black outside.

I could be on a bus out of town with bronzed skin and pink-rimmed glasses in an hour. Less if I pushed it. Or if I hitched.

And then he’d look for me.

Great.

How romantic and deadly would that be? If he made noise about the missing girl with the bad wardrobe.

The noise he’s making is banging the knocker on my door.

I just about flatline. Press myself against the wall between the bed and the dinky refrigerator. Know this is bad. Do it anyway.

Unchain the chains. Unbolt the bolt. Pull the key out of the deadbolt.

“Are we expecting a crime wave?” He looks so much larger in my doorway than in his. “Hey, I brought you doughnut holes.”

He steps in over the threshold. Holding out a paper bag as if he gave it a great deal of thought and determined that the perfect gift for me is junk food that gives the sack it comes in grease spots.

What kind of normal girl is happy when a guy brings her this stuff?

“Really?” His face. I go, “No, J! I love this stuff.” Happy face. “This isn’t a comment on the size of my butt, right?”

“If I’m remembering correctly, I’ve never seen your butt.”

Perfect. I’ve introduced body parts into the conversation.

Cat’s so forward!

It wasn’t this awkward at his place. Then again, the bed was in another room at his place, and we weren’t sitting on the edge of it.

He picks up a doughnut hole and gazes at it. “Are these gross? Should I try again? I could run to Food 4 Less and get something else.”

“Doughnut hole. Now.”

He spreads a dishtowel on the bed and pours out the doughnut holes. Powdered sugar billows up around the mound of them. Three minutes later, when we’re both in the throes of a sugar rush, he leans across the dwindling doughnut hole mountain and aims for my sugarcoated mouth.

My hands are in his hair. I’m holding his face in my hands, prolonging this kiss. I am so suddenly aware of the several layers of cloth between my breasts and his chest. When he’s kissing me, when he’s going after every molecule of sweetness on my lips, there’s a total eclipse of reason. I want more than I can have.

Then he starts to lift my T-shirt over my head from the bottom like he means it.

“Don’t.” This might be the most conflicted syllable ever spoken by a girl on a bed.

Score one for impulse control.

I say, “No, because if we do, you know . . .”

All I want is for him to keep kissing me and stop undressing me.

“I know you better than you think.”

Which is unnerving. But it’s just master-of-the-universe boy crap. It’s not like I’ve never met a boy before.

Steve, explaining why I was supposed to keep my legs crossed, basically said I had something they wanted. If I didn’t give it to them, they’d follow me down the street like a pack of hungry dogs. Which proved more or less correct. (Leaving out the part where girls who hand out doggie treats have even bigger packs following them around. Which I guess he hoped I wouldn’t notice.) I can’t make out with this guy while I think about Steve trying to get me to behave.