How to Disappear(48)

My mother isn’t burying her kid or going up in flames when her dryer accidently on purpose blows up again, this time singeing her hair down to the roots, blackening her bones.

Her car isn’t accidently on purpose losing its brakes on the interstate.

No one is going to touch any of us.

I have to do this.

I have to make Nicolette Holland disappear.

That’s why I’m here.





49


Cat


“Did you miss me?”

He’s standing in my doorway.

He’s tanner than before. It suits him.

He’s back! I hope looking shocked suits me.

My getaway can wait. Underneath my new and different exterior, in this rapidly transforming vessel of moral decay, I’m still me. It’s got to be okay to like guys. Why can’t I have whatever extremely low level of fun is possible under the circumstances?

I pull him inside, bolt the door, and kiss him.

Kiss him some more.

He says, “You’re depraved. I should beat on drunks and leave town more often.”

He hesitates for a second, looking at me. Hands me a bottle of rum. Then he kisses me back. And then some.

“You smell like a campfire.”

J crosses his arms behind my back, pulls me in closer. “It was South Dakota. You’re lucky I don’t smell like a cow patty. I was going to shower when I got back to my apartment, but there was this cop car outside when I was unpacking. So I ducked out the kitchen window.”

“A cop car?” Does he even get how bad this is?

“Calm down. They drive up and down my street every ten minutes looking for jaywalkers. What else is there for them to do around here?”

“Look for us?” Then I might make too big a show of sniffing the air. His face. I say, “No, you’re fine. Really. Was it nice?”

“Was what nice?”

“Uh, the wedding. Groomsman. Bachelor party.”

He sits down on the edge of the bed, looking embarrassed. Does the thing where he grabs on to the back of his neck and massages it. It must have been one amazing bachelor party. “It was home on the range. No strippers—just a lot of cows.”

“Did you meet any cowgirls?”

“You’re depraved and jealous.”

Now he’s massaging my neck. Much better.

“I’m so not jealous. We’d have to be together for me to be jealous and we’re so not together.”

“Not us.” He stretches out on the bed, closes his eyes.

I nudge him slightly. Nothing.

“Did you drive all night?”

He doesn’t answer. He’s asleep.

I roll the desk chair next to the bed and sit there reading, my feet draped over him on the bed. His hand closes on my ankle.

After dark, I wedge myself between him and the wall.

Fully clothed, on top of the blanket.

Not totally depraved yet, but slipping fast.





50


Jack


I wake up in her bed.

The only time I’ve ever woken up with a female in a bed was on the class trip to DC with Scarlett after we figured out our chaperone was useless. I made Calvin go bunk with the guys across the hall.

But that was intentional. This isn’t. Her chin is tucked over my shoulder. I can’t move without damaging her jaw. She’s lying there, the tail of my shirt in her sleeping fist, all but volunteering for anything I want to do to her.

She shakes her head loose and props herself up on her elbow.

She wakes up looking good. She even smells good in her day-old clothes.

She wakes up looking scared.

Then it strikes me that being this close to her messes with my head. The only problem here is that I made myself vulnerable to her. I passed out in her bed, my wallet in one pocket, my cell phone in the other. Who knows what she found out while I was unconscious, sprawled there with my throat unguarded?

“How long have I been here?”

“Weeks,” she says, smiling a little. “That wedding took a lot out of you.”

“Driving for twenty-four hours took a lot out of me.”

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you about roadside motels?”

I reach back into my pockets to make sure everything’s still there. It is. Then I start wondering what’s in her pockets. A scalpel? Piano wire? Every weapon I think of for her to have stuffed into her bra—which might as well be welded to her skin—I think, I should have that. Then I think, No, I shouldn’t have that.

I’m running my fingers over her eyelids and those stained-dark brows. “I thought girls got warned against roadside motels.”

“Everyone gets warned against driving for thirty-six hours. You’re just being a macho blowhard, right? You didn’t actually—”

“I pulled over and slept. Not enough, obviously.”

“Do you want coffee?”

She starts to climb over me, but I take hold of her arm. I want out of this errand for Don so bad, every muscle in my body is tensed up and ready to spring. Only I want to take her with me: her, me, my money, Costa Rica or Belize or Trinidad or any number of places I researched as a well-prepared little kid, aware that at some point my family might have to leave town. I could take her to an obscure island off Indonesia. Someplace nobody I ever met would take a vacation was the old rule. I could buy a coffee plantation or a rubber plantation or whatever kind of plantation they’ve got.