How to Disappear(7)
He said, “I’ll buy you all the nail polish you want, but don’t ever do this again.”
I didn’t.
Until now.
I have to stop thinking about how nice Steve was to me and how much I want to go home, or I’m not going to make it.
I slide the key off the counter. Drink rusty water out of the sink in the gas station’s bathroom until I start gagging on it. Then I stuff a candy bar into my mouth. Oh God, chocolate and coconut and almonds. Which could be fruit and protein if you leeched out all the sugar.
It does feel morally worse than stealing bread probably would, but try sticking a loaf of bread down your yoga pants.
I say thank you to the universe.
I apologize to the universe for caving to despair (big sin) in case any divine forces are watching.
I don’t apologize for any necessary thing I did or am about to do.
There’s no mirror, but even in the dull reflection of the stainless steel towel dispenser, you can tell my face made contact with a blunt object.
I try to scrape the dried blood off my face and out of my hair with wet paper towels, watching it darken the white washbasin in the already half-dark ladies’ room. I wash with the pink soap in the dispenser and dry off with my hoodie.
It’s not that I’ve never had blood in my hair before. I have. A cheerleading move that I might have pushed too far.
Olivia sitting in the ER, holding my hand while the doctor stapled my head shut. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked, tears streaming down her face. “Summer said it wasn’t even in the choreography. Why do you keep doing this?”
Oh God, Olivia, I don’t know. Not then, and not now.
This time it takes me longer to get the dried blood out of my hair than it took to wreck my life.
That took three minutes.
No more than five minutes, tops, and my previous state of oblivious faith and my family and my face gave way to this. A fugitive girl with a forehead caked in blood.
8
Jack
The whole way driving back to the prison, I’m getting angrier and angrier at everything about Don, and about my family, and the fact that I’m saddled with a last name everybody in Nevada recognizes. I’m saddled with the memory of my dad packing his bag with enough firepower to bring down a cartel.
I slam the steering wheel and mentally shout out rhetorical questions for Don:
Like you think I’m going to track down a cheerleader and end her between prom and graduation—are you out of your freaking mind? You tell me to jump, and I jump on someone’s neck?
Who does that?
I, of all people, know the answer: bad guys who are nothing like me do that. Vigilantes with no respect for the law or human decency do that. They see blood, and their eyes glaze over as they set off on lethal adventures.
I kissed my dad good-bye when he set out to hunt, waiting for the limo to pull up and take him to the private airport. Because the TSA guys at McCarran International don’t like it if you have too many ounces of shampoo or a sniper rifle in your carry-on. I wasn’t supposed to notice him packing this rifle, but even disassembled, it was hard to miss.
He was just another guy in shades off to neutralize an irritant, solve the f*cking problem, kill his prey. My plan was to ignore heredity and environment, and become his antithesis. I was the model guy, attending the closest thing to prep school a city that runs on vice can offer, battling Dan Barrons for every honor in the place. I was home on school nights, heating up nutritious dinners my mom left for me as she powered her way through night law school and setting out a striped tie and regulation button-down blue shirt for the next day.
But look at me now.
I’ve got the shades, and I know where to find Don’s gun in Mom’s garage. I’ve got good marksmanship, penmanship, grades, and skills with a bow and arrow, a fencing saber (useful if someone dressed up like Zorro comes at you with a sword), a harpoon, and, right, my bare hands.
I have years of Krav Maga to thank for that—starting at six years old, jamming my fingers into the teacher’s eyes, crying because I was afraid that when I pulled my thumbs out, his eyeballs would be stuck on my thumbnails like two candy apples on sticks.
My dad smacked me on the butt. “Don’t cry, Jack. That’s just stupid.”
You want stupid? Stupid was taking the envelope when Don first handed it to me. I wish I’d buried it out in the desert. I lock it in the glove compartment before I pull back into the prison parking lot.
I tell the lady at the sign-in, “I didn’t use my time up. Please?”
You have to look pretty pathetic for Yucca Valley Correctional to cut you a break.
They bring Don back out. He has his slack-jawed, superior face on. I hate the part of myself that wants to smash him.
I tell him, “I can’t do this.”
Don shrugs. “Can’t or won’t?”
This is another gem from our dad.
“Either way, it’s not happening.”
Don’s eyes get squinty, like on the kind of animal you don’t want in your attic. I know his eyes don’t glow red in the dark—I’ve shared a bedroom with the guy—but they look as if they would. He shakes his head, and this time he looks smug.
“It’s not just me you have to worry about,” he says. “You want to be an orphan? If this girl doesn’t disappear, I’m not the only one Yeager’s coming after.”