How to Disappear(8)

What?

I level my gaze into the center of his pinprick pupils. I can’t tell if he’s lying or juggling half truths, or why this is happening, but I’m shaking like winter in Alaska with no parka.

Dead Don is one thing, but my mom? Not my mom.

“Shit, Don. What did you do to piss off Karl Yeager?”

Don waves for the guard.

I say, “Stop! What the hell? You can’t drop that and disappear. Explain.”

I reach for the pocket where I keep my phone, which isn’t there because they take electronics away from you on the way in.

“Don’t bother calling her,” he says. “You know what you have to do to make it right. If you care what happens to her . . .”

In what universe do I salute him and not call her?

I can’t get my phone back fast enough. In the corner of the prison parking lot, I’m locked in the car, blasting the air conditioner, radio cranked up, trying to noise-bomb fear so I sound normal enough to call home.

“Mom?”

“You’re not holding that cell phone while you’re driving, are you, Jackson?”

I’m so relieved to hear her voice, I’m not even annoyed by what the voice is saying.

“No! I’m parked! And it’s hands-free. I never do that. It’s just . . .” It’s just that Don just threatened your life? “It’s just, I’m leaving Don’s late, and hey, is everything okay over there?”

There’s a longer than usual silence. I’m not used to being this afraid, not for years.

“You left some lights on. I wasn’t going to say anything until you got home, but since you asked.” She sighs. “Did you have a nice time with Don?”

There, she’s her normal, Don-loving, deluded-mom, compulsive self. I start breathing again.

“Always nice.”

It’s a stretch to remember a nice time with Don.

“Sweetheart, are you tense? You sound tense.”

I’m so tense, I can hear my neck crack when I turn my head.

“No worries, Ma. I’m not.”

What I am is pissed that I let Don pull my strings. He’s no doubt sitting on his bunk in there, gloating that he made me so frightened that he owns me, counting my false steps down the slippery slope of doing his bidding.

He doesn’t own me. Mom is fine. Don is Don: when his jaws are opening and closing, either he’s eating or he’s lying. And given that there were no snacks, likelier than not, his whole thing was a fairy tale, a campfire horror story to get me to avenge Connie while he’s trapped in there; or to get me to ditch my life and do a random hit that he gets paid for; or to prove he’s the macho king of brotherhood, upping the ante until I said yes.

“Well, drive safely!” my mom says, as if I had to be reminded not to speed through speed traps.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“You’re welcome.” There’s another pause. “And, Jack, I know it’s hard to see him locked in there, but Donny’s still your loving brother. Remember.”

No thanks, Mom.





9


Cat


So maybe the universe did provide.

Slightly.

In the form of a HELP WANTED sign in the window of the Bluebonnet Motor Court Motel. A robin’s-egg blue, sagging-roofed building in the middle of a long block anchored by the Five Star on one corner and a bright green Jiffy Taco on the other.

Not that I take this sign as a sign. But figuring it for as close to divine signage as I’ll ever get, I make myself walk over there. I have to talk myself through it, like when you’re learning the fox-trot in seventh-grade gym.

Right foot. Left foot.

Face frozen in a pick-me smile even though (when learning to fox-trot) Connor was going to knock over the other boys to get to me first.

But this is now. Texas. Bluebonnet. Go!

A buzzer is triggered when the door to the lobby opens.

I’m just this side of jumping out of my skin, scooping it up, and racing back to the dump. I pretend that I’m about to face the panel of judges at a pageant. (I only did one, but it stays with you.) Pick me.

The lady behind the counter is fiddling with a necklace that says Luna in gold cursive letters, watching Animal Planet in front of an electric fan upwind of me. A good thing, because even if the paper towel scrub removed the stink, the pink liquid soap left me smelling like a gummy bear. Who hires a gummy bear?

The part I’m not expecting is that when she asks, “What happened to you?” my impulse is to tell her.

Which is bad.

Why does every impulse I ever get have to be bad? I’ve gone so far as to write DON’T on my palm just in case I had the sudden impulse to give it up to Connor at spring formal. This was after he plowed through half the dance team and I dumped him.

Luna pours iced tea out of a plastic pitcher into a paper cup and slides it across the counter.

“Was it your boyfriend?”

“No!” I say it so loud, it’s like a puppy that scares itself by sneezing and falls over. Only I tip backward into the lobby’s one chair.

“Oh, honey,” she says. She has a nice Texas twang and a sweet round face. It’s the first second I’ve felt slightly relaxed since it happened. This is also bad. I need to be vigilant, not relaxed.