How to Disappear(80)

Our lawyers follow us in.

Nicolette says, “I can take care of myself.”

They don’t seem so sure about this, but they leave us alone.

Nicolette stares out the window across the skyline to the steel grey river.

“I’m so sorry,” I say to the back of her head. “If you could forgive me, ever—”

“Stop it!” She turns, and I’m looking at her real eyebrows, pale brown, and her hair bleached back to the blond it’s supposed to be. She looks like a badly disillusioned angel. “You’ve more than paid.”

I say, “I told the truth.”

“I know,” she says. Then she whispers in my ear, “God will probably smite me for lying to the police, but I’m not putting you in prison.”

I hold her while she cries. I’m surprised she lets me, but maybe it’s an any-port-in-a-storm kind of thing. Her body is still so warm, still the only girl I can imagine wanting. And it’s not just lust-wanting. I’m capable of lust-wanting anyone. I could probably lust after her scary lawyer stripped down if you dared me. I want Nicolette like wanting to be in the same room with her forever, wanting to take care of her even though she can take better care of herself than I ever did.

But even in the middle of her narrative, which is saving me; and Mr. Ferro’s narrative, which has kept me ten paces ahead of the law; and Birdwell’s narrative, which has me as a cold-blooded killer who heartlessly f*cked his victim before kidnapping her and dragging her off to be murdered, I have to know what really happened in Esteban Mendes’s kitchen.

I open the door to a balcony that runs along the outside of the room. We stand in the far corner, facing into the noise of the traffic below.

I say, “Baby, how well did you know Alex Yeager?”





89


Nicolette


As if it’s nothing, as if it’s just something to say between bites of burger, Jack says, “Is Alex-the-creep-from-Ann-Arbor Alex Yeager?”

I know how to do, Yikes, busted! I do. I’m the reigning princess of the cute confession. If cute confession was classified as an official talent, I’d be Miss Ohio Teen USA.

But I don’t know how to do this.

“How . . . ?”

“Your friend Olivia. She thought I might be him in Cotter’s Mill, when I was looking for you.” He pauses, waiting for something I don’t give him. “And there was the car. There was a red Camaro at the end of your driveway.”

I start to cry, which is a key element of cute confession, but it’s completely real. Real and unstoppable.

Plus, I have a headache. I don’t even get headaches. But this is like an ax hacking off the top of my head.

“Don’t be mad at me.”

“Is there some reason I’d be mad at you?” It’s like he’s torturing me, and I haven’t even told him the things he should be torturing me with yet.

“You know there is, or you wouldn’t be asking! You know the answer.” Shouting makes my head ache more. It’s like the mother of being hungover.

“I suspect the answer.”

“Jack, come on. Please.”

He closes his eyes. “I’m going to sit here in complete control while you tell me if I shot your boyfriend.”

“You’re my boyfriend! Is it that he touched me first?”

“Not even close.”

“Please, please, please, let’s not go there. You don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to say it.” At which point, it occurs to me I could have just answered the first question with, Alex who? Huh? and this wouldn’t be happening. I’d still be a terrible person. I’d be lying through my teeth. But at least he wouldn’t know.

I say, “You first. Tell me something terrible about yourself. The absolute worst thing.”

“Apart from shooting someone?”

“That was kill or be killed. It doesn’t count. Some other worst thing.”

“You know the worst thing after that. It’s what I did to you when I was J and you were Cat—and what I thought about doing.”

Jack is so earnest, like the face on an earnest vocabulary flash card.

Earnest with a dark side.

Human.

“Worse than that.”

His jaw moves around like he’s trying to decide whether to open it or not. “I liked holding that gun, in the kitchen. I knew what I was doing was stupid shit, but I felt like God.”

I’m not confessing to a guy whose worst thing is something he felt. “Oh no, a boy who likes guns. I heard there’s a club with, like, forty million of you in it. Come on, something you’re ashamed of.”

Jack looks like he wants to throw me but not catch me. Not the look a girl wants to inspire.

“Besides what happened to my father? Isn’t that enough?”

“Stop yelling.”

Jack retakes control of himself. I’m pretty sure he can change his pulse, heart rate, and body temp at will like ancient yogis.

Oh God, I really didn’t want to make him go there.

I say, “Fine, I’ll tell you. I went to a lot of parties last summer. U of M college parties. I made out a lot, are you happy?” I’m halfway between you-asked-for-it and wanting to jump off the balcony. “I was all, ‘Eff you, Connor, you think you can sleep your way through the dance team and I won’t notice? I’m with college guys, ha!’ I was fifteen.”