How to Disappear(81)

“Right, and now you’re sixteen. I don’t care if you did every guy in Sigma Nu—”

Why would he say something like that? I halfway want to tell him just because it’ll make his stomach hurt.

Jack says, “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. Nick? Sorry.”

“Like you never went to parties or drank or hooked up?”

“I’m sorry. I never should have said that. But, Nicolette: Alex Yeager. Was Alex Yeager your boyfriend? It’s a yes-no question.”

“He was not my boyfriend! He was cheating with me.” It just falls out of my mouth when I didn’t mean it to. “He had this other girlfriend. Only he says they broke up. Except they didn’t. Then he says he loves me. Only he didn’t. And I totally didn’t love him—I was getting back at Connor. I was being an idiot. I was having an adventure.”

Jack is over being sorry.

You can see it in his face. In the way he tilts his head, waiting for me to tell him the rest. And it’s not that I don’t want to tell him. It’s that I want to tell him and for him to still like me.

What are the odds?

Jack won’t even look at me. “Get to the part with Connie.”

“Stop judging me. I completely blame myself for that, I do. If I’d broken up with him when I figured out there was this other girl. Or if I’d figured out that the reason he wanted us to be a big secret was so not because I was so underage. If I’d done one thing differently . . .”

My ears are ringing so much, it feels like my head is going to shatter like a wineglass when a show-offy soprano belts a high note.

“This isn’t recounting your life to Saint Peter to get into heaven,” Jack says. “I hunted you down. My good-guy credentials were canceled, ask a cop.”

“Fine. So he tells me he broke up with her, but she’s, like, a stalker. I can sort of tell he’s a creep, but he keeps saying he loves me. And he’s in college. And he comes out for the weekend sometimes. We go to the drive-in in Kerwin.”

Jack looks up. “Esteban Mendes let you go to the movies with this twenty-one-year-old sleaze son of a mob boss? Try again.”

“I’m not making this up! I didn’t tell Steve! Are you kidding me? I mean, this guy drives his Camaro out from Michigan to go on a date. It’s not like I wanted him in jail for statutory rape. Which is what Steve would have done to him. He would have skinned him and hung his head over the fireplace.”

“But I graciously did it for him.”

“Please, that wasn’t supposed to happen!”

Jack is stone-faced.

“If you don’t even believe me, can I stop? Even though this is no end of fun.”

“No.”

It’s the no you don’t want to poke with a stick. That no.

“Fine. So life is going along fine. Alex supposedly loves me. Everybody still thinks I’m all that. Then his girlfriend shows up.”

“Connie Marino just happened to be taking a walk across your property?”

“I told you, she was a stalker. Who follows her boyfriend to the next state? You figure out he’s a dog, and you dump him. But she follows him! She shows up. She’s parked down the street from my house. And God, Jack, the minute I saw her, she was so pretty and in love with him, plus she wanted to make him hurt as bad as he hurt her. Which I totally get. Only she thought it was my fault. My fault! She won’t stop screaming at me.”

Jack is looking at me like I’m a piece of stinky cheese.

“Jack! She was going to tell everyone I was a slut. Everyone was going to believe her. She was going to tell my dad and everyone. I felt bad for her. I didn’t even want to look at Alex again. I wanted her to get in her car and take him back to Michigan and shut up. I didn’t want her dead, I just wanted her to be quiet.

“So I’m telling him to make her be quiet. Steve’s going to hear. I’m going, ‘Make her shut up!’ and Alex is going, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ and I’m going, ‘You’re freaking Alex Yeager. Think of something!’?”

Jack says, “Shit, no.”

“Oh God, Jack. There’s so much screaming. I run into the trees to make him stop, but he’s waving his knife at me. He’s covered in blood, like, he’s dripping! Then he’s on the phone to some guy to come help him, and he tells me to go inside and stay in my room and don’t come out and don’t say anything to Steve or anybody or I’m next. I’m next! And she’s dead.”

Jack’s head is in his hands. He says, “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.”

“I’m on the edge of the woods yelling, ‘Do something! Make her shut up!’ at Alex freaking Yeager—how is it not my fault?”





90


Jack


When she pulls herself together, she says, “I can’t see you. You understand that, right?”

“We could at least communicate, couldn’t we?”

“I was in love with you when you were there to kill me.”

She was in love with me? I start to say her name, but she says, “Don’t you want your life back? Talk about something else.”

How do you talk about something else? We go inside and sit in two upholstered chairs facing the window, me stealing glances at her, her not looking back.