How to Disappear(82)

I say, “Mendes wants my head, right?”

“Of course he does. But not everyone’s dad kills people, all right? Just don’t show up at my house.”

“I won’t. I’m sorry.”

She brushes against me as she heads for the door, her skin against my skin. I still want her. Maybe she’s not a candidate for sainthood, but what did she do that was anywhere close to what I did? I want to buy that plantation on an island somewhere and take her there.

She says, “It’s going to be fine. You’ll see.”

And then she’s gone.





Jack Says


So here I am in college, spring semester. My life is supposed to be rolling along down the same path as usual, with a minor interruption between the end of high school and now.

I spent fall semester doing a gap thing, built an orphanage in Oaxaca, learned carpentry, went to bed exhausted, and not with anybody. The girls were great, very dedicated, very cute. But they weren’t Nicolette.

I did months of heavy labor. I told my mom I was exhausted and she wrote back, Be grateful you’re not in prison. Stop complaining and plaster some walls.

I wasn’t complaining, it was a statement of fact. Not only am I grateful I’m not in jail, I’m grateful for all the other things I deserved but I got out of.

Agent Birdwell kept saying, “We have our eye on you,” as if there were a big, disembodied eye that the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation could program to follow me around while I ate refried beans in Oaxaca and beam pictures of my fork scraping across my plate back to headquarters.

But I’m not even on any kind of probation, thanks to Nicolette lying like a rug on my behalf.

My mom keeps dabbing her eyes and saying, “I don’t understand,” about everything she doesn’t want to understand.

“It’s not just Don who grew up in that house,” I say.

She says, “I don’t care if you’re eighteen. You’re on a six-inch leash.”

“One more Manx requiring careful supervision or who knows what he’ll pull.”

“Jackson, stop!” She shakes her head, shakes herself (temporarily) out of mourning the loss of her delusional take on Don, looking more furious than I’ve seen her for a while—even at me. “You got exploited because of your last name. Assumptions were made. . . . But listen up.” She’s right in my face. There’s no way to avoid listening up. “You were trying to save me, and Don, and yourself, and this poor little girl. Are you hearing this, Jack? I spent seventeen years with Art, and you’re not like him.”

I wish I believed her.

“I have your future in an iron grip,” she says. This I believe. “Don’t try to throw it out again.”

Thus the heavy labor to pay for my sins. But there’s no way to make up for what I did to Nicolette. Stuck in my head forever is the image of her giving me that heartbroken last look.

Then Esteban Mendes, who had his arm around her, said, “You come near her, you’re dead. You call her, dead. You text, you get a sock puppet to send her a text—dead.”

He said this within the hearing of the police, his lawyer, Nicolette’s lawyer, my lawyer, and my mom. They kept looking at the little pink case he was carrying, the one holding Nicolette’s dog, Gertie, and they didn’t take him seriously. As for me, by the third time the man got to the word dead, I believed him.

Don isn’t even in much trouble—for him. He’ll be in Witness Protection prison before being released into the world someday with a new identity. Years from now, my mom and I can meet up with him at a secure, secret location. My mom will go. I won’t.

College is weird but good. I live in the Mercer freshman dorm with a roommate and a resident advisor named Bonnie we’re supposed to take our troubles to. My roommate paints his face for basketball games and puts a sock over the doorknob when his girlfriend is there. As far as I can tell, they go at it with face paint on.

I walked on to the crew team. The coach was pissed I hadn’t shown up in the fall, but he wasn’t going to turn me away. I train harder than anyone. I’m still programmed to go for the fastest time, the highest A, the most outstanding honors.

I might have to get an apartment pretty soon, though, before I bang my head against the dorm room wall so hard, I end up staring down the guys in the next room over and then having to go work through my aggression with Bonnie the RA.

I don’t hold out much hope that I’m getting Nicolette back. She got her real life back, and I was never in it. I keep trying to think of ways to show her I’m a different guy. That now I’m the guy who, when his brother tries to dupe him into killing her, says, Are you f*cking insane? and calls the FBI—not the guy the police want to sic a big, hovering eye on.

But why would she believe this? How would I prove it?

Hey, Nick, look at me. I’m through the first three months of my first semester of college with a 3.8, and I haven’t once tried to kill anybody? I’ve returned from the dark side, and now I’m into college sports?

Why should she trust me? I don’t trust me.

But I’m planning to get there.

I’m planning to get there, risk my life to walk past her dad and, if I survive that, talk to her: I get what I did to you. I’m sorry. I love you.