How to Disappear Completely

by Ali Standish

  But when Mom comes upstairs again, she doesn’t mention the doctor. She brings me homemade pumpkin nut muffins and hot chocolate and nudges Boomer over so there’s room for her to sit next to me on the bed. She leans over and kisses me on my head, then wraps her arms around me. I let my head fall to her shoulder.

  I find myself staring at our arms, which are side by side. They’re the exact same shade. The way we look is one thing we’ve always had in common. And I don’t want my vitiligo to steal it.

  “I’m sorry you don’t feel well, sweetheart,” Mom says quietly. “Is there anything I can do to make it better? Want to find something on Netflix to watch? I can take the afternoon off from work.”

  Actually, it might be nice to have some company. And weirdly, this feels like the first time since I got diagnosed that Mom is actually worried about me instead of my vitiligo. So we go downstairs and sit on the sleek blue couch she got to replace Gram’s old lumpy one. We throw a blanket over ourselves and find an old cartoon movie I used to like when I was a kid. I don’t want to watch anything serious.

  In a little while, Dad comes home early and flops down next to us. It’s really nice, sitting there with them, and I wonder why it can’t be like this all the time. Or even just a little bit more of the time.

  For a few hours, I even manage to forget about everything that happened on Monday. But when I close my eyes that night, I’m back at school again, getting off the bus to see a crowd of scowling faces. I see them over and over. And it never hurts any less.

  The next thing I know, it’s Thursday morning, and Mom is gently shaking me awake again.

  “Emma, sweetheart? It’s time for school. Do you think you’re up to it?”

  I hesitate. I have to go back sometime. And I’m worried that the longer I’m gone, the worse it will be when I do.

  “You have a light treatment appointment in a couple of hours,” Mom says. “How about you stay home until then, but after your appointment, I take you back to school on my way to meet Arnold O’Shea.”

  Hearing the name Arnold O’Shea makes me think of Edie O’Shea, which really does make me feel sick to my stomach.

  But at least this way I won’t have to ride the bus to school with Edie and the Graces and Ruby the Traitor. “Fine,” I say. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky and the appointment will take so long I’ll miss lunch, too.

  Except, of course, I don’t get lucky. Dr. Howard’s office is actually running early today. So when Mom drops me off at school, fourth period has only just started.

  At least Fina will be there. She’ll hide in the library with me at lunch, and then there are just two more classes to get through. Still, it takes me a minute of standing by the school doors before I finally muster the courage to go in. And when I do, it’s only because I can feel Mom staring at me.

  I know she’s really excited about her meeting with Edie’s dad. She is looking even more perfect than usual in her best suit. But I can’t manage to wish her good luck. I don’t want her to get the account. I don’t want her hanging out at Edie’s house.

  At the office, I pick up my late-arrival pass before going to English class. I’m tempted to drag my feet, but then I’ll just run into someone in the hall. When I reach Ms. Singh’s room, I stop outside to take a deep breath.

  And I hear my name from the other side of the door, which is open a crack.

  I hold my breath, listening.

  “. . . happening to Emma is something that happens to many people, including to some I know personally.”

  It’s Ms. Singh. She sounds angry.

  “Vitiligo is not contagious. It is not dangerous to you. If anyone had taken the time to research it—and I mean by looking at credible sources—you would know that. The only person this condition affects is Emma. Our job is to help make her feel supported, not ostracized. And no, Austin, it’s not ostrich-sized. It means when you make someone feel different and unwelcome. And the next person I see ostracizing Emma will be doing detention with me until winter break. Am I clear?”

  There are murmurings of agreement.

  My heart is pounding. There’s no way I can just waltz into Ms. Singh’s class now, so I spin around and begin speed-walking away.

  I had wondered if Ms. Singh had noticed my spots when she cut my bangs. If she knows other people with vitiligo, maybe she realized I had it that day. But how does she know what Edie said about me? Has she seen the text? Or that stupid website?

  I can’t go back to locking myself in the bathroom again, so I go to the library and tell Mr. Yardley that Ms. Singh’s class is in the middle of taking a quiz and I’m supposed to wait here until lunch. It’s the first time I’ve ever lied about something like that to a teacher.

  My stomach cramps when the bell rings and kids flood the hall. I glance up and spot Fina walking by. She sees me and heads straight for the library door.

  “Emma!” she says, throwing her bag down and squeezing me in a tight hug. “You’re here. I’ve been so, so worried about you. I was going to come to your house today if you didn’t show.”

  “I got here a few minutes ago,” I say. “I went to Ms. Singh’s room.”

  Fina stiffens just a little as she sits down across from me.

  “I heard what she was saying. About my vitiligo.”

  “It’s a good thing, Emma,” Fina says quickly. “Now that people know the truth, everything will go back to normal.”

  “But how did she know what happened?”

  Fina bites her lip. “I, um, might have told her.”

  “Why?” I ask. “Edie’s going to think I told her. She’s probably going to do something else to me now.”

  Fina shakes her head and pulls nervously at her ponytail. “I thought of that. So I didn’t tell Ms. Singh who sent the text,” she says. “I’m sorry if it wasn’t the right thing to do, but, well, you weren’t here, Emma.” Her voice goes mouse quiet. “I couldn’t just let people say— I had to do something. You’re my best friend.”

  I feel a whole swirl of emotions, like a pile of leaves caught up in a sudden gust of wind. I’m a little upset that Fina didn’t ask me before telling Ms. Singh, but also grateful that she was trying so hard to protect me. And embarrassed that a teacher had to come to my defense.

  Mostly, though, I still just feel sad.

  “You’re my best friend, too,” I say. “Thanks for trying.”

  “I’ll stick my gum in Edie’s hair when she’s not looking,” she offers. “Ruby’s, too. I’ll call their parents and pretend to be the principal and say they’re failing all their classes.”

  “You’re going to pretend to be Mr. Keeler?” I say.

  “Sure I am,” she says in her deepest baritone. “I’ll do anything you want.”

  When I don’t laugh, she loses the fake voice. “What do you want to do, Emma? Right now, I mean. Stay here? Go to lunch?”

  “You go. I have makeup work I have to do.”

  Her face falls in confusion. “Really? You want to be alone?”

  “Yeah,” I say, not exactly sure why I’m saying it or if it’s even true. “For now.”

  “Okay,” she says uncertainly. “If that’s what you really want.”

  She picks up her bag and walks slowly to the door, glancing back at me one last time as if she’s hoping I’ll have changed my mind.

  Somehow, I get through the rest of the day. And Fina was wrong, by the way. Ms. Singh’s speech does not make things go back to normal. It’s true that fewer people seem to step out of my way as I walk down the hall, so maybe they did listen to the part about me not being contagious.

  But wherever I go, whispers follow behind me like bits of toilet paper stuck to my shoe.

  And even though everyone is talking about me, nobody but Fina says a word to me.

  When I get home, I play it all over in my mind. Every sideways glance, every single whisper.

  I wonder if this is what my life is going to be like from now on. Because if so, I think I would rather be
homeschooled.

  30

  The next morning, I stare into the mirror for a long time. And the longer I look, the worse I feel. The patches above my eyebrows are spreading down past my temples. My bangs can’t cover them anymore. The ones at the corners of my mouth are lengthening into a pale ropy circle around my lips.

  It’s funny. Before I got vitiligo, I never understood how Mom and Lily spent so long looking at themselves in the mirror. I guess it was easy not to care what I looked like until I looked . . . different.

  I reach for my concealer, then hesitate. The counter is dotted with little plastic tubes and glass bottles of my makeup. But what’s the point of wearing any of it anymore? Everyone thinks I look like a zombie underneath it anyway.

  What does it matter if I show them what’s really there?

  So I drop the concealer into the drawer beside the sink. Then I sweep the rest of the makeup in, too.

  When I come down for breakfast, Boomer is the only one who doesn’t stare at me.

  They’re used to seeing my patches by now. But not in the morning before school.

  Dad looks only for a second. Then he says, “Morning, Butterfly,” and slides over a plate of toast.

  Lily stares up from her laptop, her mouth slightly open. I can’t quite read her expression. But when Mom looks up, I know instantly that the mom who rubbed my back and watched Netflix with me earlier in the week is gone.

  “Honey?” Mom says softly. “Did you run out of makeup?”

  “I didn’t run out.”

  “Is that how you’re going to school?” she asks, taking a tiny sip of orange juice.

  “Yes.”

  There’s a tense silence.

  Then, “Are you sure you—?” Mom starts.

  Anger bubbles up inside me. I should have known Mom would react like this. I push back my chair so suddenly that Boomer startles and skulks away upstairs. “It’s my face, Mom,” I say. “Not yours. And I can do what I want with it.”

  “Emma, I just—”

  “Mom,” Lily mutters.

  “Emma’s right,” Dad says, then turns to me. “You look great, hon.”

  Tears prick my eyes as I take a piece of toast, swing Gram’s bag over my shoulder, and go out to wait for the school bus, squinting against the sunlit frost that sparkles across every yard.

  When the bus arrives, I clench my hands into fists. As I walk down the aisle to my normal seat, I keep my chin held high, but I’m careful not to look at anyone. I want them to see me, but I don’t want to see their reactions.

  Ruby gets on a few minutes later. I think I feel her hesitate as she walks back to sit with the Graces, but I don’t look up at her.

  I do when Edie gets on, though. We lock eyes for a second, and as she takes in my face—both shades of it—her mouth rounds. Then she looks away.

  At school, it’s the same. People stare as I walk by. They fall silent first, then start whispering again. I try to imagine that I am back in the Spinney, that their whispers are just the wind rustling in the trees.

  But I can’t.

  Fina isn’t at school yet when my bus arrives, so I go straight to homeroom and don’t see her until English class.

  “You didn’t wait for me this morning,” she says as she sits down next to me, sounding hurt.

  “Sorry,” I reply. “It was cold out.”

  She looks at me and does a double take. But instead of gawping like everyone else, she smiles. “No makeup,” she chirps, pushing her glasses farther up the bridge of her nose. “Cool.”

  I look down at my warm-up.

  After class, Ms. Singh crouches by my desk.

  “Feeling better?” she murmurs.

  “A little.”

  “I’m glad,” she replies. “You know I’m always here if you need anything. Or if anyone gives you any trouble.”

  At lunch, Fina and I sit at our usual table. I glance at the empty seat where Ruby used to sit, then across the cafeteria to where she’s sitting beside Edie. I wonder if she’s happier there than she was here with us. I wonder if she thinks telling Edie about me was worth it.

  Fina tries to keep me distracted. She talks about how her dad has finished Pretty Little Liars and started watching The Vampire Diaries.

  “If you don’t mind sharing a roof with the most embarrassing dad of all times, maybe you could come over this weekend,” she says. “Sleepover?”

  “Maybe,” I say. But I don’t mean it.

  I know Fina is trying as hard as she can to act like everything is normal, but somehow it feels like things are different between us now. Like in The World at the End of the Tunnel when Jack is taken to the hobgoblin king’s castle and thrown in the highest tower.

  A damp, mossy wall surrounded him. Jack put his hand to the stone. On one side of the wall was him, Jack, and on the other were birds and horses and trees and clouds and everything he had ever known and loved.

  That’s exactly how I feel. Like I’m on one side of this wall and Fina’s on the other. Her side is bright and cheery, and my side of the wall is dark and lonely.

  I know what you’re thinking. Letting myself feel so defeated is like letting Edie win. But it’s not just Edie’s text.

  I could probably get over that—over all the whispers and the stares, too, if I knew they were going to go away eventually. Like the time I threw up during the third-grade spelling bee, and for a while, I was totally humiliated, but after a week or so, nobody even remembered.

  The stares aren’t going to go away this time, though. Nobody can forget about my vitiligo when my face is a constant reminder.

  Even if I wanted to keep wearing makeup, what about the patches on my toes, which are now threatening to cover my feet entirely? And the ones on my elbows and neck? Am I supposed to wear jeans and turtlenecks for the rest of my life?

  I glance around the cafeteria at all the kids talking and laughing. Not wondering what they’re going to look like when they wake up tomorrow. It’s just a normal day for them.

  I’m not sure if I even have a normal anymore.

  That night at dinner, Mom asks me how my day was (I lie and tell her it was fine), but nobody says anything else about my vitiligo or my lack of makeup. We talk about Lily’s next round of college applications, and Mom tells everyone that Arnold O’Shea has officially hired her.

  Which is my cue to push the rest of my stir-fry away and go upstairs. But I can’t sleep. So I lie in bed, listening to Boomer snore and imagining Mom hanging out at Edie’s house.

  If they ever meet, I bet Edie will put on the sweet innocent face she does around teachers. She’ll be all polite, and Mom will come home wondering why I told her Edie wasn’t a nice girl when clearly she is. Mom will wonder why I can’t be more like her.

  Finally, I throw my covers off and go downstairs.

  The kitchen is dark and empty. No Gram waiting with warm pie. No Gram to comfort me or tell me what to do. Even the smell of her is gone, like she was never really here. I pour myself a glass of milk and sit down at the table.

  “It’s not fair for you to just leave me like this, you know,” I whisper to the empty chair that used to be hers. “Right when I need you the most. You shouldn’t have done it. You shouldn’t have died.”

  I stare at the chair for a long time, silent tears rolling down my face, a ball of anger hardening in my stomach.

  When I go back up, I hear something coming from Mom and Dad’s room. Mom should be over the moon. She’s just gotten the biggest account of her career.

  But through the crack under the door, I can hear her crying, too.

  31

  When I go back to school on Monday, something has changed.

  People aren’t whispering about me anymore. They aren’t staring.

  Instead, they look right past me in the hall. Like I’m invisible.

  And somehow, this almost feels worse than the staring and the whispering. Because at least then I felt like I existed.

  I tell myself I should be relie
ved. It’s better this way, right? Better to be invisible than to be a freak. Even Edie just stares forward in English class, pretending like I’m not sitting right beside her. Which is probably not that hard, because I don’t raise my hand or say anything all class. All day, actually.

  Fina stays by my side as much as she can, like a bodyguard. At first, she still tries to pretend like everything is normal. She smiles and laughs and talks.

  But everything is not normal, and when I don’t smile or laugh or talk back, she stops trying to make conversation. Her smile dims. We walk silently through the halls together.

  At lunch, Fina makes another attempt. “See that girl?” she asks, taking out her sandwich and nodding to a tall girl across the room. “She’s in my social studies class. She’s really funny, actually. Maybe we could invite her to sit with us sometime.”

  “Or you could just sit with her at lunch from now on if you wanted,” I say.

  I don’t say it to be mean. I really, really don’t. I was just thinking that it would be good if Fina had some other friends. Friends who will laugh at her jokes and make her laugh, too. It’s bad enough that I heard Mom crying again last night. I don’t want to be responsible for making Fina sad, too. I don’t want her to be stuck on the dark side of the wall just because I am.

  But when Fina looks at me, there are tears welling in her eyes. She picks up her tray, throws her trash away, and walks out of the cafeteria without a backward glance.

  And as she disappears, I can’t help thinking that I might have just lost my only friend. The only person at school who actually still sees me.

  That night, I go to the bathroom to take a shower, but instead, I walk over to the mirror and study the spots on my elbow that are now sprinkled down my forearm like breadcrumbs from Hansel and Gretel.

  Except that Hansel and Gretel used the breadcrumbs like a map to find their way back home.

  Whenever I have a problem, I like to retrace my steps, Gram said. Go back until I figure out where things started to go wrong.

  My skin is kind of like a map, too. You know, the two-tone ones where continents are patches of green in the ocean of blue?