“From your big sister?” He’s perplexed and completely unhelpful.
“I need one with my name on it. Don’t even ask. I was an idiot.”
He shakes his head and takes another drink. Looks more perplexed. “I know someone at UT who might.”
He smiles at me, white teeth, green eyes. And it’s not like I’m waiting for a knight with a pool cue to rescue me, because I’m not. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel something. Like the tiny filaments of hair on my arms rising in unison. Like I should have DON’T shellacked on my fingernails.
He hands me his cell phone. “Give me your number and maybe he’ll call you.” Leaning in. “Maybe I’ll call you.”
This is when it wallops me: I have to stop acting like this is a party party. If I don’t start acting like this is my opportunity to get what I need, I’m dead. Not the wink-giggle-my-daddy-will-kill-me-if-I-climb-into-your-backseat metaphorical kind of dead. The literal kind.
I’m walloped like, Clark can’t help you, and it’s disappointing, and it feels like there’s a boulder on your chest when you think about how doomed you are.
Do something, because nobody is coming to the rescue. Stop flirting and go!
Get in.
Get what you need.
Get out.
Xena, Warrior Princess would.
It’s after midnight: Any minute it will be too late. The whole night’s risk will be a waste.
I ditch Clark. He’s gazing at a knot of college girls (so hot they make me look like a redheaded panda bear) and doesn’t notice when the Little Mermaid swims off. Upstairs, doors are open, people hanging out smoking (not cigarettes). People are on the beds and slumped on the floor. Girls too out of it to notice where their bags are.
Girls too out of it to notice where their bags are.
Bags with drivers’ licenses in them.
All along the dark, smoky corridor, I search for short white girls with brown eyes. (Good luck determining the eye color of passed-out girls.) I have to find a girl who looks enough like me so the photo on the license I slide out of her wallet could be me. Then I have to find her bag and snatch it.
I mumble, almost to myself, “Where’s my bag?” Then I scoop a tiny rectangular clutch off the floor and take it into the bathroom. It smells like fresh barf in there. It’s no wonder there’s no line.
The bag belongs to a 5'10'' girl named Zoe. I’m too short to pass as her.
By the time I come up with a girl who looks right—lying on her back across a bed more out of it than sleeping—I have to wait while her friend tries to get her up and staggers off in search of a third girl to drag her out of there.
All I can do is pray that when I pry open her eyes, they aren’t blue.
Brown! According to the license in the Prada wallet in the Kate Spade bag. And she’s 5'4'', close enough.
Also, she just went to the ATM.
The first bang on the bathroom door stops my heart. I yell, “Wait up!”
Because talking yourself into something this bad takes a little time.
I tell myself she’s rich. There are Mercedes keys in there. There’s a Platinum American Express card like Steve has.
I tell myself it doesn’t matter how rich she is, I’m going to be punished for this. That God is watching and bookmarking all this for divine reprisal. Then I try to talk myself into the idea that I was sent to this party by the universe to punish her, to teach her a lesson about getting passed-out drunk.
Sure I was.
I vow, if I make it out of this alive, I’ll track her down and pay her back. How many girls named Catherine Grace Davis from Tulsa, Oklahoma, can there be?
Then I open the door, and it turns out I was right about who’s getting punished the first time.
Standing on the other side of the door is Piper Carmichael, Summer Carmichael’s older sister that I’ve known since I was ten years old, no doubt sent by an avenging God to out me.
“Nicolette? What are you doing here?”
I have the little Kate Spade bag under the halter of the backless dress, which is, duh, my signature party attire. Oh God, oh God, oh God, what was I thinking? Idiot.
I try to look confused, as opposed to shocked and white and shivering.
I say, all Texas drawly, my insides turning to ice, “I have that kind of face. Everyone thinks I’m someone else. I’m Kelly Hill.” I slur the words as best I can. I might have said Callie Hale or Kaylie Hull or anything but the name Piper Carmichael has called me since I was in fourth grade with Summer. When she showed us how to put on lip gloss but made us give back her mascara.
Piper’s hands fly to her lips, ten flashes of the bloodred nail polish she favors.
“You’re who?”
She knows who I am.
I run.
19
Jack
Cotter’s Mill, Ohio, has a main street with a couple of sad-looking mom-and-pop stores intersecting a side street with a strip mall and Cotter’s Mill Unified High, where Nicolette attended before she started practicing her knife skills on people.
I cruise past the hamburger joint where Olivia works weekends. I might come off as a stupid prep tourist, but at least I have the sense not to lead my life online. Olivia, on the other hand, records each minute of every day for the general public. I know when she’s on early shift and when her boss, Maxine, reschedules her last-minute. More to the point, I know when the chef leaves, the place is deserted, and she’s behind the counter reading a library book: now.
Olivia is even better in person—brown-haired, brown-eyed, perfect skin, and built. I try to lock in to her eyes to avoid distraction. I order a burger, rare, and a Coke for an excuse to be there.
“The cook leaves at two. Sorry. Just ice cream and pie.”
“Olivia?” I pretend to look at her name tag for the first time. “You’re not Nick Holland’s friend Liv are you?”
Nick, that seems like a nice touch.
There’s a quick intake of breath before she starts smoothing nonexistent wrinkles out of her white waitress apron. Maybe I didn’t play this right.
“Wow,” she says. “How do you know Nick?”
No question, I didn’t play this right. “Yeah,” I say, hoping I’m guessing well. “She wasn’t too happy when I called her that, either.”
This gets the beginning of a cautious smile. “I’m pretty much the only one who gets to call her that.”
“Sorry.”
“And we don’t have Coke. Just Pepsi.”
“I’ll have root beer.”
“I know,” she says. “No Coke. So moronic.”
“Who drinks Pepsi?” I say. “Listen, is Nicolette around? We were in touch for a while, and then she just . . . stopped. But as long as I’m here . . .”
Olivia is making a big show of wiping off the counter. It’s already spotless.
“Come on. I’m trapped at my uncle’s for the weekend. On the lake.”
“Your uncle has a place on the lake?” she says. “Who is he?”
The smallness of this town is evident. I don’t have this down. “Frank Burris,” I say, pulling a name out of my butt. “He’s renting.”
“He’s renting a summer place in Cotter’s Mill?”
“It’s closer to Kerwin.” This is two towns over, but she probably knows everyone there, too.
“I’ll bet it is,” she says. This girl can make anything sound questionable.
“Is there something you know that I don’t know?” Such as where Nicolette is? Just tell me, and I’ll get out of your hair. “Is Nick pissed off at me?”
“How would I know?” She’s fiddling with ketchup bottles. “I don’t even know what your name is.”
“Shit!” This is involuntary. “It’s James.” I picked a name that starts with J. If someone says, “Jack,” and I turn around, it won’t be that suspicious.
Olivia, back to me, shovels ice into a glass. “I’ve never heard of you.”
“That’s disappointin
g.”
She laughs, just a little.
I say, “Maybe her memory was shot. I heard she got hauled to rehab.”
Olivia doesn’t take this well. “Where? In rehab where? And there’s nothing wrong with her memory!”
She has no idea. I’m in Cotter’s Mill giving out information, learning nothing. Even Don would do a better job. He’d show up, put a knife to her throat, and make her spill everything she knows and then some.
I look down because looking someone in the face and hurling bullshit is getting harder, not easier. “Sorry, it’s just what I heard. And I feel bad. I might have encouraged her to drink more than she intended. Shots. I didn’t realize she was still in high school.”
Olivia is holding up a bottle of mustard and glowering at me. “Where did you say you know her from?”
I’m prepared for this. The Internet is a wonderful thing.
“Cheerleader camp. Last summer.”
She gives me an even more disapproving look.
I say, “I wasn’t at camp, she was. In Ann Arbor? I was in summer school. The cheerleaders kept showing up at parties at the Fiji house.”
Olivia tsk-tsks. “You’re a frat boy? You sure you’re not that douche Alex?”
“Independent. Things get looser in the summer. And I don’t know anybody named Alex.” I shrug. “Let me think.”
“Don’t bother. He came, he went.”
Then she stands there, staring at me as if I’m supposed to carry on a conversation about Alex the unknown douche from Ann Arbor. I need to get this back on track. “I just wanted to talk to her. . . . I was in rehab myself once, so . . .”
Olivia squints at me. “You don’t seem like the type.”
I try to imagine myself reaching around her and snapping her neck. I can’t. I’m aware of her chest rising and falling as she breathes, and of her tongue licking her chapped lower lip. She and Nicolette had better not have that much in common, because if I ever find her, I don’t want to stare at her like this.
I go back to being James, the bitter U of M drunk. “Some people in rehab are the type. Others were rich kids whose parents needed a place to ditch them.”
“Which category were you?”
“Not the former.”
Unless Olivia likes guys who pity themselves, the lip-licking isn’t a come-on. “At least you have parents,” she says. Definitely not a come-on. “Not that I’m complaining. I’ve been with the same foster family forever. Like Nick got Steve. We were the girls who ended up with different parents than we started out with.”
How did this go from me trying to pump her about Nicolette to her pouring her heart out?
“Don’t look so upset,” Olivia says. “Mine are pretty great. I’m staying with them after I age out.”
How did this solid girl end up with a bloodthirsty BFF like Nicolette?
I say, “Listen, when does your shift end?” Because this interrogation is not going well, and I need another shot.
“Like, ten minutes ago. We close three to five.”
“You want to get coffee somewhere that doesn’t smell like a grease fire?”
“Watch it, mister. Someday I’m going to grow up and own Cotter’s Mill Shake Shack. It’s my dream.”
I look at her.
“Don’t even!” she says. “You’re so gullible. Nick must have had you twisted around her pinkie like a rubber band. My dream is to be a microbiologist. Someplace warm. Like Florida. Nick can be my accountant.”
Nicolette Holland is planning to be an accountant?
Olivia finally gives me a full smile. “Wait for me while I lock up in back.”
Her book and bag are on the counter right next to me as if I were the kind of trustworthy guy you could leave alone with your things for five long minutes.
I do what has to be done.
There are two phones in Olivia’s bag. The good one’s in the pocket where I think phones are supposed to go. The burner’s in the change compartment of her massive five-pound wallet. There’s only one number in this burner. I memorize it, put the phone back in the wallet, the wallet back in the bag, and the bag back on the counter before the door swings back open.
I look at my phone, and I lie. “I’m sorry! I’ve gotta head out. Family calls. I obey. Next time?”
She looks disappointed. I did good. “Well, nice to meet you.” Then she reaches for my phone and writes herself into my contacts. She says, “Call me if you get back here. I’ll tell Nick to call you if I get the chance. If she’s up for a drunk rich boy.”
“Very sober, very rich,” I say—both true. “You do that. Give me your e-mail, too.”
20
Cat
I cup my hand over the burner. “Liv, I’m on a bus.” I lower my voice. “Somebody saw me.”
“I know. Piper Carmichael tagged you. And this boy from Ann Arbor wants to know why you stopped talking to him. You should let me call you!”
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
I don’t know if I say, This is worse than I thought, or if I think it. “What did he look like?”
“Super prep. Brown hair. Nice eyes. Knows you from Fiji parties.”
It’s as if everyone I’ve ever met is fanning out across the lower forty-eight waving sticks in front of themselves like volunteers forming a grid to find lost hikers.
“I told Summer it was probably your doppelganger,” Olivia says. “But she didn’t know what that was. So then I said your body double, and she said why would you have a body double, and I said—”
She rattles on. I know she’s trying to be helpful, but I can’t take it in.
“What was Piper Carmichael doing at South Texas Tech? Why would it even occur to her it was me?”
Olivia snorts. “Well, apparently, with red hair, you look exactly like yourself with red hair. And were you wearing aqua eye shadow?”
I’m pressed up against the window, curled into my best approximation of not existing, eight rows behind anyone else so they can’t hear me coming apart.
“I said it wasn’t you,” Olivia says. “I said, really, would Nick be caught six feet under and rotting with aqua eyelids?”
“Lovely image.”
“I said even if it was you—which it wasn’t—she should tell Piper to take it down because you’re supposed to be in rehab and Steve will pitch a fit.” She sighs. “But you know Summer. If it’s not about her, she won’t remember.”
I’m undone by my signature backless dress, and the fact that I had a terrible disguise, and what Piper told Summer. I feel like throwing up. And not because I’m tearing into a bag of Dunkin’ Donuts, Texas toast grilled cheese, and frosted crullers.
“Don’t cry!” Olivia says. “Even worst case, it’s not that bad. You get hauled back to rehab, it sucks, you cooperate with their BS, and you’re out.”
“Olivia, this wasn’t about rehab! I wasn’t in rehab. I lied.”
“What?”
“Just listen. Someone’s after me.”
“Says Miss Bears-False-Witness who lies to her best friend. Forget the Nick Holland show for a minute. Rehab is stupid, but what if you go back and gut it out?”
“Listen to me! Men with guns are after me, all right? I disappear or I’m dead.”
“What?”
“I saw them. I heard them. Please believe me.”
Liv says, “Sweet Jesus Christ!” And it’s not like she’s taking it in vain. It’s more like she’s trying to invoke divine intervention. “How did this happen? Stop wailing or someone’s going to notice you. Focus. If your hair’s still red, you need to get off that bus.”
But my hair isn’t still red, and I’ve been completely focused ever since Piper Carmichael said, “Come on, Nicky. I’m not that drunk.”
Absolute terror will do that for you.
I could hear blood flow past my ears inside my head, could hear myself breathing, could hear the words left foot, right foot, left, right, forming in my head. Directing me out through the front door and into the
night.
Picked up my daypack and kept going.
Walked straight into the ladies’ room at the first bar I came to.
Cut five inches off my hair. Buried it in the trash.
Standing there in my bra, I pulled a box of dye out of my pack. Squirted foam through my hair. Spread Vaseline around my hairline. Kept spraying room deodorizer to cut the smell, which could have made birds fall out of the sky.
All I needed was twenty minutes for the dye to set.
I got fifteen, then some girl started rattling the door. It was my night for hogging bathrooms.
I yelled, “Just a sec, y’all!” As if I thought if I said y’all enough, people would believe I was from Georgia. Or wherever I said I was from.
Dunked my head into the sink. Ran a weak stream of water over it.
“You taking a bath in there?”
I wrung out my hair. Wiped out the sink. Put on jeans and gym shoes.
Walked out the back door into the pitch-black alley.
Tossed my wadded-up dress and fake-leather sandals in a trash can.
Walked away.
You get spotted. You evaporate like dew on a leaf. The sun rises, the leaf dries off, and even if someone can tell you were there, you’re gone.
Ask me who I hitched a ride to San Antonio with. How I found the bus station there. How I bought a ticket on the next bus out. How I managed to calculate the exact number of calories in the junk food I kept shoving down my throat.
I don’t know.
The new plan was to alter the shape of my body—put on weight, and quick—before I hit Tallahassee. Because obviously, cheap disguises didn’t do the trick. It crossed my mind that with all the greasy frosted doughnut residue, the cream filling and oozing cheeseburger fat clogging my arteries, I’d probably keel over dead before anyone got me in his crosshairs anyway.
So I’m sitting in this bus heading east, eating a chalupa. Wide-awake. Jolted into a perfect state of clarity.
Then it gets worse.
Then it’s not that if I keep messing up, they’ll find me.
I’m found.
Then comes my first and only text. Luna says: Your biker’s back with some muscle. Two guys with shoulder holsters. Looking for you. They have pictures. I said I never heard of you. Get outta Dodge. I’ll box your stuff. Xo.
How to Disappear Page 6