How to Disappear

by Ann Redisch Stampler

  “Is this a quiz?”

  “Seriously? Who goes to a party looking for suicidal poets?” She grins. “Unless that’s your type. Ladies who cry a lot?”

  Apart from the sick, intrusive flashes of me with my hands circling her neck just above the collarbone, it’s possible that she’s my type.

  Scarlett, for all her put-downs, for all the times she came on to Dan Barrons whenever she was pissed at me, at least didn’t kill people. But after spending three hours with this girl, I like her better than Scarlett. I like that she doesn’t take her imaginary self that seriously. I want to off-road with her and Calvin and Monica—despite my reservations about introducing my friends to a girl who could be hazardous to their health. I want to steer into hairpin turns with her thrown against me, riding shotgun. I’m betting she likes to go fast over rocky terrain.

  While I’m wondering if I’m genetically impaired in a different way than I’ve thought all along—if the genes I should worry about aren’t my father’s, but my mother’s (the woman who spent two decades with my father, knowing what he was, but loved him anyway)—Nicolette AKA Cat is polishing off the whole mixing bowl of sundae, and smiling at me between bites. It’s that lopsided, endearing, unbearably sexy smile.

  I want to rip her clothes off.

  32

  Cat

  Cat is so trampy! She goes to his apartment and starts talking about condoms? Makes fun of abstinence. Plus, factoids about dead poets. Really? Like she didn’t notice they were dead and it was tragic?

  At least I got out of there without unbuttoning anything.

  But it was as if one of those tiny red Disney cartoon devils—the ones that hover over your shoulder encouraging you to do the wrong thing—was going, Kiss him, kiss him, kiss him. Until it was so loud I had to do it.

  Fast, no tongue, antiseptic. Then I’m out the door so fast, it’s like the bad-kiss cops are chasing me.

  J’s the one who’s chasing me, going, “Hey!”

  I go faster. So does he.

  “Hey!” This guy needs to learn one or two things about picking up girls. But not from me.

  “Hey! There are rules against kissing and running.”

  He’s caught up, and he’s touching my arm for good measure.

  “Says who? The sleazy guys’ handbook?”

  He breaks out laughing. “Right under the section about aftershave.”

  “I hate aftershave!” Something Cat and I agree on. “Please stop following me.”

  “You’re not supposed to flirt with guys you’re trying to ditch,” he says. “Didn’t one of your many older sisters tell you that?”

  I want to slap myself. Then him.

  Acting like I act in real life when buzzed, only worse! Real life being my old life. The one where guys following me wasn’t cause for alarm. Possibly should have been, but wasn’t. (Definitely should have been. But wasn’t.)

  What am I doing?

  It’s not that hard to break it down. I could make a diagram of how my heart is divided into empty sections labeled with things I can’t have anymore.

  The address of the home I can never go back to.

  An aerial view of the trail where I run through the woods and along the lakeshore with (what used to be) home right at the end of it.

  A schedule of cheer practice.

  A road map from Cotter’s Mill, Ohio, to Ann Arbor, Michigan.

  Then there’s the place right in the middle, full of loneliness and longing, where I’m not allowed to put anyone. There are rules of survival for runners like me. Human entanglements aren’t exactly encouraged. Desire for a normal friend, for a normal conversation with a normal boy, for a kiss, has to be squashed.

  But how normal is it that the scared-out-of-her-mind girl who spends all her time with an elderly demented person would entertain one or two thoughts about the hot, not-demented boy who was thrown into her path by Fate?

  And then removed his shirt.

  33

  Jack

  We’re standing on the sidewalk, both of us trying to look inconspicuous.

  She says, “I’m going home. Do not follow me. If you follow me, I’ll yell for the police.”

  No, you won’t.

  I say, “Understood. But you don’t have a phone. How will I find you?”

  I’ll follow you, and this time I won’t lose you.

  “You’re extremely persistent. I’m not the first person to notice this, right?”

  The guy I used to be would be persistently figuring out how to get the hell out of shoving this girl in front of a moving car without ending up with a dead family. He wouldn’t be wondering how best to position himself to kiss her back, and how soon he could get to the base of her neck, to that little hollow she keeps touching with her fingertips.

  He wouldn’t be chasing her down the street, uncertain about whether this is moving toward sex or death.

  Fuck all.

  Meeting her face-to-face in a place I didn’t control was an unlucky accident, but was I supposed to leave that little girl bleeding on the ground? Who would have thought Nicolette Holland would be a steps-up-in-emergencies kind of girl? I wasn’t prepared for her holding that kid’s hand, spilling milk of human kindness all over the ground six inches from me, where I could smell her hair and get turned on while waiting for paramedics.

  I was supposed to be repulsed.

  Instead, I’m thinking, Don has to be wrong. She couldn’t have done this. She’s too normal to have done this. She’s too cute; I like her too much; I could tell.

  I look at her standing in front of me. There’s no one else on the street.

  I run my hand across her forehead, pushing the fake-brown bangs out of her eyes. Then I kiss her back. It starts out tame. It doesn’t end that way. I cradle the back of her head in my hands, with only a brief thought of snapping her neck. Her hands are in the small of my back, and her mouth tastes like chocolate. When I come up for air, she reaches up and takes hold of the back of my head and pulls me back in. I kiss her eyelids and her ear, and I swear she shudders, like in a porno, only more believable. Scarlett didn’t shudder.

  If there were some way to pick her up and haul her back to the apartment without courting arrest, I could add that to my list of depraved aspirations.

  “Fine!” She makes the word fine sound like swearing. “Tomorrow. Are you happy?”

  I’m happy, but Don isn’t.

  The respite between his phone calls has diminished to the point that I anticipate by sundown, there’ll be one long continuous ring. I’d turn off the sound, but I can’t stop listening for it, a regular reminder of how messed up this is.

  I have no plan to answer. For once in my life, I have no plan—not even the old plan to hold off figuring out what to do until I found her. Because I have found her, and the brainstorm that was supposed to strike when she was within grabbing range is nowhere on the weather map.

  What happens next?

  Don’s phone calls come in all night, pulling me half out of sleep like a recurring nightmare that won’t loosen its grip. It used to be, I was jolted out of sleep by flashes of my father’s body, making out his shape in the dark garage, realizing why he was crumpled in that shape over and over until my mother forced me into therapy to “figure it all out.” No way in hell was I going to let anyone else figure it out. I knew what I did; that was enough.

  At four a.m., I wake up with an image of Nicolette lying crumpled up at my feet. I reach over and answer the phone.

  Don says, “Don’t you ever hang up on me.”

  “Or what?”

  Provoking Don is a dangerous hobby, but it’s late; I cut myself some slack.

  “You don’t want to find out. Did you get her back? This is taking too long.”

  Lying to Don comes so naturally, it doesn’t feel like lying. “There are three hundred twenty million people in the US. How long is it supposed to take to find one of them who doesn’t want to be found?”

  “How long does it
take to walk from the laundry room to Mom’s bedroom?”

  I’m awake, fighting off the kind of unwanted emotion that makes you put your fist through walls if you don’t lock your arms against your sides. It would be easier if what could happen in the four seconds it takes to get from the laundry room to that bedroom didn’t come to me so easily—if a parent with his throat cut wasn’t already in my mental photo album.

  “Don’t push it. Mom and I could disappear and leave you behind for Yeager to carve up like that.”

  This shuts him up even though we both know she’d never do it. She’d never leave Don. We both know I’ve been so indoctrinated to take care of him that I took the envelope, and at some point I’m going to have to do something.

  Don says, “Don’t crap your pants, but you don’t have much longer.”

  “Because you’re God, and you’ll end the world if I don’t bow down faster?”

  “Because Yeager is God, and you don’t want to piss him off.” This has the ring of absolute truth.

  “Shit. How much time do I have?”

  I’m not the only one who knows how to use silence for intimidation.

  “How much time, Don?”

  He pauses for so long, I’m afraid my cell will cut out before he gets to the point. “Yeager’s getting impatient. That’s all I know.”

  The chance I’m falling back to sleep approaches zip.

  34

  Cat

  So great, I told him where I live.

  Semi-safe solitary life as wily fugitive versus life of mad kissing.

  Score one for kissing.

  There’s no point in changing out of a bad-looking outfit to promote the kissing, though. All I have are bad-looking outfits.

  Reminders of reality.

  The reality in which the safety of bad, brown outfits trumps romance. The one in which loneliness trumps good decisions, and bad impulses trump everything.

  I could be packed and gone before he got here.

  Race out the door.

  Slip down the street.

  Duck down alleys and through parking lots.

  There are clumps of trees and huge flowering bushes that could shelter a motionless person until it was pitch-black outside.

  I could be on a bus out of town with bronzed skin and pink-rimmed glasses in an hour. Less if I pushed it. Or if I hitched.

  And then he’d look for me.

  Great.

  How romantic and deadly would that be? If he made noise about the missing girl with the bad wardrobe.

  The noise he’s making is banging the knocker on my door.

  I just about flatline. Press myself against the wall between the bed and the dinky refrigerator. Know this is bad. Do it anyway.

  Unchain the chains. Unbolt the bolt. Pull the key out of the deadbolt.

  “Are we expecting a crime wave?” He looks so much larger in my doorway than in his. “Hey, I brought you doughnut holes.”

  He steps in over the threshold. Holding out a paper bag as if he gave it a great deal of thought and determined that the perfect gift for me is junk food that gives the sack it comes in grease spots.

  What kind of normal girl is happy when a guy brings her this stuff?

  “Really?” His face. I go, “No, J! I love this stuff.” Happy face. “This isn’t a comment on the size of my butt, right?”

  “If I’m remembering correctly, I’ve never seen your butt.”

  Perfect. I’ve introduced body parts into the conversation.

  Cat’s so forward!

  It wasn’t this awkward at his place. Then again, the bed was in another room at his place, and we weren’t sitting on the edge of it.

  He picks up a doughnut hole and gazes at it. “Are these gross? Should I try again? I could run to Food 4 Less and get something else.”

  “Doughnut hole. Now.”

  He spreads a dishtowel on the bed and pours out the doughnut holes. Powdered sugar billows up around the mound of them. Three minutes later, when we’re both in the throes of a sugar rush, he leans across the dwindling doughnut hole mountain and aims for my sugarcoated mouth.

  My hands are in his hair. I’m holding his face in my hands, prolonging this kiss. I am so suddenly aware of the several layers of cloth between my breasts and his chest. When he’s kissing me, when he’s going after every molecule of sweetness on my lips, there’s a total eclipse of reason. I want more than I can have.

  Then he starts to lift my T-shirt over my head from the bottom like he means it.

  “Don’t.” This might be the most conflicted syllable ever spoken by a girl on a bed.

  Score one for impulse control.

  I say, “No, because if we do, you know . . .”

  All I want is for him to keep kissing me and stop undressing me.

  “I know you better than you think.”

  Which is unnerving. But it’s just master-of-the-universe boy crap. It’s not like I’ve never met a boy before.

  Steve, explaining why I was supposed to keep my legs crossed, basically said I had something they wanted. If I didn’t give it to them, they’d follow me down the street like a pack of hungry dogs. Which proved more or less correct. (Leaving out the part where girls who hand out doggie treats have even bigger packs following them around. Which I guess he hoped I wouldn’t notice.)

  I can’t make out with this guy while I think about Steve trying to get me to behave.

  I say, “Leave my clothes on me.” It comes out sharper than intended.

  J pulls back. Holds up his hands like I’m arresting him.

  Then I think, What kind of college girl keeps her shirt on? Either way I go, this blows south very fast. I say, “Religious zealots. Remember? In the trailer. Homeschool. Fire and brimstone.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to burn in hell.” He might not be taking me that seriously.

  “Next time you want to get it on with someone, try not to make fun of her.”

  He’s sitting so he isn’t even touching me. “I understand the word no. Not that I’ve heard it before, but I get it.”

  “You’re so full of yourself! Did anybody ever tell you that?”

  “So we can assume the zealots beat the sense of humor out of you?”

  The only thing in reach is a handful of doughnut holes. Which I throw at him.

  He pretends he doesn’t like this and returns to kissing. Maybe just to distract me. I feel it in places I don’t want to be feeling.

  Not now.

  Not when I’m hiding.

  Not when I have to be on top of my game and not under some guy who doesn’t even know my real name.

  35

  Jack

  Doughnut holes might have been the wrong thing to bring. She eats them, but then she wants to know if I go out with a lot of girls, the message clear that guys who go out with lots of girls know enough not to bring doughnuts. I tell her the truth, maybe because no matter how this goes, it’s not destined to be a lasting relationship where things you said at the beginning come back to bite you later.

  I say, “There was one long thing, not much else.”

  “When did it end? It did end, right?”

  “Six weeks ago. Something like that.”

  She screws up her face. “Was she an evil bitch?”

  “No.”

  She tosses a doughnut hole at my face, presumably aiming for my mouth.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’m not looking for touchy-feely. I’m just not helping you two-time anybody while we have a good time.”

  “Do people say ‘two-time’ this century?”

  “They should.”

  I have my hands on her shoulders, and all I want to do is kiss her and anything else she’ll go along with. I slip my hands under her big shirt, fingers against her skin, which is so soft, softer than you’d expect, softer than Scarlett.

  She says, “Uh. Not that good a time.”

  This is when my phone vibrates again. Don has a seemingly endless supply of cell phone min
utes and an unerring ability to call when I least want to hear from him. She’s pressed against me, so she feels the phone’s vibration.

  “Speak of the devil,” she says. “Is this her? And if it is, you’d better lie because I’ll hand you your ass tied up in ribbons.”

  “You’ll hand me my six-foot ass with your hundred-pound-girl hands?”

  “Does your girlfriend like it when the six-foot ass tells sexist jokes?” She sighs. “Not that you can’t see tons of other girls. It’s not like we’re together or anything. Just not one cheated-on one.”

  “No girlfriend.”

  I take her hand, and this time she doesn’t pull away from me. The phone starts buzzing again, and I tighten my grip. There has to be some other way out of this damn yellow wood, a shortcut I can find before Yeager finds it for me.

  Somewhere in this confusion, there’s a workable syllogism.

  Cat is girl; I like Cat; therefore, I don’t dispose of Cat?

  Then I think, Hurray for me; I only get rid of girls I don’t like. What a stand-up guy. I only get rid of girls I don’t like who cut the throats of people I do like. And I only do that when my pathologically dishonest brother says my mom dies if the girl doesn’t.

  Girl-whose-pants-he’s-trying-to-get-into versus mom-he’d-prefer-not-to-see-burned, and the guy stands there lusting after the girl in a converted garage, waffling about whether he’s going to answer the phone and deal with his shit brother. What a sick story that makes.

  She says, “Did I just do something?”

  “You want to finish eating carbs and go for a run?”

  “Those are my choices? Let you take my shirt off me or run around the block? Very romantic.”

  “I saw you running in the park. You run.”

  She grins. “I hope you’re not the competitive type because I’m going to run circles around you.” She stretches out her legs straight in front of her, points her toes, and bends until she’s folded on herself.

  “A little overconfident, are we?” I say as she looks up to see if I noticed how limber she is. I noticed. “You want to go right now?”