How to Disappear

by Ann Redisch Stampler

  “We have to talk. Not about that.”

  “Talk to me now.”

  “Wait until we get there.”

  “Don’t order me around!”

  “Don’t start!”

  It’s like this all the way up into the mountains until we’re at the ridge of wherever we are—just us and the coyotes and whatever else they have around here that bites.

  56

  Jack

  After three hours of acting like an asshole because, apparently, it’s my nature, I’m driving along with no idea of where I should take her. I had it planned out. I knew the terrain. Now all I know is I can’t go back there because I already led the lowlifes who followed me west from Yucca Valley Correctional to what was supposed to be the crime scene.

  Where we go now is anyone’s guess, or, if I’m lucky, nobody’s guess.

  Normally, I’m good under pressure. But this is life-and-death and, right now, I wish I had a sliver of my father’s lethal grace.

  I pull off onto a gravel fire trail until the car is out of sight of the main road.

  She looks so upset, I start to stroke her hair, but she pulls away. She says, “You’ve been yelling at me all the way here. You have to say sorry like you mean it before you start making out with me.”

  “I was patting your head!”

  “I’m not your cocker spaniel!”

  “Do you have a compulsion to turn things to crap?”

  “No wonder your ex is your ex!”

  She storms out of the car and runs into the unfamiliar woods, kicking the door shut behind her. It’s first light, and she’s running toward the rising sun. I squint, but I can barely see her.

  I’m so pissed at her. I shout, “Wait up!”

  She shouts back at me, “How could I be with such a jerk?”

  I go running after her. This isn’t the way this was supposed to go down. I reach out—I’m about to grab her arm—but I wasn’t supposed to be overpowering her. There wasn’t supposed to be physical force and certainly not me yanking her arm out of its socket.

  I take her hand instead, my fingers clamped like the jaws of a wrench.

  “Don’t make me chase you down! Crap, Nicolette, I get that you—”

  Nicolette?

  What have I done?

  Her hand twists out of my hand. I go for her wrist as she breaks away from me. A sharp kick to my ankle, and she catapults off me. There’s a yell like the cry before you break a board in half in karate, that kiai, and she’s gone. She’s racing deeper into the woods, and I’m running after her.

  Every time my ankle comes down anything but straight on, where the terrain is uneven—every stride—I get a thrusting blade of pain. I want to kick her back. Then I have this feeling-like-shit moment because what kind of person wants to kick a girl who’s a foot shorter than he is?

  And then the deeper thrust of realization: what I was supposed to be doing to her went far beyond kicking her. And the fact that I’m chasing her through this desiccated landscape with a gun in my hand doesn’t look good for me. But it doesn’t seem as if she’s going to stop long enough for me to tell her that the gun was in case the guys who decked me followed us. She’s not going to slow down long enough for me to say it’s in my hand because I can’t even walk fast with it stuck in the back of my jeans, and I couldn’t exactly drop in on her wearing a holster for her to discover while making out.

  The girl can run. It’s the damned Cotter’s Mill Unified High School track team. Who knew she could sprint like this? When I catch sight of her, she’s bouncing off things like she grew up getting chased through the wilderness. She makes it over rocks and outcroppings of thistly bushes like Bambi—not Bambi in the headlights but surefooted Bambi.

  She’s running toward the precipice, toward the cliffside of the narrow stretch of woods between the road and oblivion. When she realizes, she dodges back into the woods.

  I’m waving this gun in front of me like a fool, like I was planning to shoot someone with it. This is something I’m not going to do.

  I start to tuck it back into my waistband, not paying enough attention. I go down, the thing in my outstretched hand, slamming a rock as I fall, and the thing fires. I fire it, and then my hand closes on nothing. I fire a gun, and I’m so startled, I don’t even hang on to it, don’t even brace my fall. I hear the thwack of my head against a tree trunk before I even feel it. My hands go to my head, without thinking, which you can’t do when there’s a gun involved. You can’t stop thinking ever (think, Jack) but especially not then.

  I hear my head cracking open against the tree, and the gunshot, and myself saying, “Shit!” all at once, although they couldn’t have happened at once.

  My forehead is wet, I’m bleeding from the temple, wet fingers, and Nicolette has the gun.

  She’s crouched in a good position, a two-handed stance, the gun in her right hand, right arm braced with the left, not crying, not shaking, not in any way weak or hesitant or anything you’d want a girl with a gun on you to be.

  “Did you shoot me?”

  “Are you serious?” Her voice is vibrating with indignation. “You bumped your head when you ran into a bush. It’s a boo-boo. When I shoot you, you’ll need more than a Band-Aid.”

  Then she lowers herself onto a rock, not losing her aim for a second.

  “It’s not what you think. Cat, it’s not. Put down the gun.”

  “Nicolette,” she says. “My name is Nicolette Holland. But you already knew that.”

  She doesn’t put the gun down.

  57

  Nicolette

  His name isn’t J.

  And he isn’t my boyfriend or my semi-boyfriend or my friend.

  He’s the angel of death. Maybe not death in general. Just my death. The opposite of my guardian angel.

  The opposite of what I thought.

  I’m staring at his face across his gun. I have to get this right the first time, because the kickback is going to throw me off. Also, the sight of him, his head coming apart in pieces like a clay pigeon, could be bad. I know it won’t happen like that, but I imagine his face breaking apart like a porcelain plate you drop on a tile floor.

  This doesn’t upset me as much as it should.

  Maybe answering the Sunday School question of whether, if it was either you or this other person you were deeply into until five minutes ago, you’d kill the other person.

  It isn’t down to him or me yet, but I’ll shoot before it gets there.

  So, yes.

  I don’t want him looking at me like this.

  Scared out of his mind but planning something.

  I don’t want him to see my face.

  I mean, I want him to see how much I want to kill him, but I don’t want him to think I’m weak because I haven’t pulled the trigger yet. I want him in the dark.

  My whole life is turning into a can-you-top-this fest of getting as angry as I thought I could possibly be. And then topping it.

  This angry.

  No, this angry.

  No, THIS ANGRY.

  I got therapy for this a long time ago, where the point was to figure out I wasn’t actually angry. No, Nicolette, you’re actually sad. Unbearably sad. Your mom is gone, and you’re left with this sweet Cuban stepfather you hardly even know.

  But face it, as unbearably sad as I am now that my freaking boyfriend wanted to take me to see a romantic sunrise where he was going to freaking shoot me, the main thing is anger. Righteous anger.

  Even if I deserved everything he planned to do to me, it wasn’t supposed to be him.

  I’m this angry, and I’m not going down.

  He is. Whoever he is.

  I order him to close his eyes.

  He just keeps watching me.

  “Close your eyes!”

  He says, “I can explain.”

  I say, “Shut the fuck up!”

  58

  Jack

  I shut the fuck up because when the person with the gun tells you to do t
hat, you do. We sit there as the sun gets hotter and starts to fry me, long enough for me to sweat through my flannel shirt, just this side of forever. The gun is trained on me. She doesn’t look away from me for a second, the whole time glaring at me.

  And I’m not my father’s son as much as I was afraid I was because it’s taking a lot of effort not to piss myself.

  I need to be thinking about ways out of here as I tense and untense my muscles, preparing to flee or lunge. I ought to be calculating what to do tonight—if I last that long—when it’s so dark, she can’t see me unless she comes so close that I can overpower her. But I’m just staring at her staring at me.

  I can’t tell if she’s talking herself into shooting me or out of it—or if I’m already dead. I wonder if the gun got messed up bouncing across the rock, and if she knows how to shoot it. But I look at her stance, the way she’s crouched, the way she’s got the gun braced, and I know she knows what she’s doing.

  She says, “Eyes closed!” She sounds ferocious.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Close them!”

  I do, but not completely—I can still see a sliver of light and underbrush.

  She says, “Keep your hands on your head!”

  I sit there, frozen, not wanting to spook her. I keep trying to look at her through the slit between my eyelids, remembering the part of the equation I’d rather not remember—Connie Marino with her throat cut.

  I make an inventory of the parts of my body that don’t hurt, in case I need them later: my left leg, my hands, my right arm up to the elbow.

  She says, “How were you planning to do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Shoot me? Push me over the edge? Shoot me and then push me over the edge?”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Were you going to rape me first?”

  “You think I’d rape you?” I rub my left shoulder, which is starting to throb.

  “Keep your hands on your head! Just if you value them.”

  “You’re going to shoot up my hands?” I can’t stop marveling at the strangeness of this conversation, how fast everything tanked.

  “I grew up in Cotter’s Mill, Ohio, asshat. I know the dates of hunting season. I can shoot a Canada goose out of the sky and gut it.”

  “Really?” I don’t know why I’m even asking. Skills with a knife is one talent I’ve always known she had. I just didn’t know how she acquired it.

  She does one of her little sighs. “How hard could it be to gut a goose? I’ve watched enough times.” She’s using that tone she gets when she’s admitting to something. How cute I thought it was—not so cute now. “Here’s the thing, J, or whatever your name is. I can shoot up any part of you I feel like shooting up. I have a pretty good idea of where I’ll start.”

  I don’t like where I think she’s looking. “Cat—”

  “Nicolette. And I could blow the slider off your zipper at twenty-five yards.”

  The fact that she says twenty-five yards, not some other number, but exactly twenty-five, makes her a target shooter. Shit. I’ve been disarmed by a cute, cheerleading target shooter. Shit, shit, shit.

  “I didn’t mean to insult you. Sorry. I didn’t realize you were—I’m sorry.”

  “Do you think I care how sorry you are?” she shouts, rising, approaching. I’m so fucked. “Do you think I believe anything you say? All I care about is how to get you tied up in the car without taking this gun off you so I can turn you in.”

  “Please don’t do that.”

  “Why not?” she shouts. “Do the police already know about you? Am I just one in a string of girls you hooked up with and threw off cliffs?”

  My head hurts, my shoulder hurts, and I think I’m a lot closer to getting shot than I was five minutes ago.

  She screams, “Answer me!”

  “No! Cat. And I swear on my father’s grave, there was a change of plan. I was trying to save you.”

  “I don’t believe you! And don’t call me Cat.”

  “Okay. I don’t see why you should believe me. But the hitch with turning me in is you’ll have to turn yourself in.” There’s silence from the armed girl. “Think about it. Even if you get off in the end, do you want to spend the next decade on death row in Ohio?”

  In a gritty voice, she says, “Open your eyes.”

  She’s just a couple of yards away now, still aiming at me, and even if her reflexes were below average, if I took a run at her, I’d have a hole in my gut.

  “What do you think you know?” she says.

  Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. I tell her the truth, which is short and pretty simple, or I draw it out all day until it’s dark and I can take her: maybe.

  I say, “Connie Marino.” She’s stone-faced. “I know what you did to her, how you stabbed her.” I sound like a bad guy on TV, like the bozos in my apartment, like the guy who pulls you out of the story because he needs acting lessons. I try again, “She shouldn’t be dead.”

  “Somebody told you I stabbed someone?”

  “Shit. Do you even know who Connie Marino is?”

  Her face is screaming before anything comes out of her mouth. “I don’t know who you are!” She aims down at me. “And I didn’t stab anybody! So I won’t be on death row anytime soon.” She sighs. “Unless I shoot you.”

  Her arms look so muscular from this angle, and so at ease with that gun. She probably could take down a duck in flight. Or bag a guy.

  My gut is a rock, rolling into my throat, defying gravity and my will.

  She doesn’t have a clue. I’ve brought the wrong girl to ground.

  Or maybe the point was for me to take out an innocent, know-nothing girl, hiding for reasons I might never know if she takes me out before I ask her.

  “I’m going to throw up. Don’t shoot me.” I barely finish because I’m puking into a bush, gagging and wiping my mouth, heaving some more. I’m going to be a vomit-crusted carcass, devoured by cougars and maggots in the Sierras.

  “You must think I’m an idiot,” she says. “You find me, you con me, and I just leap into your car. Oh, J, I’ve never felt this way before. Oh, J, do you want to kill me now or later?”

  “It wasn’t like that. I swear.”

  “On the imaginary grave of your undead dad?”

  “I’m going to toss you my phone, all right? Google him.”

  “You think I’m going to let you pitch your phone at my head? I’m going to take my eyes off you to play Candy Crush? You must think I’m so stupid. Oh, J, why don’t I take off my bra so you can strangle me with it?”

  “Please, baby, don’t—”

  “I’m not your baby! Put your hands back on your head. What kind of moron gets turned on by a guy who’s there to kill her? I don’t exactly trust my instincts right now. I have such bad impulse control.” She sighs. “Which is not great for you.”

  Here we have a girl who would tear my heart out with her bare hands if she could do it without giving up her weapon.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She just glares. “So what should I call you?”

  “Asshat works.”

  “I mean it! What’s your name? And when I look in your wallet, that better be your name.”

  “Jack. It’s in the pocket of my rucksack. My license. The one that’s in my wallet says I’m twenty-one, and it says ‘Gerhard Rheingold.’ ”

  “Gerhard Rheingold?”

  “My friend’s older brother is Gerhard, all right? My name is Jack.”

  She’s resting her hands on a rock, aiming low. “J wasn’t very imaginative.”

  “I’m not that good at this.” This isn’t what I’d intended to say, but once it’s out there, it sounds true. “I started to say ‘Jack,’ and I was stuck with the J sound. Remember in the park?”

  She hisses, “I remember Every. Single. Second. I thought you were the one good thing in what you were trying to turn into my very short life.”

  There’s a silence, and then in a flat vo
ice she says, “How much was he paying you, anyway? What was I worth dead?”

  “It wasn’t for money. I have a shit ton of money from the not-undead dad.”

  “What did he pay you? Or is this your hobby? Hunting girls for fun because you’re so rich and macho?”

  “My name is Jack Manx. My dad was Art Manx. Is this ringing any bells?”

  “I don’t care who your dad is. I hate you!”

  “Will you let me explain? I have a brother in prison in Nevada, okay? He’s been locked up off and on since he was fourteen. He’s a bad guy.”

  “You’re the good guy?”

  We’ve come a long way from her running her finger along the scar and getting me—me telling her things I’ve never told anybody else—to this. It occurs to me that I don’t want her to hate me, and not just because she has the gun. “My brother, he said…” How do I even say this to her? “He told me you cut somebody’s throat. And you knew some things this thug Karl Yeager didn’t want you walking around knowing.”

  Her face keeps vacillating between skepticism and pure horror. “So you’re attracted to girls who kill people and know things about thugs? I’m so not buying this.”

  “But you didn’t do it.”

  “You didn’t know that! Maybe I’m a really good actress and a total liar. Maybe I . . . you know . . . cut her throat, and now I’m going to cut your throat. Ha!”

  Damn fucking Don.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. My brother said you did, and some bad things were going to happen if I didn’t find you first.” Finally, her hand is shaking. “But I wasn’t going to do it! I was starting to tell you so we could fake it. People would think you were dead. You could get away.”

  “There are no people.” She’s screaming and holding the gun out with rigid arms, waving it at me. “The only person I have to worry about is you.”

  “Nicolette, listen to me. Two guys came to my apartment last night. Do you see the side of my neck? I’m going to pull down on my shirt, don’t freak—”

  “Don’t patronize me!”

  “That’s why it had to be tonight.”

  “Save your story with your imaginary bad guys! How much am I worth to Steve dead?”