Watch Me Disappear

by Janelle Brown

  “OK, Dad, I’ll let it go,” she whispers, because she knows that’s what he wants most to hear.

  She lets him think that he’s won. But he hasn’t. She’s already memorized the address in Santa Cruz.

  —

  In the morning, she arrives at school early and finds a senior girl trying to shove a flyer through the ventilation slits in her locker. The girl sees her coming and turns to greet her.

  “Olive? Hi, I’m Dominique,” she says.

  “I know who you are,” Olive says, unexpectedly shy. She’s noticed Dominique before; how could she not? Dominique has hair an implausible shade of red that is shaved short on one side and falls across her cheek in choppy waves on the other. Her ears are studded with inky black buttons and her lipstick is purple and she has a tattoo of a blue star visible on her collarbone under her uniform. A walking rainbow. She’s the kind of girl who surfs easily through the halls, riding each passing swell of girls, never appearing to lose her balance. She is everything Olive is not.

  Dominique shoves the flyer at Olive, who takes it out of reflex. She reads it as Dominique looks on, apparently quite pleased with herself.

  CLAREMONT QUEER CLUB MEETING THIS FRIDAY AT 4 PM.

  FREE DONUTS.

  HOT GURL ON GIRL ACTION.

  OPEN 2 ALL!

  How did she know? Is it really that obvious already? Olive looks questioningly at Dominique, who smiles wider. “I’m the club president. Loud and proud, right?” Olive isn’t sure what to say. Dominique’s smile starts to fade. “Oh, shit. You’re not out yet? I thought…” She shrugs. “Sorry. Someone told me something and I just assumed.”

  Natalie told. Stung, Olive shoves the flyer into her backpack. “Thanks. I’ll think about it,” she says.

  Dominique swings the hair out of her eye with a practiced flip of her head. “At your own pace. We’ll be here when you’re ready.” She squeezes Olive’s arm and then disappears off down the hall.

  Olive slowly gathers her books from her locker. The hall is filling with Girls, the humidity rising; she can smell the sharp scent of her own sweat through the layers of wool and cheap uniform polyester. Her head spins. She needs to talk to Natalie.

  She races toward first-period German, ping-ponging dizzily through clusters of girls. Is everyone staring at her, or is she imagining that? She doesn’t like this feeling at all: like she’s been trapped in a terrarium, labeled and put on display. Again. (It was bad enough being Poor Olive Whose Mom Died in a Tragic Accident, now she has to shoulder Olive the Closeted Lesbian, too?) What if she’s got the wrong label? What if she has to stay there forever? Why do people always seem to feel like they know more about her than she knows about herself?

  “Olive!” Someone is calling her name from the opposite end of the hall. She spins around just in time to see Mrs. Santiago, the school counselor, descending on her from the direction of the administrative offices, knit layers flapping like the wings of a colossal bird. One of those wings sweeps Olive out of the stream of girls and to the edge of the hallway, beside the trophy case. Olive is trapped.

  “I already took my medicine today,” she says quickly. She digs in her backpack, pulling out the bottle of allergy pills, and waggles it in the air. “I swear. You can count.”

  Santiago shakes her head. “That’s not it. I’m worried about you. I’m hearing things about your problematic attendance record.” Her breath in Olive’s face smells like Altoids. “Can you tell me what’s been going on, Olive?”

  Olive gazes deep into the trophy case, hoping it will yield answers. 2012 Indoor Lacrosse Champions. Third Place JSA State League. CIF NorCal Girl’s League Golf 2004. “Family crisis?” she tries.

  Santiago shakes her head sadly, as if Olive’s problems pain her deeply. “I can’t help you if you won’t try to help yourself.”

  Over Santiago’s shoulder, Olive sees Natalie walking by, flanked by Ming and Tracy. Ming and Tracy are staring straight at Olive, baldly curious. Between them, Natalie resolutely refuses to look up, her gaze trained on the wooden floor of the hallway.

  Olive feels sick to her stomach.

  “Olive? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I understand,” Olive says quietly.

  Santiago peers at her face, her voice soft. “Olive, I’d really like to set up a session with you.”

  Olive can’t imagine anything she wants less at this minute than to try to explain herself to the school counselor. “I swear, I’m OK. It was an anomaly. I promise it won’t happen again,” she says. Then, aware of what Santiago most wants to hear: “And my dad is already sending me to a therapist. I’m just, you know, learning how to process my grief.”

  Santiago sighs and sweeps a wing of taupe linen across Olive’s back, steering her toward her classroom. “Well, that’s great, Olive,” she says. “Remember, I’m always here for you.”

  And she pads off down the hall, patting backs and squeezing shoulders as she passes. Olive hesitates outside first-period German, peering at the roiling mass in the overheated classroom, a bevy of girls frantically getting in their last Instagram posts before the final bell rings. Her own desk, next to Natalie’s, sits empty.

  Natalie is looking down at her phone, her curly hair hanging limply around her flushed cheeks. Olive wonders whom Natalie is texting. It clearly isn’t her.

  Olive pivots on her heel. She dashes back down the hall, makes a right at the trophy case, and takes a shortcut through the silent auditorium, her sneakers squeaking on the freshly waxed floor. Then it’s out to the parking lot, where the dusty Subaru sits wedged between two late-model BMWs, looking like a forlorn goldfish stranded in a tank full of exotic koi.

  There’s only one place left to go.

  —

  It’s a clear day in Berkeley, but by the time Olive gets to the other side of the bay, the sky is socked in with gray cloud cover. She drives south and west on 280, getting stuck for a time in Silicon Valley commuter traffic near San Jose; and then she breaks free and she’s winding over the mountains toward the coast. A fine mist hangs low between the pines, the road slick with damp. Her tires skate along the hairpin curves. She stays in the slow lane, petrified, as trucks whizz past so close that they rattle her car.

  And then she’s finally out on the other side of the mountain, accelerating down the hill, turning onto Highway 1. The ocean opens up before her, a blanket of gray rising to blend with the clouds. She knows exactly where she is. Some force keeps bringing her back here, and surely there’s a reason for that.

  The GPS directs her south, though, away from the butterfly beach, toward the outskirts of Santa Cruz. She winds slowly through a scrubby neighborhood of cottages with unfenced yards, their battered grass creeping out to meet the crumbling asphalt of the road. Station wagons parked on meridians, the salt air chewing holes in the finish of their paint. Faded beach towels slung over porch railings.

  Only now does she grow aware of the kick of her racing heart. The car windows are fogging up from the heat of her breath. She realizes that she’s in danger of hyperventilating. This is it.

  “Almost there.”

  Olive looks to her right, to the source of this voice. Her mother sits in the passenger seat, her feet kicked up on the console, warming her bare toes against the vent of the heater. She’s wearing a fleece sweatshirt and a woolly cap pulled down over her forehead. A thick braid dangles along the side of her neck.

  The car veers in the roadway as Olive stares. Billie raises an eyebrow, then lifts a foot off the vent and uses her toe to point ahead, through the windshield. “Eyes on the road, Bean. Don’t kill us now.”

  Olive jerks around and corrects course just in time to avoid sideswiping an RV parked by the side of the road. When she looks back, her mother is gone.

  And then the GPS on her phone informs her that she’s reached her destination. 830 Madeo St. Olive slows to a stop. She peers through the condensation on the windshield, sees that she’s parked in front of a bottle-green bunga
low, its paint weathered and peeling, sheltered by a giant oak tree. A faded ornamental flag with a smiling orca hangs over the living room window. The patch of grass in front of the house is cluttered with bicycles and rusting lawn chairs and surfboards still wet from the sea.

  She feels her bladder pressing heavily on her groin and realizes she’s in danger of peeing her pants.

  She gets out of the car and walks up to the front door of the bungalow. There’s a line of flip-flops, male and female, jumbled in a pile beside the bungalow’s screen door. A fraying hammock, strung between the house and the trunk of the oak tree, sways heavily in the breeze.

  She raises a hand to knock and hesitates. Music blasts from inside the bungalow. Cat Stevens, live in concert. There’ll never be another you. She remembers her mother sitting in the driver’s seat of the Subaru, banging her fingers on the steering wheel in time to this song. There’s going to be another story.

  (Why is she so scared of knocking?)

  Olive knocks.

  Nothing happens.

  She knocks again, louder this time. And then she rings the bell, but it seems to be broken; or maybe she just can’t hear it over the music. She presses it again, then again and again and again, bearing down so hard that the joint of her thumb begins to protest.

  She steps back from the door and then screams at the top of her lungs: “MOM!”

  The music stops so abruptly that Olive can hear her own voice echoing through the cottage. Footsteps thump through the house and then the front door is yanked open.

  Olive finds herself staring into the eyes of her mother.

  BY THE TIME JONATHAN wakes up on Tuesday morning, it’s almost eight o’clock. He lies in bed, listening to the garbage trucks rattling down the street. Today you begin again, he thinks. It’s time to start making plans. Maybe he’ll meet with a headhunter and see what jobs are available for someone with his qualifications. Maybe he’ll call up some of his old journalism contacts and see if he can rustle up some freelance work. Maybe he’ll start writing a new memoir, something utterly unrelated to Billie—travel back further in time, say, and write about Jenny.

  Then again, maybe he should take advantage of the life insurance money that is coming his way and take a little more time to figure out what’s next. He imagines the world opening up before him, imagines himself shedding the brittle carapace of forty-three years of single-minded focus and trying on something completely new. He could launch a dot-com. Learn a new language. Take up CrossFit. Plan an extended vacation, just him and Olive: some bonding time before Harmony moves in.

  Take that, Billie, he thinks. We’re going to be just fine without you.

  He wanders down to the kitchen and discovers that Olive has left a pot of coffee for him. A sign of reconciliation? The Subaru isn’t in the driveway; she’s already left for school. He sits at the kitchen table, flipping methodically through the newspaper, determined to read every word of every article. Because why not.

  At half past eight, the home phone rings.

  “Jonathan?” The taut voice on the other end of the line belongs to Vice Principal Gillespie, and immediately his upbeat mood is shattered.

  “Yes,” he says flatly.

  “Olive came to school this morning and then left campus again without permission.”

  He stalls for time as he dashes up the stairs: “Are you sure?” He pushes open the door to Olive’s room and peers in, just to check. Cascades of books lie upended on every surface. Her bed is unmade, the sheets dragged off the bed and halfway across the room, tangling with a pair of boots and some striped tights. An opened bag of barbecue Kettle Chips lies abandoned in the middle of the rug, regurgitating orange crumbs across the floor.

  Catsby is curled up on Olive’s pillow, keeping guard over the chaos. The cat jumps to his feet and leisurely picks his way through the mess, then slips past Jonathan and dashes down the stairs.

  “She cut class yesterday, too, were you aware of that?” Gillespie says.

  He thinks of Olive sitting in the courtroom behind him. I should have written her a note to take to school today. “Actually, yes. I can explain that one, I was with her—”

  “Which makes this the fourth time in two weeks that she’s been truant, not including the sick day she took last Friday.” Ms. Gillespie’s voice is as crisp and tart as a Granny Smith. “Honestly, Jonathan, because of your family circumstances, I’ve already given her more leniency than most girls would get, but this, in combination with your late tuition payment…”

  “I can give you partial tuition now,” he says quickly, wondering if Marcus’s check has cleared the bank yet. “And I’ll have the rest shortly.”

  She hesitates. “The thing is, Jonathan, I’m not sure that Olive wants to be at Claremont anymore. She doesn’t seem happy, her grades are falling, and her teachers tell me she’s struggling with her friendships. She’s resisting our efforts to try to help her and refuses to meet with the school counselor. I’m wondering if perhaps a change might benefit her.”

  “Look, don’t do anything yet, OK? We’ve had a lot going on lately, as I’m sure you’re aware. Why don’t we set up a meeting, all three of us, to discuss it?”

  Gillespie sighs. “Fine. She’s suspended for the rest of the week. We’ll discuss this further when she returns on Monday.”

  Where the hell is Olive? he wonders as he hangs up and races out to his car. He texts her as he pulls out of the driveway, typing in furious all-caps: SCHOOL CALLED WHERE ARE YOU? CALL ME NOW!! Steering with one hand, eyes on his phone, he knocks over one of the garbage cans out by the curb and sends its contents flying across his lawn. Leftover pad Thai noodles glue themselves to the top of his hood. It looks like someone vomited on his Prius. He feels like vomiting, too. What are you trying to pull now, Olive?

  He drives through the streets of Berkeley, the noodles on his hood collecting gnats and dust, his eyes peeled for a glimpse of the Subaru. He tries the Cheese Board first; they bake pletzels on Tuesdays, and Olive loves their pletzels. But she’s not there. Maybe she’s at a coffee shop: the original Peet’s, Philz, the Elmwood Café? No, no, and no. Mrs. Dalloway’s bookstore, Amoeba Music? It’s too early; both are closed.

  He makes it to the Berkeley library just after it opens, and jogs up to the reading room; but even before he scans the tables, he knows that it’s pointless because Olive’s car wasn’t parked in the library’s lot. The reading room is cold and empty and accusingly silent. A solitary librarian watches, baffled, as he races around, checking between the stacks to be sure. Nothing.

  He is at a loss. Where else would she go? Why is she such a mystery to him? How can he pull her back to him, how can he climb inside her mind and untangle its cryptic contents? What does his daughter care about these days?

  Natalie, he realizes. Maybe they’re together.

  He drives back home. From the drawer in the kitchen, he digs out a dog-eared Claremont school directory and thumbs through it until he finds Natalie’s contact information. He calls her cellphone from the house line, hoping that she will recognize their number on her caller ID and pick up. Natalie’s phone rings and rings as he studies the clock, trying to figure out if he’ll catch her between classes. He gets voicemail and hangs up. And then he tries calling it again.

  This time Natalie answers right away. “Olive?” she whispers. “Why are you calling?”

  “Actually, this is Olive’s father,” he says. “Hi, Natalie.”

  He can hear Natalie’s footsteps echoing in the empty hallways of the school. “Oh,” she says. “Is Olive in trouble for cutting again?”

  “You could say that,” he says. “Natalie, where is she?”

  There’s a burst of staticky noise on the other end of the line—he can hear the student council president making an announcement over the school’s loudspeaker, something about the Fall Frolic—and then Natalie comes back on. “I don’t know,” she says.

  “Did she tell you that she was planning to cut class today?”<
br />
  A hush on the other end of the line. “No. We kind of, had some problems? We aren’t really talking.”

  Her only close friend. His heart breaks for his daughter. “Where do you think she would go?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” She’s quiet. “I have to go. I only got a bathroom pass, and my teacher is going to yell at me if I don’t get back soon.”

  “Wait.” He thinks. “How does my daughter seem to you these days?”

  She seems flummoxed by the question or perhaps by its source. “Confused,” she says finally.

  “Confused by what? Do you mean, about her mom or her seizures or…” Something else rises to the top of his mind. “Something to do with a boy?”

  “A boy?” She’s quiet for a beat. “Not a boy, no. Look, sorry, I gotta go, bye.”

  He holds the dead receiver in his hand, thinking. Something about the way Natalie said this—Not a boy—gives him pause. Out of nowhere, a critical question that has been gestating in the back of his mind for months finds its form: Is his daughter gay? It would explain her lack of interest in talking about boys; it would explain so much, really, about her state of mind, about their growing disconnection. Does she think he wouldn’t support her if she told him she was into girls? Doesn’t she know him better than that?

  A rush of hope. Maybe that’s where she is right now: skipping school with a secret crush. Maybe there’s someone he’s overlooked.

  He goes back upstairs to Olive’s room, pushing his way in through the mess. He walks over to look at the photographs that Olive has taped to her wall, but there’s nothing there that might enlighten him. Besides a few selfies taken with Natalie, the pictures are mostly of her mom. Billie and Olive in an igloo, cheeks flushed with the cold. Olive at her eighth birthday, Billie lowering an elaborate cake in front of her. Billie at the beach, laughing with her head tipped back, chin tilted at the clouds. He pushes a pile of books aside in order to make a closer examination of this photo, and one slips off the top of the heap and lands on his toe: Connections: Visionary Encounters with Your Beloved. He looks down at the book, feeling ill, knowing in his heart that his daughter is not off doing something reassuringly normal like cutting class with a love interest.