How to Disappear(6)

Cat


I’m bolt upright on a broken-down lounge chair, with a death grip on a pointy stick. Concealed between old, disgusting mattresses and bloated garbage bags in a vacant lot rimmed with trees.

The stick is for rats (saw them) and snakes (didn’t). But it feels like a hundred degrees, and it’s Texas, and don’t rattlesnakes crawl out of the ground to cool off and bite people in weather like this?

I would.

If Olivia were here, she’d be weaving together strips of plastic bag. Making us a tent and matching shoulder bags. She’d be distracting me with ghost stories. I might be the bouncy one with the pom-poms, but she was the one who was with me 24/7 when my mom died. The picture she drew of my mom with a sparkle-marker halo and wings, sitting on a cloud, looking down at me and waving, had a permanent place under my pillow. Until Steve steamed out the wrinkles and framed it.

I want my friend.

I want my picture.

I want to be home, where I can never go again.

If I were in Cotter’s Mill right now, I’d be at Olivia’s house, listening to Katy Perry. We’d be copying each other’s math.

At twilight, I’d run home along the lake. Yellow light would be pouring out of my house like the steady beam that glows from a lighthouse. Rosalba, who cooks for us, would pile food onto my plate, complaining that I’m too skinny. And when Steve got home late, I’d cut myself a thin, tiny slice of the tres leches cake Rosalba and I baked. Sit with him. Feed Gertie tiny scraps of meat off his plate while Steve pretended not to notice.

I force myself not to let images of home eclipse the landscape where I actually am. This works for about thirty seconds.

Then I start torturing myself with mental tours of Cotter’s Mill Unified.

These are the trophies from when cheer squad took second at State twice in a row.

That’s the dark stairwell where my first kiss with Connor happened. And happened. And happened.

Here’s the principal’s office where Steve had to show up and use the phrases “harmless prank” and “Of course I take this very seriously” more than once. While I pretended to be contrite, also more than once.

After we made over Maura Brennan in the locker room and her mom had conniptions that I dyed her hair blue-black and pierced her ears twice each. (“Stop saying how good she looks!” Steve said. “What were you thinking?”)

After we cut and went ice-skating on the lake all day. (“So if this Connor does something, anything, you do it too?”)

And when Mr. Kirkbride decided that doing our math homework together was plagiarism??? (“There’s going to come a time when I can’t fix things for you.”)

It’s like some part of my mind is stuck, acting as if the worst thing I ever did is make Maura Brennan look good.

As if it didn’t happen.

But this is now. It happened. My hair is caked with blood, my stomach screaming for me to put something in it now.

And between now and when (if) I come up with a plan more immediately workable than buying a new face and fingerprints and passport (hatched in the cement pipe), I need water and a Hershey bar, a sun hat, and a place to hide.

And as basic as those things are, I have no idea how I’m going to get them.

Steve always says to have faith, and the universe provides. This is what you’d expect from a guy who got from Havana to Miami Beach on a raft that was basically a tabletop.

I used to believe him.

But the obvious fact is, I have to provide for myself. I can’t just sit here forever, slamming the ground with a stick whenever I hear the sound of rodents. It’s not like I’m going to spear one and eat it for lunch.

I peer out at the street through the wall of trees. Pickups going eighty miles an hour billow dust to waist-high clouds, skidding around curves.

Across the street, there’s a Five Star Gas and Mini-Mart.

I run into the street like a crazed squirrel. Trying to make it through the door of Five Star’s mini-mart without getting spotted, run over, turned in, or shot.

It seems like a whole lot of trouble for candy. But what’s the alternative?

The guy behind the counter takes one look, and the obvious question of how I got this way might as well be printed on his forehead.

I say, “No bike helmet. Stupid, huh?” That’s the best I’ve got. Flirting is out of the question in my current situation. “Could you please tell me how to get to downtown?”

Even though I don’t know what town it is yet. I only know it’s Texas from the license plates.

The cashier points and tells me only to hitch with the ladies.

I thank him by lifting four supersize Almond Joy bars out of the rack under the register while he’s distracted. Proving that old shoplifting skills never die. No matter how sorry you were at the time.

I really was sorry. I was only eight, but I took enough nail polish to open a salon before anybody noticed. And it is like riding a bike—you don’t forget how.

At least last time I took things, everybody thought some variation on the theme that I was filling the void after my mom’s aneurism. The tiny flaw in her brain that killed her. Everyone except for Steve, who said, “You didn’t do this because you’re sad, did you?”

I said, “I like nail polish.”

Steve patted my shoulder, signifying his recognition that he was stuck dealing with me forever. Or so I thought.