How to Disappear (9 page)

“That was ninth grade,” Calvin says. “Gerhard found out. I’ve reformed.” Gerhard has a long history of busting us.

“And I need to keep the ID.”

“You need it? It’s about to be summer. I need the ID.”

“Who signed your notes?” Calvin is at war with our second-period math teacher. He won’t turn in the homework, which he claims is a waste of time. He got a string of before-school detentions with parental sign-off notes—hence the forgery by yours truly.

I might be a solid citizen, but I’m loyal.

“You need it for how long?”

“Give me a break. I’m hitting the road in the Thing. What if I need a beer?”

“Maybe you should call off your plan. I hear they have beer at senior night. You should come.”

“I hear your mother thinks you’ve been handing in homework all year. Are you going to help me or what?”

Calvin draws diagrams and demonstrates how to use spyware to
get into Olivia’s computer for the next three hours. “You get her to download an attachment,” he says. “Make her think it’s a coupon or an invitation or something.”

Once I infiltrate Olivia’s computer, I’ll see everything that comes in or out, every stroke of her keyboard. If Nicolette contacts her from another computer, I’ll see every word and emoticon and link Nicolette sends.

Getting the IP address of Nicolette’s computer is trickier. I have to get her to click on a dummy website, followed by a series of moves I didn’t know existed. But if I do this right, I can get the physical location of Nicolette’s computer, leading me to the location of the back of Nicolette’s murderous, throat-slashing head.

I flip through my notes, most of which were drafted by Calvin when my speed of comprehension was slower than his speed of explanation.

“Could you go through this again, right here?”

Calvin looks at me as if I were a moron.

“Jesus, were you asleep in comp sci?”

But he explains. It’s all in there, my step-by-step guide to tracking Nicolette with marginally legal technology.

Calvin takes hold of my upper arm. He has a wrestler’s grip. “
Why
are you doing this? The truth.”

“I have to find this girl. Before she gets hurt.”

“Don?”

“What do you think? I have to get to her before . . . anyone else does.”

I watch the light bulb click on in his head. “You have to find her to warn her?”

This is so plausible and benign. Hell, maybe it’s what I’m doing. Either way, she disappears right after I find her. “Something like that.”

Calvin likes answers. Now that he has one, he’s happy again. He says, “May the force be with you.” He throws in a Vulcan blessing to cover all bases.

It doesn’t work. I haven’t even turned the key in the ignition of the shitmobile when a call comes in with an area code that’s probably Helsinki.

There’s static. Then Don says, “Shut up. This isn’t me.”

My first instinct is to toss the phone and floor the car.

My mother told Don that if he got a contraband phone—like half the other prisoners in Nevada who don’t mind jeopardizing their release dates—it was the end of his cigarettes. But apparently, to torment me, it was worth the risk.

“What do you want?”

“Is that what you say to your brother who’s doing you a favor?”

“What favor?”

“You can turn my car around. She’s not in Nowhere, Texas, anymore.”

I say, “Thanks,” trying to sound as if I know what he’s talking about, as if I were already halfway to Nowhere, Texas.

“Word is, guys got there inside of five hours, and they scoured the place.”

“If other guys are looking for her, why am I looking for her?”

His voice goes dark. “You’re doing more than look for her.”

Parked on a side street near Calvin’s house, I surf through all things Nicolette. I find red hair and a blurry face that could be anyone, posted on Facebook by some girl named Piper who goes to Southern Methodist. While I was driving straight through like a madman, this was sitting there online, and forty-three people were commenting.

It’s possible I’m screwing this up big-time.

I stop when I hit the Pacific Ocean.

Union Station in Los Angeles. Cavernous. Beautiful. Crawling with police. I walk out in a parade of ladies trailing wheelie bags into a noon sun so bright, it glints through sunglasses in shade. Rows of palm trees. Sky so blue, it looks fake.

Two miles to the library. I know the exact specifications for where I want to hide out. Four turns on the computer, and I’ve found it and the bus route to get to it.

I sleep at a late-night movie in a mall bordering a commuter college
no one
I know will ever attend. There are people hanging out at an all-night Mexican place. Every hour until seven a.m., I buy some cheap new thing to keep my table. By morning, there are thousands of students milling around.
I’m like Waldo on a two-page spread of ten thousand other Waldos.

If you think I’m going to make the same mistake I made in Galkey, guess again. As if there was just one.

I’m hunkering down until no one can tell that Cat Davis is
me
.

Not people who saw me once at camp. Not people who grew up down the street from me. Not me when I pass my own reflection in a plate-glass window.

Plus, I’m constantly scared.

Which is good.

In real life, if you’re so scared, you’re debilitated, you’re supposed to suck it up. Go to your happy place. Talk it over with your stepfather, who encourages you to stop hiding in your room and go back to fourth grade even if the back of your skirt did get caught in your panties so everyone saw your butt.

In the new real life,
scared
is my motto and creed and religion. It makes me nocturnal, cleaning out offices on night shift. I got the job off Craigslist. At sunrise, when I’ve mopped my last floor, the boss hands me a wad of cash.

In the room I’m subletting (also Craigslist, also cash), I do hundreds of crunches. Deep knee bends like a manic jack-in-the-box. Push-ups and headstands and walking on my hands between the closet and the tiny bathroom.

Then I eat a bag of frosted Winchell’s Donuts.

I’m not actually fat. I pass the pinch test for not being
morbidly obese. Let’s just say I won’t be climbing to the top of a human pyramid anytime soon.

What used to be empty space between my thighs is filled with slabs of me that rub against each other when I walk. I’m cushioned in a muscled sheet of safety.

I live half a block from three bus lines, a quarter mile to the metro. Be fit. Run. Hitch with whoever gets you off the street fastest.

When the girls who rent the other rooms in the apartment are gone, I sneak into the living room and watch Ultimate Fighting on their cable.

I’m in a crap motel outside Laughlin, where I’ve been sitting since I left Calvin’s house. I paid with Manx cash and signed the register with illegible handwriting. From a hundred miles away, Summerlin feels like ancient history.

It took less than a day for Olivia to download my attachment, a fake contest for tickets to see Taylor Swift live. I might as well be standing right behind her every time she logs on, draped in Monica’s Mermaid Ninjas’ mantle of invisibility. I’m not pleased to be this level of creeper, but at least I’m not turning on her camera remotely and watching her undress—I could, but I wouldn’t. But then, the guy in the cheesy horror movie who chants, “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” probably doesn’t think he’s a freak either.

I keep clicking on Olivia’s screen, refreshing it, waiting for it to
update with what I’m looking for. As soon as Nicolette e-mails or Facebook messages or contacts her in any way from a computer, I can find her.

I watch Olivia buy a skirt online and shoes that don’t have much to them except heels. For hours, all she gets is spam and notices from her dad’s church. Her youth group has a Facebook page. She’s bringing lemon bars to their next meeting. This gets eight likes, a “yum,” and a smiley face.

I eat cartons of KFC, Big Macs, and chili cheese fries.

I wait a day, two days, five days.

Don says, “Aren’t you supposed to be the smart one? Speed it up.”

“Do you think I want to draw this out?”

“Don’t make me wish I got somebody else for this.”

“Why didn’t you? If you had so many people begging to do your bidding.”

“Because
Mom
was in play.”

I don’t know if he’s trying to motivate me, scare me, or hit me in the face with the stakes, but he’s three for three. I pull two mini-bottles of whiskey out of the mini-fridge and pour them into the glass I’ve been using for my toothbrush.

Maybe all the drunk, creative guys had it right. Because then I figure out the obvious. Just because I can’t get into Nicolette’s phone doesn’t mean she’s not using it. Why would Olivia get e-mail from Nicolette when they both have phones? Ding, ding, ding: I have to get Nicolette to stop using her cell phone to talk to
Olivia. I need her in Olivia’s computer. That’s when I’ll get to take my mantle of invisibility on the road.

If she loses the phone, I’ve got her.

It feels like I’m playing Clue against Nicolette, except that I already know she did it and where and with what weapon and to whom. I leave the motel for long enough to buy the phone that’s going to lead me to her.

Don’s right.

I’m going to win the game.

I explain that there’s a new strategy, and he blows. It’s pointless to try to explain. He doesn’t have the concentration to sit through it, and the likelihood that he’d forgive me for not figuring it out sooner is nil.

I say, “Tell me anyone’s closer to finding her than I am, and I’ll mail you a finger. Let up. I’m on this 24/7.”

“I don’t want your friggin’ finger! I want results. You’re supposed to be the smart one. Do something smart. Because something might happen that I can’t stop.”

Without thinking, I say, “Whatever happens to Mom happens to you.”

There it is: my first death threat.

The first message arrives at 1:40 a.m.

The phone pings.

On the dimly lit screen, a text:
I know where you are.

My heart stops. I’m still breathing, but there’s no pulse or sound or heartbeat. The phone drops onto the bed.

No. No no no no no no no.

I was supposed to be untraceable. How could this happen?

I bite into my lower lip until I taste blood.

Every cell in my body is screaming,
Get out! Get out! Get out!

Or do they want me to run? Hope I’ll be spooked and charge into the open, too scared to think or fight? A moving car’s door opens, there’s a hand, I’m taken.

The ice pick is in my hand like a sixth finger. I keep it under the pillow.

The phone pings again:
I know.

Cold hands, cold feet, my right knee bouncing a staccato rhythm on the bed. I’m trying to think, but I can’t—not over the sound of silent screaming.

Get out!

Get out!

Get out!

This phone felt like a lifeline. Turns out, it was the human version of the locator chip we put in Gertie when she was a puppy.

Luna has my number. What did they have to do to get her to fork it over? And I gave it to Clark, too, to pass on to his UT fake ID friend.

Damn.

What if
Law & Order
was
wrong
? What if this phone has been pinging my location every three inches?

This phone dies now.

There are footsteps in the outside hallway. The upstairs neighbors shouting at each other. Music coming through the walls.

I hold the phone that knows where I am, waiting for it to tell me something else. I grab my pack and slip out to the walkway that rims the building. Black sweats, faded hoodie, shoulders folded inward from fear. A shapeless gray ghost.

At the corner of the building, a party is overflowing. I stay
low, under the railing, slide in the other direction toward the trash room. Open the heavy metal door. Stomp my phone under my heel and toss it down the chute.

How easy would it be to light the paper in the stainless-steel recycling bin on fire? Just enough smoke to trip the alarm and empty the building?

For one second, I see myself waving the lighter over my head at night at the arena in Columbus, swaying to the music with Connor. Feel the flames of the homecoming bonfire throwing heat onto my face, see myself tossing a branch into the conflagration, watching it ignite.

Orange plumes shoot up from the recycling can, and I’m back in reality. The reality in which I just started a fire. Which is bad, for the obvious reasons.

How can I still be this impulsive, how?

But it’s a sealed cement room with a fire door. A spritz of an extinguisher, and this will be over.

I smash the glass on the fire alarm with the handle of the ice pick to speed things up. The alarm blasts fast and loud.

I close the fire door behind me as licks curl upward toward the smoke detector. The party crowd heads down the open stairways toward the courtyard as sirens wail. I am indistinguishable from all the other girls who live behind identical apartment doors.

I glom on to a beer-scented guy. Shaved head and heavy-lidded eyes.

I can so do this. Walk away from the fire trucks and the fire fused to the side of an anonymous drunk guy.

He pats my back, all sloppy and uncoordinated. And I wouldn’t mind being held—not groped,
held
—even by a comatose bear. But more than that, I want to get away.

I scan the crowd, but who am I looking for? Anyone could be the bad guy. Except for this guy. He’s too tanked.

“You got a car?” I’m under his arm all the way to a five-speed Honda Civic. He doesn’t complain that I’m hijacking him. He’s too far-gone to hear me grind the gears.

“Oh, baaaaabe,” he says. Large guys can be so trusting and moronic.

A girl who does what he’s doing—gone forever. But he’s asleep and I’m driving, so I’m not that unfortunate girl. I’m the girl he won’t remember when he wakes up in the parking lot facing the beach, keys in the ignition.