The Rules for Disappearing (4 page)

works in the public school system.

Camo boy and jock stand up but it only takes a few seconds

before they’re both blaming each other again. The man holds up his hand.

“No one breathes another word until I give you permission to

do so. Understood?”

The guys quiet down and follow him into an office marked

“Principal.” Just before the jock goes inside, he raises one eyebrow and says quietly, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Welcome to Natchitoches High School.

After taking two wrong turns, I finally find my homeroom after the final bell rings. The teacher looks up from her podium and gives me a quick glance. “You must be Megan. Go find a seat.”

Glancing across the room, I see an empty one in the back row.

Thank God. Everyone scans me up and down and then dismisses

me. The urge to pull my hoodie up over my head is overwhelm-

ing. In my head, I know what I look like to them—I would have

acted the same way if some freak-looking girl showed up at my old school—but it doesn’t make the stares hurt any less.

A loud screech fills the room and I’m on the floor near my desk before I even realize I fell. The announcements start playing over the intercom and the room fills with laughter.

“It’s the intercom speaker. It’s busted and sounds horrible when it comes on,” the girl in front of me says. She looks sorry for me, S—

which I hate, but at least she’s not laughing like the others.

N—

I put my earbuds back in and wait for the bell to change classes.

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The morning goes by in a haze. New teachers, new classes. All

these schools are starting to run together. This one isn’t that big, so I share most classes with a handful of the same people.

I follow the crowd through the double doors into the cafeteria.

A few girls I had a class with this morning, including the one from homeroom, signal me to sit with them. My legs itch to walk to their table and drop down in the chair they have pulled out, but before I take the first step, I check myself and remember The Plan. No friends. Grabbing a banana and a bottle of water, I give a half wave in their direction and flee the cafeteria.

Lugging my go-bag, I walk down the hall in search of a quiet

place. Deep down there is a twinge of regret for isolating myself like this. I knew it would be hard, but I never believed it would be this hard and it’s only the first day.

The windows down a side hall overlook a small deserted

courtyard, a circular area with several stone tables and benches surrounded by overgrown bushes. It’s the perfect hiding spot so I decide to brave the elements. January is colder than I thought it would be in Louisiana. I figured the hoodie would be enough, but it’s hovering around the freezing mark.

The benches are too cold to sit on so I plop down on the mossy ground, pulling the hood over my head and sliding my earbuds

into place as I crank the music. I take out my journal and write a while before my thoughts start to wander. One month. One month to figure things out. If I fail, I’ll have to start all over in the next placement. The thought of this isolation being permanent makes me almost throw up but I know I’m stronger than that now. The old

—S

me wouldn’t have been able to do this. I shove the banana in my bag

—N

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along with the journal and use the bag as a pillow. Closing my eyes, I let the music wash over me and try not to think.

A dark shadow passes over. I jerk upright.

It’s Camo boy. His lips are moving, but my music is so loud I

can’t hear what he’s saying. I take the earbuds out, and he repeats himself.

“Not fitting in so well, huh? Must be pretty bad in there if you decided to freeze your ass off out here rather than sit inside with everybody else.” He drops down beside me.

“Are you always so blunt?”

“Yep.” He pops open a Coke. “What’s your name?”

“Meg.”

“I’m Ethan Landry. So, Meg. What’s up? Why all alone out

here?”

I shrug and lean back against my bag. If I ignore him, maybe

he’ll go away. I give him a quick once over, noticing that the caked-on dirt covering his boots is also on his jeans and jacket. Why is he so dirty at school?

“Did you roll around in the mud or what?” I want to clamp my

hand over my mouth the second the words leave my lips. So much for ignoring him.

He lets out a loud, sharp laugh. “I guess you could say that. Had to help my dad this morning.”

“So your dad fell in the mud and you had to get him out?” Quit asking him questions!

He smiles. There’s a dimple on the bruised side that is prob-

S—

ably adorable when not discolored. “Something like that. Tractor N—

got stuck and I had to go pull him out.”

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I lean over and wrap my arms around my knees. “So you live on

a farm?” I ask.

“No, but we have a farm right outside of town.”

His hands are rough and calloused, like they belong to a man

more than a boy. I wonder if they feel as rough as they look.

My eyes move quickly back to his face, hoping my brief trip to the gutter doesn’t show.

“Ya know, you’re a pretty good singer,” he says.

What.

A grin breaks out across his face. “I guess you didn’t know you were singing out loud?”

Oh. My. God.

“Uh, no . . . um, I. . . .” There are no words. I’m humiliated because I know, really know, what a bad singer I am.

My face is on fire and probably looks like a tomato.

Ethan chuckles then nudges my foot with his. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you, although it’s pretty cute the way your cheeks got all pink like that. So what classes do you have this afternoon?” he asks.

He called me cute. Or at least my red-stained cheeks cute. The excitement this brings is replaced immediately with dread. I’m not doing this. Making friends. No matter how nice (or hot) they are.

“Look, I gotta go.” I stand up and he grabs my ankle.

“Don’t be mad. Bell won’t ring for another ten minutes.”

God, he’s adorable even with the ugly bruise staining his cheek.

And that accent. I want nothing more than to sit back down and spend the next ten minutes flirting with him.

Instead, I shake my leg free.

—S

“You must be pretty desperate to hunt down the new girl, farm

—N

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boy. If I wanted to hang out with some hick, I’d have stayed in the cafeteria where it’s warm.” Brutally harsh, but I’ve seen that look before. Interest. Interest in me and who I am, and I can’t handle that. Not again.

He drops his hand, surprised, and squints at me. I swallow

down the guilt. I’m really doing him a favor. I put the earbuds back in and walk inside.

I glance over my shoulder at the courtyard where Ethan is still sitting, and I already regret walking away from him.

There’s no way I’ll make it a month.

S—

N—

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RULES FOR DISAPPEARING

BY WITNESS PROTECTION PRISONER #18A7R04M:

Be forgettable. No name brand clothes or anything remotely cute—and that goes for shoes too. It’s not like anyone in these small towns will appreciate a good pair of Jimmy Choos anyway.

Dad’swaiting where he said he would with Teeny in the car.

Her head pops up just a bit when she sees me and I try not to run the last block.

Every change between classes, I saw Ethan. Once I literally

ran into him trying to get into the same classroom and we both dropped all our books. It didn’t help that the jock with the cut lip was in that class too. Ethan didn’t try to talk to me again but he kept eyeing me. It makes me nervous, the way he watches, and a bit tingly, too, which is bad, bad, bad. I’m also pretty sure I blushed like a fool every time he got near me.

Teeny is quiet. I ask about her teacher, her school, and the kids in her class, everything down to what she ate for lunch. Every answer is one word.

Dad takes a different route back home than the one we took this morning.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

—S

He takes a moment to answer. “Thought we would do some

—N

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sightseeing this afternoon. Get our bearings around town.”

This is code for: Mom’s hammered and Dad’s giving her time to

pass out before we get home.

I go along with it because it won’t hurt to see what this town has to offer. Plus, I’m in no rush to have a drunken conversation with my mother.

Those never end well.

The streets near the river are narrow and very crowded. We

end up driving in circles since most streets are one way until we manage to get away from the historic district. The farther we get, the more it changes. Quaint mom-and-pop shops are replaced with Taco Bells and Olive Gardens.

I watch Dad as he drives. He’s staring more at the rearview

mirror than through the windshield. I glance behind us a few times but don’t see anything that looks weird. After several quick turns without putting on the blinker first, I ask, “What are you looking for?”

“What?” He taps the brake and we lunge forward. “What are

you talking about?”

“You keep looking in the rearview mirror. Like a lot. Is some-

body back there?” I glance behind us again, but still see nothing odd.

Dad shakes his head and mumbles under his breath. He’s gotten

really good at the mumbling.

After about thirty minutes, Dad pulls up in the parking lot in front of an ice cream shop next to an Old Navy.

S—

“How about we stop in here?” Dad throws the wagon in park.

N—

I hop out of the car, go-bag clutched to my chest, and nearly

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bump into a girl I recognize from school. It’s actually a group of girls piling out of an SUV and most of them were in several of my classes.

As I scoot past them to the sidewalk, they giggle and whisper

to each other, and once I catch my reflection in the plate glass window, I know why they’re laughing. The cute towel-dried style this morning didn’t last. My hair is glued to my head and has no shape or body at all. In the plain jeans and gray hoodie, I could pass for a boy. And not a very cute one.

Dad and Teeny follow me inside the ice cream store and we pick a booth in the back.

Dad ambles off to the counter to order for us.

Teeny gives me a small smile. “Do those girls go to your

school?”

“Yeah. They’re in some of my classes,” I say, my voice too high and my enthusiasm forced.

“Are they mean to you?” I don’t give Teeny nearly enough

credit—she picks up on everything.

“It’s just the first day. I don’t even know them, really.” I fidget with the napkin dispenser and ask, “Were the kids in your class nice to you today?”

Teeny leans back against the booth and focuses on the ceiling

without answering me.

Dad, balancing three ice cream cones, slides in next to Teeny a few minutes later. She’s more interested in peeling the paper off the cone than licking the ice cream. Dad uses a spoon even though his is in a cone, too. What a nerd.

—S

I take long, slow licks and try to think about what to say to Dad.

—N

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Number four on my list is to figure out what he did to get us into Witness Protection, and I won’t get a better opportunity than this.

“Dad, what are we waiting for?”

Dad peeks over his shoulder and examines the room. “What do

you mean?”

I lean in close. “Are we waiting for trial or something? Why are we here?”

He presses his lips together and they turn white. He whispers,

“This is not the place to discuss this.”

Before The Plan, I would have backed off, but not now. “There’s never a good time. Every time I bring this up you blow me off. Just tell me. The suits won’t move us around forever, will they?”

Dad digs in his cone, his head shaking. “There may be a trial at some point,” he answers through clenched teeth.

“What’s the hold up? Don’t we get out of the program after

that?”

Dad’s head comes up and his expression is odd. Like I’m crazy.

“It’s not as simple as that.” He stands up and throws his cone in the trash. He won’t look at me. “We’re not going back home. We’re in this program for the foreseeable future, so please don’t make things any more difficult than they already are.”

“Dad, something’s different this time. I don’t know what it is—

things just feel wrong.”

“Stop talking about it!” Teeny screams, then throws her cone

on the floor and runs from the store. I chase her out, dumping mine on the way. I catch her at the wagon and try to pull her in close but S—

she’s shaking and hitting me with her fists. I don’t stop her.

N—

I glance through the window and Dad’s cleaning up the spilled

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ice cream. God forbid he leaves the mess there to check on his daughter, who is completely. Freaking. Out.

When Dad finally comes out he picks Teeny up, who’s kicking

and screaming now, and carries her to the car. She’s really loud and draws a crowd pretty quickly, including the cheerleaders who walk out of Old Navy straight into my family breakdown.