The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance Page 4

  When I got home I rousted Mom out of bed. “Where did Zack go?”

  She said, “Don't you yell at me, young lady.”

  I didn't even know I'd been yelling. But I also didn't care. “I have to know, Mom. I have to know where he went, so I can write to him.”

  “I don't know,” she said. “I don't know and I don't care, so get out of my room and let me get some sleep.”

  That pissed me off, that she talked to me like that. It pissed me off that she made Zack go. I guess really I'd been pissed at her ever since Bill got taken away. I guess I'd been sitting on this big ball of blaming her for everything. It's like I'd been afraid to even start with that. It was like a locked-up thing I was afraid to even open.

  I took that ugly pottery lamp off the bedside table and smashed it on the floor. Just for a split second I watched it start to fly apart, and then the room was dark. I waited. To see what she would do. Nothing. I couldn't even hear her moving.

  I went to stomp out, but on the very first step I got a big sharp piece of pottery in my foot. I wanted to yell out, but I didn't. It'd be weak. Besides, it was my fault that crap was on the floor. I had no right to say ouch. I didn't get to cry.

  I hobbled out into the kitchen and turned on the light, and pulled the piece of lamp out of my foot, and put on a Band-Aid so I wouldn't keep bleeding on the floor. I didn't clean up the blood that was already there. I went out to the living room and took a fresh, unopened bottle of her gin. Just as I got my hand around it, I looked up and saw her watching me.

  I didn't even take my hand off it. I just stood there, staring her down. I was waiting for her to tell me to put it the hell back.

  I said, “Well?” I waited. Nothing. “Do something.” Geez. I mean, stop me. Or something. “Try being a mother for a change.” She just turned her face away. I snorted at her. “You're pathetic,” I said.

  I took the bottle.

  I took it back up in the tree house. This time, I told myself, I'm not coming down. I drank about a fifth of the gin. It made my arm and leg muscles all runny inside. I knew it was too much, but I wanted that. I wanted too much. I did it on purpose. It's not like I had Bill to look after. When he was home again I wouldn't get drunk anymore. But he was gone, so why should I care? I wanted to see if there was a line, and what was on the other side. And if it was anything like disappearing. And how long it could make me feel whole.

  While I was doing that I saw her cart the pieces of lamp to the outside trash cans. She didn't even look mad. She just cleaned it up. She looked a little wobbly, though. Then she went inside, without even looking up at me.

  Just as she was walking away, I thought I wanted to say something. I almost said something to her. Like maybe I was sorry for what I'd said before. Like maybe I went too far even for me. But I froze in it. I couldn't figure out which was worse, to do that and not say sorry, or to have to admit how bad I felt. They both felt so awful that I just froze and couldn't do anything at all.

  After a while I saw the last light go off in the house.

  Now, as far as the part about not coming down, I was wrong. I was pretty deep asleep, or passed out, and I guess I must have rolled over to the right-hand side, the rickety side, because I heard this crack, and I was flying through the air, still too much asleep to get the message.

  I landed real hard on my left side and just lay there for a while. I was thinking, I know this means something, and in a minute I'll put my finger on what it is.

  When I opened my eyes I figured out it was morning. The light felt like fire in my eyes. My tongue felt all thick and fuzzy and I wasn't sure if I would throw up right then or just very soon.

  And to make matters worse, Snake was standing over me.

  “You okay, Cynnie?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Looks like we've got some repairs to do.”

  “I don't think so.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I sat up carefully and wrapped my arms around my knees, and pressed my forehead between them, where it was dark, and closer to safe. I said, “I've been thinking a lot about this disappearing thing.”

  “Disappearing how? You mean like magic tricks?”

  I said, “No. That's just it. I've decided there's no magic to it at all. I've decided I just have to get a lot more real about a lot of things.”

  “I don't read you.”

  I guess I didn't really expect him to. Because I'd never told him the beginning of the conversation. I hoped that didn't mean I was getting to be more like my mom.

  I said, “Maybe the two of us ought to disappear.”

  “You mean, like, for real?”

  “Yeah. Like, forever.”

  I opened my eyes just enough to see the look on his face. It was a mistake. The light almost made me sick. But his face was all open with surprise, like something wonderful and amazing had been led down the street in front of him. I sort of liked that about Snake. Some things actually made him happy, and he admitted it.

  “You and me?”

  “Why not?”

  “Does this mean you're my girlfriend?”

  Another wave of sickness, which may or may not have been related. I really hadn't bothered to think that part out. Or any of the rest of this, really.

  “Snake, you think of a way to get me out of this town forever and I'm your girlfriend.”

  “Cool.”

  “There's a catch, though. We're taking Bill. Or no deal.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Snake's Got It Worse than Me

  Mom's new boyfriend was a real loser. He always sat too close to me on the couch, and he wouldn't stay out of the tree, even under threat of two-by-four. I tried to talk to Mom about it but she wouldn't believe me. She said I was just sore because Zack was gone, and that there was nothing she could do about that. So I spent a lot of time at Kiki's.

  Kiki was hardly ever home anyway, or if she was, I'd watch her run around getting ready for work or a date. I liked to watch her put on her makeup. It was like the construction of a new building, from the ground up.

  One day I told her I wanted to talk about boys.

  “Ooooh,” she said, real drawn out and important, and I wished she wouldn't make such a big deal about it. “I knew this would happen sooner or later, Cynnie.”

  “It's not a big deal, Kiki.”

  “That's what you think, girl.”

  She was curling her eyelashes with one of those awful- looking things women use to curl their eyelashes, and I wondered why it made my eyes water to watch, but not hers to use it.

  “What if there's this boy and you're not sure you like him, but you say you'll be his girlfriend. Anyway. Does that make you a wrong kind of person?”

  “If you didn't like him, why would you be his girlfriend?”

  “Well, let's just say there was something he could do for you. And that's why you wanted to be around him.” I felt guilty saying that, because I think there might have been things to like about Snake, other than a car for leaving town. I couldn't think of any right off, but I felt like they were in there somewhere.

  Kiki busted up laughing, this really funny sound that squeaked out between her lips like air leaking out of a balloon. “Cynnie, why do you think guys are interested in us? Ever. At all. It's because there's something we can do for them. It's the way of the world, Cynnie. Remember you heard it here first.” She bounced up off her chair in front of the makeup mirror and headed for the kitchen.

  “So, if guys use us, does that mean if I use a guy back, that's just making it even?”

  “That is exactly what I mean. Hey. Cynnie. What happened to all my beer?”

  “Beer?”

  “Yeah. Beer. I had three cans in here.”

  “I don't know anything about it, Kiki.”

  She looked around the corner and raised one eyebrow at me. Damn. Now I'd have to start saving up my lunch money and buying my own.

  I didn't see Snake much after school started again, because he was always o
ut at his uncle Ted's junkyard working on the car. In a way it was kind of a relief. I thought he'd be hanging around me all the time. But then I got to feeling sorry for him because it must be lonely out there, with nothing but a bunch of rusty old cars to keep him company. Uncle Ted kept a dog, but it was so mean they only let it out at night.

  The day I went to see him was his birthday. I would have felt too creepy not even giving him a present when he was spending all this time fixing up our getaway car.

  It was a pretty long way from home, but I rode over on my bike and left it leaning on the office wall of Ted's Auto Parts Recycling. Ted showed me where to find Snake. Good thing he did, too, because there wasn't much to spot him by, just a pair of chunky legs all smeared with grease sticking out from under the car. I was glad when Uncle Ted went back in the office so we could talk.

  “So. This is it.”

  “Yeah. This is it.” He didn't come out from under the car, but I heard his voice drift up to me.

  “Not bad.”

  That was just a little lie, and maybe it would make him feel good on his birthday.

  It looked pretty crappy. It was a stubby little Nissan, and it was old. I don't know how old, just that it had a lot of rust so you could stick your fingers through in places, and it was bright yellow. I mean bright. It didn't seem like a good car to disappear in. It seemed like people would be staring at us wherever we went.

  “Does it run?”

  “Not yet. But it will.” He still didn't come out.

  “I brought you a birthday present.”

  He grabbed the fender of the car and pulled himself out, and jumped up. He had a big bruise on the side of his face, the whole side, all the way from his forehead down. It looked puffy, and it was more than one color.

  “Snake. What happened to your face?”

  “Nothing.” He was looking at the bag in my hand. The plain brown bag.

  I should have wrapped it, I thought, and besides, it was a dumb present, and he'd hate it, and I shouldn't have announced it like that, like it was a big deal, something to look forward to. And then I thought that I'd had lots of days where nothing happened, and it never left a bruise like that on me, and I wondered what happened for real, and why I hadn't brought a better present to make up for it. He reached his hand out and I gave him the bag.

  “It's just little,” I said.

  “Yeah, but you remembered. You came all the way down here.”

  He stuck his hand into the bag and pulled out the fuzzy dice.

  “They're for our new rearview mirror.”

  “Cool.” He stuck his head inside the car and hung them by the little string, and then he came back out and we both admired them from the front. “That looks pretty cool.”

  He didn't seem disappointed. He had this look on his face. I didn't know quite what it meant. I'd never seen it before. It made me think he was either going to cry or try to kiss me, but then he didn't do either one.

  I said, “So, when's the party?”

  The look went away. “Never.”

  “Never? If I just turned fifteen, I'd have a party.”

  He picked up a wrench and slid back under the car. “I don't like to have anybody over.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just don't, that's all.”

  He didn't sound like he wanted to talk anymore, so I sat in the passenger seat for a while and closed my eyes and thought about cruising down the road with the window open and all that wind in my face, and Bill on my lap, holding tight to me. Maybe headed for the Grand Canyon.

  Then I said goodbye to Snake, and he said goodbye, but he didn't come out from under the car to say it.

  I bought one of those big giant beers with my lunch money on the way home, even though I had to ride a mile out of my way to that store where the guy doesn't care how old you are, just so long as you're old enough to pay for it.

  I drank it in the alley behind the store, because I knew it would make it easier to go home. Well, it made it easier to be home, but pedaling there on my bike was hard. That street had never seemed so long before.

  The more I got into my first year of high school, the more it made me lonely. I don't think I'd ever been lonely before. Or maybe I always had, and I just hadn't known it yet. I didn't have any friends at school, and I didn't really bother to make any. I'd be gone soon anyway, and nobody really acted like they were dying to know me.

  I had this feeling like something was missing. It reminded me of that dream where you get to school with no clothes on, but it wasn't that, it was something else. I wanted to talk to Snake but he was kind of quiet, and as soon as school let out, he was gone to Uncle Ted's.

  After school I rode around on my bike, to keep from going home. The park sounded like a good idea, until I got there. Then I pedaled across the highway overpass and watched cars shoot by underneath. But only for a minute. Wherever I went, it felt like the wrong place, and I needed to be somewhere else. After a while that made me tired, so I went home, which was worse.

  I didn't have anything to drink, and Mom was sitting right by her only bottle and not passed out yet. At first I thought, I'll go without tonight. One night. It'll be good for me. I don't have to drink every night. God, if I drank every night, I'd be starting to be like my mom. Which would be, like, totally disgusting.

  But I didn't know what to do. It's like I forgot what I used to do to pass the time. I knew I could read or watch TV, but it sounded boring. It was like my nerves were all bare and everything around me was touching them.

  I looked around for money, but my piggy bank was empty. Once I had almost thirty dollars in there. I dug around in my top drawer, thinking maybe I still had a two-dollar bill or some quarters or something. Way in the back I found the three silver dollars from my dad. He gave them to me when I was only three years old. About a week before he died. I quick put them back.

  I tried to do something else, or think about something else, but about five minutes later I was on the long walk down to the store with those silver dollars. My stomach felt weird. I was trying not to think at all.

  I got a cheap bottle of wine and put it on the counter and then I stood there with those dollars squeezed in my hand. I guess I still had time to change my mind.

  “You want that or don't you?” the guy said.

  I grabbed the wine and put the dollars on the counter and ran home.

  In the morning my stomach felt real heavy and squirrelly just getting up for school. Mom wasn't up, so I poured a little of her gin into my thermos of orange juice, and then I put water in the gin bottle, so it filled up just right. After all, the less gin and the more water she drank, the better. It wouldn't kill her to cut down a little.

  Since Bill left, things had only gotten worse with her. It's like she was right in front of my eyes but she didn't exist. It was like living alone. I even wrote to Nanny, telling her that Mom hadn't gotten better at all. She didn't write back for a long time, and when she did she said that grown-up problems were hard, and I should try to be patient. And she said Bill was fine, and he missed me, like I didn't know that already.

  I had my own locker at school, and I went back between classes and drank some of the orange juice, and it made the day a lot easier, except it was gone before lunch. It seemed a lot harder to be at school when it was gone, so I left early and rode around on my bike, looking for that right place to be, even though I pretty much knew by then that I'd never find it.

  I guess I just figured any day was a good day if it went away and got me one day closer to leaving forever.

  One day, while we were waiting to go, I fell asleep in Mr. Werther's art class. I didn't think it was such a big deal, but I guess he did. He told me to wait and talk to him after class. Maybe I fell asleep again, or something close to it, because the bell rang and I remember being really surprised.

  I went straight for my locker. I guess I forgot about Mr. Werther. My orange juice was almost gone, and it was only the start of third period. I was just about
to toss down the last of it when I saw Mr. Werther standing there watching me. As soon as I saw him I remembered how he told me to stay after class, but it was a little too late by then.

  He reached his hand out for the thermos and I gave it to him. Maybe there was a better thing to do at that point, but I couldn't think of it. My brain was working kind of slow.

  He smelled it, and then took a little of the orange juice on his finger and tasted it. I expected him to be real mad, but he had a look on his face like he felt sorry for me. I hadn't expected that, and somehow it seemed a lot worse.

  The principal said, “This is pretty serious. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

  I said, “No, sir.” I wasn't even sure what kind of anything he had in mind. I wasn't sure what people think you're supposed to say when they ask stuff like that.

  He sighed. Then he said, “Your mother will have to come down. We'll schedule a special parental meeting to discuss this situation. And there's an automatic three-day suspension. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. But I only said that because I knew I was supposed to. I didn't understand. I never understood anybody when they talked. I felt like I was in a country where everybody spoke a different language. And not all of a sudden, either. I'd been feeling that way for as long as I could remember.

  “Wait in the outer office. I'll write you a note to take home to her.”

  I sat there swinging my legs and thinking about when I was littler, and got in trouble, which I almost always did, and how it used to make my stomach tingle. I wondered why my stomach didn't tingle anymore. I knew this wasn't good, but I didn't feel anything about it.

  Mrs. Leary, who worked in the office doing attendance, took time off to drive me home.

  I kept staring out the window, wondering if I should have mentioned about my bike still being at school. I got the feeling she was looking at me, but I didn't look back.