Don't Try to Find Me: A Novel (5 page)

SO HAPPY TO BE
off that bus! If I were on Facebook, it would say, “Marley likes solid ground.”

Not being on Facebook and not being able to text is changing me. It makes me think in longer bursts. Like, in whole paragraphs. That’s one of the things I like about B. Mostly we text, but sometimes he writes actual e-mails where I have to scroll down. It’s so mature.

Speaking of which . . . B. looked younger in his photos. Not that he looks old in person, just older than I was expecting. He’s twenty-two but he looks more like twenty-five or twenty-six. He’s got little lines radiating out from his eyes, thin ones, like cat whiskers. But North Carolina is a very sunny place.

It’s November, and it’s got to be 90 degrees. In the car, B. asked if I wanted to take off my button-down, since I was wearing a tank top underneath, and I said no, I’m very cold-blooded. I mean, I know he’s going to see everything eventually, that’s kinda the plan, but I didn’t want the first time to be in blinding sun. What do they call light like that? Unforgiving, I think that’s the expression.

I don’t like the expression “body issues,” but I know I have them. I’m shaped like a pear, and that is just not the fruit I would have chosen. My mom, she’s more like a banana. Straight up and down—it’s hard to believe I came from her. We have similar faces and the same kind of hair, but the resemblance stops there. She can look
really nice in clothes, when she tries. Fashion is designed for bananas, not pears. But it could be worse. I could be a watermelon.

I’m all out of order. Ms. Finelli told me I’m a good writer but that I have “trouble explaining in a linear fashion.” I know that’s how a story is supposed to go: This happened, and then this, and finally, this. But I’m always circling back, realizing I left out important details or figuring out late which details are important. I can be very—what’s the word?—tangential.

So . . . rewind. I left the bus station, and B. was waiting for me in the parking lot, leaning against an old blue Toyota Corolla. He didn’t want to come inside because he didn’t want anyone seeing us together. His sunglasses were mirrored, so I was looking back at myself, at my own pathetic eagerness. He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, and has a really good body, lean but muscular, just like in the photos.

If I hadn’t hugged him, I don’t know that he would have hugged me. I’ve never had a boyfriend before but I’ve seen it done, and that doesn’t seem like a good sign. He should have wanted to touch me. We’ve waited a long time for this.

We got in the car, and I stared out the windshield. I was too afraid to look at him. I didn’t want to be disappointed, or to be disappointing. I wanted him to take off his sunglasses and become familiar.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, but when I glanced over, he was staring out the windshield himself.

“Me too,” I said.

“You look pretty.” Though again, he wasn’t looking at me.

I raked my hand through my hair nervously. That part of me, I knew, looked good. Just a quick brushing at the station, and I had one feature about which I could feel confident. “Could you do me a favor?” I asked. “Could you take off your sunglasses?”

“I don’t want anyone to recognize me.”

It seemed a little paranoid, but then, he’s the one with a lot more to lose. He could go to jail for this. Someone loves me enough to go to jail over it. It’s kind of amazing, when you think of it that way.

I scanned the parking lot. No one was in sight. “Who’d see?”

He paused, and then he took off the sunglasses. I felt better immediately. B. has nice eyes. Green like sea glass, in an angular face. Maybe that’s why he looks older than in his pictures. He’s thinner. I, on the other hand, went the other way.

He looked right at me and smiled and said, again, “You look pretty, Mar.” I could feel it that time.

I like his accent, which is more prominent in person. It’s softly Southern—seems gentlemanly, rather than rednecky. But he also seems different in some way I can’t peg.

“Are you scared?” he asked.

I shook my head. I’m stronger than I think. I’m stronger than I think. I’m stronger than I—

“You don’t have to pretend with me,” he said. “I’m not going to let you down like everyone else. You left those people behind to be with me, and I’m honored by that. I will not let you down.”

B.’s the only one who knows practically my whole story, even the things I used to tell Dr. Michael, so he’s currently the only one who really knows me. He accepts me, just like I am.

He looked so sincere, so loving, as he made me that promise. If he’d taken my hand, it would have been perfect. But he didn’t. Instead, he started the car.

We drove to his apartment. I must have been disoriented from the bus ride, because it seemed like we were driving around in circles for a while before we got there. If you paid me a thousand dollars, I’d never be able to trace the route back to the station.

B. parked in front of the building, which was crumbling brick and seemed to be leaning slightly to one side, like a sinking ship or a drunk. “It used to be a tobacco factory,” he said. I could tell he thought that was cool, so I said, “Cool.” I just hoped it wouldn’t stink like cigarettes.

It was the only building on the block, which seemed a little strange. I guess they demolished the others??? The street felt creepy,
postapocalyptic. I wanted to get inside right away, so I started to walk toward the front door. B. shook his head while he let out this little whistle between his teeth. I felt like a misbehaving dog; he probably used to do that with Gracie. “Around the back,” he said.

I followed him, over cracked concrete with the occasional defiant daisy poking through, to a heavy black door. “I’m the only one who uses this entrance.” He cast a glance around, but there was no one in sight. Despite the heat, this shiver went through me. Just nervous anticipation, I guess.

He unlocked the door and led me down a corridor lit by a few dangling lightbulbs. Inside his apartment, it smelled strongly of bleach. He’d obviously cleaned for my arrival, but the place was pretty industrial, with exposed pipes and a scarred stone floor. I told myself how sweet it was that he tried so hard to clean; I told myself that it’s starving-artist chic. B.’s scholarship only gives him a small stipend for living expenses, and his parents don’t help him out at all. He’s doing it on his own, like I will.

“I don’t think anyone saw us,” he said, like he was trying to reassure himself.

I have to get used to the idea that no one should see me. I’m voluntarily turning into a ghost. But that’s not for long, just until we can go on Disappeared.com and get everything arranged. Soon, I’ll be able to walk out the front door.

B. showed me around. He made the built-in bookshelves himself, out of lumber he scavenged. There was this awesome bed that he pulled down from the wall, made of the same wood. He built that, too. The photo was on Facebook: B. standing next to the finished bed with a saw-type thing.

I love that he’s good with his hands—a thought that sent a shiver through me. This time, it was the good kind of shiver. The kind I wouldn’t let Kyle create.

I feel bad about what I did with Kyle. It’s not like B. and I ever said we wouldn’t be with anyone else—we’re the farthest thing from
Facebook official—but I am living with him now. I won’t do it again. It’s not like guys are exactly beating down the door to get to me, and besides, I won’t need anyone else, now that I have B., really and truly.

“This bed is so beautiful,” I said. I ran my hand over the wood. “How long did it take you to make it?”

“A couple of weekends.”

“How did you do it? Like, how do you attach the parts of the wood to one another?” I was a little curious, but mostly I hate dead air.

B. gave me a smile, like, “Silly girl, everyone knows that.” He didn’t answer.

He put all my clothes in the dresser and gave me a towel for the shower. He seemed a little stiff, formal maybe. No, gentlemanly. But after I showered, I went and sat on the futon next to him, and he actually moved to the other end. He said he wanted me to have my space. WTF?

I’d come all the way across the country, and I was sitting there in my T-shirt and jeans with no bra on, and he was giving me space. Maybe he isn’t attracted to me, after all. I think I look like my photos, but maybe I’ve changed. Or he’s changed his mind.

He made us some spaghetti with sauce from a jar and the conversation was a little stilted. It’s probably because I just wanted to forget about the bus ride. About Hellma and her bony toes and that needle, and the smoking trolls, and the fighting couple, and the dead Iraqi family, and hooking up with Kyle (the one nice thing, which probably shouldn’t have happened). So I tried to get B. to do all the talking.

He told me about how he made this snotty rich kid look stupid in class the other day. His college has a lot of rich kids. B. loves learning but he hates a lot of the other students. He says they’ve had it too easy, that they don’t appreciate anything. They want to get good grades by doing the minimum and spend the rest of their time partying.

I’ve never met anyone like B. He’s so smart—a genius, probably—
and he’s had to do everything himself. His dad used to beat him up and put him down. What a combo.

There was this one funny thing at dinner. The conversation had all these lulls that were making me nervous. It was too much time for my mind to go off-leash. With texting, there are no awkward silences. It feels natural to sometimes have to wait for a response. B. and I talked on the phone much more rarely than we texted because I didn’t want to get caught and have my parents know anything about him, mostly because they’d want to know EVERYTHING and they wouldn’t be happy with what they heard. They’d think he was too old, and too far away, and that it’s weird that he’s interested in me. I don’t think they find me very interesting, and they wouldn’t understand how anyone else could either.

So, the funny thing is that in one of the lulls, I asked him about Wyatt. It was kind of a risky thing to do, since I used to have a thing for Wyatt, but that was before B. We were there at dinner, trapped in the lull, and I grabbed for something I knew we had in common. Wyatt was my life raft.

B. got this look on his face like he’d never heard of Wyatt before.

“Wyatt,” I repeated. “From Facebook?”

“Oh, right,” he said slowly, like dawn breaking. “Wyatt and I are pretty much only Facebook friends. I don’t know what’s up with him. I can find out, if it’s important to you.” Then he shoveled in a mouthful of pasta.

It makes sense, what he said. I mean, it’s not like B. thinks about Wyatt every day. They met on vacation one time. The point is, B. knows Wyatt, and through Wyatt, he met me, and voilà. Here I am, in my new life, with my first boyfriend. Serendipity or kismet or one of those other words they use in the old romantic comedies that my mom and I used to watch together when I stayed home from school sick.

Enough about my mom already.

“No,” I tell B. “It’s not important.”

Part of what scares me is that I’m really attracted to B., just like I expected, and the feeling might not be mutual. The whole time we were talking, I felt this volcano inside me. I wanted him that bad; it was like I was going to erupt. It must have been because I’d waited so long to see him, and now he was making me wait even longer. Why was he doing that? Didn’t he have a volcano inside him, too?

He asked me if I wanted him to sleep on the futon—oh, great, more space—and I said no. He took a shower while I got into bed. I wasn’t sure what he’d think of my body or if I’d know how to make him happy. I was imagining all the things he might know that I don’t, what it would feel like for him to teach me . . .

He came to bed in a T-shirt and his boxers. He climbed in on the far side, curling away from me. Then he cast a smile over his shoulder. “Glad you’re here,” he said, for the second time that day, and I so wanted to believe him.

I thought about rolling over to him or reaching my hand out to touch his shoulder. I wanted to send him the signal that he should touch me, that it was okay. I don’t need space.

Instead, I stared up at the ceiling—it must have been thirty feet high, like being in a gymnasium—and I tried not to cry.

Now he’s at school, and I’m here by myself. I’m writing in my journal because I can’t write to anyone I know. I can’t go on Facebook or Tumblr.

I’m in exile.

I didn’t think B. would go to class this morning. Yeah, it’s Monday, but I assumed he’d take the day off to be with me. But he got up and made me pancakes, which was such a momlike thing to do. He didn’t even ask if I wanted pancakes and I felt like I had to eat them, even though he didn’t have real maple syrup. Instead, it was that gross fake syrup in the plastic bottle shaped like an old woman. Then he reminded me not to go anywhere, because no one can see me, and he left.

I’m hiding out like a fugitive. I guess that makes sense, since I’m
on the run, a runaway. Is that breaking the law? If I show back up, or if I’m found, can they put me in juvenile hall? I did so much planning, but there were a lot of things that didn’t occur to me. Like B. not being into me or spending all day every day inside, by myself, stuck with my thoughts.

But we’ll go on Disappeared.com soon, and I’ll have a whole new identity. I could start right now, except that B. took his laptop to school with him.

B. always jokes that I’m one of those people who wishes life was a book so you could peek at the next chapter, or even jump to the end. He’s right. I just want to know how it’ll all turn out.

PAUL’S WORDS FILTER UP
to me as he talks on the phone downstairs. He’s able to keep his voice at a constant pitch, so the person on the line can’t tell he’s pacing, but I can. He circles closer and farther away, his phrases dangling elliptically, tantalizingly, in and then out of earshot. “. . . PR specialist . . . press releases . . . nothing concrete yet . . . private investigator . . . could be anywhere . . . shrinking the map.” The media campaign has begun.

I can’t eat. I can’t sleep, yet I also can’t manage to leave the bed. Terrible images clog my mind: Marley unconscious in an alley, money stolen, clothes torn off; being yanked into someone’s car to be taken who knows where, so he can do who knows what. Marley violated. Marley dead.

Then there are the more selfish scenarios, fearing for myself if my secrets are discovered. What would Marley say if she knew? Or Paul? Or the whole world, once it’s part of some Twitter feed? It’s only one secret, really, but it’s got tentacles. If a lie is big enough, it leads inexorably to the next.

That might be Marley’s story, too. The runaway websites make it sound so singular: She ran away because she was on drugs, or because she’s gay, or because she’s unhappy at home or at school. The truth is likely to be more complicated and more interdependent. It could be that she was drinking that day at Trish’s house because she’s become
an alcoholic, derived from the shame of being gay, which caused her to shrink from making new friends and to isolate herself from her old friends and from her parents. See, I can play this game all day. I do play, but in the grim, repetitive style of a traumatized child. I’m trapped in a loop.

What I know is this: A secret life isn’t one secret. It’s a lie that takes precedence, encroaching like crabgrass over a lawn. It keeps spreading and spreading.