Don't Try To Find Me: A Novel

by Holly Brown

  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.

  Day 5

  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.

  Day_5

  THERE’S A TV THAT gets thirty channels, tops. And no computer, since B. takes his laptop to school with him. And no phone. Not that I have anyone to call besides B. Sasha’s okay, I don’t really have a problem with her, but she is still Trish’s sidekick. I pretty much hate Trish. The way she made such a big deal about my being drunk after I’ve seen her go home drunk a bunch of times—she is such a hypocrite! It made me think she’d been looking for a reason to get rid of me. I’d become geographically inconvenient. She likes to be worshipped up close.

  Not that I ever really worshipped her. That was Sasha’s job. I think it’s why even when we were supposedly all three best friends, they were the true best friends. If Trish had been the one to move, Sasha wo
uld have been devastated. With me, she was sad for a while, but she wasn’t in mourning.

  The irony is, Trish has made a lot of this possible, without knowing it. Without knowing anything about B. Well, that’s not exactly true. I said something about him a long time ago, but I didn’t even use his name. It was when he first wrote me through Facebook, and I told her about him offhand, not like he was important, because he wasn’t, then. There’s no way she’ll remember any of that, self-absorbed as she is. That’s finally come in handy.

  Handier still is her old cell phone. It was B.’s idea for me to swipe it and mail it to him. After Trish got her smartphone with a new number, she kept the old phone as a backup. I knew exactly which drawer it was in, and that was a big part of why I slept over her house that last time. I figured that by the time she noticed it was gone, she’d think she was the one who’d lost it. She wouldn’t connect it to my visit, and she wouldn’t say anything to her parents because she always likes them to think she’s perfect.

  I don’t try to look perfect for my parents. It would be too much work. I’d have to get A’s in my math class, for one thing, and that would make my dad so happy I couldn’t stand it. He gets his way all the time with my mom; I feel like it’s good for him to lose sometimes. So I’m his loser.

  When I have thoughts like that, I like to text B. But I can’t, because he took Trish’s cell phone with him. What does he need it for now? He has his real cell phone, the one he couldn’t use with me because I didn’t want his number showing up on the phone bills. If he had left Trish’s phone, I could be texting him right now. But he probably just forgot he had it on him. Still, it’s crazy to think that I have less access to him now than I did when we were thousands of miles apart.

  In my planning stage, I found out that there’s no GPS tracking on that model of phone, and I made sure that her parents hadn’t put a chip in. The Internet’s incredible. It makes it so much easier to disappear.

  My parents must be losing their shit right about now. Well, my mom definitely is. It’s not that my dad wouldn’t care; it’s that I can’t picture him ever freaking out or breaking down or doing anything but EXCELLING at emotional control. That’s his word, “excelling.”

  I’m not the excelling type. They tried to enroll me in every sport, handed me every musical instrument, gave me every advantage academically, and nothing’s really stuck. I can write, but not in a very linear fashion, and I haven’t even been doing much of that except to B. I’m this basically average, somewhat overweight person. Even being a little bit overweight is average. Much of the country is, supposedly. We’re a Fritos nation, haven’t you heard?

  That’s not really true of where I grew up. Everyone’s so fit, it can make you want to throw up. I don’t mean that in the eating-disorder way, just in the sense of its being revolting. Even the moms are all fit and MILF-like. I’m kind of hoping that the people in Durham will be more average.

  I’m pretty sure that my dad’s moving us to the farm was a sign he’d given up on my ever being exceptional. Oh, he can’t make it too obvious. He has to keep asking about my math tests. But I went from a top school system to an average one, which means he’s finally admitted the truth to himself about who I am and where I belong. Plus, Mom and Dad used to encourage me to try every extracurricular activity, but this year, all they’ve said is that maybe I should join the school newspaper. They’ve been content to let me do nothing, and if that’s not giving up, I don’t know what is.

  “It should be easier for you to shine here,” Dad said after the move. As in: Everyone’s more mediocre, so here’s your chance!

  But he’s pretty much my father in name only, as far as I’m concerned, so who cares what he thinks?

  I probably was more comfortable in that high school than I would have been if I’d gone with Trish and Sasha. It’s okay to be mediocre when you’re anonymous; not so much when you’re best friends with the Queen Bee. If we hadn’t moved, I would have felt college pressure from the first day of ninth grade, that place is so achievement-oriented. Every year, their valedictorian gets a full ride to Stanford.

  It’s not like I was actually happy in the land of meager expectations. How could I be happy anywhere but with B.?

  I just need something to do, that’s all. I feel antsy, being so unplugged from everything and everyone. Dr. Michael used to say too much idle time is bad for me, but he doesn’t really know me anymore.

  I’m trying not to think about the bus ride, but it keeps bubbling up. I mean, how did Hellma become Hellma? How does that happen to a person? Someone probably loved her once, and now she’s shooting up between her toes on a bus, calling her daughter’s name. I wonder where they are now, all the other passengers. That couple is probably in some cheap motel, beating the shit out of each other. That military guy, he had so much anger inside him—where will it go? So much desperation and hate, it’s just out there. Or is it inside all of us? Is it in me and I just don’t know it yet?

  See, this is why I’m not supposed to have so much free time.

  It’s a fight not to go through B.’s stuff. He’s seemed more removed than I expected. And less goofy. He doesn’t seem like the guy who tweeted all that silly poetry for me (“You’re the one I’m forever picking / I love you more than fried chicken”) or the one who was so open about his past, who told me all about his parents abusing him and the girls who screwed him over. “I need you, Mar,” he used to say. One night, he texted it to me ten times right before bed and called it a lullaby.

  Since I got here, he hasn’t once told me he needs me.

  I’m tempted to dig around and see if I can recognize him in his possessions. But he trusts me. I don’t want to see him later and know that I violated that. Also, he might be able to smell it on me. He’s really alert for betrayal. I’m sure I’d be like that, too, if I had a dad like his and ex-girlfriends like Staph.

  I can look at his bookshelves. They’re right out in the open. He has a ton of books, which is one of the things that attracted me to him. I like that he’s a reader and a thinker. He runs deep. People my age are way too shallow. They’re like wading pools, and he’s the whole ocean.

  Would Ms. Finelli like that analogy? Or is it a metaphor? I get those mixed up.

  She always said the way to become a better writer is to read more. So I select one of B.’s favorite books: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. He read it last semester and raved about it.

  Maybe he’s too smart for me. That could be one of the things he’s realized now that I’m here. That I’m fat and I’m not that smart or interesting.

  I better start reading. Dr. Michael’s right. I need to keep my mind occupied.

  Day 6

  OUR HOUSE HAS BECOME a command center. It’s a hive with the buzz of volunteers donating their time to find a girl who might not want to be found. Might not? Try definitely not. She led with that in her note: Don’t try to find me.

  Unless that was opposite-speak, a possibility that became much less appealing once I translated that final line. I don’t think it’s wrong to want to believe that she loves me rather than hates me. But I wouldn’t want to place a bet on it. It seems pretty hateful to take off and go six days with no communication.

  She has to know it’s killing me. Her father can depersonalize and go into work mode. His new job is finding Marley, and unlike the police, his resources seem infinite. That’s not true of me.

  I can’t believe how quickly Paul has gotten FindMarley.com up and how professional it looks. One of the web designers from his tech company put it together. So now Marley’s eighth-grade graduation photo is center stage, her smiling face encircled by specs about her disappearance: when she was last seen, what she was wearing, which police department is investigating. It’s a Wanted poster, really, but with lots of digital embellishments and links. People can download the flyer, print it out, and put it on lampposts and bulletin boards wherever they are. Paul’s put his cell phone number out there for all the world’s quacks t
o find.

  He wrote a little essay (credited to both of us) that talks about what a sweet girl Marley is, that she’s smart and funny and well-read and well loved. He said it’s there to “humanize” her. Who thought she wasn’t human, just because she’s missing?

  Paul’s in his element, running the show. He used LinkedIn to connect with a private investigator as well as a PR specialist, a comely twentysomething named Candace whose auburn hair seems perpetually backlit like all the world’s a shampoo commercial. She strides around, high-heeled boots clacking, as she pitches us to San Francisco media. There are three people—strangers, volunteers—gathered around our dining room table, all talking on their cell phones. It’s like Marley disappeared and the volunteers materialized in her place.

  I keep revisiting the last morning I saw her. Her backpack was bulging as she followed me to the car, but I was too stupid to notice.

  No, it wasn’t only stupidity. I was preoccupied. I’d gotten that text, and my mind was elsewhere. I spent so much of this last year elsewhere. I took her for granted, assumed she’d be here with us until the day we drove her to her college dorm.

  She seemed a little edgy. I can recognize that now and understand why. She didn’t want me to go back into the house—more specifically, into the kitchen—and see her phone and her note. She didn’t want me stopping her. “Can we go, please?” she said. “I can’t be late.”

  We’re often late. It’s not always me and not always her, but it’s always someone. We both got the late gene, as we call it. It didn’t skip a generation.

  I knew I was going to be late anyway. The text superseded work.

  I should have asked: Why can’t you be late? What’s going on? It would have shown interest in her life. If she heard something in my voice, that might have made the difference.