Page 101 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
So I did. I turned around and I sprinted straight into the trees.
33
SUMMER BEFORE COLLEGE
I GO THROUGH THE DAYafter the party without even a trace of a hangover. Youth is good for that; drink yourself to chaos and wake free of the consequences. Poison yourself within an inch of death—on purpose—and bounce back so quickly you’d think nothing ever happened. Some unknown mechanism lets us skip the pain. Call it genetics. Call it invincibility. Call it the power of a blank slate, of a body not yet punished enough to reveal its cracks. It’s an ability of which we aren’t even aware, but we miss it when it leaves.
Resilience is wasted on the young. Our ability to push past anything, even embarrassment, even poison. Spring back into life, gait unchanged, suffering nothing more than vertigo and an invisible heap of sorrow amassing in the pit of our stomachs. A growing heap of trauma. Add to the pile with every fake smile, every unacknowledged ordeal. Dig into it only years later. By then, the heap will have grown so large it will be impossible to see all at once. But for now, it lies dormant, growing, collecting misery.
—
AT FOUR O’CLOCK, A BLACKcar shows up outside my house. From my second-floor window, I have a bird’s-eye view of anyone whocomes and goes. I see the car pull up and know immediately who it is. There are only two cars in the Valdecasases’ garage. I duck back into bed and shimmy under the covers.
The doorbell rings. My window is open. Manny’s voice drifts through it clear as day. “Eliot?”Bang, bang, bang.“Eliot, are you in there?”
If my parents were home, the game would be up. They would answer the door and see Manuel on the front step and insist I come downstairs. They would ask why on Earth I don’t want to say goodbye. They would ask lots of questions. Questions I cannot answer.
“Eliot?” He isn’t giving up. As soon as the doorbell stops, he pushes the button again. “I know you’re in there. I see your light on. What the hell is going on?”Bang, bang, bang.“Just come down here. Jesus. I’m leaving,por el amor de Dios.”
Yes. Leaving, gone, unreachable. Exactly as it should be.
Pedophile.
Disgusting.
Evil.
I exhale unsteadily.
You don’t deserve him.
You never will.
He’s better off without you.
The car will drive away. His plane will take off. He’ll begin his new life in Boston. From then on, he’ll exist only as a number on a touch screen. A number I can ignore. It will pass. He will pass.
And he does. After ten minutes, the doorbell goes silent. I hold my breath. Through my open bedroom window, I hear footsteps trudge down stone steps. A car door slams. An engine roars to life. And finally, gravel flies beneath four tires as my best friend rolls away.
—
I MOVE THROUGH THE WEEKafter the party like a body through water. If I kick hard enough, I move forward. But everything above the waterline is a disfigured blur.
I try not to think about the party. When I do, it appears to me with a ghostlike quality, a haze of darkness. So I try not to think about it. About the realization that I could be one of the most vile, disgusting types of human beings on the planet. The type of person who gets bullied by serial killers because eventheycan’t look at pedophiles without wanting to hurt them.
I roll onto my side. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,fuck.”
—
MY SELF-IMAGE HAS BECOME Amental Jenga. A precarious tower constructed of beliefs I’m only half-certain are real. It’s sturdiest in the morning, because overnight I accidentally forget all the bad things I know about myself. I open my eyes with a full, solid tower. But the minute my brain awakens enough to remember its own existence, it begins to look for the things I’m supposed to be anxious about. All day long it searches. Every remembered evil is a block removed.
By the end of the night, I’m a hollow, swaying skeleton of the tower I woke up as. All it takes is a nudge of the pinky, and I fall to pieces.
—
WEDNESDAY MORNING, MOM POKES HERhead in the door. “Are you okay, honey?”
“Yeah,” I say, eyes on the ceiling.
