Page 104 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
“It has?” asks Speedy.
“Yes.”
This is semi-true. I did indeed decide that it had always been my dream to move to New York—three days ago.
My parents look at each other. I know that look. It’s a look I’ve seen hundreds of times. It’s the look that says,This is a bad idea.It says,This is a bad idea, and if she were our first kid and if we were twenty years younger and not so damn tired, we would stuff her into the back of the car and drive her to college ourselves.It’s the same look they always share immediately before I get away with something my older siblings would never have gotten away with.
There will be more low-grade fights after this one. More cajoling, more forehead grabs and eye rolls, but it doesn’t matter. With that look, I know I’ve won.
34
NOW
UP THE BOARDWALK. FAR FROMthe rocks. Far enough to guarantee no one could see me. Veering left, deeper into the woods, holding nothing more than a flashlight and the heavy weight of regret. Dinner roiling about in my stomach.
No more than ten feet from the boardwalk, I tripped and fell. Hands and knees. I started to retch. The tequila and whipped cream…it was sloshing about inside me, sickening me, like a sailor being tossed back and forth on a wavy sea.
“Fuck,” I groaned. I retched again.
I don’t want to be here, I thought.I should never have come. Should never have left the safety of New York. I knew this would happen. Iknewit would happen, but I went against my better judgment. Now look at me.
I gave up. Collapsed into the mud. Rolled over. Faced the sky. The moon glowed high and bright, a mockery of my crumpled form.
I knew Henry was coming long before I felt him. He settled over me—a chill and a shiver, a cold blanket trying and failing to protect me from the night air. Normally, I would have run. Hopped to my feet and sprinted from the trees as fast as I could. Not this time. This time, I stayed. Blinked up at the moon.
Tears pooled at the edges of my eyes and dripped down my cheeks.
“I know you’re there,” I whispered, but nobody replied.
—
“ELIOT?” THE VOICE CAME FROMfar away. I knew it was Manuel from the way he said the first vowel of my name. “Jesus, Eliot, are you okay?”
Heavy clunks as his flipper-like feet pounded through the trees. Dirt puffing as he landed on the ground. His face above me, silhouetted by the night.
“Are you…wait. Are you crying?”
I didn’t respond.
“What happened?”
I shook my head.
“Whathappened?”
I didn’t say. I couldn’t.
I’m not who you think I am.
My lungs caught a sob as it rolled up my stomach.
Manuel hesitated. Then he leaned over and gathered me into his arms. I went limp. He untangled my heavy limbs and folded them to his chest like a blanket. All of them, all of me. Legs bound by the curve of his elbow. Head cradled in the soft hollow of his palm. Eyes shielded from the moonlight. He started to walk.
Don’t let him do this, the voice said, but I was too tired to fight.
“Where are we going?” I mumbled into his shoulder.
“To bed.”
