Page 15 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
KARMA:wow.
KARMA:to what do we owe this honor?
Bubbles popped up one after another, building a grey tower up my screen.
TAZ:hey, Eliot!
CLARENCE:THE BOOSE IS BACK!!!!
MOM:Eliot. Y didn’t u answer my call yesterday?
DAD:Boose? Who is this? Eliot?
MOM:Yes
DAD:Is this about food at the wedding?
MOM:Yes
DAD:Oh.
DAD:In that case, I like sweets.
KARMA:yes, dad. we know.
My family didn’t understand why I did what I did. Why I disappeared to New York at just eighteen, never coming home for holidays and rarely answering their calls. And, what’s more, I never planned to explain it to them.
Not in this lifetime, anyway.
6
FIFTH GRADE
I MEET MANUEL GARCIA VALDECASASon the first day of fifth grade.
He arrives in the afternoon. In the morning, I spend most of my time sitting at my desk and trying to fix whatever has broken inside my head.
That morning, I woke up in my four-poster princess canopy bed and decided that I knew exactly how to solve this. How to make the moths flying about my mind stop beating their torturous wings: I willthinkabout it. I will thinkreally hardabout it. I will apply all of my brainpower to the task, to this one problem, the only problem that matters anymore, because that technique has always worked in the past, right? Stuck on a test question? Think about it. Think about itreally hard. Close your eyes and press your palms to your forehead and think think thinkthinkand then—there! The answer. It pops into your mind as suddenly as a file opening on your computer.
So, I do. After hopping out of Speedy’s navy-blue Suburban, I sprint over the pavement and into the Skokie School, Winnetka’s only public middle school and my home for the next two years. Inside, the hallway is packed with fifth and sixth graders shouting greetings or swapping stories about the summer or shyly shuffling forward with their eyes on the tiled floor. Their skin is tan andfreckled. The popular girls are resplendent in their First Day Outfits. I ignore them all, making straight for my new classroom.
Once there, I find the desk with my name on it and sit down. Then I start to think.
And think.
And think.
The result of all of this thinking?
Chaos.
You loved your brother, I tell myself.
But did you? Did youreally?
Of course I did. He was my best friend.
But don’t forget that you didn’t cry at his funeral. Don’t forget that even your parents noticed, that they were concerned about you.
