Page 3 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
An old feeling, long forgotten—or, more accurately, long bound, gagged, and stuffed away in a corner of my mind from which I bade it to never return—yawned and stretched its wings inside my stomach.
No, no, no.
He stepped forward. “Surprise,” he said, lips curving up shyly.
Saliva edged up the back of my tongue.He’s here. He’s really here.What was he doing here? The first few days of the wedding werefamily only—it said so in clear, shimmering letters on Taz and Helene’s invitation. So, why was my former best friend standing two feet in front of me, soft chestnut eyes watching me warily beneath wild curls?
He reached out one hand. I froze, uncertain of what would happen next.
Then he grabbed my shoulder and pulled me into his chest.
Despite being skinny as a willow branch, Manuel Garcia Valdecasas gives hugs that feel like drowning. He sucks you into the void of his arms, drags you to the very deepest point of comfort.
“You’re here,” he said into my hair. That was it. Nothing else.
I thought I didn’t miss him. Really, I did. For three years, I pushed him from my mind. Focused on my life in New York. That’s what you do, that’s whateveryonedoes: you grow up, you fly the coop, you leave the other birds behind.
I knew I shouldn’t let myself take comfort in his embrace. I’d been a bad friend. An awful friend, really. But I did. I let myself sink, just for a moment. And it felt good. God, it feltsogood. It felt just the way they say it does—that clear, heady euphoria of death by drowning.
2
SUMMER BEFORE FIFTH GRADE
MY STORY BEGINS WITH THEdeath of my brother.
I’m ten years old. I’m standing on the porch of Sunny Sunday, the main cabin on Cradle Island. The lake is the color of storm clouds. My mom has just come outside from talking on the telephone. She pulls me onto her lap and says something I don’t understand.
“What do you mean, gone?” I ask. I study her expression. It’s too close, her face. Old people look scary up close. I want to get down. I fear I might catch whatever it is that makes her old.
“He isn’t here anymore.”
“But he wasn’t here in the first place,” I say. “He stayed in Winnetka. You said he had summer school, so he stayed home.”
She blinks. Her eyes are big and old.
“How can he be gone if he was never here in the first place?”
And then she starts to cry.
—
BEFORE THIS MOMENT, WE NUMBEREDeight. Two parents, six kids.
Caleb, Clarence, Karma, Taz, Henry, Eliot. Caleb, Clarence, Karma, Taz, Henry, Eliot. A list I’ve given a thousand times—to every new teacher, new friend, anyone who cares to ask. I’m theyoungest, and I love my siblings. When asked, I recite our names with near-religious pride. “CalebClarenceKarmaTazHenryEliot! CalebClarenceKarmaTazHenryEliot!” The list became a sort of spell.Recite these names enough times and you’ll finally belong to them!Because that’s all I wanted, really. To sit at the big kids’ table.
When I reached the end of the list—when I got to say my own name, to attach it to those five fully formed humans, to claim my place among them, even as just the caboose, hitched to the train by nothing more than the fragile rope of familial obligation—I said it with shiny eyes and a plump-cheeked smile.
—
HENRY AND I WERE WHATyou call Irish Twins—siblings born less than a year apart. From the start, we did everything together. We slept in the same crib, gnawed on the same toys, even ate from the same bowls. The first time Mom tried to acclimate me to real dishware, she dumped me onto the bench next to Hen and handed me a plastic bowl and spoon. The bowl was filled with my very own serving of mush. Henry, of course, had been eating mush for almost a year. The way Mom tells it, I looked at my bowl for only a few seconds before turning to the side and starting in on Henry’s. He didn’t say a word. Just pushed the bowl closer to my half of the table and kept eating. We took turns dipping into the mush. Then, when his bowl was scraped clean, we moved over to mine and kept right on going.
Henry learned to read first. Every night before bed, I’d burst through his door, and he would open whatever fantasy novel was on his nightstand and read aloud until my head started to nod. He created far-off planets for me. Gave each of the characters a different voice. Held dramatic pauses when appropriate. “Where are we going tonight?” I would say.
“The Sahara Desert,” he would say. Or “Hogwarts.” Or “To visit the dinosaurs.”
And I cuddled in close, shut my eyes, and listened as we soared far, far away.
—
