Read Online Don't Try to Find Me: A Novel by Holly Brown - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Holly Brown
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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 becomean 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 would 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 swipeit 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.
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 becomean 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 would 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 swipeit 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.
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