How to Disappear Read online

  There’s Marissa again, hair in a sophisticated updo. She’s beautiful, and she’s everywhere. Does everything. I choose a picture of her being crowned queen, with Adrian as her king. They’re not looking at the camera, but at each other. Laughing. It’s the kind of photo that makes you want to be them.

  I search for other photos that make me feel that way. Images of the people I can never be, the moments I will never have. A cheerleader teetering at the top of a pyramid. A line of girls sitting hip to hip and arm in arm in the stadium stands. A row of pep band members, trumpets raised. I throw a requisite touchdown shot into the mix, choosing one that captures that moment of pure joy on the player’s face when he reaches the end zone.

  I can’t help imagining where Vicurious might appear in each photo. Locking arms with a row of friends, high-fiving the touchdown. I’m nervous Marissa will hate what I’ve picked, but Marvo said I have a good eye and I cling to his praise like it’s a life raft—a tiny one that’s losing air, and sharks are circling. But still, it’s keeping me afloat.

  That’s how I feel most of the time, like I need to stay calm and still so the sharks won’t notice me and attack. I make a mental note to check Instagram for hashtags like #dontnoticeme and #saveme. Because, after what I saw on #alone, I’m starting to think that I’m not.

  Studying the photos, I spot the people who are alone in the crowd. I zoom in on them. Find another, and another. Soon my monitor is filled with close-ups of people hiding in plain sight—the people who watch, but don’t participate. My people.

  The door behind me creaks and I spin around. Marvo and Beth Ann walk in. He’s smiling. She’s not. I scramble to close the images, but knock the mouse off the desk instead. If I bend to pick it up, they’ll definitely see the collage of lurkers on my screen.

  I leap up and turn to face them, blocking the monitor from view. “Hi! Hey! How’s it going? Here to work on yearbook? Of course you are. Stupid question. I mean, why else would you be here. Right?”

  Oh, God.

  Their eyes go wide. My heart nearly pounds through my chest and smacks them in the face. Marvo glances at Beth Ann and back at me. “She speaks.”

  I laugh in a desperate, it’s-really-not-that-funny-oh-kill-me sort of way.

  Beth Ann scowls and starts searching for something in the pile of papers on her desk. “Of course she speaks.”

  “I mean, like, full sentences,” says Marvo.

  “Stop picking on her.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Yes, you are,” Beth Ann snaps at him, flipping through her papers more frantically.

  “You don’t have to be such a—”

  Her hand shoots out, a stop sign in his face, paired with an incinerating glare. “If you ever say that word to me . . .”

  “What word?” Marvo grins. “Meanie?”

  “That’s not what you were going to say. And if you want to keep your balls, you better not say what we both know you were going to say.”

  Marvo crosses his hands over his private parts and backs toward the door. “My balls and I will just be going now.”

  “Wait!” Beth Ann stalks over to him, grabs his shirt, and kisses him. Right in front of me. And he kisses her back, and she puts her arms around him, and he puts his arms around her, and . . . I am staring at them like a weirdo.

  Before they can catch me, I spin around to face my computer again and grab the mouse that’s dangling off the edge of the table. I put the computer to sleep so the screen darkens, and drop to the chair. Not because I want to stay here another minute—but because the room is spinning and I don’t want to embarrass myself further by passing out in front of Marvo and Beth Ann’s make-out session.

  Besides, they’re blocking the door.

  I sit very still in hopes they’ll forget I exist, though I can still see them in my peripheral vision.

  “Knock it off,” says Beth Ann, slipping out of Marvo’s embrace and rushing back to her desk.

  He laughs. “You started it.”

  “I just . . .” She growls. “I need to find that stupid essay. I swear I left it in here.”

  Marvo helps her search, rifling through the stacks of folders and loose papers on her desk. The bell rings. Beth Ann starts whimpering.

  “We’ll find it,” he says. “Calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down!”

  “Okay!” Marvo’s hands are pressed to the sides of his head.

  I slide my backpack on and stand to leave. I don’t want to be late for class. I don’t want to get in the way. I avert my eyes and slowly head toward the door. That’s when I see what’s pinned to the bulletin board. “The Refugee Crisis of 1939” by Beth Ann Price.

  I stop. Point to it. Clear my throat. “Is this it?”

  Beth Ann spins, runs to the board. “Ohmygod. Yes!”

  She grabs me by the shoulders and says, “I could kiss you,” then unpins her paper and hugs it to her chest. Marvo twirls her around, her red sneakers flying through the air. Red Converse. High-tops. I stare at them spinning and then bouncing up and down.

  They’ve got yin-yang symbols on the toes.

  Beth Ann . . . she’s the girl from the bathroom who asked if I was okay. No wonder she was staring at my shoes the other day. I dash out and am halfway down the hall when I think I hear someone calling “Vic!” But I don’t look back. I probably heard wrong, anyway, or they’re shouting for Victoria Ewing or Victor Santos or even someone named Nick or Rick. There is nothing more humiliating than turning when it’s not you they’re calling.

  And it’s never me they’re calling.

  8

  IT’S NOT UNTIL LAST PERIOD that I realize I put my yearbook computer monitor to sleep but never closed the photos. If anyone sits down to use that workstation, they’ll see the way I zoomed in on random loners and think I’m really strange. The moment the bell rings, I head there instead of toward the buses.

  I’m out of breath when I open the door and, in a rare show of mercy from the universe, the room is empty. But there’s a soda can next to the keyboard, and when I touch the mouse, a blank screen comes up.

  Someone’s already closed all the photos, which means they’ve seen what I was doing. I push my chair away from the desk and leap up to race for the bus, slamming right into Marvo.

  He clutches my upper arms to steady me. “Whoa there.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t hear you come in,” I pant, stepping out of his grasp.

  “You staying after?”

  I shake my head, eyes darting to the clock above the door.

  “You ran off before. Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

  “No, I . . . bus,” I say. “I have to catch the bus.”

  He waves off the urgency of my transportation needs. “I can take you—”

  “No. I mean, thanks. But, no. It’s okay. I can make it.” I scoot to the door.

  “Hey, Beth Ann and I meant to tell you before. There’s a party at Marissa’s house on Saturday,” he says. “All the yearbook staff is invited. You should go. It’ll be fun.”

  “Oh, yeah. Okay. I’ll try,” I say, knowing full well that “walking into parties alone” is at the very top of a list even more terrifying than the Terror List. “Sorry, I have to go.”

  “Go! Go!” He holds his hands up like he’s surrendering. “I’ll see you later, Vi.”

  I fly out the door. Vi?

  He called me “Vic” before. Now he’s suddenly calling me Vi? Pronounced vie, as in lie, pie, sigh, oh my, I’m gonna die. Vi as in Vicurious. I swallow the dread that’s creeping up my throat.

  Has Marvo seen Vicurious? The very irrational, paranoid part of my brain starts worrying that my log-in for the yearbook computer is somehow linked to my Instagram and anyone could hack into it and see what I’ve been doing.

  But I must quickly dismiss those thoughts, because the buses leave in about two minutes, which means I have to run. Like, full-out sprint. Which I can’t do. I mean, I know how to run, and I do have a mod
icum of athletic ability, but I can’t race down the halls that way. It draws too much attention.

  So, I fast-walk as calmly as possible. When I reach the front of the school, the buses are closing their doors. The first in line is starting to drive away. I stutter to a halt, chest heaving. It’s an excruciating moment of indecision. Do I approach my bus, and risk that the driver won’t notice me and I’ll have to bang on the door or stand there looking ridiculous as he drives away? Or do I stand here looking ridiculous right now and risk that he does notice me and honks until I get on the bus?

  It’s a no-win situation, so I’m considering a third option, which involves ducking behind a nearby shrubbery or sitting on the ledge by the school entrance as if I’m staying after on purpose.

  Unfortunately, or fortunately—I’m not sure which—I don’t have to make any decision, because Lipton comes tearing out of the school shouting, “Wait! Hold the buses!”

  He sprints past me, skids to a stop, and spins around. “Are you missing your bus, too?”

  I nod feebly.

  Lipton lunges for me, grabs my hand, and starts dragging me toward the departing line of buses. “What number?”

  “Th . . . thirteen,” I sputter.

  He tears toward bus thirteen, dragging me behind him and waving frantically. Also shouting. “Hold up!”

  The bus in front of mine starts pulling out, but we reach bus thirteen before it moves. Lipton slaps his hand against the door. The driver sees us and pulls the lever that swings it open.

  I want to disappear, slide right under the bus. I remember once a kid slipped on ice and fell beneath the bus and it ran right over his legs. Even that sounds slightly more appealing than boarding the bus right now with everyone staring.

  Lipton beams at me like he’s just climbed Mount Everest, and the driver says, “You getting on or what?”

  So I get on and slide to the window of the first seat that’s empty. Lipton takes off for one of the buses behind me, and someone shouts, “Go Tea Bag!” out the window. Everyone laughs. I concentrate on calming my gasping breath, making it shallow and quiet.

  More than anything I want to text Jenna right now. Sinking low in my seat, I pull out my phone and log into Instagram instead, curious to see what Vicurious and her seventy-eight followers have been up to today. Except Vicurious doesn’t have seventy-eight followers anymore.

  She’s got 1,723.

  I blink at the screen. One thousand, seven hundred, twenty-three people are watching me? That’s more than the entire student body of Edgar H. Richardson High School. I try to imagine them all seated in the gym for a pep rally, filling the bleachers and the floor. I have that many followers?

  I turn my phone off. Press my forehead to the cool window. Close my eyes.

  How is this happening? All I did was Photoshop myself into a few images, which takes a certain skill, but not exactly the sort that people on the internet get excited about. I have no special talent. I’m not funny or clever. Why are they following me? I can’t believe I’m not hyperventilating yet. In fact, the feeling seizing my chest is something else entirely. It’s . . . glee?

  No, it can’t be that. I’m not even sure what that feels like. Yet I’m having a hard time stopping myself from smiling. Vicurious is a hit! And the fact that I’m more psyched than scared about that is so foreign to me. A burst of laughter—a really loud one—is hovering at the base of my throat, and I’m tempted to get up and skip down the bus aisle. But Vicky doesn’t skip down aisles, or laugh out loud.

  Only Vicurious does that.

  9

  ONCE I’M HOME AND HAVE shared an acceptable amount of information about my day with my mother, I retreat to my room with the cucumber-mango-cilantro-lime smoothie she prepared for me and plop down in front of my computer. I click through all the activity on my Vicurious account, trying to figure out how it blew up so fast. There are hundreds of likes and dozens of comments. I scour my feed for clues. I mean, even if you’re a fan of Neil deGrasse Tyson or Jimmy Fallon, you don’t follow every single person who posts a picture of them.

  People seem to be responding to the vicariosity of it, if that’s even a word, which I’m pretty sure it’s not. They’re writing stuff like:

  OMG I LOVE THIS! I’m vicurious too.

  and

  When watching everyone else have fun is not enough.

  I open my followers list and start clicking on them one by one. Their posts are mostly the usual stuff. Selfies. Cats. Books. Shoes. Quotes. Drawings. Food. Every now and then there’s a feed that’s filled with nearly naked shots. It makes me uncomfortable, like I’ve just walked in on someone while they’re getting dressed. I click away as fast as I can.

  After checking out about forty of my followers’ feeds, I realize there are just too many to study them all. So I scan the list for familiar names. I’m on the lookout for jennaelizabethtanner, of course, but also marvolicious, which is Marvo’s username. If he’s following Vicurious, I’ll know that calling me “Vi” was not a coincidence.

  My eyes are bleary by the time I get to the bottom of the list, which thankfully does not contain Marvo. No Jenna, either. New followers have popped up while I was checking, though. I still haven’t figured out why, or how, Vicurious is attracting so many, so I go back to the comments.

  Then, I see.

  Someone’s tagged my Academy Awards photobomb of Jennifer Lawrence with #jenniferlawrence and then a user whose name is Jennifer Lawrence has written:

  Photobombing on the red carpet. Looks like something I would do.

  I switch over to her page, and she’s actually reposted my post, and told her 58,472 followers to follow me, too. My heart starts racing at the thought of the actress Jennifer Lawrence following me, but then I notice three other Jennifer Lawrences have commented on my photo, too.

  I do a Google search for “Jennifer Lawrence Instagram,” hoping to find an official website or something. A bunch of Jennifer Lawrences show up. But right underneath them is an article titled, “Jennifer Lawrence Scorns Social Media,” and it reports that Jennifer Lawrence has said, “If you ever see a Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter that says it’s me, it most certainly is not me.”

  I’m kind of relieved. Also impressed. Jennifer Lawrence may be the only person on the planet not using social media and she couldn’t care in the least. I wonder what it must feel like to be so utterly unconcerned about what anybody else thinks. I guess that’s part of what Vicurious is about—capturing that feeling, that confidence.

  I log out, delete my browser history, and push away from my desk. The smoothie Mom made for me after school is still sitting there. All melty. I stir it with the straw and stare into its depths.

  “Vicky, are you in there?” A pounding on my door jolts me from my smoothie reverie.

  “What?” I run stocking-footed across the room to open the door a crack and peer at my mother.

  “I’ve been calling you!” Her face is all exasperated. “Jenna’s on the phone.”

  “Jenna?” I glance at my backpack, where my cell phone has been safely tucked away since I got home. “What phone?”

  Mom rolls her eyes. “The home phone, silly. Come talk to her.”

  “I . . .” My mind freezes for a second. The only thing I can think of is—why are we the only ones with an actual landline? And then, What will I say? “I . . .”

  Mom pushes my door open and grabs my arm, dragging me toward the kitchen. “What is wrong with you? You’ve been holed up in your room like a hermit for days. Your best friend wants to talk to you. So talk to her.”

  She picks the phone up off the counter and shoves it into my hands.

  It feels like I’ve just been pushed onto a stage in front of a thousand people. My mother’s glaring at me, fists on her hips, as I bring the phone to my ear. I open my mouth but nothing comes out.

  Mom grabs the phone back from me. “Jenna? Just hang on a second, sweetheart. Vicky will be right with you.” She presses the mute button and her v
oice, which was all sugar with Jenna, turns back to a snarl for me.

  “What is the problem? I’m trying to be patient and understanding with you, Vicky. Truly, I am. But now you can’t even talk to your only friend?”

  “Not with you staring at me like that,” I say.

  “Fine!” She throws her arms in the air. “I’ll leave the room. But you’re going to have to get over this . . . this . . . absurd shyness. Self-consciousness. Whatever it is. If you expect to function in the real world—”

  The zombie vacuums start to roar to life in my head. I press my hands to my ears and turn away from her, away from the phone and Jenna, and start walking to my room.

  Mom grabs my arm and pulls me back to the kitchen. When we reach the counter she maneuvers me around to sit on a stool. She pries my hands away from my ears and presses them to my lap.

  “I will leave you alone now.” Her voice is low and really calm. Too calm. “You will pick up the phone and talk to your friend. You think you can do that?”

  I nod slowly.

  “Terrific.” She lifts the phone from the counter and hands it to me. “I’ll just be in the living room. And we can talk about this after.”

  I wait until she’s gone, take a deep breath, and push the button to unmute the phone. But I’m not ready. I haven’t figured out what to say. Everything that comes to my head is wrong. Does she realize how jealous it makes me to see her hanging out with those girls in their matching outfits? And why is she dressing to please some boy she hardly knows? What’s up with that? The worst, though: How could she have said what she said about me? I can’t bear to hear her deny it, to try to convince me she doesn’t really think I’m pathetic, when she obviously does.

  As I slowly lift the phone to my ear, I hear her voice on the other end. “Hello? Vicky? Are you there? I can’t believe you’re not even going to talk to me. You’d rather just sit around in your room and mope? You’re being so . . . aargh. Tristan was right.” There’s a pause. A sigh. “Are you even there?”