How to Disappear Completely Read online

  Dedication

  For Aki,

  who fills even the stormy days with sunshine

  Epigraph

  Glory be to God

  for dappled things.

  —GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

  “Pied Beauty”

  Would Sarah and Jack have clasped hands and stepped into the tunnel if you or I could have warned them of the darkness that awaited them on the other side? I suppose I like to think they would, or there would be no story to tell.

  —R. M. WILDSMITH,

  The World at the End of the Tunnel

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  The spot appears on the morning of Gram’s funeral.

  It arrives unannounced and uninvited, like a fly buzzing around a picnic.

  Not that my life is a picnic today.

  Or maybe the spot has been there for a while, and I just haven’t noticed. Maybe the only reason I notice the little white circle now is because I’ve been staring at my lap ever since I sat down in the front pew.

  If I were wearing black tights, like Mom told me to, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the spot just between my big toe and my second. But when I searched my room earlier this morning, every pair I owned seemed to be ripped, or covered in Boomer hair.

  We didn’t have time to run to the store to buy a new pair. I know because Mom said that three times before saying I would just have to go to the church “as is.”

  “As is” is an insult when it comes from Mom.

  “It’s still warm out,” I reminded her. There’s a whole week left before school starts, after all. “I don’t need tights.”

  Just then, Lily came gliding down the stairs, flawless as usual, from her shiny long hair to her own sleek black tights.

  Lily is my older sister, in case you didn’t know, which you didn’t, because I’ve only just started the story.

  There are two other things you need to know about Lily:

  1. She is perfect.

  2. She is going to Yale to study English next year, even though technically she has not applied yet, but she will definitely get in (see #1 above).

  She stood shoulder to shoulder with Mom. You can tell that Lily is Mom’s daughter, not because they have the same complexion or eyes or hair, but because they are both the same kind of very polished pretty. Lily had spent the hour before locked in the bathroom we share, curling her hair and perfecting her makeup.

  I can’t remember the last time I looked at my reflection in a mirror except to get something out of my teeth.

  Dad came rushing down a moment later, and I was relieved when Mom pounced on his crooked tie, forgetting all about my tightlessness. Then we were off.

  And now here I am, sitting in the church, staring at the white spot on my left foot while the minister talks about God and heaven and angels.

  Now that I’ve seen the spot, I can’t stop staring at it. I blink at the paleness of it against my skin, like a tiny bright moon.

  I think of this one time Gram took me to the meadow by the river to sit with her while she painted. Well, we did that all the time, but this time, I started pulling the paints from the old leather satchel she carried them around in and reading all their names. They were called things like “icebox plum” and “whitening willows.”

  “What color would I be?” I asked.

  Gram looked at me thoughtfully. Then she said, “You, Emma, are the color of afternoon light settling on the trees in the Spinney.”

  “You can’t fit that on the back of a tube of paint!” I protested. Gram was always saying stuff like that, like she was a poet instead of a painter. But secretly, I’d been proud.

  Spinney is an old-fashioned word for a little forest, by the way. And the Spinney is the place where I wish more than anything I could be right now.

  I think the spot must be some kind of stain. I lick my finger and lean down, rubbing at it. It doesn’t fade like marker or paint would. Another, more alarming thought floats into my brain. What if I’ve managed to bleach my skin somehow? It seems like something I would do. If I have, Mom. Will. Kill me.

  As if to prove me wrong, she reaches an arm around my shoulders and gives me a reassuring squeeze. She probably thinks I’m looking down because I’m crying. I cross my right foot over my left so she can’t see the spot.

  It seems like almost everyone in Lanternwood has shown up today for Gram’s funeral. A glance back reveals Ruth and Gloria and the rest of the garden club sitting directly behind our pew, all of them wearing big black hats. Old Joe and Older Joe (who used to be Young Joe and Old Joe) have taken the morning off from the farm and sit side by side, their few strands of hair slicked back and their heads bowed respectfully.

  Even villagers who didn’t know Gram very well showed up to say goodbye to her. There are lots of people I know by face but not by name, like the Apple Lady. She never spoke to Gram as far as I could tell, but this morning she’s in the back pew, next to a family with two little kids I don’t recognize. Their mom is sniffling into a tissue.

  I know I should probably be crying, too. I should be thinking about Gram, not some weird spot. And you should know that I do think about her, all the time since she died. It’s just hard for me to think about her here.

  The old stone-and-brick church is just down High Street from her house, but I never saw her come inside. Sometimes, we would take Boomer and walk through the graveyard, searching the mossy gravestones for funny names or making up stories for how the people under them died. (In the old section, of course—not the new one, where people still put flowers by the stones.)

  Anyway, you would be surprised by how many people died in the killer skunk attacks of 1919, including poor Billy Snagglehook, May God Rest His Soul.

  But mostly, we spent our time in the Spinney or down by the river, where Gram told me fairy tales while she painted.

  In fairy tales, things are always changing into something else. Pumpkins turn into carriages, frogs into princes, mermaids into girls. Nothing is ever what it seems. Nothing ever stays the same. And I guess that’s the way it is in real life, too.

  Gram didn’t tell us she was sick until a
couple of months ago. Not until she knew she was going to die. I still didn’t believe it, though. Not until the sickness changed her, turning her into a weak old woman.

  Then one day, she fell into an enchanted sleep.

  That’s the part fairy tales get wrong, see. In Gram’s stories, things usually come out right in the end. Sleeping Beauty wakes up. Little Red Riding Hood gets to go home.

  Gram did not wake up. Gram is never coming home.

  And with her gone, I don’t know how the story is supposed to go.

  2

  After the service, Gram’s ashes are buried next to Grandpa’s, under an old oak tree. Their grave is just one row up from the grave of a woman named Isabella Fortune, who was born eight years before Gram but died when she was only twenty-four, which doesn’t sound very fortunate to me. I asked Gram about her once, and she said that Isabella had been one of her favorite teachers before she’d gotten sick and died. Now the grass around her grave is overgrown and dotted with weeds.

  People keep saying we should be grateful that Gram led a long and happy life, and I guess that’s true. But as we stand over the gravestone she will share with Grandpa, listening to Ruth blow her nose, I imagine that the stone belongs to someone else. To two strangers. I pretend that Gram is standing right next to me, her whispered words crackling in my ear.

  “What do you reckon?” she would say. “What carried these poor souls away?”

  “Maybe he came home when his wife was doing one of those face masks,” I’d murmur back. “The kind that Lily and Mom do. And the sight of it was so scary it gave him a heart attack.”

  “Yes. And he was lonely in the grave, so one night his ghost got up, walked back to the house, and whispered, ‘boo,’ in his wife’s ear. Scared her right to death.”

  “And now they’re even.”

  The minister clears his throat, and the image of Gram fades away. I realize that a smile has snuck onto my face and wrestle it off.

  Most people follow us back to Gram’s house once we’re done in the graveyard, although some of them go their separate ways.

  Lanternwood has only one main street, High Street, which curves in a slow horseshoe, sandwiched by the river on one side and farmland on the other. From Gram’s front yard, you can see the church—with its wobbly steeple and ancient bell—to the left, and the village hall—with its cheery red brick and bulletin board—to the right. In between the two are old, pretty houses that seem to shine in the sunlight like charms on a giant bracelet, linked together by the flower gardens that spill over their neat picket fences.

  And Gram’s house is the best of them all.

  Actually, it’s called a cottage—kind of like how Lanternwood is technically a town, but everyone calls it the village. There’s even a white sign that hangs just over the fence outside the house that says “Morning Glory Cottage” in big handwritten letters. It’s named for the morning glory vines (I know, big surprise) that have climbed around the door, all the way up the white walls to the sloping roof.

  Mom, Dad, Lily, and I officially moved in at the beginning of the summer, when Gram finally told us how sick she was. We used to live forty miles away, but Gram needed to be taken care of, and Mom wanted a bigger house. So now we live here, in Morning Glory Cottage, where six generations of my family have lived before us, including Gram’s father, who was once the mayor of the village.

  Six might sound like a lot of generations to you, but Lanternwood is old. Like, really old. It was founded in 1747, and not much has changed since then. The church is the original one. People come to take pictures of it and of the village hall. They pick apples and have lunch in the old apple orchard, where there’s a little café now, or they take picnics down to the meadow beside the river. They say coming to Lanternwood is like stepping back in time. Like something out of a fairy tale.

  Dad used to drive me here pretty much every weekend to stay with Gram, so I’ve always had my own bedroom, and I’ve explored every corner of the village.

  I also know everyone who follows us back to the cottage from the funeral. Dad knows them all, too, since most of them have lived here forever and still talk about what a fat baby he was.

  Old Joe (who is Gram’s age) and Older Joe (who is about a thousand) hit the buffet table and then strike up a conversation with Dad about corn prices. They run the farm that wraps around one side of the town. If you ever visit Lanternwood, odds are you’ll get stuck behind Old Joe driving his tractor down High Street, chugging from one end of the horseshoe to the other.

  Gloria and Ruth—Gram’s best friends since childhood—make a beeline for me as soon as they walk in the door.

  “Oh, Emma,” says Gloria, opening her arms and enveloping me in a crushing hug. “We miss her already, don’t we?”

  I shouldn’t be surprised by Gloria’s strength. She’s only five feet tall, but she manages to string the holiday lights outside the village hall every year and has been known to use her huge handbag to hit people who ask how old she is.

  “Yeah,” I say. “We do.”

  “She had a good life,” croaks Ruth, banging her cane against the wood floor for emphasis. “A good, long life.”

  When you come to Lanternwood, Ruth will be the one leaning on her cane in her yard next door to the church, waiting to complain about her aching bones to anyone who happens to pass by. Now she lets out a sob, and Gloria reaches into her enormous purse and hands her a tissue. Ruth blows her nose—actually she sounds like she’s trying to blow it off—and brings all conversation to a halt. Then she catches sight of Mom.

  “Excuse us, Emma,” she says. “We need to have a little chat with your mother.”

  As Gloria and Ruth corner Mom and begin to pressure her into joining the garden club, I make my way over toward where Dad has gone to sit with Lily. In the corner of the room, standing in front of one of Gram’s river paintings, I glimpse Professor Swann, who used to teach in town at Hampstead College. He’s dressed in the same tweed suit and old-fashioned hat that he wears every day when he takes his morning and evening walks to the river.

  You can tell by his British accent that Professor Swann didn’t grow up here. Even though he’s lived in Lanternwood for most of his life, he’s still kind of an outsider. He is standing alone right now, sipping coffee and staring off into space, his eyes misty with tears. Which is sweet, since I don’t think he and Gram were particularly close.

  “Gloria has extra tissues if you need one,” I say.

  Professor Swann looks startled to see me. “How kind, Emma,” he replies. “But I’ve got a—no—where is it now?” Patting his pockets, he eventually produces a purple handkerchief.

  “She was a wonderful woman, your gram,” he says as he dabs his eyes. “Truly extraordinary.”

  I thank him and worm my way through the crowd toward Dad, wanting to tuck myself under his arm.

  “Isn’t anyone in this village under the age of ninety?” I hear Lily ask him.

  Lily doesn’t approve of old people. Or people who smell funny, wear sweatpants, or don’t like her Instagram posts as soon as she uploads them.

  Lily only approves of people like her. People with perfect shiny hair who go to Pilates classes on Saturdays and have the right shape of nose to look down on everyone else.

  She’s probably almost relieved that Gram is gone so she doesn’t have to listen to her cough at night or kiss her soft, saggy cheek or pretend not to notice the crumbs that sometimes got caught between the folds of skin around her mouth.

  Lily is good at noticing the outsides of people. She gets that from Mom, too.

  Thinking about outsides makes me remember the spot between my toes again, and I’m just bending to examine it when Old Joe appears by my side.

  “Between you and me, I don’t think your gram would have liked that service too much,” he says, one of his woolly eyebrows crooking.

  “No,” I say. “She’d have thought it was boring.”

  On my other side, Boomer thumps his brown-s
peckled tail, and Old Joe leans down to give him a good scratch behind his ears.

  “Hey there, boy.” He straightens again. “You know, it was me who gave Boomer to your gram.”

  “I know,” I say, grinning. “She said you got him to help you on the farm, but all he did was scare the cows. And when you realized he wasn’t much help at all, you left him tied on her stoop in the middle of the night.”

  He snorts. “That old bat,” he says affectionately. “Never could believe a word she said to you. Anyway, some of us are heading to Gloria’s house in a while. To give her a real send-off, you know? Why don’t you ask your dad if you can come along?”

  I think about accepting the offer, but honestly, I’d rather be alone right now. Or at least I’d rather not be around other people.

  “Thanks,” I say. “But maybe some other time?”

  “Sure thing, Emma,” Old Joe says, winking his goodbye. “You take care of yourself now.”

  When everyone is looking the other way, Boomer and I slip out the back door. Mom will be angry I didn’t ask, but if I did, she’d probably want me to stay until all the guests are gone. Who knows how long that will take?

  At the end of the yard, there’s a crumbling stone wall with a red door in it that leads to a little passageway between two rows of houses so ancient I’m sure I can hear them creaking sometimes. Ruth’s not the only one around here with old bones.

  We run down the passage and turn onto High Street across from the church, then veer left. We gallop past the apple orchard and run down the gravel road that spits us out onto the wide meadow along the riverbank.

  Once we reach the meadow, I let Boomer off the leash and he goes charging toward a line of unsuspecting ducks. I love the feeling of the long grass skimming my ankles as we speed past groups of picnickers.

  Soon we reach the end of the meadow.

  Lots of people come here to picnic and walk by the river. They all stop when they get to the line of elm trees with the single strand of barbed wire stretching between them.

  But like I said, I know every corner of Lanternwood.

  Boomer and I duck beneath the wire and weave between the trunks, keeping clear of the patches of poison oak. The leaves rustle their usual greetings as we pass.