An Amateur Magician’s Guide to Perfecting Her Best Trick

How to Disappear When You’re Seven 

1. Pull the bedcovers over your head and count to ten. 

2. When Daddy calls Mommy a bad word, hold your breath and count slower this time. 

3. Listen for the quiet before you exhale.

4. Whisper-sing that song you learned at school, the one about the old farmer with all the animals. 

5. Hear yells when you get to “Everywhere a quack-quack.” 

6. Push your hands hard against your ears. 

7. Hear more yells. 

8. Slide down to the floor between the wall and your bed. 

9. Find Mrs. Fluff and brush off the dust bunnies with the hem of your nightgown. 

10. Hear your big brother Scotty tap tap on the wall between your rooms. 

11. Tap tap back.

12. Hear yells and more yells and so many yells you can’t tell if Scotty is still tapping. 

13. Crawl under the bed and find one of Scotty’s Star Wars people, Luke you think. 

14. Point Luke’s gun thingy at Mrs. Fluff, say “I’m gonna kill you bitch slut whore.” 

15. Make Mrs. Fluff jump up and down, say “Sorry don’t please no.” 

16. Hear sirens. 

17. Throw Luke across the room.

18. Pull the blanket off your bed. 

19. Wrap it around you and Mrs. Fluff like a caterpillar waiting for Spring.

How to Disappear When You’re Fifteen

1. Wear the Raiders sweatshirt your dad left behind even though Mom says it’s too big and you look ridiculous but screw her. 

2. Steal beers from Mom and crawl out your bedroom window. 

3. Slurp a bunch of lime Jell-O shots at a house party where you don’t know anyone except your best friend Julie and kind of the guy you met at the mall food court. 

4. Laugh too loud with Julie about stupid things because God it feels good to laugh and who knew a jiggly dessert could make you feel so free.

5. Notice how all the guys look at Julie when they talk to you but don’t be mad, you totally would too, her blue eyes dance while your brown ones just sit there like clumps of dirt.

6. Down two more shots alone in the kitchen.

7. Go down on the mall food court guy because he says “Hey Maple Glazed” when he sees you, and for some reason remembering your favorite donut makes it okay when he pulls you into a dark bedroom. 

8. Afterward, lock yourself in the bathroom until your head stops spinning.

9. Look everywhere for Julie but don’t find her. 

10. Get a ride home from a girl who says she knows your brother. Her car smells like pot and she’s way old but it’s better than walking. 

11. Feel your head spin again. 

12. Clutch the dashboard and puke green on the floor mat. 

13. When she holds back your hair and says It’ll be okay, push her away and say “Get off me bitch.” 

14. Slam the car door and walk the rest of the way home.

15. See Scotty through the front window, his red face stretched in a scream. 

16. Crouch down on the front steps. 

17. Hear Mom’s boyfriend yell. 

18. Pull Dad’s sweatshirt down over your knees. 

19. See the boyfriend shove Scotty into a wall.

20. Close your eyes and try to find the laughing-Jell-O-freedom feeling but only find the one that makes you want to crawl out another window.

21. Taste more green come up your throat.

22. Ask God to please make the world stop spinning.

How to Disappear When You’re Twenty-two 

1. Weigh yourself in your dorm room, let the number on the scale tell you if you are a good or bad person.

2. Jog to class with a full backpack as penance.

3. Ace your Russian history midterm, but don’t tell anyone. It’s only an elective and anyway no one likes a showoff.

4. Buy a large iced tea, add five packets of Splenda, and call it lunch.

5. Hide behind your notebook when that cute guy Hank catches you looking at him in Bio 101. 

6. Hole up in a library carrel the rest of the day reading Anna Karenina because you feel like you know her somehow even though that’s totally ridiculous.

7. Startle like a new fawn when Hank appears next to you on the dark path back to the dorms.

8. Laugh at his jokes even though they make your throat go dry. You should be grateful a guy like him even knows you exist and anyway no one likes a prude.

9. When he slides your glasses off your face and says you look like the pretty actress from that movie, wish you could click your heels and be that girl. Wish harder than you’ve ever wished for anything in your life.

10. Open your dorm room door to find Scotty passed out on your bed. Again.

11. Find a baggie of white power in his backpack and hope it’s only coke.

12. Watch his hands clench and unclench in his sleep like when he used to choke up on the bat before hitting a homer in T-ball. 

13. Refuse to let yourself cry.

14. Squeeze three lemons into ice water, add five packets of Splenda, and call it dinner.

15. Watch MTV with the sound off so you don’t wake Scotty.

16. When Julie knocks on your door, open it a crack and whisper you can’t hang out tonight, nothing’s up, no you have not lost weight, everything is fine totally fine. 

17. Lock the door.

18. When Scotty’s bloodshot eyes finally focus, tell him all about school and your midterm and everything except that you’re terrified he’ll die, because his smile is so sweet you keep thinking about T-ball. 

19. Wipe bloody snot off Scotty’s face and hold him while he cries. 

20. Skip class the next morning.

21. Drive Scotty to the Navy recruiting center in a strip mall.

22. Don’t take it personal when he won’t look at or talk to you the whole drive.

23. Lean out the car window and say I love you but don’t know if he hears.

24. Realize you forgot to weigh-in this morning and so have no idea who you are.

How to Disappear When You’re Thirty

1. Dress for work in the dark because Hank got home late last night and judging by his breath when he climbed on top of you he needs to sleep it off.

2. Leave a note that says you hope he’ll be home for dinner, then draw a bunch of hearts around the edges so he won’t think you’re a nag.

3. When you get to the office and find your boss blocking the way to your desk, try to make yourself very small to slip past him.

4. Act like his arm grazing your breast isn’t a thing but know it is a thing. 

5. Vow to work the words “My husband” into every conversation with him from now on.

6. Tell Julie but not Hank. Never Hank. 

7. That night, push green beans around your plate while you ask Hank what he’d think about you maybe going back to school to finish your degree, and you could wait tables for extra cash and study when he’s not home so he’d hardly even notice, because being a secretary is okay but what you really want to do is teach, not like those teachers whose faces twist in bored contempt when a student asks a question, but the kind who sparks a fire in a kid who spends most of her life shivering.   

8. Shine like a love-crazed teenager when he says “Yeah, maybe.”

9. Drop your contact lens in the bathroom sink when he shoves an email from your boss in your face.

10. Say “No” you’re not having an affair, don’t be ridiculous, you do not dress sexy, say “Sorry, don’t, please no.”

11. Flash on a memory of your old stuffed animal Mrs. Fluff but don’t know why.

12. Wear long sleeves and extra concealer the next day. 

13. Smile and stare at your hands when you ask your boss to please not send those emails because, yes you know it was just a joke but, yes you do understand he’s under a lot of pressure except, sorry to make trouble you do need this job you’ll try harder. 

14. Gnaw on the inside of your cheek when he invites everyone in the department to lunch except you. 

15. Sit at your desk in the empty office until the silence sounds like a scream. 

16. Shake so hard you can hardly get the key in your car door. 

17. Take the on-ramp going East instead of West. 

18. Drive too fast up winding mountain roads. 

19. Lose your bearings. 

20. Lose the bars on your cell phone. 

21. Park by the side of the road and walk through the tallest trees you’ve ever seen. 

22. Lay down on the pine needles. 

23. Fold into yourself like an origami turtle. 

24. Cry. 

25. Hear a bird call. 

26. Then another. 

27. Then a hundred. 

28. Let their songs fill your head and your heart until nothing else exists, nothing else matters.  

29. Unfurl your arms and legs. 

30. Look up at the sunlight filtering through the branches. 

31. Take a deep breath for the first time since you can remember.

How to Disappear When You’re Forty-one

1. Buy five acres outside Banning with Scotty’s Navy death benefits. 

2. Wear long underwear and your glasses all day because you’re comfortable and no one’s around to care anyway. 

3. Feed every stray cat that wanders to your door. 

4. Tell yourself the ones with collars are stray, too, if they’re way the hell out here. 

5. Tune the radio to one of those megachurch broadcasts after breakfast. Tell yourself this God stuff is a crock but the choir is sublime. 

6. Trudge outside to pick radishes then curse the rabbits who ate every damn thing in your garden. 

7. Put out carrot greens when you notice the morning dew has turned to ice. 

8. Throw on jeans and run a brush through your hair when you hear tires on the gravel. 

9. Insist the UPS guy take a jar of strawberry preserves. 

10. Ramble on about the weather or some such thing.

11. Keep talking as he backs away from your door with a frozen grin.

12. Watch him drive away and realize he’s the first person you’ve spoken to in weeks.   

13. Judge the package he delivered as too light to be the study guide you ordered.

14. Settle onto the couch and feel the cats weave you into their matrix. 

15. Run your fingertips over Julie’s name in the return address.

16. Try to remember how it feels to laugh too loud about stupid things. 

17. Draw a blank.

18. Read the card first.

19. Unwrap the hand-knit scarf like it’s a Faberge egg and you’re a tsarina.

20. Wonder at the ache in your chest. 

How to Reappear When You’re Fifty-five

1. Wear mom jeans and a new t-shirt with an old band name that makes you both nostalgic and so very glad time runs in only one direction. 

2. Drop off rolled newspapers and a case of canned food at the cat shelter. 

3. Buy Mom her favorite fancy chocolates even though she usually thinks you’re a nurse or her social worker or on bad days her own mother.

4. Don’t apologize to the cashier for not having exact change. 

5. Arrive at the bar early and grade papers while you wait.

6. Write something positive on each student’s paper, especially the ones with handwriting so faint it looks like disappearing ink, because you never know when the spark will catch.

7. Waive at the bartender for, like, five minutes before he deigns to acknowledge you. 

8. Laugh about it when you and Julie clink glasses. 

9. Howl when she tells you her baby-faced doctor said stiff joints are normal for someone of her, quote, advanced age. 

10. Gobble-gobble when you compare neck waddles. 

11. Give not one single shit when the look-like-twelve-year-olds at the next table throw you side eye. 

12. Hug Julie tight in the parking lot and tell her you really, truly love her, stiff joints, waddle, and all. 

13. Mean every word.