Gone Girl

online: how to drain your toilet for repair.
    Noelle invited for lemonade. Lots of lemonade.
    Noelle peeing in my drained, unflushable toilet, each of us so terribly embarrassed!
    Me, a small glass jar, the pee in my toilet going into the glass jar.
    Me, a well-laid history of needle/blood phobia.
    Me, the glass jar of pee hidden in my purse, a doctor’s appointment (oh, I can’t do a blood test, I have a total phobia of needles … urine test, that’ll do fine, thank you).
    Me, a pregnancy on my medical record.
    Me, running to Noelle with the good news.
    Perfect. Nick gets another motive, I get to be sweet missing pregnant lady, my parents suffer even more, Ellen Abbott can’t resist. Honestly, it was thrilling to be selected finally, officially for Ellen among all the hundreds of other cases. It’s sort of like a talent competition: You do the best you can, and then it’s out of your hands, it’s up to the judges.
    And, oh, does she hate Nick and love me. I wished my parents weren’t getting such special treatment, though. I watch them on the news coverage, my mom thin and reedy, the cords in her neck like spindly tree branches, always flexed. I see my dad grown ruddy with fear, the eyes a little too wide, the smile squared. He’s a handsome man, usually, but he’s beginning to look like a caricature, a possessed clown doll. I know I should feel sorry for them, but I don’t. I’ve never been more to them than a symbol anyway, the walking ideal. Amazing Amy in the flesh. Don’t screw up, you are Amazing Amy. Our only one. There is an unfair responsibility that comes with being an only child – you grow up knowing you aren’t allowed to disappoint, you’re not even allowed to die. There isn’t a replacement toddling around; you’re it. It makes you desperate to be flawless, and it also makes you drunk with the power. In such ways are despots made.
    This morning I stroll over to Dorothy’s office to get a soda. It’s a tiny wood-paneled room. The desk seems to have no purpose other than holding Dorothy’s collection of snow globes from places that seem unworthy of commemoration: Gulf Shores, Alabama, Hilo, Arkansas. When I see the snow globes, I don’t see paradise, I see overheated hillbillies with sunburns tugging along wailing, clumsy children, smacking them with one hand, with the other clutching giant non-biodegradable Styrofoam cups of warm corn-syrupy drinks.
    Dorothy has one of those ’70s kitten-in-a-tree posters – Hang in There! She posts her poster with all sincerity. I like to picture her running into some self-impressed Williamsburg bitch, all Bettie Pagebangs and pointy glasses, who owns the same poster ironically. I’d like to listen to them try to negotiate each other. Ironic people always dissolve when confronted with earnestness, it’s their kryptonite. Dorothy has another gem taped to the wall by the soda machine, showing a toddler asleep on the toilet – Too Tired to Tinkle . I’ve been thinking about stealing this one, a fingernail under the old yellow tape, while I distract-chat with Dorothy. I bet I could get some decent cash for it on eBay – I’d like to keep some cash coming in – but I can’t do it, because that would create an electronic trail , and I’ve read plenty about those from my myriad true-crime books. Electronic trails are bad: Don’t use a cell phone that’s registered to you, because the cell towers can ping your location. Don’t use your ATM or credit card. Use only public computers, well trafficked. Beware of the number of cameras that can be on any given street, especially near a bank or a busy intersection or bodegas. Not that there are any bodegas down here. There are no cameras either, in our cabin complex. I know – I asked Dorothy, pretending it was a safety issue.
    ‘Our clients aren’t exactly Big Brother types,’ she said. ‘Not that they’re criminals, but they don’t usually like to be on the radar.’
    No, they don’t seem like they’d appreciate that. There’s my friend Jeff, who keeps his odd hours and returns with suspicious amounts of undocumented fish that he stores in massive ice chests. He is literally fishy. At the far cabin is a couple who are probably in their forties, but meth-weathered, so they look at least sixty. They stay inside most of the time, aside from occasional wild-eyed treks to the laundry room – darting across the gravel parking lot with their clothes in trash bags, some sort of tweaky spring