How to Disappear Completely: Chapters 14–34

As with many autoimmune diseases, it's unknown what causes some people to develop vitiligo, though it is suspected that there can be a genetic factor, and it can be triggered by stress.

What Is My Prognosis?
The path of vitiligo is impossible to predict and occurs differently in every patient.

She hesitated, thinking. “Maybe you can start by rethinking what you mean by normal. Between you and me, I think normal is pretty overrated anyway.”
I mustered a small smile because she sounded a lot like Gram.

Yeah, well, not my mom. I don’t think she ever saw something she didn’t think needed fixing. And now that something is me. I can already feel her getting all obsessive like she does sometimes.

The moss under my scuffed boots glitters with dew, and there is a threadbare carpet of golden leaves beneath the sycamore tree.

For many weeks, Ivy refused to set foot in the forest. Though it hurt her to be away for so long, she was too frightened to return. For though her gran insisted that the woman in the white cloak had only been a figment of Ivy’s imagination, Ivy knew what she had seen.

“The kind of day you want to share with someone,” he says, squinting up at the sky. “You know, we will miss your gram terribly around here. She always made me feel welcome in Lanternwood, even when other people treated me as an outsider. Always had a kind word to spare. She was a wonderful person. But you know that better than anyone, of course.”
“Yeah, she was,” I say, feeling a bit taken aback.

“Fina?” I say dubiously.
She stands in front of me, wearing some kind of crazy helmet with bars across the face and holding a baseball bat.
“Emma!” she says. “Come in!”

“When I went to the bathroom this morning, there was one in the tub,” Fina says, grimacing. “It just sat there, watching me.”

“Did they have a red dot on them?” I ask.
Fina shakes her head. “No. They were black.”
“Then they aren’t black widows. And if they’re big, then they aren’t brown recluse spiders. So they’re probably harmless.”

Just as we pull away from Edie’s stop, I feel something hit me in the back of the head, and—thinking of elves with their bows at the ready—I instinctively spin around. Too late, I realize it was just a balled-up candy wrapper that Edie threw at me, and now I’m staring at her and the Graces, and all three of them are staring back at me, mouths agape.

Just as we pull away from Edie’s stop, I feel something hit me in the back of the head, and—thinking of elves with their bows at the ready—I instinctively spin around. Too late, I realize it was just a balled-up candy wrapper that Edie threw at me, and now I’m staring at her and the Graces, and all three of them are staring back at me, mouths agape.

“Gran!” Ivy cried, running to her grandmother and flinging herself at the old woman’s feet. She laid her head in her grandmother’s lap. “You’re safe!”
“Of course I am, child,” said Gran. But her face looked pale in the meager firelight.

Gran took one last breath that seemed to go on forever, and then in an instant was gone. Ivy and Shilling tilted their heads up in unison. Their howls pierced a hole through the moonless night.

Even better, Mom’s been so preoccupied with reviewing Lily’s college applications that I think she’s forgotten to be so worried about me.

Too late, Ivy realized she had been tricked, for suddenly, the rose-cheeked woman was gone, and the woman in the white cloak stood before her, holding Ivy tightly with one gnarled, clawlike hand, and gripping a wooden staff in the other.

I’ve pretty much been giving Mom and Lily the cold shoulder ever since my ambush makeover. Lily has offered to take me into town for makeup a couple times, but when I shake my head the second time, she rolls her eyes.

I look down at the fat stack of invitations in her hand. “I’m really not the one trying too hard,” I say smoothly.
She scoffs. “Jealous much? Sorry, I seem to have misplaced your invitations. Oh, well.”

“What...was that?” Fina asks, still panting as I close my bedroom door behind us. “A ghost?”
“It looked more like a person to me,” I say. Adrenaline buzzes in my ears.

She shrugs. “Well, you tell your mother we’re expecting her at the garden club next month. No excuses this time.”
She turns to hobble back to her house.

There’s another message, this one just a link. I click on it, and it takes me to this site about vitiligo. It’s not one I’ve seen before. It’s really more of a blog than a site, full of typos. It has all these horrible pictures, most of which I’m pretty sure have nothing to do with vitiligo, and says all these bogus things that aren’t true.

“Vitiligo is not contagious. It is not dangerous to you. If anyone had taken the time to research it—and I mean by looking at credible sources—you would know that. The only person this condition affects is Emma. Our job is to help make her feel supported, not ostracized. And no, Austin, it’s not ostrich-sized. It means when you make someone feel different and unwelcome. And the next person I see ostracizing Emma will be doing detention with me until winter break. Am I clear?”

“Vitiligo is not contagious. It is not dangerous to you. If anyone had taken the time to research it—and I mean by looking at credible sources—you would know that. The only person this condition affects is Emma. Our job is to help make her feel supported, not ostracized. And no, Austin, it’s not ostrich-sized. It means when you make someone feel different and unwelcome. And the next person I see ostracizing Emma will be doing detention with me until winter break. Am I clear?”

Anger bubbles up inside me. I should have known Mom would react like this. I push back my chair so suddenly that Boomer startles and skulks away upstairs. “It’s my face, Mom,” I say. “Not yours. And I can do what I want with it.”

I could probably get over that—over all the whispers and the stares, too, if I knew they were going to go away eventually. Like the time I threw up during the third-grade spelling bee, and for a while, I was totally humiliated, but after a week or so, nobody even remembered.

After all these years, Ivy recognized his laughing blue eyes. A mean light danced in them now. His sister—the one who had brought the pie—stood next to him, eyes downcast.

The wolf dog gave one last cry before he turned away and loped off into the darkness.

Saying all that stuff about not letting myself be invisible was easy enough in the Spinney, where there was no Edie to sneer at me, nobody to gawk at me or pretend I’m not there. What if I get to school and the curtain falls again, leaving me alone once more?

There's no point in worrying about things you can't change, Gram’s voice chides, and you can't change what people think of you.

“So, are you saying we aren’t going to concoct an elaborate revenge plot to get back at her?” Fina asks, giving a dramatic sigh of disappointment.
“You’ve done enough plotting for one day,” I say, giving her a light shove.