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Prologue
I was six years old the first time I disappeared.
My father was working on a magic act for the annual Christmas show at the
senior center, and his assistant, the receptionist who had a real gold tooth and
false eyelashes as thick as spiders, got the flu. I was fully prepared to beg my
father to be part of the act, but he asked, as if I were the one who would be
doing him a favor.
Like I said, I was six, and I still believed that my father truly could pull
coins out of my ear and find a bouquet of flowers in the folds of Mrs. Kleban's
chenille housecoat and make Mr. van Looen's false teeth disappear. He did these
little tricks all the time for the elderly folks who came to play bingo or do
chair aerobics or watch old black-and-white movies with soundtracks that
crackled like flame. I knew some parts of the act were fake -- his fiddlehead
mustache, for example, and the quarter with two heads -- but I was one hundred
percent sure that his magic wand had the ability to transport me into some limbo
zone, until he saw fit to call me back.
On the night of the Christmas show, the residents of three different
assisted-living communities in our town braved the cold and the snow to be bused
to the senior center. They sat in a semicircle watching my father while I waited
backstage. When he announced me -- the Amazing Cordelia! -- I stepped out
wearing the sequined leotard I usually kept in my dress-up bin.
I learned a lot that night. For example, that part of being the magician's
assistant means coming face-to-face with illusion. That invisibility is really
just knotting your body in a certain way and letting the black curtain fall over
you. That people don't vanish into thin air; that when you can't find someone,
it's because you've been misdirected to look elsewhere.
Delia
You can't exist in this world without leaving a piece of
yourself behind. There are concrete paths, like credit card receipts and
appointment calendars and promises you've made to others. There are microscopic
clues, like fingerprints, that stay invisible unless you know how to look for
them. But even in the absence of any of this, there's scent. We live in a cloud
that moves with us as we check e-mail and jog and carpool. The whole time, we
shed skin cells—forty thousand per minute—that rise on currents up our legs and
under our chins.
Today, I'm running behind Greta, who picks up the pace just as
we hit the twisted growth at the base of the mountain. I'm soaked to the thighs
with muck and slush, although it doesn't seem to be bothering my bloodhound any.
The awful conditions that make it so hard to navigate are the same conditions
that have preserved this trail.
The officer from the Carroll, New Hampshire, Police Department
who is supposed to be accompanying me has fallen behind. He takes one look at
the terrain Greta is bulldozing and shakes his head. "Forget it," he says.
"There's no way a four-year-old would have made it through this mess."
The truth is, he's probably right. At this time of the
afternoon, as the ground cools down under a setting sun, air currents run downslope, which means that although the girl probably walked through flatter
area some distance away, Greta is picking up the scent trail where it's drifted.
"Greta disagrees," I say.
In my line of work, I can't afford not to trust my partner.
Fifty percent of a dog's nose is devoted to the sense of smell, compared to only
one square inch of mine. So if Greta says that Holly Gardiner wandered out of
the playground at Sticks & Stones Day Care and climbed to the top of Mount
Deception, I'm going to hike right up there to find her.
Copyright © 2005 by Jodi Picoult. Printed by permission. Excerpted from the book Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult published by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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