Free The More They Disappear by Jesse Donaldson

of “stock” this person or that came from.
    It was only after she failed to get into college that Jackson’s fatherly indifference turned into outright disappointment and that disappointment morphed into resentment. Both his and hers. Jackson tried to persuade the University of Kentucky to rethink their decision—it was his alma mater after all—but Mary Jane’s grades and test scores were an embarrassment. They couldn’t talk anymore without fighting. It was the same with her mother, though Lyda’s shortcoming had never been indifference. Her mother had tried to shape Mary Jane into a version of herself, as if she were a nesting doll, but Mary Jane stopped fitting the mold. Every once in a while she told Mary Jane she could still be beautiful, but it was always couched with the words if you only or if you would just  …
    Mary Jane climbed the stairs to her father’s third-floor office. Jackson’s desk was that of a man who spent too much time with his work. Papers paralleled edges in perfect stacks. Ornaments sat catercorner. A gilt pen was clipped to a notepad with a list of letters and numbers that had something to do with investment. Mary Jane licked the coating off an OxyContin, crushed it, and snorted a line of blue dust. Her life had become a routine of drug-induced ups and downs, but the office was a special treat—the best room in the house to get high. The windows were two squares that touched both the floor and slanted ceiling. She’d liked to stand between them as a girl: big as a wall!
    Mary Jane couldn’t spend another night in the house sad and alone; she wanted to go out into the world, to revel. She decided to call Tara Koehler. Even though Tara was a year younger and they’d never been that close, Tara liked to party. Besides, Tara was as close a thing to a friend as Mary Jane had left in Marathon. Almost everyone she’d known growing up had moved on—to college, the military, jobs in other towns. Mary Jane was supposed to have done the same but she’d stalled out.
    She snorted the rest of the Oxy, pulled out the phone book, and dialed Tara’s number. When a voice said hello, her thoughts cobwebbed. “Hello? Hello?”
    Mary Jane’s eyelids fluttered as the Oxy pulsed through her. “Tara?”
    â€œYeah. Who’s this?”
    â€œIt’s Mary Jane. Finley.”
    â€œMary Jane? You don’t sound so good.”
    â€œI’m okay. I took some pills.”
    â€œHold on.” She heard the cupping of the receiver, followed by a whisper. “What did you take?”
    â€œAn Oxy. Will you pick me up and take me somewhere?”
    â€œYou got any more?” The room shifted. The ceiling bore down. Mary Jane became lost in the pattern of a rug. “Mary Jane?”
    â€œSorry. I … I have more.”
    â€œIf you can get me high, I’ll take you to the dirt track.”
    â€œSure. Anything. Just come over.”
    Mary Jane hung up and looked down at her legs. They jangled but she didn’t control them. Parts of her raced, flew, and hummed. Parts of her stayed numb. She grabbed the desk and swiveled the chair. Come on feet! Come on legs! She stood. She stumbled. She walked. What freedom!
    The office was the best place to get high. Streetlight slanted through the cat-eye windows and the musty smell of books filled the air and the faces in the photos that hung along the wall stared back at her. She studied a pair of Civil War soldiers in a split frame—both of them kin. The Confederate rested an arm across a saddle, his hand loosely gripping a pistol. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips. He was handsome and cool, nothing like the Union man standing rigidly before a bullet-marked wall with his arms crossed like he didn’t know what to do with them. Next to the soldiers hung tintypes of toddlers in church clothes, their eyes dead and stern. Mary Jane moved down the wall,