Watch Me Disappear (25 page)

“You mean until the morning?”

“Why are you being so mean? Can’t you just be nice?”

“I’m leaving,” I say. “Do what you want.”

“Wait!” Maura steps between me and the car door. “Follow me to Jason’s and then home,” she says. “I’ll feel safer that way.”

“I’m not hanging around at Jason’s. I have to get home. I told my parents—”

“Okay, that’s fine. I’ll just drop him off.”

Something more than a flat tire is wrong. Her big date night had clearly not gone as planned, or she wouldn’t be in such a hurry to ditch Jason. It isn’t even ten o’clock.

The minute Jason gets out of her car and Maura takes over the driver’s seat, my cell phone rings. Maura wants me to talk her through the drive home. I’m not supposed to talk on the phone while I’m driving. It would be just my luck to get in an accident while on the phone. “Can’t we talk later, after we get home?” I ask. It’s my turn to whine.

“Do you really have to go home right now?” she asks.

I don’t. I have until 11:30. She suggests we go to the ’50s Diner, a retro greasy spoon at a truck stop at the entrance to the turnpike.

The diner is mostly empty. Overhead the fluorescent lights blare. The ugly Formica tabletops seem to glow in the unnatural light. Elvis is playing softly through the ceiling speakers. It smells like French fries, and in the case behind the counter are pies that look better than homemade. Maura and I are on a diet. I wonder why we’re here. In the unforgiving brightness of the diner, I can see Maura’s face clearly. Her eyes are pink, her nose rimmed with red. Her usually powder-smooth complexion looks shiny. I feel a little bad for being short-tempered with her about the tire. Obviously it hasn’t been a good night.

While we wait for our waitress, Maura fiddles with her paper napkin, twirling it around her fingers. Her hands are tense. Every now and then she sniffles. When she looks at me, I try to smile reassuringly.

“Well, aren’t you going to ask what’s wrong?” she says after we each order coffee.

“I didn’t know if you wanted me to—”

“Why do you think we’re here?”

“Sorry, I just figured you’d tell me if you wanted to.” I wait a moment, but she doesn’t speak. Finally, I ask, “So, what happened? Aside from the tire, I mean.”

Turns out Jason’s idea of a date night was not Maura’s. Maura had been planning for this, had bought her slinky little dress, had made reservations at Angelo’s. But when she arrived at Jason’s to pick him up, he was still in his sweat pants, lounging on the couch watching MTV, I imagine with his hand in his pants, as usual. He didn’t want to go. As “the man,” as he apparently put it, he was supposed to be driving her and sweeping her off her feet, but he didn’t have a car, and he didn’t have any money, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to be humiliated by having her pay for some fancy dinner. I imagine he belched after he said that, and maybe turned up the volume on the TV.

“We’ll hang out here,” he said. “I’ll cook.”

Maura then said something about not wanting to wait until he had a car and money to go on a date. She wanted to go now. I suspect she threw something of a hissy fit, although she doesn’t admit as much. When Jason didn’t move off the couch, she turned to leave, and he didn’t like that one bit. He threw the remote, got up, and grabbed her—as she tells me this she tenderly rubs her hand along her upper right arm—and then he pushed her hard into the wall. Her head hit the wall, hard enough to make her see stars.

“You gonna cry now?” he said, letting her go.

Maura couldn’t answer because she knew if she did, she would indeed cry.

“You’re too used to getting your own damn way. You think you’re some kind of princess.” He moved back to the couch and then realized he didn’t have the remote because he’d hurled it across the room. “Get me the damn remote and sit your ass down,” he said.

“And he’s never acted this way before?” I ask, interrupting her.

She shakes her head and then continues. She didn’t know what else to do, so she picked up the remote and handed it to him, but she didn’t want to sit down. She told him she was just going to go home.

“Go then,” he said.

Maura asked if they could just go get dinner. She told him they didn’t have to go out to Angelo’s. They could go anywhere. They could go to a diner. She just wanted to go out. I can believe that; all she and Jason ever do is sit around his house.

“You gonna let me drive that sweet car of yours?” he asked. He had tried before to get her to let him drive, and, to her credit, she had always denied him. You only had to meet the guy for five minutes to know he’d be a hazard behind the wheel.

“Okay,” she said. “Sure.”

“And I pick the place?” he asked.

She agreed.

He got up to change his clothes. “You want to come up with me, maybe help me work up an appetite?”

“Wait,” I say, “after all that, he wanted you to go make out with him?”

Maura nods. The waitress comes by and refills our coffees.

“You girls going to order any food?” she asks.

“We’ll have a hot fudge sundae to share,” Maura says.

“So what did you do?” I ask, after the waitress leaves.

Maura shrugs. “What could I do?”

“You didn’t.”

She shrugs again.

“Did you have sex with him?” As soon as I ask I know it is a stupid question. It’s not like they’ve never had sex before. Sex is the entire basis of their relationship. I’m surprised that Maura turns red at the question. “What?” I ask.

“He wanted me to,” she pauses, her eyes filling again. “He wanted me to, you know, go down…” Her voice trails off.

I don’t say anything, and after a minute she looks up at me, a tear spilling from her eye onto her cheek.

“Maura,” I say, reaching a hand across the table and stopping her fluttering fingers that have, by this point, torn the napkin to little shreds. “It’s okay.”

She nods.

“Really,” I say. “It’s okay.”

“Yeah, I know. People do it all the time.”

Of course that isn’t what I meant. “Maura, what are you doing with him?” I ask. “All your friends hate him. When’s the last time you even hung out with Jess or Katherine? He’s a total dick.”

“He’s not,” Maura says. “He’s had a hard life, that’s all. He doesn’t always know the right way to act. He just needs someone to—”

“To beat up?”

“It’s not like that,” she says, wiping her eyes. “He had a bad day.”

“Why are you defending him?”

“I… I care about him.”

I think she is trying to decide whether or not she should say she loves him. I’m glad she doesn’t.

“Show me your arm,” I say.

“It’s fine,” she says, tears returning to her eyes. At just that moment the waitress sets the sundae down between us. I thank her and ask for extra napkins. Maura looks down, not wanting this stranger to see that she is crying. Working the night shift at a place like this, I imagine our waitress has seen her share of weeping teenage girls, but I understand Maura’s impulse.

We don’t really talk any more after that. We clean the bowl down to the last drop of fudge, pay our bill, and leave.

Driving home, I wonder where they’d ended up for dinner. It must have been someplace nice. Maybe Maura’s bedside manner helped Jason lighten up, made him feel better about letting Maura pay for an expensive meal.

I can’t sleep when I get home. I’m too wound up. What is Maura doing with a Neanderthal like Jason? She is beautiful and popular. She is the queen bee. She could have any guy she wants, except, I suppose, Paul. I’m sure Jason has had a hard life. And I’m sure sometimes he really doesn’t know better, but does Maura honestly think she can transform him into her prince?

Maura probably compares every guy she meets to Paul, and believe me, I know what that’s like. I suspect she and I have come to the same conclusion: guys like Paul are few and far between. If you meet one in your life you’re lucky, and you’ll probably never meet another. If you do, your luck is so good you should play the lottery.

*          *          *

In the morning, I look out the window to the Morgans’ driveway and see that Maura’s car is gone. Probably Mr. Morgan took it to get a new tire. The part of me that is proud I knew how to change a tire hopes she told her parents the truth. The rest of me hopes she lied. If she admitted I came to the rescue, undoubtedly Mrs. Morgan will say something to my mother, and then my mother will know I wasn’t at Missy’s all night, and I’ll be grounded.

Back in the fall, my mother would have loved to think of me being such good friends with Maura that Maura would call me in her hour of need. Now she has taken to asking me about Missy. Back then I defended Missy to her, while she insisted I give Maura a chance. Funny how the roles have reversed. And for what? Missy is the perfect friend—giving, trusting, supportive—while Maura is selfish, unreliable, and judgmental. But Missy doesn’t need me, especially now that she and Paul are together. And Maura does need me, or at least she needs someone. Her other so-called friends aren’t standing behind her, and I can’t just leave her with no one.

*          *          *

“Oh my god, I’m never eating anything again,” are the first words Maura says when I call to find out what she told her parents about the tire. “I cannot believe we ate that ridiculous sundae. I must have been more drunk than I realized.”

“It’s not the end of the world.”

“Isn’t it?” she asks.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she snaps.

“You didn’t tell your mom—”

“Are you kidding? Of course not. She’s been driving me crazy,” she says, her angry tone turning to a pathetic whine.

“She just cares about you,” I say.

“Want to go out for a while?”

“I don’t know, my mom’s in a huff about my homework.”

“Whatever, Miss Straight A’s.”

“She might not let me come out, is all,” I say, thinking about how far from straight A’s I have fallen.

“Please.”

“I’ll try.”

I tell my mother I am going to the library. My AP English teacher gave us a ridiculous research paper to write and arranged for us to use the library at the state college. We had to go there a few weeks ago for an orientation session. I haven’t set foot in the library since, let alone started the project. My mom can’t turn me down if it is for school.

Maura meets me a little way down the street from our house so my parents won’t see. She shuts the door and tells me which way to turn. She wants to go to the state park and walk around. It is bitter cold and windy, and neither of us have hats or gloves, but Maura dismisses that point.

“You burn more calories when it’s cold out,” she says, staring out the window as I drive.

The gate is locked across the entrance to the park. Closed for the winter.

“Just pull up over there,” Maura says, pointing to a place where others have obviously parked, the ground rutted from the weight of cars.

We walk around the gate, our sneakers crunching on the gravel, our breath in little puffs before us. I shove my hands into my pockets and scrunch up my shoulders in an effort to keep warm.

“We just have to walk faster,” Maura says. Her long legs outdo mine and I have to jog to keep up.

“There’s a trail over here somewhere,” she says, walking along the shoulder of the road that leads through the park to the recreation area.

The trail is marked by a little wooden sign that reads “To the ledges.” We start up the steep, rocky path, slipping on icy patches. I can’t keep my hands in my pockets for more than a minute at a time. I am constantly flinging them before me, catching myself against the slope when my feet slide out from underneath me. I can’t risk getting dirty.

“Do we have to come back down this way?” I ask when we stop about halfway up the slope. I look down the way we came. If we are heading back out this way, we are going on our butts.

“I think we can loop around another way,” Maura says.

I am not reassured. It hasn’t been a snowy winter, but it rained recently and then it turned cold. Although everything in town was muddy, out of the city and up at this height everything is slick with ice. The rocky path is treacherous, and where the ground isn’t rocky, it is covered in slippery half-frozen leaves. We huff and puff, and walking uphill is enough to warm most of me up—even if my hands are numb and red. The slope ends abruptly and the trail takes a sharp turn to the left. I follow Maura until we come to an overlook.

“There,” Maura says, staring out over the valley, stretching her arms up and then resting them on top of her head.

I study her for a moment and then let my gaze turn out at the view. It is a gray day. The sky is pale against the dark outline of the hills on the horizon. Below us farm houses are scattered about the grayish-brown fields. Wisps of smoke drift up from chimneys. You can only glimpse the city from here, nestled in hills as it is. We stand quietly for a moment, and then the cold starts to catch up with me. I got too warm, had even begun to sweat, and now the cold breeze is blowing right through me. I shiver. “We should go,” I say.

“Days are getting longer,” Maura says, still looking out past the edge of the ledge.

It’s true. Soon we’ll turn the clocks ahead for Daylight Saving Time, and though it still feels like winter, afternoons aren’t so dark anymore. But it isn’t the dark I’m worried about. It’s frostbite.

“It’s cold,” I say.

Maura looks over at me but doesn’t say anything. Then she squats down and rests her elbows on her legs and her face in her hands, her eyes trained on the horizon. “Do you know who showed me this place?”

I haven’t even thought to wonder about it. “Paul?”

She looks up at me and makes a face. “Paul’s idea of the great outdoors is a baseball field.” She stands up and brushes her hands against her jeans. “My dad used to bring me here,” she says, pulling her arms up through her sleeves and into her jacket. I can see she is shivering.

“Oh,” I say. That isn’t the answer I expected. She never talks about her dad.

“We went hiking all the time,” she says. “This was the closest place to home, but we went lots of places. The summer before he died we went to Mount Washington in New Hampshire.” She turns to face me. “We didn’t make it to the top. I guess I got tired or something. I mean, I was barely 10. But he didn’t mind. He just liked being with me.”