Watch Me Disappear

hardly believe how easy it is. Giddy, I go back to Facebook and set up an account.
    Soon, however, I run into my second problem. I have no picture for my profile. If I try to befriend people who don’t know me, they’ll probably think I’m ugly or fat or weird. I decide to fill out all the rest of the profile and wait to try to make Facebook friends until I have not just a picture, but a whole bunch of pictures to make an album like those of Maura and her friends.
    I am contemplating what I should list as my favorite quotation when I hear a door open in the hallway. I freeze and listen. I hear Billy’s footsteps on the stairs. Scrambling to make sure the desk looks as I found it, I slip as quickly and quietly as I can out the door and down the stairs. Billy is standing in the middle of the TV room, wide-eyed, lower lip quivering.
    “I had a bad dream,” Billy says. “And I couldn’t find you.” He’s trying not to cry.
    “It’s OK, Billy. I was just in the bathroom.”
    Billy looks doubtful. “When are my mom and dad coming home?”
    I glance at the clock on the DVD player. 11:45. I lost all track of time. Good thing I heard Billy or I might have been caught at Maura’s computer. “Any minute now,” I say. I walk over to Billy and put an arm around his shoulder. “Want to wait here on the couch with me? You can put in a video.”
    Billy nods and walks over to the TV stand. He puts in a DVD and manages to hit all the right buttons on a series of remotes to make it play. I settle on the couch beside him, my heart still racing at the thought of the forbidden online life I just began.
     
    *          *          *
     
    Finding pictures worthy of a Facebook profile is no easy task. First of all, my parents are probably the only people on the planet who still use a film camera; and second, they only ever take pictures on holidays and vacations. Luckily, for the past year or so, whenever my mom has film developed, she also gets photo CDs because she finally learned how to Email pictures to her sisters.
    I spend an entire afternoon sifting through half a dozen CDs. The biggest problem is that there are few pictures of me alone. In holiday shots there are always cousins or my brother or parents. I find exactly one of myself alone—Christmas morning, in my pajamas, my hair a mess, wearing my dreaded glasses. Hardly putting my best face forward. I mean, I never even leave my house without putting my contact lenses in. Then there are a few from last summer’s vacation in New Hampshire. They are sort of fun, action pictures from hiking and kayaking, but my hair was still a lot shorter then and the pictures were taken from too far a distance to be good profile material. Finally, after hours of agonizing, I decide on cropping my brother out of our Easter picture. It will have to do.
    Now the problem is that I can’t upload the picture to Facebook from my house. I can get online at the library, but first I have to have a way to get there. Everything would be so much easier if I could drive, but learning to drive is just one of those things I haven’t gotten around to. I am young for my grade; I didn’t turn 16 until December of junior year, and during school I was too busy with academics to make time for drivers’ ed. Now my parents are so busy with the house they don’t really have time. My mother is so nervous to let me behind the wheel that I’m not sure I want her to teach me anyway, and my dad is always promising, but he never gets home until after dark, and everyone agrees I need daylight practice before I can try driving at night. It isn’t like I have a lot of places to go, so I haven’t complained much, but if only I had the freedom of a driver’s license now, I could start making things happen in my life. I could go to the library—and wouldn’t my mother be delighted not to have to drive me!—and once there, I could use the public computer without anyone looking over my shoulder. The library is only a few blocks from my grandmother’s house, so maybe I can convince my mom to let me walk to Gram’s after, instead of having her wait for me. It might just work. Poor Gram. If only she knew she was getting tangled up in my little plots.
     
    *          *          *
     
    The same afternoon I am planning to go to the library to finish my Facebook profile, while I am waiting on the deck for my mother to give me a ride, I hear the Morgans’ screen door swish open