Watch Me Disappear

lot of people are looking now, and laughing. I want to run away and rub my feet in the wet grass, but I can’t move. I glance up and for a moment make eye contact with Hunter. He isn’t laughing. If anything, the look he gives me says, “Sorry.” I adore him.
    “Lizzie?” a voice says at my ear. It’s Missy. She tugs my elbow. “Come on!”
    I take a step in her direction.
    “Not so fast, girls,” someone says. We both look past Maura to see a police officer behind her.
    “We aren’t with her,” Missy says.
    By this point Maura has stopped puking but has dissolved into a drunken puddle sobbing on the ground next to a pool of vomit.
    “Is that so?”
    None of Maura’s friends have come forward to claim her, although pretty much everyone except the band on stage is now watching the spectacle unfold.
    “She’s my neighbor,” I say softly. This is everything I dread in life: standing in the spotlight, looking like a fool.
    “We didn’t come here together,” Missy adds. “Our friends are over there,” she says pointing.
    “Officer?” a boy’s voice says.
    We all turn to see one of the guys who’d been standing with Hunter. He has the smug look of a kid who is used to charming his way through life.
    “They’re telling the truth,” he says. “She’s not with them, but she’s my friend. I can take her home or call her parents.”
    The police officer looks at me and Missy, then down at Maura, and then the boy. After a moment, he nods. “You girls get out of here,” he says.
    We do not waste a minute.
    The drizzling rain has returned. I drag my bare feet in the grass. My hands are shaking. Wes and his friends follow us from the pavilion. We stand in a misshapen circle in the dark.
    “What the heck was that about?” Missy asks.
    I shake my head. “She’s my neighbor, and she hates me.”
     “No kidding,” Wes says. After a moment he adds, “If it makes you feel any better, most people hate her.”
    “Her? Miss Popularity?” I ask, looking at him.
    He pushes his hair back behind his ears. “Maybe she used to be,” he says, “but she’s been making people’s lives hell since middle school, and even the prettiest girl can’t get away with that forever.”
    That’s news to me. I am pretty sure that beautiful people are generally immune to the rules of polite society that the rest of us must obey. “Yeah, but she doesn’t know that, does she?” I ask.
    “I doubt it,” he says.
    “Uh, Lizzie?” Missy says, touching my elbow. “Is that your dad?” She points toward a man who is indeed my father, standing in the middle of the pavilion.
    “What time is it?”
    “9:20,” one of Wes’s friends chimes in.
    I had lost track of the time. It had been such a gray and gloomy day that it never sunk in how dark it had gotten outside. And I have to admit, before Maura lost her dinner at my feet, I was having fun. I guess the old “time flies” expression contains some truth. As I hurry toward my dad, I hear Missy quickly explaining to Wes and his friends.
    “If it were up to me, I’d let you stay until the end,” my dad says when I reach him. He turns to lead Missy and me to the car where undoubtedly my mother is getting ever more annoyed with me.
    Oddly enough, I don’t feel the usual dread of my mother’s anger. It was sort of a fun night (up until the end), and I guess I am ready to pay the price. Besides, I so seldom give her real cause for anger (sure we snip at each other, but I don’t get into real trouble. Even tonight—9:20—it’s not like I stayed out hours past curfew or anything). Anyway, I know she will save her true temper for when we get home. She won’t get too heated in front of Missy.
     
    *          *          *
     
    Turns out my mother thought her best reproach tonight was the silent treatment. She said nothing to me or Missy in the car, she said nothing after we dropped Missy off, and when we got home, she went straight upstairs without a word to me. My dad and I sat in the living room watching TV until around 10 when he went to bed.
    I finally had my first real high school social experience. I went out with a friend to a large gathering of teenagers where there were few adults. I sat around gossiping with other kids from school. I was actually part of a group, if only for a couple of hours. And—the only part I would have liked to skip—I was the center of attention in a scene of teenaged drunkenness. At least I had not been the