Watch Me Disappear

sleep for a while and then I wake to the smell of bacon and eggs cooking. Jessica’s mom hollers down the stairs that breakfast is almost ready. I cannot imagine eating. The springs of the pull-out bed creak. I manage to pull myself up to a seated position. Maura lays on the pull-out right beside me. Jason’s arm is draped across her. She smiles groggily at me, but he isn’t stirring yet at all. She shakes off his arm and rolls onto her side.
    “Good morning, sunshine,” she says. “How do you feel?”
    My mouth feels too disgusting to open to talk. My eyes are waking up, though, and as I look past Maura across the room, I can see Missy, nestled into Paul on the recliner in the far corner. He has one arm around her back with his hand on her upper arm, and the other arm passing in front of her with his hand in her hair. Apparently the ice princess warmed up to Paul pretty fast. Maura turns her head to follow my gaze. Then she rolls over, nudges Jason, and leans down to kiss his neck and ear. It doesn’t take him long to wake up.
    We all shuffle upstairs for breakfast. Someone hands me a cup of coffee and I wonder if I can stomach it. That anyone can eat is mind-blowing. I sit on the couch, blowing on the coffee I am afraid to drink, when Missy and Paul come over with full plates of food and sit down beside me.
    “Don’t you want breakfast?” Missy asks, not really looking at me.
    Paul, however, does look at me, and a smirk spreads across his face. “I’ll bet someone isn’t too hungry this morning.”
    “Huh?” Missy says, looking up from her food. “Lizzie!” she exclaims, taking in my haggard appearance.
    Somehow in the past twelve hours I have turned into a regular water works. I can feel tears creeping up again.  
    “Your parents are not going to forgive me,” Paul says.
    “Me either,” I mumble, but if he hears me he doesn’t acknowledge it.
    “We’re going to have to clean you up before we take you home.”
    “I’ll take her home,” Maura says, appearing above me.
    “I don’t think—” Paul begins, but Maura cuts him off.
    “We live next door to each other. It makes sense,” she says.
    “Are you sure?” Paul asks me.
    “Of course,” Maura answers for me.
    I close my eyes and rest my head back against the couch.
    Thankfully when I get home my parents aren’t there. My dad is at work and my mom is at the gym. I take a shower and put my dirty clothes, which smell like a barroom floor, in the wash to erase all evidence. Then I go to sleep until almost dinner time.
    After dinner, Paul calls and I let it go to voicEmail, but I know there’s no way to avoid him at school. In my head I keep rehearsing our next conversation, how normal it will be, how I can joke with him about Missy finally coming around, how I will not mention that he kissed me or that I got shit-faced in order to avoid having to watch him and Missy together.
     
     

Chapter 14
     
     
    “Feeling better?” Maura asks when I get in the car to go to school Monday morning.
    “Still sleepy,” I say.
    “I’m proud of you, Lizzie. You had to break that good-girl act sometime.”
    “Sure,” I say.
    “Jason is pretty cute, huh?” she asks.
    “Yeah,” I say. She isn’t usually so chatty in the morning. I wish she’d be her usual quiet self. After sleeping all day yesterday, I didn’t sleep much last night, and when I finally did fall asleep, I had to get up for school an hour later. Perhaps Maura has been up all night, and that is why she’s so awake.
    “You want to stop for coffee or something?” she says, glancing at me as I yawn and lean against the window.
    I look at the clock. We don’t have time to stop.
    “So we’ll be late. We’ll say there was traffic,” Maura says.
    “We’ll get detention.”
    “You ever have detention before?”
    “Nope.”
    “About damn time,” she says. “Besides, Mr. Kramer loves me. Whenever I get detention, he lets me go help the secretaries, which usually means I sit in the office stuffing envelopes and eating candy.”
    “Mr. Kramer doesn’t even know me.”
    “I’ll hook you up,” she says. We are only a few blocks from school, and she pulls down a side street to a place called the Broadway Diner.
    We both order coffee and Maura orders pancakes. “Get something,” she insists. “This place is great.”
    I order French toast and try to keep from checking the time too often.
    “I just don’t know what to do about Paul,” she says, stirring sugar