Watch Me Disappear

talk.
    The moment I had been hoping to avoid comes after we eat. We go to the kitchen to load up the dishwasher. Missy puts the plates away and then starts taking out the ingredients for cookies. Cookies—like the wings we just scarfed down—are not a part of my diet as prescribed by Maura, but that isn’t the worst of it.
    “You know, Lizzie,” she says, plopping the flour canister on the counter. “I’m worried about you.”
    I can’t even bring myself to look at her.
    “It’s just, you know,” she says, brushing a stray hair from her forehead, “I know you’ve been hanging around with Maura a lot, and—” She pauses, looking at me for a moment and then looking away. “I know you don’t care what Paul thinks, but he knows Maura pretty well.” So she and Paul have discussed this, have discussed me. I wonder where Paul is at the moment and why they aren’t spending Saturday night together. Maybe they plotted this heart-to-heart. Maybe Missy knew all along her parents weren’t going to be home, that we were just going to sit around her house, and that she’d be able to talk to me, privately, about things she knew I didn’t want to talk about. Then again, I remind myself, Paul doesn’t care about me at all.
    “Maybe I’m wrong about Maura,” she says slowly. “I might have just gotten a bad first impression. But I don’t think so,” she says, talking more quickly now, “because Paul has known her for years, and he feels the same way.” She looks at me, waiting for some kind of response. I don’t have one.
    “I know I haven’t had a lot of free time, and I haven’t been a great friend, but you don’t have to hang around people like her .”
    “So what,” I say, “I’m supposed to go through life with one and only one friend, and when she’s too busy, I’m supposed to sit home alone?”
    “No! It’s not like that. Of course I want you to have other friends. I just think,” she pauses again, picking her words, “you could do better.”
    “Do you think we could skip the cookies?” I say. “I’m not hungry.”
    “What? Oh!” Missy looks at the butter, flour, chocolate chips she set out. “Sure, yeah.” She puts things away.
    “Do you remember at the battle of the bands, when Paul was the one who came forward to claim Maura from the drunken mess she’d created?” I say.
    “Sure.”
    “If he disliked her so much, why did he do that?”
    “Because that’s Paul,” Missy says. “Because he’s too nice to just stand by.” Her voice has taken on a defensive edge.
    “Right,” I say, thinking about just how nice Paul can be when he wants something.
    “Look,” Missy says, “Paul knows her and understands her. It’s not like he hates her, or anything, but, it’s just, he thinks she’s, you know, unstable.”
    “Well, she’s been really nice to me.”
    “Good. I’m glad. I mean, if she’s being a good friend to you, then I’m glad.”
    I trace circles on the countertop with my finger, waiting to see if she has more to say or if we are done with this miserable conversation.
    “ Pretty in Pink ?” Missy says, putting the butter back in the fridge, and heading back to the living room.
    “Who’s in that?” I ask, trying to remember if I’ve seen it before.
    “Oh my God,” Missy says. “Tell me you’ve seen it! Molly Ringwald! All the brat-pack movies are my mom’s faves.”
    “Oh.”
    We are only a few minutes into the movie when my phone starts buzzing. I grab it off the coffee table and look at the screen. Maura. She is supposed to be on her big date. I glance at Missy.
    “Be right back,” I say, flipping open my phone and scooting out into the front room. “What’s up?” I ask quietly.
    “Where are you?”
    “I’m at Missy’s.”
    “I need you,” Maura says. Her voice is high and shaky.
    “Aren’t you with Jason?”
    “Yeah, but…” she breaks off and I hear her gulp down a sob. “My car…”
    “What happened?”
    “Jason was driving,” she says, hiccupping, “and he went too fast around a curve.”
    “Are you okay?” I say, trying to stay calm, wondering why she’s talking to me and not, say, the police or her parents.
    “I’m okay, but he blew a tire,” she says sniffling. “He hit the curb.”
    “How fast was he going?” And whatever possessed you to let him drive your car, I wonder.
    “I don’t know,” she moans. “What should I do?”
    “Don’t you have a spare?”
    “Yeah,” she says, blowing her