Watch Me Disappear

nose.
    “So, tell him to change it.”
    “He doesn’t know how.” She starts crying again.
    In my experience, there are few things tough guys like Jason like more than fixing cars, so I am pretty surprised he doesn’t know how to change a tire. My father insisted I learn—it was one of the few lessons he gave me to prepare me for getting my license. I’m not sure I can actually change a tire on the side of a road, but I have done it in the driveway, with my dad’s help. “Call AAA,” I say.
    “Should I?”
    “You have it, right?” I say.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Well, where are you?”
    She tells me the address. It isn’t far from Missy’s house.
    “Can you please just come here?” she asks, pathetically.
    “Gimme a few minutes,” I say, hanging up the phone.
    I turn around to see Missy standing in the doorway. “Everything ok?” she asks.
    “It’s, uh,” I stall, trying to think of a good lie. “It’s my dad. He had a little accident.”
    “Is he ok?” she asks, looking unconvinced.
    “Yeah,” I say, moving past her into the family room to get my shoes and sweater. “But the car,” I say my voice trailing off. “My mom needs me to come home.”
    “Of course,” Missy says. She picks up my bag from the floor and hands it to me and we walk out to the hall, where she gets my coat from the closet. I look at her as I turn to close the door behind me. Her eyes are brimming with tears. My lie is an invisible wall between us. We both know it’s there and we know now that any effort to break through it is futile. “Call me,” she says. I just nod and turn around.
     
     

Chapter 17
     
     
     
    They had pulled the car into the dirt at the side of the road along a stand of trees. Maura is inside the car, which is running. She’d freeze waiting outside. Jason sits on the front bumper smoking a cigarette.
    Maura gets out of the car and the smell of alcohol hits me the minute she throws her skinny arms around my neck.
    “Are you drunk?” I ask, pulling away from her, wondering why I had defended her not an hour ago to Missy.
    “They totally just served us without even blinking,” Maura says. Instead of sounding sorry, she seems pleased that she passed for twenty-one.
    “Both of you?” I ask.
    “We just split a bottle of wine,” she says. “It’s not like we’re drunk.”
    Maybe Jason can handle a couple of glasses of wine with dinner, but Maura—I know how little she’s been eating, because I know how little I’ve been eating. It suddenly makes sense why she let Jason drive the car in the first place.
    “So you know how to change this bitch?” Jason says, dropping his cigarette stub and coming around the side of the car.
    I look down at the ground. It has been warm the past few days and so instead of a hard, frozen shoulder, Maura’s car is sitting in mud. My jeans are relatively new and spotlessly clean. I do not want to change the tire, and even if I wanted to, how would I explain my filthy clothing to my mother? “I can walk you through it,” I say, looking him in the eye.
    He just crosses his arms and spits out of the side of his mouth.
    “You blew the tire. You can change it,” I say, wondering again why I left the home of the best friend I’ve ever had to deal with this nonsense.
    “Lizzie,” Maura says, stepping toward me. Her eyes are brimming with tears. “Please.”
    She’s so pathetic I wonder how I was ever intimidated by her.
    “Jason can do it,” I say, “or you can call your parents, but I am not going to kneel down in the mud to fix this.” The feminist in me bristles. I’m not a girly girl, and I am acting like I’m too prim to change a tire, like I need a man to do it (although I’d hesitate to call Jason a man), but I’m not going to be a pushover who does Maura’s bidding whenever she calls. If she wants to be my friend, then she needs to know my limits.
    Maura turns to Jason. We both wait, our breath hanging in the air in white clouds between us.
    “Screw it,” he says. I open the trunk and reveal the donut and tools. In the end, I’m not sure I could have changed the tire. I don’t know if I could have loosened the nuts. But Jason, if nothing else, is strong. It takes no time at all. Both of them must feel like incompetent morons for needing me to come help them.
    When he’s finished, Jason walks to the driver’s side and gets in.
    “Are you kidding me?” I say. “He just blew your tire driving like an asshole. Are you