Watch Me Disappear

of me hopes she lied. If she admitted I came to the rescue, undoubtedly Mrs. Morgan will say something to my mother, and then my mother will know I wasn’t at Missy’s all night, and I’ll be grounded.
    Back in the fall, my mother would have loved to think of me being such good friends with Maura that Maura would call me in her hour of need. Now she has taken to asking me about Missy. Back then I defended Missy to her, while she insisted I give Maura a chance. Funny how the roles have reversed. And for what? Missy is the perfect friend—giving, trusting, supportive—while Maura is selfish, unreliable, and judgmental. But Missy doesn’t need me, especially now that she and Paul are together. And Maura does need me, or at least she needs someone. Her other so-called friends aren’t standing behind her, and I can’t just leave her with no one.
     
    *          *          *
     
    “Oh my god, I’m never eating anything again,” are the first words Maura says when I call to find out what she told her parents about the tire. “I cannot believe we ate that ridiculous sundae. I must have been more drunk than I realized.”
    “It’s not the end of the world.”
    “Isn’t it?” she asks.
    “Are you okay?”
    “Yeah, I’m fine,” she snaps.
    “You didn’t tell your mom—”
    “Are you kidding? Of course not. She’s been driving me crazy,” she says, her angry tone turning to a pathetic whine.
    “She just cares about you,” I say.
    “Want to go out for a while?”
    “I don’t know, my mom’s in a huff about my homework.”
    “Whatever, Miss Straight A’s.”
    “She might not let me come out, is all,” I say, thinking about how far from straight A’s I have fallen.
    “Please.”
    “I’ll try.”
    I tell my mother I am going to the library. My AP English teacher gave us a ridiculous research paper to write and arranged for us to use the library at the state college. We had to go there a few weeks ago for an orientation session. I haven’t set foot in the library since, let alone started the project. My mom can’t turn me down if it is for school.
    Maura meets me a little way down the street from our house so my parents won’t see. She shuts the door and tells me which way to turn. She wants to go to the state park and walk around. It is bitter cold and windy, and neither of us have hats or gloves, but Maura dismisses that point.
    “You burn more calories when it’s cold out,” she says, staring out the window as I drive.
    The gate is locked across the entrance to the park. Closed for the winter.
    “Just pull up over there,” Maura says, pointing to a place where others have obviously parked, the ground rutted from the weight of cars.
    We walk around the gate, our sneakers crunching on the gravel, our breath in little puffs before us. I shove my hands into my pockets and scrunch up my shoulders in an effort to keep warm.
    “We just have to walk faster,” Maura says. Her long legs outdo mine and I have to jog to keep up.
    “There’s a trail over here somewhere,” she says, walking along the shoulder of the road that leads through the park to the recreation area.
    The trail is marked by a little wooden sign that reads “To the ledges.” We start up the steep, rocky path, slipping on icy patches. I can’t keep my hands in my pockets for more than a minute at a time. I am constantly flinging them before me, catching myself against the slope when my feet slide out from underneath me. I can’t risk getting dirty.
    “Do we have to come back down this way?” I ask when we stop about halfway up the slope. I look down the way we came. If we are heading back out this way, we are going on our butts.
    “I think we can loop around another way,” Maura says.
    I am not reassured. It hasn’t been a snowy winter, but it rained recently and then it turned cold. Although everything in town was muddy, out of the city and up at this height everything is slick with ice. The rocky path is treacherous, and where the ground isn’t rocky, it is covered in slippery half-frozen leaves. We huff and puff, and walking uphill is enough to warm most of me up—even if my hands are numb and red. The slope ends abruptly and the trail takes a sharp turn to the left. I follow Maura until we come to an overlook.
    “There,” Maura says, staring out over the valley, stretching her arms up and then resting them on top of her head.
    I study her for a moment and then let my gaze turn out at the