Watch Me Disappear

view. It is a gray day. The sky is pale against the dark outline of the hills on the horizon. Below us farm houses are scattered about the grayish-brown fields. Wisps of smoke drift up from chimneys. You can only glimpse the city from here, nestled in hills as it is. We stand quietly for a moment, and then the cold starts to catch up with me. I got too warm, had even begun to sweat, and now the cold breeze is blowing right through me. I shiver. “We should go,” I say.
    “Days are getting longer,” Maura says, still looking out past the edge of the ledge.
    It’s true. Soon we’ll turn the clocks ahead for Daylight Saving Time, and though it still feels like winter, afternoons aren’t so dark anymore. But it isn’t the dark I’m worried about. It’s frostbite.
    “It’s cold,” I say.
    Maura looks over at me but doesn’t say anything. Then she squats down and rests her elbows on her legs and her face in her hands, her eyes trained on the horizon. “Do you know who showed me this place?”
    I haven’t even thought to wonder about it. “Paul?”
    She looks up at me and makes a face. “Paul’s idea of the great outdoors is a baseball field.” She stands up and brushes her hands against her jeans. “My dad used to bring me here,” she says, pulling her arms up through her sleeves and into her jacket. I can see she is shivering.
    “Oh,” I say. That isn’t the answer I expected. She never talks about her dad.
    “We went hiking all the time,” she says. “This was the closest place to home, but we went lots of places. The summer before he died we went to Mount Washington in New Hampshire.” She turns to face me. “We didn’t make it to the top. I guess I got tired or something. I mean, I was barely 10. But he didn’t mind. He just liked being with me.”
    I don’t know what to say so I don’t say anything. I try to keep my teeth from chattering. After a few minutes I can’t take it anymore. “We need to keep walking,” I say.
    “I don’t want to go,” Maura answers, and she begins to cry.
    “Hey,” I say, putting an arm around her shoulder. I don’t know if she’s shaking from the cold, from emotion, or both. “It’s okay.”
    “Nothing is okay,” she says, wiping her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve.
    “You’re just cold and hungry.”
    She won’t look at me.
    “Well,” I say, trying to sound lighthearted, “losing a finger isn’t going to make anything better. Let’s head down before frostbite sets in.”
    “Go without me then,” she says.
    Without her? She’s clearly lost her mind. For one thing, I am her ride. For another, we are in the middle of nowhere. Also, I don’t know the way down. And how will I explain to anyone how I left her on a mountainside to freeze to death? I don’t know what she wants. If she wants to talk to someone, I am willing to listen, but I’m not going to just sit here freezing my butt off. The thing is I’m not used to asking questions. I’m not used to trying to get information out of people. I don’t really know how. I am used to people asking me, the perpetual new girl, questions, and I guess that’s made me pretty self-centered, when you get right down to it. Until I met Paul, I didn’t even know how narcissistic I was. It almost never occurs to me to ask other people questions, but right now I know that’s what I have to do.
    “What was your dad like?” I ask, squatting back down next to her.
    She sighs and squints her eyes. “He was the best,” she says. “He was nothing like David.” She turns her head to look at me. “My parents, they didn’t have much. My dad was a teacher and my mom stayed at home with me. We only lived in an apartment, but we were happy. You wouldn’t even believe how different my mom was. This whole rich housewife thing of hers is so fake. She acts like she belongs with the country club crowd, but she doesn’t. She always tells me she’s the same, that she always wanted the same things, but that’s bullshit.”
    “I know he’s not your dad, but David doesn’t seem so bad,” I say gingerly. I don’t know Mr. Morgan well, but he seems like a typical, boring banker to me. What’s more, for all her pretentious mannerisms and sometimes dubious parenting techniques, Mrs. Morgan seems to really want the best for Maura.
    “David is an asshole. He thinks money is the answer to everything. He doesn’t care about me, he just wants me to shut up and leave him alone.”
    That assessment