Watch Me Disappear

accept fifteen percent of applicants. I swear a third of my class is going to UMass. They will be everywhere. I can randomly end up with one of them as a roommate or neighbor. I hate it.
    I am pretty jealous of all the kids going to “accepted student” weekends at their future colleges. There is no point in that for me. I will go to the concrete maze in the middle of the farm fields, the hideous high-rises and paved courtyards that resemble in no way my ideal of ivy-covered buildings with lush green quads and huge old trees to read under. I will get good grades so that I can come out the other side and at least get into a prestigious graduate school somewhere. I’ll show everyone someday.
     
    *          *          *
     
    Maura is still caught up in Jason’s drama as April wears on. I only see her if I tag along with the two of them, and Jason is never thrilled to see me, so usually I just stay home. And then, the Friday after April vacation, she suddenly is ready to reclaim her old social status at school.
    “Listen,” she says to me in the car on the way to school, “I’ve been thinking a lot about prom.”
    I’m listening.
    “I just don’t want to, like, hurt your feelings or anything like that, so I wanted to check with you before I did anything,” she says.
    I can’t begin to imagine what she has planned that might be so upsetting to me.
    “I mean, you don’t, like, have a date or anything yet, right?” she asks.
    I do not.
    “Well, would you be upset if I went with Hunter?”
    With Hunter? She can’t be serious. Questions are churning in my mind faster than I can ask them. What about Jason? And doesn’t Hunter already have a date? I am long since over him, so I don’t care, but it just doesn’t make sense, and I say so.
    “Jason isn’t interested, and I’m not going to miss senior prom just because he doesn’t want to go,” she says. “And last I heard, Hunter still didn’t have a date.”
    I can’t really picture Hunter saying yes to Maura, but I can understand why she wants to go with him—a handsome jock with no personality. He’ll look great in the pictures but he won’t infringe on her spotlight.
    “And we’ll get one of his friends to be your date,” she says.
    “You should do whatever you want,” I say.
    “I just know you had a thing for him back in the fall.”
    “Before I met him.”
    “Whatever,” she says, “but I have to move on this fast or we’ll be shit out of luck.”
    I am encouraged to hear Maura sounding so cheerful and excited about prom. It’s a nice change from the cynical, negative attitude she’s had lately, and maybe I’ll get to go to the prom after all. I don’t really care about those kinds of traditions, but still, everyone wants to go to their senior prom, right?
     
    *          *          *
     
    It doesn’t work out, though. Maura’s plan was to get one of Hunter’s soccer buddies to tell him that she wanted to go with him. Then Hunter would ask her because she certainly couldn’t ask him herself. She’d have to be desperate to sink to such a low. But it turns out that Hunter is taking a sophomore. Another little blonde cheerleader who can do back flips. According to Maura, she never even had time to initiate her plan before she heard he had a date, but according to the gossip mill, Maura actually slipped Hunter a note asking him to be her date, and he said no. After that, he hurried up and found someone else to escort.
    “Screw it,” Maura says, when I ask her if she has any other ideas. “Fuck the prom. We can just hang out that night and then hit some of the parties.”
    I remember the way the party after the semi turned out. I’m not sure I’m up for a repeat performance, but I agree to hang out with Maura anyway.
    Maura talks her parents into letting her host an after-party. I’m sure Mrs. Morgan feels terrible that Maura doesn’t have a date. She even agrees to open the pool early for the summer so Maura and her friends can use it. Normally, they don’t open it until Memorial Day, but it has been an unseasonably warm spring, so she figures there’s no harm in being a week ahead of schedule.
     
    *          *          *
     
    By the time prom rolls around, I’m looking forward to Maura’s party. After a brutal couple of weeks of AP exams, I can barely think straight. I need a night to just let it all go. I go over to the Morgans’ after dinner to help get