Watch Me Disappear (4 page)

“I had a bad dream,” Billy says. “And I couldn’t find you.” He’s trying not to cry.

“It’s OK, Billy. I was just in the bathroom.”

Billy looks doubtful. “When are my mom and dad coming home?”

I glance at the clock on the DVD player. 11:45. I lost all track of time. Good thing I heard Billy or I might have been caught at Maura’s computer. “Any minute now,” I say. I walk over to Billy and put an arm around his shoulder. “Want to wait here on the couch with me? You can put in a video.”

Billy nods and walks over to the TV stand. He puts in a DVD and manages to hit all the right buttons on a series of remotes to make it play. I settle on the couch beside him, my heart still racing at the thought of the forbidden online life I just began.

*          *          *

Finding pictures worthy of a Facebook profile is no easy task. First of all, my parents are probably the only people on the planet who still use a film camera; and second, they only ever take pictures on holidays and vacations. Luckily, for the past year or so, whenever my mom has film developed, she also gets photo CDs because she finally learned how to Email pictures to her sisters.

I spend an entire afternoon sifting through half a dozen CDs. The biggest problem is that there are few pictures of me alone. In holiday shots there are always cousins or my brother or parents. I find exactly one of myself alone—Christmas morning, in my pajamas, my hair a mess, wearing my dreaded glasses. Hardly putting my best face forward. I mean, I never even leave my house without putting my contact lenses in. Then there are a few from last summer’s vacation in New Hampshire. They are sort of fun, action pictures from hiking and kayaking, but my hair was still a lot shorter then and the pictures were taken from too far a distance to be good profile material. Finally, after hours of agonizing, I decide on cropping my brother out of our Easter picture. It will have to do.

Now the problem is that I can’t upload the picture to Facebook from my house. I can get online at the library, but first I have to have a way to get there. Everything would be so much easier if I could drive, but learning to drive is just one of those things I haven’t gotten around to. I am young for my grade; I didn’t turn 16 until December of junior year, and during school I was too busy with academics to make time for drivers’ ed. Now my parents are so busy with the house they don’t really have time. My mother is so nervous to let me behind the wheel that I’m not sure I want her to teach me anyway, and my dad is always promising, but he never gets home until after dark, and everyone agrees I need daylight practice before I can try driving at night. It isn’t like I have a lot of places to go, so I haven’t complained much, but if only I had the freedom of a driver’s license now, I could start making things happen in my life. I could go to the library—and wouldn’t my mother be delighted not to have to drive me!—and once there, I could use the public computer without anyone looking over my shoulder. The library is only a few blocks from my grandmother’s house, so maybe I can convince my mom to let me walk to Gram’s after, instead of having her wait for me. It might just work. Poor Gram. If only she knew she was getting tangled up in my little plots.

*          *          *

The same afternoon I am planning to go to the library to finish my Facebook profile, while I am waiting on the deck for my mother to give me a ride, I hear the Morgans’ screen door swish open and click shut again, and then I hear not one voice but two float over the fence—Maura’s and Tina’s.

“Not gonna happen,” Maura says. I hear the clatter of patio chairs being dragged on the concrete. Adjusting for optimal sun, I assume.

“Why not? Are your parents sick of paying her when they could have you for free?” Tina asks.

They’re talking about me. I straighten up in my chair and lean forward, nearly holding my breath.

“That bitch isn’t coming to this house again,” Maura says.

“So she was in your room. Big deal,” Tina says.

Of course I left some obvious clue behind. Sometimes I really am that stupid. Still I can’t imagine what—I thought I’d been so careful.

“It’s a small price to pay,” Tina says, “for all the freedom you get out of the deal.”

“It’s not your stuff she’s been going through,” Maura says.

“Yeah, but it’s not like she stole anything, did she?”

“Not that I noticed, but—”

I’m afraid I’m going to hyperventilate. Is Maura planning on setting me up? Is she going to make it look like I stole something? That’s probably what I would do if someone had been snooping through my stuff.

“I just don’t trust her,” Maura says.

“Whatever. If you were babysitting, you’d be into every corner of the house seeing what dirt you could dig up,” Tina says. “Admit it.”

“She was in my computer!” Maura’s voice is shrill.

“I use your computer all the time.”

Thank you, Tina, but why is she so willing to defend me?

“You use my computer when I’m there. This is different.”

“We’re talking about the party of the summer!” Tina says. So that’s it. Tina just wants Maura to be available for some party. She isn’t trying to defend me.

“There’ll be more parties.”

That is all I need to hear to know Maura must be seriously upset. She’s been having me babysit just so she could go to the movies, and now she’s willing to miss a party to be sure I can’t get near her room again.

“Seriously, what is your deal?” Tina asks. “Did she, like, give your computer a virus or something?”

“OK, so I figured out she was using my computer because I went online and I was logged out of Facebook, and an Email address that could only be hers was in the login line.”

“So she used Facebook? I go on Facebook on your computer all the time.”

“There’s more, if you’d let me finish. Anyway, yesterday I opened Word and in my recently viewed files were file names I haven’t opened in like two years, seriously.”

“What, she’s been reading your old essays?”

Why would I want to read her old essays? I was reading much more personal things. Even a dimwit like Tina should be smart enough to figure out that one.

“That’s what I’m saying. She didn’t just use my computer. She was digging through all my files.”

“What the hell does she want with your old school stuff?” Tina asks.

And then I realized Maura’s “BFF” doesn’t know about her poetry.

“Damned if I know,” Maura answers.

They’re silent for a few moments. I sit as still as a statue. I need to hear more. Is Maura going to retaliate somehow? How can I have been so stupid? I left an obvious trail on Maura’s computer. Really, though, it’s my parents’ fault. If they let me use the computer more, none of this would have happened. I don’t know how I ever thought my plan would work.

“So did you, like, tell your mom?” Tina asks finally.

“What, and all but hand her a letter saying, ‘I’m hiding stuff on my computer that I don’t want you to see’? I do not need my mother in my business.”

Sweet relief—she didn’t tell on me! If Maura told her mother, Mrs. Morgan would surely tell my mother and that’s more than I need.

“I wouldn’t have expected her to be such a skank,” Tina says.

“No shit. You should hear my stupid mom going on and on. Lizzie does the dishes when she watches your brother. Lizzie reads instead of watching TV. Lizzie doesn’t get an allowance. Whatever. She’s a two-faced bitch. And I’ve been nothing but nice to her.”

When was she nice to me? More like she’d been nothing to me. Or maybe it’d be fair to say that at the cookout she’d been about as nice as she might be to a lab rat that she was going to dissect. And how could Maura call me a two-faced bitch? Maura, who is always talking about her so-called friends behind their backs, whose best friend doesn’t even know she writes poetry, has no right to call anyone two-faced.

I hear the back door squeak open behind me, and I leap up before my mom has a chance to call me and make known to Maura just how close our deck is to her pool.

*          *          *

At the library, I head straight for the computers. I have about an hour before my mom will be back to pick me up after getting the groceries. It’s a weekday so there’s no line for the Internet stations. I go straight to my new Email account. My inbox is shockingly full, considering I haven’t given the address to anyone. It’s mostly spam, but then I see a message that catches my eye.

From:
[email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject:

U THINK IM TOO DUMB TOO CATCH A SNOOP?

JOKES ON U.

I CAN MAKE UR SENIOR YR HELL.

U SHOULD OF THOUGHT OF THAT.

SO MUCH FOR SWEET, INNOCENT LIZY.

She couldn’t even copy the correct spelling of my name. I could hardly believe this message was from the same person who’d written those poems. I’m not used to the shorthand of Email or text messages and it isn’t what I expect of Maura, although I realize that I probably should have expected as much. I stare at the message for a minute and then delete it. I sign into Facebook.

“Four friend requests,” I read on my home page. Three are from people who will be my classmates in the fall. One of those requests includes a message saying, “I’m new, too.” My faith is renewed. This really might work, with or without befriending Maura. But at the last request, my heart sinks—my brother. He included a personal message in the request: “Busted. Mom and dad are gonna kill you.”

*          *          *

 “So your brother called this afternoon,” mom says at dinner, passing me the salad. My heart beats so hard I’m afraid I’ll have a heart attack, and I have a hard time keeping the worry off my face. “He can’t make it home in August after all.”

No mention of Facebook. He hadn’t ratted me out. If he had, she’d already be yelling. I dump some salad onto my plate.

“I guess between his internship and soccer,” she continues, “he just can’t get away. I’m going to find him a flight for Thanksgiving.”

“Whoever would have thought our party-boy would turn out to be so industrious,” dad says, winking at me.

My mother glares at him. Her beloved son isn’t going to come home until Thanksgiving. She is not in the mood for joking or for the sarcastic reminder that Jeff’s behavior since leaving for college has not always been admirable. During the semester, he lives for the weekend, and we all know it.

“Thanksgiving will be here before we know it,” I say, hoping to bring mom back to her happy place. And it’s true—time is flying by. It’s already the end of July. Still that’s a small consolation. I’ve been looking forward to having Jeff home in August, too. I have hardly talked to him since we moved.

Since Jeff left for college, he’s managed to come home as little as possible. Last summer he stayed at school to work in the admissions office. If I were him, out of the house and free all through the school year, I wouldn’t want to come home and deal with our nutty mother either. She’s enough to make anyone want to head for the door. Then again, she adores Jeff and she’s much nicer to him than to me, so he has less cause to flee her grasp than I do.

Everyone loves Jeff. He’s good looking and charming, an All-American soccer player, a decent student. What’s not to like? Jeff was always Mr. Popularity in school. It was definitely easier going to school when Jeff was there, too. I am certain things would have gone better at my last school if Jeff had been there, but when I was a sophomore in high school, he was a freshman in college. It was the first time in my life I ever had to face a new school without him, and I was not prepared. I was used to being known as Jeff’s little sister, and that was OK with me. Jeff made friends and he introduced them to me, and they were nice to me. Without him, I was just the new girl.

*          *          *

After dinner, I go straight to the computer with the pretense of writing my summer reading essay on
Beowulf
. I do have to write an essay about it, and I have managed to finish reading it, but my real motive is to talk to Jeff. I have my “essay” open in one window, and Instant Messenger in another. I’m only allowed to have an IM account to chat with Jeff. He convinced our parents to allow it as a compromise when they forbid Facebook. Most of my attention is on a game of Solitaire. My parents hate it when I play Solitaire or Snood, so every time the floor creaks and I think one of them is entering the room to check on my progress, I close the game, which means I am not experiencing too many wins.

Around nine thirty, my mom comes to the door and tells me to wrap things up. My parents go to bed around ten, which means I have to go to bed around ten. The only response I’ve gotten so far from Jeff is his away message. I try to crank out a couple of pages of my essay because summer is half over and I still have three books to go. Also anything I can get done will serve as proof to my parents that I have not been using the computer for shady purposes. I am just about to call it quits when Jeff finally replies.

“What’s up, sis?” he writes.

“If you tell mom and dad, I’ll never talk to you again,” I respond. Okay, maybe I am being overly dramatic, but I need to know that he is on my side.

“I’m proud of you, you little rebel,” he writes.

“Lizzie!” my mother calls from upstairs. “I told you to shut that thing off!” What timing she has. At least I have some reassurance that my secret is safe with my brother.

“A few more sentences, mom!” I shout back.

“Mom’s calling. I have to go,” I tell Jeff.

“OK, but how’d you do it? I gotta know,” he asks.

“At the neighbors’ house. I was babysitting,” I write quickly.

“No more sentences! Now!” mom yells. “Do not make me come down there!”

Believe me, I do not want her to come downstairs. “I’ll tell you more later. TTFN,” I write and shut down the computer.

*          *          *

I am obsessed with Facebook. I’m not proud of it, but it’s true. It drives me nuts that I can’t get on at my house. I obsess for hours about stuff I can add to my profile. It’s torture. Overprotective parents really know how to make life hell.