Watch Me Disappear (16 page)

I am so nervous when we enter the dance that I think I might puke. Every morning that week, I considered telling Maura that I was going to the dance with Paul, but I never managed to say the words. She asked on Friday if I was going and all I said was yes. She still had not decided if she should go. Katherine was having a party afterwards, and apparently Maura, Jessica, and Tina, annoyed that none of the guys had asked them to the dance, were thinking of skipping it altogether and just going to the party. I have a strong suspicion that they’ll show up anyway, if for no other reason than to remind everyone that they are the pretty ones, the desirable ones, the ones wielding the power of popularity.

Popularity is a funny thing. Everyone wants to look like the kids at the top of the social food chain. Everyone wants to be liked by them. Everyone is slightly afraid of them. And everyone hates them and loves to see them fall. There are a lot of people who will be disappointed if Maura and company fail to show.

The DJ is set up in the gym, and already there are a lot of people—mostly girls—dancing. In the cafeteria, the student council is selling pizza and soda, and the World Series is on the big-screen TV. The Sox didn’t make it through the division play-offs, so there aren’t too many people in there watching, but it is still early in the game and scoreless. There’ll be time to watch the game later, after they’ve had their fill of watching the girls.

“So are you gonna bust some serious moves?” Paul says, leaning in close for me to hear him as we walk into the gym.

I remember from Maura’s party that Paul is an enthusiastic dancer. “I don’t dance.”

“Everyone loves to dance,” he says. “Some people just don’t know it yet.”

I shake my head, but I know he isn’t going to take no for an answer. He steers me to the edge of the dance floor and offers some instructions and encouragement. I have to admit, I am having fun. He puts an arm around my back and pulls me in. It isn’t exactly dirty dancing, especially compared to the people around us, but it’s too close for me. I pull away, embarrassed to look him in the eye, but he smiles and guides me away from the dance floor and out to the cafeteria.

“You’ve done well, grasshopper,” he says, dropping into a table where he can see the TV, but he doesn’t really look at it. He scans the room, and I follow his gaze until it lands on Missy and Wes, sitting by the windows, both of them looking bored. “Let’s check on the lovebirds, shall we?”

Missy’s face lights up at the sight of us, but Wes turns his head away and looks out the window. “Where have you been?” she asks. “I’m dying to go dance!”

“What, you couldn’t get him to join you?” Paul asks, motioning toward Wes.

Wes looks at me and rolls his eyes.

“Mind if I steal your date for a while?” Paul asks.

Missy springs up from her seat. There is no need for Wes to answer. I take her seat and join Wes in silent brooding.

“Not feeling the vibe tonight?” I say after a few minutes, breaking the silence.

“Dances are stupid. I’d rather just hang out somewhere.”

“I don’t know. Seems like a rite of passage or something. Like you just have to go to the dances because that’s what kids are supposed to do.”

“Missy acts different in front of everyone,” Wes says.

“I’ve never noticed—”

“She flirts with everyone.”

“Maybe, but Paul said you’re quite the ladies’ man,” I say, trying to get Wes to lighten up a little. He’s acting like he’s been jilted, and all Missy had done was get up to dance, which is the point of the event. “Is it true?”

“I’ve had a few girlfriends.”

“Not just any girls,” I say.

“Some guys always think they’ll get turned down, so they never ask girls out, but when I like a girl, I figure, what the hell? Either she says yes or she doesn’t.”

“Missy thinks you’re some kind of innocent guy who doesn’t know up from down when it comes to dating. She thought you might never get around to kissing her.”

Wes laughs. “Always best not to move too fast,” he says.

So Paul was right. That is Wes’s strategy. “So you’re, like, pretty experienced?”

“Yeah, sure,” he says. “You could say that.”

“So you’ve, like, done it?” I ask, hating how awkward the idea of sex is making me.

“Are you asking me if I’m a virgin?” 

I nod.

He just smiles smugly.

“Does Missy know?” I ask.

He shrugs and I’m starting to hate that gesture.

“She thinks you’re a virgin. Just like her.”

“So what? Are you going to go tell her?”

“It’s not really my place,” I say.

“But you’re her friend.”

I consider this. As Missy’s friend, it is my duty to tell her what I know about her boyfriend. And yet if I do, she might break up with Wes. And then Paul will be there to comfort her in her time of distress, and he won’t need me anymore as the intermediary. Probably Missy won’t need me much as a friend, either, because she’ll be with Paul, an instant ticket to the friendship of all of his popular pals.

“I already told her what Paul told me, and she didn’t believe me,” I say. “Besides, if you like her so much, don’t you think you should tell her?”

“If she asks, I’ll tell her.”

We both sit there in silence some more, and then I ask Wes—ever a useful source of gossip—about Alison.

“She’s a football cheerleader,” he says. “She’s young for her grade. She must have finally hit puberty or something, because she went from looking like she was 10 to being a hottie over the summer.”

“She still looks like she’s 10,” I say.

“You’re jealous,” Wes says. “If it makes you feel better, she hasn’t been with Hunter since we walked in the door.”

I look around. Hunter is sitting in front of the TV with a group of guys. Alison is nowhere in sight.

“I’m sure she’s in there dancing with her cheerleading friends. They’re probably showing off their back flips in the gym right now,” Wes says. “But really, don’t waste your energy on Hunter. He shows up at dances with the hottest girls, but he never dates any of them. If you want to know the truth, I think the kid is gay.”

“Yeah, right,” I say.

“I’m not joking. It would explain so much.”

“Just because he doesn’t date much—”

“Whatever. It’s just my opinion. All I’m saying is you’re wasting your energy. There are plenty of other guys who’d love to go out with you.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say. Like there is a line of suitors tripping over themselves to win me over.

“You’re a cute girl,” Wes says. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

Flattered as I am, I have had enough of Wes and decide to go find Paul and Missy. Wes gets up with me and we make our way to the gym. It is more crowded than before. I can’t believe the teachers are just standing there letting kids grind on each other and blatantly make out right in front of them. We can see a circle has formed near the DJ and we fight our way in. Everyone around the outside is clapping and cheering for the brave people taking turns in the middle. We spot Missy and Paul on the other side of the circle. Missy waves and we push over to them around the outside. I stand beside Paul for a minute and then someone shoves us from behind and suddenly we are in the middle of the circle.

He holds onto my waist again and I just sort of follow along for a minute. And then I look up over Paul’s shoulder and see Maura staring straight at me with a look of hatred in her eyes. I pull away from Paul and out of the circle.

Missy follows me out of the gym and into the cafeteria. She saw the look Maura gave me, too, and we both know this is not good. I am thankful to see that it is almost 10 o’clock. Soon the dance will be over. I am staying over Missy’s afterwards, and her parents want us home by 11:00, so there won’t really be time to check out any of the parties. That’s fine with me.

“It’s not like she owns him,” Missy says after a few minutes.

“He thinks she’s unstable.”

“What, like crazy?”

“Yeah, like you never know what she’s going to do,” I say.

Missy considers this. “She does seem off. Think about the battle of the bands.”

“I thought that was just the booze, but maybe not,” I say.

We see the lights in the gym come on, and it is as if some kind of magical spell is lifted. In an instant, all the kids realize how their behavior is viewed by the chaperones, and they can’t get out of there fast enough. Some couples are holding hands, but most people are scurrying out, looking at their own feet, in a hurry to get outside into the relative dark of the parking lot. We walk out toward the van, figuring the rest of the group will find us there. In fact, Hunter and Alison beat us to it. Hunter is resting against the rear bumper with one arm around Alison’s waist. Missy starts asking them how they liked the dance, breaking it down into music, pizza, dancing. Wes comes around from the front of the car. He apparently was lurking in the shadows, not wanting to be the third wheel with the attractive couple. And then we are just waiting for Paul.

“This could be a while,” Hunter says, and we all turn to look at him, startled. He hasn’t spoken voluntarily to any of us all night. “Maura cornered him.”

The line of cars waiting to pull out onto Main Street is diminishing rapidly. Hunter whispers to Alison, who nods, and then he pushes himself away from the car.           

“Tell Paul we’ll catch up with him at the party,” he says.

We watch as Hunter knocks on the window of a car that is waiting in the parking lot traffic. Then he opens the back door for Alison and climbs in behind her.

“What party are they going to?” Missy asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. Wes just shrugs.

Before too long, there are only a handful of cars left in the lot, presumably some of them left by people who got rides with other kids.

“That’s Jessica’s car,” Wes says, pointing to an old white Volvo that’s idling near the gym doors. The windows are down and I can faintly hear music coming from the car. I squint and see that indeed Jessica is at the wheel and someone else is sitting in the back. We watch as the car rolls forward toward the corner of the building and hear three little beeps. Apparently Jessica and her friend are also getting sick of waiting. A minute later, Paul and Maura come around the corner into the glow of the streetlight. He has his arm around her shoulder. When they get to the car, he kisses her on the cheek and opens the door for her. Then he hurries over to us.

“Hunter left?” he asks, looking at our diminished numbers. “Should we check out Katherine’s party?”

Missy looks at her cell phone. It is 10:30. “Probably not,” she says. “I mean, by the time we get there we’ll just have to leave.”

“Besides,” I say, “Maura’s going to be there.”

“It’s cool,” Paul says. “I talked to her.”

“I think you should just take us home,” Missy says.

Paul drives to Wes’s house first. When we get there, Missy hops out and walks up to the door with him. I roll up the window because I don’t want to hear her pleading with him not to be mad. I want to talk to Paul while we have a moment alone, but I can’t figure out what to say so I just look straight ahead.

“Do they always have such long goodbyes?” Paul asks after a minute.

“They’ve been fighting.”

“You don’t say.”

I don’t have to look at Paul to know he is grinning.

“So I told Maura that you and I are just friends,” he says. “She understands.”

“I doubt it. Unless you admitted it’s Missy you’re after.”

“Seriously. It’s cool.”

Thankfully Missy chooses that moment to get back in the car with an apology for taking so long. When we get back to Missy’s house, Paul grabs my arm as I open the door. Missy is already bounding up the front walk. “Thanks,” he says.

“For what?” All I did was ride in the car with him.

“I had fun,” he says. “Didn’t you?”

I think about dancing with Paul at the beginning of the night. “I’d call it a wash, really,” I say.

 “You never give me the response I expect.”

I reach for the door again and he lets me.

“See ya Monday,” he says.

Missy’s dad is relieved we’re home early. He locks the door behind us and goes straight to bed. Apparently he and Anna forgot the extent of sleep deprivation that accompanies a baby. Missy goes to the kitchen and comes back with a half-gallon of cookie dough ice cream and a bag of chips. We settle into the couch to sort out the night.

Missy is perplexed by Wes’s moodiness. To tell the truth, so am I. I don’t get why he would just want to sit and sulk when he could have been dancing with the prettiest girl in the room. In the summer he’d been easygoing, but since school started he seems touchy and anxious a lot. And, Missy reveals, he had a pretty serious jealous streak. I figure that maybe he hadn’t realized how widely admired Missy would be. Maybe he isn’t confident enough to be the boyfriend of a girl who turns heads everywhere she goes. Then again, he should have seen that coming the first time he set eyes on her. I wonder what we can learn about Wes by talking to some of his exes, like if he dumped them or vice versa.

“Still, he is sweet when we’re alone,” Missy says, sinking her spoon back into the ice cream.

I point out that a social person like herself probably needs someone who likes to be out and about doing things.

“Maybe I’ve been trying to turn him into some high school sweetheart that doesn’t exist,” Missy says.

I think she is probably right. “What about Paul?” I ask.

“He’s too slick,” she says. “I don’t think I could ever trust him.”

I, however, have started to think that Paul is almost as trustworthy as Missy. Somehow I am willing to overlook the fact that he took me to the dance to get close to my friend who already has a boyfriend and that he left us all standing around in the parking lot while he disappeared with his ex behind the school. What I prefer to see in Paul is that he is funny and handsome, that he doesn’t get drunk at parties, and that he always smiles at me. His smile begs me to trust him. He has none of the mystery that I thought I liked in Hunter, but he has triple the personality. As I sit there on Missy’s couch, I realize that Paul is the high school sweetheart I have always wanted, and I am glad Missy is set against liking him.