Watch Me Disappear

shook her head. “I’ll bet your room is always in order.”
    “Not always,” I said. This is partially true. At the moment, my room is a mess, but my general habit is to keep it pretty neat. Since we moved in, I haven’t figured out how to organize things in my new room, and my parents haven’t had the time to help me get situated.
    I know it isn’t right to go snooping around Maura’s room, but I want to anyway. After all, I’m doing Maura a favor, right?
    I try to put the thought out of my mind by turning on the TV, but I can’t figure out how to make it work. The Morgans have one of those Direct TV things, and none of the buttons I push on the oversized remote make a picture appear.
    I wander into the kitchen and look through the cupboards. This is one of my favorite babysitting diversions. The best babysitting jobs are those where the kids fall asleep early and the cabinets are full of snacks. Not much by way of tasty treats here, though. The Morgans have every manner of diet protein bar, low-fat cookie, and baked (not fried) potato chip, even two kinds of fat-free ice cream in the freezer, but nothing I can even imagine enjoying. In the back of the bread drawer, I find a half-eaten box of Fig Newtons, but when I try one, I discover that they must have been there since the dawn of time.
    No TV, nothing to eat, nothing good to read, and Maura’s room upstairs beckoning like a high tree limb to a curious kitty. I tiptoe up the stairs, listen for a moment at Billy’s door, and then creep down the hall to Maura’s door. The door swings open silently and I slip inside.
    The room is indeed a mess; that wasn’t just an excuse Mrs. Morgan came up with to keep me out. The bed is unmade. There are clothes on the floor and a few sketchy half-full glasses of soda or juice or something on the bedside table. The room smells of perfume and hair spray from Maura’s pre-party preparations just a few hours ago. The dresser is littered with makeup tubes and compacts and hairstyling products. There are a few photos in the edge of the mirror, and I carefully lean across the dresser to take a look. Two are of Maura and a boy, both professional wallet-sized pictures from formal dances, and the other is a picture of Maura and a girl I didn’t recognize. Also on the dresser is a framed snapshot of Maura as a little girl, maybe six or seven, in a fancy dress, sitting on the lap of a middle-aged man with dark hair just turning gray around his temples. Too young to be her grandfather, but I can’t imagine who else it could be. Turning from the dresser, I notice that on the door of the closet Maura taped up Absolut Vodka ads from magazines. I wonder what Mrs. Morgan thinks about that, and then I conclude that Mrs. Morgan hasn’t been in this room in quite some time.
    Stepping over a pile of clothes, I cross to Maura’s desk in the corner of the room, noting with a twinge of jealousy that Maura has her own computer. In fact she has her own computer, television, and phone—all things forbidden from my bedroom. I notice the green monitor light on the computer and tap the mouse. The screen comes to life and I’m staring at an image of Maura and Katherine posing at the beach in their tiny swimsuits.
    In the lower right of the screen, I spot a flashing icon and without even thinking about what I’m doing, I click on it. The Internet browser opens revealing Maura’s Facebook page, with a chat window open. I’m not allowed to have a Facebook account. Jeff tried to convince my parents to let me have one when he went to college so that we could keep in touch, but they told him the phone was good enough. Fascinated, I scroll down Maura’s profile. Her latest status reads, “See ya at John’s, beee-ahtches!” Charming. On the side of the screen I notice that Maura has 1,168 friends who theoretically have seen that status. For once, I don’t feel like I’m missing much by not having my own account.
    You know how sometimes, half-way through doing something, you realize that you don’t even know how you got started? It’s like your brain goes on autopilot. That’s what happens to me as I stand in front of Maura’s computer, because next thing I know, I am sitting at her desk staring at the contents of her “My Documents” folder. And the thing is, when I realize that I am snooping on Maura in a completely uncool way, I don’t stop. I can’t stop. I scroll through her files, seeing some stuff that looks like