A Fabrication of the Truth (4 page)

“I like your hair,” he said after a while.

“Thanks,” I said. “I like your face.” It was all I could think of – I should have said I liked his hair too because when he was younger, it all stood up straight, like if he held one of those electric balls. It was really cute.

He looked around at all the people in the house. “Who are all these people?” he asked.

I told him they worked for my dad. He then leaned in close to my ear—we still held hands—and asked, “Is your dad a drug dealer?” Later, according to newspaper articles, all the neighbors started to get suspicious of the unusual activity around my house. I told Dalton not to tell anybody. He nodded and I asked him if he played Dancing Revolution – he did, so we started to play. He was really good at it, too. We’d look at each other and smile, pause the game to talk, and stopped for a bit for a snack. We were having fun and were happy. I thought he was even cuter up close – he was so sweet and talked so soft. I had this urge to kiss him, so as he stood there, sweating after winning a round, I gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “I’m really glad you came over,” I said.

“Me too,” he said.

We continued to dance, and I thought it was one of those perfect days until we decided to take a breather and drink some pop – and there was this huge boom. The front door had been rammed open. What must have been a smoke bomb flew into the house and the two of us just sat there, terrified. Dalton’s eyes were so big. All of my dad’s guys started screaming and swearing, and these guys in all black and protective gear ran into the house. The next moments happened so fast, but in slow motion at the same time. Dalton shot up to his feet.

“We have to get out of here,” he said. He reached out his hand to me, and I started to reach for it, but my hand froze in midair when Mike appeared in the doorway at the back of the house that led into the kitchen. He held up this huge gun – wasn’t one of the ones I normally saw the guys with – and he pointed it across the room.

I don’t think anybody realized we were there between all the commotion and noise, things breaking and smoke – lots of smoke. Then an explosive sound –
bang, bang, bang
– rang out. One of the guys in black shot across the room at Mike, who shot back at the same exact time. His body shook as it was riddled with bullets and
bam
, right to the ground. Then I saw Dalton. He looked down at me with his mouth hanging open, then he looked at his chest and crumpled to the floor. I still reached my hand out to him. He lay on his back, his legs kind of tucked underneath him, staring at the ceiling. He had this look of disbelief, like what had happened hadn’t really sunk in, but I knew. Dalton’s chest started pouring blood. His shirt went from white to red in seconds. He started blinking and coughing, and I crawled to his side. “Dalton,” I said. I placed my hand on his cheek, and then somebody’s arm was around my waist, picking me up off the floor as I screamed for Dalton and thrashed about, but it didn’t faze the guy holding me. I didn’t take me eyes off of Dalton. He lay motionless on the floor. One of the S.W.A.T. guys had his hands on Dalton’s chest – if it weren’t for that one officer, Dalton would have died. I was carried right out of the house.

Outside, all these cop cars and people in uniforms surrounded an ambulance, just waiting there like it knew. I was handed off in hysterics to a cop waiting outside. It seemed so bright out, and I couldn’t stop squinting my eyes. The cop gave me to a paramedic who checked me out and saw that I was fine, only extremely upset. They had to wait for a social worker to show up, so they stuck me in the back of a cop car to wait. I watched as paramedics rushed into the house and came out with Dalton on a stretcher. They had one of those things over his face where they squish the bag to give him oxygen. They shouted and rushed and swept him away – and I just sat there. Lights flashed, yellow crime-scene tape went up, and then they came out with Mike, the guy who shot Dalton. He was in a black body bag. I then realized that I watched a person die that day. I think part of me died, too. My grandma says it was my innocence. My childhood. Eventually, a social worker came and I didn’t talk. My dad was the only family I had around, and he got arrested that day, so I stayed in an emergency foster home where somebody could keep an eye on me temporarily until things were figured out. My grandma showed up two days later.

Now, Dalton was most definitely back in my life, and we were going to be friends. Just friends, that’s all. Just friends.

In school, Dalton saw me and gave me a slight nod. I realized I had to acknowledge him at least a bit in public, since I supposedly somewhat knew him because word around school now said he was friends with some distant prince I once courted. Dalton and his darn song.

“I still can’t believe it,” Luiz said, walking up next to Caroline, who stood near my locker.

I didn’t give a response.

“Now the whole school is talking about it.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not, but outrageous lies and stories were my specialty, so why not?

“Where did you meet him?” Luiz asked.

“Remember when I said I went to fashion week when I was younger?” I asked, going along with her.

“That is so, wow.”

Caroline smiled and shook her head – she knew that I was, in fact, full of bullshit. Sometimes I just wished she knew the levels of it. I considered myself the worst possible friend ever, but the truth was just too painful for me. Caroline had never even been to my house. If people knew where I lived, they’d all know – people passing by the neighborhood frequently said things like, “There was this huge drug bust there years ago,” or, “That old lady is the lead of a giant drug ring.” She actually had nothing to do with it. It was all my dad. “That’s the house where that kid got killed.” People seemed to forget that Dalton was still alive.

As I was about to leave school, I got a text:
Meet me in front of the library.

I wasn’t sure which library exactly. The school library? I got another text:
Sorry, the one near your house.

I didn’t recognize the phone number, but I had a sneaking suspicion on who it was. How did he get my phone number? As per usual, I had nothing to do after school, so I decided to meet Dalton. I got off the bus near the library – as opposed to going one stop over and getting off near my house – and there, sitting on a cement bench with his legs crisscrossed and looking down into a book, was Dalton Reyes.

He always haunted my periphery, waiting and never sure where to go. Now that he was back, I couldn’t call it a haunting – but I was sure the memories would haunt me for a lifetime. I closed my eyes for a second and let out a breath as a memory washed over me. It was so loud. A pool of blood started to form around Dalton, and it was just all so loud. I shook my head, remembering that Dalton was alive and okay – and sitting on a bench waiting for me.

I walked up to Dalton and tapped the top of his book. He looked up and smiled at me. He never smiled much in school. He was so handsome, and his smile increased that tenfold. He got these cute little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, his teeth were perfect, and his lips such a beautiful rosy color. I was transfixed on him, my mouth partially hanging open.

“Hey,” he said, snapping me out of it.

“Something for school?” I asked as he closed his book and slid it into his backpack.

“No.”

“You actually read for enjoyment?”

“Don’t sound so surprised. I’m more than just a pretty face.”

“Shut up, you’re as ugly as all get out,” I said, nudging his leg with the tip of my shoe.

“I get that a lot.” Dalton shrugged like he told the truth.

“What were you reading?”

That was when Dalton blushed. It was the cutest damned thing ever.

“Where My Heart Goes.”

“Oh,” I said, seriously trying not to laugh. There was nothing wrong with guys reading romance novels, but I knew that book – my grandma had read it!

“Let’s go inside.”

“Okay,” I said. Inside was a good idea. It was pretty chilly out, and my coat was a little too thin.

As we walked into the warm and slightly dim library, Dalton went over to the circulation desk. He leaned over and said, “Pssttt,” to a woman scanning in books and wearing a cat sweatshirt.

“Dalton!”

“I was here by myself.”

The woman, about my grandma’s age, looked around Dalton at me, smiling. “By yourself,” she said.

“You’re the best, Char.”

“Only for the young men I love.”

Dalton waved at me over his shoulder, and I followed. We went over to the children’s section and sat at a table that had picture books strewn all over it.

“We’re in the children’s section,” I said, stating the obvious.

“They don’t mind if you talk in the children’s section.”

“Oh,” I said. It made sense.

“And, we’re still technically children,” Dalton said, pulling off his layers – first his jacket, then his hoodie underneath –and hanging them on the back of his little chair.

“True. Should I pick out some easy readers for us?”

“Yes, preferably ones with that cute, little, yellow puppy.”

“So, what’s up with you and the librarian? Is it serious?”

“Totally. We’re going to have beautiful children together.”

“As long as they come out looking like you…” I said, trailing off. I could feel my face flush.

“Hey, I thought you said I was as ugly as all get out.”

“Truly horrific.” I scrunched up my nose and stuck out my tongue, trying to cover up what I couldn’t believe I let slip.

“Thank you. Anyway, I wanted to meet here because my lola is home at this time on Mondays, and my family tracks my every move. Spies and eyes everywhere, like our sweet Char up front. My lola’s friend. My grandma’s been taking me to this library since I was about nine, so Char knows me – she’s to report back to my lola to tell her if I actually stayed the whole time at the library.”

“Jesus, and Char lies on your behalf?”

“We’ll see.”

“So you’re under constant watch?” I asked, pushing some of the picture books to the side.

“That’s why I started reading a lot after, you know, because I had nothing else to do. Reading and making music. God, just my parents, my whole family, really. They have me under, what would you call it? I don’t know. It’s like I’ve been imprisoned in my own life.”

“But how are you in a band then?”

Dalton sighed and his expression fell a little. I wanted to reach out, stroke my finger over his beautiful cheekbones and tell him everything was all right. God, what was I thinking?

“So my parents have held the reigns pretty damn tight. I could never go anywhere alone. Never went to another birthday party, not another pool party. Granted, I was severely shy when I was younger, so that was no big deal. But the friends I did have always had to come over to my house. I couldn’t ever go outside by myself. They were and still are so afraid something else would happen to me, so about a year back, I well…I think I just started acting like a normal teenager,” he said, flipping through one of the picture books on the table. He stopped on a page with a little polar bear stuck on an iceberg.

“And what does being a normal teenager encompass?” I asked, closing the book and pushing it to the side.

“Sneaking out, getting in fights, stuff like that.”

“I’ve never snuck out or gotten in a fight.”

“Maybe you’re not normal.”

“Far from it.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not normal either.”

“Are we talking fist fights here?”

“A couple, yeah,” he said, scratching the tip of his nose. “One was over something stupid I started. I just wanted to show people that I wasn’t this little delicate thing. Well, didn’t work out that way. My parents had already caught me sneaking in the house the one night. Okay, and I swear it wasn’t like late or anything. It was like ten o’clock at night, and I went to the movies. Seriously, the movies. I couldn’t even go to the movies without my parents. So that coupled with the first fight, I had to become good friends with my room.”

“That’s kind of crazy, but how does this lead to you being in a band?”

“Okay, so, the only place they did let me go to after that was youth group at the church. Then one day, I picked up a guitar that belonged to one of the youth group leaders – just an acoustic one – and started playing, and some kid started playing along. We got to talking, and I started to bring my own guitar. My parents only let me do that because they thought I was playing Christian music. Which I did. I even wrote my own songs.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Let me bring you higher to my savior,” Dalton sang, leaning back in his little wooden chair.

“You just made that up.”

“And let his holy light shine on me,” he sang, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You’re for real.”

“Yep, and I started staying after with Matt, my now band member, and we’d work on stuff together. Then this guy, Harry, started hanging out with us, and he happened to be a drummer. I told my parents I was training to be a junior group leader, that’s why I had to stay.”

“So you’re really just a bunch of church boys.”

“Yeah, I know, so rebellious, right?”

“But you still did get in some fights.”

“Yeah, but, you know.”

“Okay, so how do you go from hanging out and playing together at youth group to playing at Nat Drummond’s party?” I asked as a mom and little boy, dressed like an early winter apocalypse was about to happen, walked over and started flipping through the books. The mom gave me some stink eye, but I pretended not to notice.

“We all started playing at the youth church services and I started making excuses after school so we could get in some practice. Then some church friends invited us to play at their birthday party. They wanted original songs, which I just wrote in my room and e-mailed to the guys. We didn’t even really practice them before the party. I thought it would be my one and only gig because that was months ago, and my parents found out, and all hell broke loose. But Nat saw me the first day I started school here, and it was like his cousin’s friend’s party we played, and he asked if I wanted to play his party.”

“So his party was like your second official gig.”

“I’m not sure I’d call it an official gig. It was just some dude’s basement, but yeah,” Dalton said, uncrossing his arms and itching the side of his nose.

“What happened when your parents found out about that first party?”

“They pretty much exiled me to my room. Which wasn’t much different from my status before, except that they started formulating ideas on me transferring schools, so on and so forth.”

“And you ended up at your lola’s,” I said, seeing the little boy pull books one by one off the shelf, dropping them to the ground as his mom scrolled through something on her phone.

“Yep.”

“I’m surprised they let you stay there.”

“You and me both. I told them it might be cathartic for me. A reminder to keep me on track. They were also kind of desperate.”

“Is it working?”

“Not at all.”

“You’re the most un-rebellious, rebellious kid ever to live.”

“Pretty much. I hang out with youth group members and sneak off to the library.”

“And hang out with me, which you’re not supposed to be doing.”

“I could start some sort of rebel gang,” he said, his mouth turning up in the corner and his finger tracing the grain in the wood of the table.

“You did say you started some fights.”

“The one was barely anything.” Dalton looked over his shoulder at the boy who started kicking the books on the floor. The mom finally caught on to her son’s antics, huffed, and dragged him away, not picking up a single book her son took out.

I laughed. “And the other one?”

“Just some jerk.”

“That’s vague.”

Dalton shrugged.

“I think your parents might have misjudged you. What’s so wrong about letting you live your life?”

“Apparently, everything.”

I reached across the table and placed my hand on top of his. He then leaned forward and rested his forehead on top of our hands. I ran my fingers through his hair, combing them through a couple of times and letting my hand lay there for a moment before removing it. Dalton sat up and grabbed my hand back. I let him hold it a moment, and it felt reassuring almost, but then I yanked it back.

“Friends, Dalton,” I said. “Friends.” Even though I did hold his hand in my basement the night before, and couldn’t seem to stop touching him as we sat there in the library. “And I hardly know you.”

“I think you know me better than anybody. You just won’t admit it.”

“You can’t just show up in my life and expect…what do you expect from us?”

“I’ve thought about you every day since then.”

“Dalton…”

“I know it’s crazy and really makes no sense, but there’s something. When I saw you in the school hallway, it was like my heart went into overdrive.”

I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes for a moment. “We need to be just friends.”

Dalton nodded, his mouth dropping into a frown, looking defeated. “Friends.”

“Friends.”

Dalton left the library before I did. We didn’t want to get caught walking together. When I got home, I threw myself onto my bed. Why did I have to lie? To Dalton, about life. I knew exactly what Dalton was talking about. I felt it, too. When he looked at me, touched my hand, that deep timbre of his voice – it made me feel all different inside, excited, happy. It was uncharted territory for me, really. I never had feelings for a boy like this before. He had an effect on me, and it left me wanting to kiss him. Those lips of his on mine – I bet they’d feel wonderful.