Everything Is Perfect When You're a Liar (21 page)

“Sure, Betty! See you later. I heard there's an unadvertised sale at Darcy's Department Store!”

“My cousin Marty sure likes video ga— Oh my
God
, Aimee, what are we doing?”

I jumped off the perch and opened the fridge, looking for something to do. “We have water, potato chips, and ketchup.”

She climbed down and grabbed the chips. “I totally forgot we had these.”

We lay down on the bed and I started squeezing ketchup onto the chips.

“We're, like, really poor. This is weird. I can't live here like Gryphon or the loggers. We need to do something.”

Aimee nodded. “We need to get jobs.”

I licked the ketchup off a chip. “I didn't even
like
ketchup before I lived in a van. Let's go to Victoria. We'll get off this island and go to the big island and get jobs so we can drive home.”

“I don't know,” Aimee said, popping a greasy, ketchupy chip in her mouth. “You really want to go home?”

I spread my arms and gestured at the world around us. “Right, and leave all this?”

“I guess.” She licked her fingers.

“HEY!”

It was a man's voice, but not Gryphon's and not Jake's. Aimee and I sat straight up, dropping ketchup all over ourselves. It was two
A.M.

“OH, LAAAADIES!”

Our van was in a parking lot beside the beach. There was no one around for miles. I suddenly felt that surge of panic, like I was a nineteen-year-old girl stuck in a box in a parking lot on an island off an island off an island off the mainland. We were living the best
Dateline
ever.

“HEY! You girls in there?”

“WHO IS THAT?!” I shouted, almost passing out from the adrenaline rush. And then, like a cartoon character going all flat and sliding down the stairs, Aimee slowly melted off the bed and onto the floor.

“IT'S DANNY AND JOE!”

“Who the fuck are Danny and Joe?” I asked Aimee. They didn't sound friendly.

Aimee lay flat on her back and cried. “You were right. You were right. We
are
going to die. I choked on that carrot and almost died, but I didn't, and now death is chasing after me. Jesus Gryphon
was
a sign!”

“Aimee! Do not do this to me now. Stop it.” Aimee never, ever lost her shit. This was bad.

I backed up against the wood-paneled van wall and put my face inside the black diamond window. It was a perfect fit—a tiny bit of magic that momentarily distracted me from my SVU fears. I could barely make out the silhouettes of two men outside, but they were definitely walking away.

I slid down the wall and Aimee hunkered beside me. We listened to the gravel crunching under heavy boots and the sound of the men mumbling in the dark. When it was quiet, Aimee turned to me. “Tomorrow we leave.”

As I crouched there on the ground, I spotted Aimee's bag and remembered the wine. “Tomorrow we leave,” I said. “But tonight we drink the blood of Jesus until we fall asleep.”

I opened her bag. Inside I saw the bottle of wine—and Jake's newspaper. “You STOLE Jake's newspaper?” No wonder death was chasing her.

“There's no way he reads. There's something in there I had to show you.”

While she flipped through the paper, I opened the wine and took a swig directly from the bottle, like a hobo.

“They have a program here,” Aimee said. “A program for homeless street kids. The Salvation Army sends them home for free.”

“Cool. Maybe we should do that. Get flown home for free.” And even though I was joking, and even though I could never possibly lie to a charity to get a free flight, I stopped and my eyes locked with Aimee's. Then I laughed. “Oh my God, that would be terrible!” I took another swig of wine.

Then Aimee said, “It would be awful. Truly.”

Then we stopped laughing, and after a pathetic beat of silence she said quietly, “Maybe we could do it.”

I shook my head. “Aimee, we aren't homeless. We have families!”

“Homeless kids aren't orphans, Kelly. They have families.”

“Yeah, but we have families that could buy us tickets home.”

“Are you going to ask them to do that?” she asked.

“And disempower myself to them even more than I already have? No. But we can't ask the Salvation Army either.”

“Then we need jobs,” she said.

I agreed. “Let's leave the island, go to Victoria, and get jobs before Stone Phillips starts narrating the tragic end of our lives.”

Gryphon was on the dock as our ferry pushed off. He held his fishing pole with one hand and waved good-bye to us with the other.

“Are you disappointed in us for not staying and living off the land?” I yelled to him.

“NO!” he shouted back. “But I think you are capable of more than you know.”

“So are you. We escaped certain death on that island, Jesus. You'll have to get us another time.”

“Until next time!” Gryphon said, then looked away thoughtfully and went back to fishing.

I turned to Aimee and passed her a joint. “Did you hear that?
Until next time
. He's talking about Heaven, Aimee.”

At the first gas station into Victoria, we sat down on a curb and checked the classified ads for jobs.

“We should be waitresses at a bar. That's the easiest way for girls like us to make quick money without taking off our clothes.”

A clean-cut guy walked across the parking lot toward us. He looked like a grad student. Those could be dangerous.

“Hey, is this a Dodge camper van?” he asked, all jocular, pointing with his fingers in the shape of a gun.

“Yeah,” Aimee responded.

“Some people are only into Volkswagens, but I've always been more meat and potatoes.”

“Yeah, Dodge is the meat and potatoes of vehicles.”

He stood back and put his hands in his pockets. “You even have the tinted diamond windows? Do you want to sell it? I'll give you eight hundred dollars for it.”

Aimee and I both stood up. I hadn't realized it from the curb, but he was really tiny. Like a less-lovable Alex P. Keaton.

“Are you kidding?” I asked.

“I'm dead serious.”

I shot a look at Aimee. “Hold on. I need to talk to my friend for a second.”

Aimee and I walked around the back of the van to be alone.

“When did we decide to sell the van, Kelly?”

“We didn't,” I said. “But this is a sure sign we should. This guy came out of nowhere and wants to buy it. Don't you see, Aimee? We won't have to be waitresses!”

Aimee took a deep breath. “I guess if we're going to end it anyhow, it's kind of the perfect way to do it.”

I was so relieved.

“Yes! It is kinda sad. I mean, this was our home. It was, like, the first thing I ever bought myself that I couldn't smoke.”

Napoleon came around the back of the van. “Okay, fine. I'll give you a thousand bucks. But that's the most I can offer.”

I grabbed his miniaturized hand in my miniaturized hand. “Deal.”

I had a thousand dollars, a duffel bag of clothes, my Discman, and an
Archie
comic as I watched our van drive away.

“I pray to God we didn't just enable a date rapist.”

Aimee turned to me. “That isn't funny.”

“It wasn't supposed to be funny, I was being earnest. I left the weed with him too.”

“Kelly! You IDIOT!”

“Aimee, weed always finds us, remember? That's our rule. Besides, we can't exactly take it with us to the airport.”

“Kelly.” Aimee grabbed my shoulders and looked me in the eye like she was a hockey coach. “We should totally tell the Salvation Army we're street kids and get a free flight home!”

Diabolical.

“NO!” I looked up at the storm clouds that were rolling in and realized that we were all alone. We had nowhere to go, and no way to get there without the van.

“However,” I said, breaking the silence. “We ARE homeless without the van.”

Aimee nodded. “Good. Good! This is good!”

“I mean,” I continued, lowering my voice in case some Salvation Army employee with superior hearing was lurking nearby, “we did just lose our home.”

“We didn't lose it. We sold the van, Kel. We have money.”

I nodded. “I have almost as much money now as I did before the trip.”

We sat in silence for a moment again, and then it was punctuated by a single clap of thunder. My thoughts were racing, and I could not believe what I was about to say, but I was fascinated with my own mind at that moment. Terrible.

“However,” I said, leaning in again, “if we didn't have the money, we'd be homeless
and
broke—and we'd actually fit the profile for needing a free flight home.” Horrible.

Aimee returned my lean. Our foreheads were almost touching, right there on Douglas Street. “What do you mean, ‘if we didn't have the money'?”

I can't speak for Aimee, but as I passed the Club Monaco cashier $489 for a dress and a coat, I knew this was my terrible horrible. And yet I couldn't stop myself. It was the perfect plan. I was now penniless and homeless and ready to take my free flight home.

“Your blouses are gorgeous,” I said to Aimee as we left the mall. We walked in and out of Value Village with our haul of mismatched clothing, all of it baggy. Our mission was “hobo,” not “hobo chic”: we needed to look homeless.

A block away from the Salvation Army, Aimee and I stopped inside a bus shelter and started layering the Value Village clothing on top of our own. I pulled on two sweaters and a pair of filthy training sneakers, and put my white Chuck Taylors in the Value Village bag. Aimee pulled on a pair of ugly old-man brown pants.

“Hold up,” I said, and reached for her pocket. “There's something in there.” I grabbed the white thing sticking out of her pocket and pulled it out to reveal its true nature: little girl's panties.

“
AHHHHHH!!!
” I screamed at the top of my lungs, dancing around in disgust. I did three hours' worth of voguing in less than twenty seconds. “LITTLE GIRL'S PANTIES IN YOUR OLD-MAN PANTS!”

“Throw them in the garbage,” Aimee ordered, so coolly and matter-of-factly, like she was James Bond all of a sudden. “Let's just do this.”

And then I caught him out of the corner of my eye, walking down the street.

It was Jesus.

“Aimee,” I hissed. “Aiiiiiimeeee!”

She dropped her swagger for just a second, looked around, and saw what I was looking at.

“It's Gryphon!” she said. “He left the island.”

My blood ran cold. “I told him he'd have to get us another time. Has he come for our souls? Oh GOD, Aimee. We can't go through with this!”

“If he's Jesus, then he already knows and he's forgiven us.”

“He did like to hang out with beggars and thieves, right?”

“Yes.”

“You're right. I'm actually kinda proud of him for leaving the island.”

I collected myself and pushed the awful truths—that Aimee was wearing pedophile pants, that Jesus knew we were liars—to the far recesses of my brain as we walked toward the Salvation Army wearing dirty clothing from Value Village. My heart was pounding out of my chest. I tried to distract myself by focusing on the chances of catching a disease from the mothball-scented sweater I was wearing.

Then I saw an actual street kid with a dog and something occurred to me. “Aimee.” I stopped. “Aimee, let's borrow that dog. We'll look more legit.” I gave the kid five dollars and in exchange got ourselves one last prop—a dog on a rope.

Aimee must have seen the guilt on my face. Just before we entered the building, she stopped.

“Besides cab money, do we have money?”

I shook my head.

“Do we have a home?”

I shook my head.

“Do we want to go home?”

I nodded.

“Do we have some other way to get home that doesn't involve telling our parents we're morons and letting them lord this over us for the rest of our lives?”

I shook my head.

Aimee nodded and opened the door. “You do the talking.”

“Hi.” I was trying to look very, very homeless. Homeless and maybe even drug-addicted. I slumped my shoulders and pulled at my gross sweater.

“Hello!” The Salvation Army greeter almost squealed with excitement. Clearly a do-gooder thrilled to help the impoverished. “Your dog is adorable. What's his name?” The guy was skinny, blond, and well-dressed. I was mortified.

“Uh”—I started picking at my nails—“Sandy. His name is Sandy. That's right.” I scratched my hair and faked a nervous tic. I watched his smile get nervous and I liked it. He tried to make the liberal “Don't worry, I think you're just like me” face. “Sooo . . . we heard you guys did this free-trip-home thing?”

He nodded and pulled a giant black binder out from under the counter. “Good choice, girls. Going home is the best choice. Getting help! I always tell people, ‘You have to want it!' ”

“Yeah.” I reached down to pet the dog and some tiny bug on it bit me. “We want it.”

He handed us a pair of forms. “Just fill these out.” They weren't really detailed: name, age, reason for travel, destination address, Social Insurance Number.

Social Insurance Number?

“Hey, this isn't going to go on any sort of permanent record, is it? Like some government record future employers can access? Why do we have to give our Social Insurance Number?”

“It's just to make sure we're sending you to your actual home. Don't worry, we don't keep any of the info.”

We gave the sheets back to him and he retreated to an office for a few minutes. When he returned, he was holding ticket vouchers in his hand.

“You have the tickets HERE?!” I was shocked. This was organization at its finest—and for hobos, no less.