Four Truths and a Lie (9 page)

“Nowhere,” Rachel says, blushing through her plum blush. “Scarlett made me over.”

A look of annoyance passes over Crissa's face. “What do you mean she made you over?”

“You know, she cut my hair and did my makeup.” Her hands wander to her newly shorn locks, and she touches them nervously. But she doesn't sound as happy or excited as she did just a minute ago.

“Obviously.” Crissa sniffs.

“So that's why you weren't at soccer practice?” Mrs. Bacon asks. She sounds like it's the most ridiculous reason she's ever heard.

“Well, no,” Rachel says, looking uncomfortable. “I had a private tutoring session, and by the time I got out, there was only half an hour of practice left, so I figured it wouldn't be worth it to go.”

“Mmm,” Crissa's mom says. But it's one of those
Mmm, you just made a really big mistake
kind of “mmm”s. “Well, I should be going. I just wanted to check on Crissa's room, which has obviously fallen into disarray.” I swallow hard and look at the floor. “I'll speak with you later, Crissa.” With that, Mrs. Bacon flounces out without saying good-bye to any of us.

Nobody moves for a second, and then Crissa heads over to her closet and starts getting out her shower stuff.

There's an uncomfortable silence.

“Well,” Rachel says, standing up. “Thanks for everything, Scarlett. Crissa, I'll, um, see you later in the library.” She rushes out the door.

“I should go too,” Amber says, looking at Crissa nervously. It's like the joy has been sucked out of the room, with some sort of special Crissa deflator. On her way out, Amber squeezes my arm. “Do you want to have dinner together?” she asks. “We could meet in the dining hall in like half an hour?”

“Sure,” I say. Once she's out of the room, I start cleaning up the mess. I don't even care that I can feel Crissa's eyes on me as I throw tissues into the garbage and return the makeup and brushes back to their case. I'm too excited about my new friends and the fact that I have someone to eat dinner with. My stomach rumbles, and I realize I'm starving. Must be all that running up and down the basketball court.

“So,” Crissa says as I'm sliding my bucket of magazines under the bed. “You're friends with Rachel now?”

“Well, not really friends,” I say, trying to keep my voice light. “She just heard about Amber's makeover, and she
wanted one too, so …” I throw a dirty tissue into our trash bucket. Hmm. It's getting pretty full. I didn't know we'd be using so many tissues to blend. My stomach rumbles again.

“Well, just so you know, you should be careful about how you pick your friends around here.” Crissa lounges back on her bed, her hair falling in a pool around her pillow. She must notice that I'm giving her a death look, because she tries to backtrack. Well, halfway backtrack. “What I mean,” she says, “is that we've all known each other for a really long time. So you shouldn't be disappointed if people don't accept you right away. Especially since nobody knows why you're here.”

“Rude much?” I say.

“Look, I'm not trying to start anything,” she says. Yeah, right. “But I just want to make sure that you don't automatically ruin your social future here. I mean, there must be some reason you left your old school. And I just wouldn't want to see you make that same mistake again.”

I swallow hard. What is she, the friend police? Besides, it's not like she's been going out of her way to be nice to me and include me in all her popular-person activities. And from what I can tell, all those entail are going to soccer, studying, and walking around with a mean expression on
her face. No thanks. “I think I'll be fine,” I tell her. Then I finish cleaning up my side of the room, grab my bookbag off my chair, and head down to the dining hall to have dinner with Amber, pushing Crissa and her rude comments out of my mind.

The next morning, in English, we get letters back from our stranger-writing pen pals. Already? Who said e-mail was faster than the post office? Jeez.

For some reason, I have two letters. The first one says this:

Dear Number Seventeen:

It's nice to “meet” you. Well, kind of, anyway. My teacher, Mr. Lang, says this has something to do with “stranger writing.” I guess he saw some documentary over the summer. Figures teachers would be watching documentaries on vacation. Anyway, I don't have that many secrets. Except for one time, when I borrowed my best friend, Tony's, favorite T-shirt, and I accidentally forgot to give it back. Actually,
I'm lying. That's the secret part. I really left it at my camp over the summer, but I told him that I just forgot to bring it to school.

I know a lot about basketball. I play all summer at my friend Ryan's house, although we cheat a little and lower the hoop so we can practice dunking. You probably can't dunk yet. Sorry you got conned into playing basketball. You should try to switch to soccer—that's what I play. It's pretty fun.

Hit me back.

Number Seventeen

How lame. He doesn't even have any big, juicy secrets. Well, that settles it. I'm definitely not telling him mine. Not that I would anyway. After the big debacle at my old school, no one is going to find out the real reason I'm here.

The second letter says this:

Number Seventeen,

Welcome to FOUR TRUTHS AND A LIE. Over the next few weeks, I will be sending you five declarative statements. Four of these statements are true, and one is a lie. It will be your job to figure out which is which.

Statement Number One:

MISS CARDANELLI IS DATING MR. LANG.

You have until Monday to figure it out. If you choose not to participate in this game, you are destined for darkness.

Good luck.

What is it with people here and this game? I look around the room to see if this is some kind of joke. Like, part of the documentary or something, where the teachers are trying to see how bad they can freak the students out. But everyone
is reading their letters with interest, and no one else seems weirded out by them. Crissa's even got a little smile on her face as she reads hers. Figures. She's probably happy she has someone to flirt with, since she had such a bad breakup. She catches me looking at her, gives me a snotty look, and then folds her paper up carefully.

Of course I'd get the only psycho at Brookline Academy for Boys.

“You're lucky,” Amber says later at lunch when I'm done filling her in about my crazy letter. “At least it's interesting. My pen pal sent me a very long letter about himself.” She pulls it out of her book and clears her throat. “Listen to this. ‘Dear Secret Pen Pal, My name is Stu. Actually that is not my real name, it is the nickname I am using for this exercise, since I have always wanted to be called Stuart. I am in the eighth grade at Brookline Academy for Boys. I like to play chess, and my dog's name is Muggles.'” She throws the paper down in disgust. “It goes on for three pages. I mean, hello. BOR-ING.” She takes a bite of pudding from the little paper cup in front of her.

“At least it's not crazy,” I say, picking up her letter. “He sounds nice.”

“It's semicrazy,” she says. “He ends it by saying I have
pretty handwriting. I think it was his idea of letter flirting or something.”

“Amber! You have to give him a chance.”

“Why?” she asks. “I don't see you giving your guy a chance.”

“My guy doesn't want to flirt with me,” I say. “He just wants to freak me out.” Although it is kind of cute. And mysterious. Amber's right, I could have a pen pal who writes me super long boring letters (snooze.) And he seemed perfectly normal in the first letter. Maybe I should be thankful that my pen pal has a little spark to him.

“He wants to entertain you and be creative,” Amber says. “Now, that is pretty cool.”

“Do you think they're really dating?” I ask Amber. “Mr. Lang and Miss Cardanelli?”

“Well, did you ever stop to wonder how Miss Cardanelli got those letters to us so quick? Obviously they're meeting up somewhere to do the exchange.”

“I wonder what he looks like,” I say.

“Your pen pal?” Amber asks.

“No!” Although the thought did cross my mind. Not that it matters, since, you know, we're never going to meet. “Mr. Lang. I wonder if he and Miss Cardanelli are in love.” True-to-life romance! I love it. “Maybe you could write a
book about them.” Amber looks skeptical. “Why not?” I ask. “You're on newspaper, and you're always scribbling in your journal.”

“Writing in a journal is a lot different from writing a novel, Scarlett,” she says. But before she can say anything else, a shadow falls across the table. I look up to see a very tall, very mean-looking girl standing over us. It takes me a second to realize it's the girl from basketball, the one who whispered to me before we started our suicides.

“Are you seriously going to eat that?” she asks, looking down at my plate. There's a blue keychain dangling from her backpack that says “Andrea” in swirly letters.

“Why?” I ask, horrified. “What's wrong with it?” Maybe she found out about some sort of weird thing going on in the kitchen. Or maybe there's mad cow disease going around here. I saw that on the news once, about how mad cow disease can live in your body for, like, twenty years.

“Um, it's red meat?” She gives me a look like I'm totally stupid.

“Ohhh,” I say. “Are you a vegetarian?” I almost became a vegetarian once. After I learned about the mad cow disease. Maybe this Andrea from basketball is some kind of animal-rights activist. I practice looking interested and concerned.

“No,” she says. “I just don't eat things that will make me slow during practice. But I guess it doesn't matter if you're going to be riding the pine the whole time.”

She trounces off, her bookbag bouncing against her back.

“Wow,” Amber says. “What was that about?”

“She's on my basketball team,” I explain. “And I guess I'm supposed to be like, on a training diet or something. Although I'm not sure what riding the pine means.”

“I think it means that you're not going to be playing at all,” Amber reports.

“Great.” I sigh and pull a french fry through my ketchup. I glance around to make sure Andrea's not lurking around somewhere, and then pop it into my mouth. “It's so weird, they all seem to be taking it so seriously, and I have no idea why. When I signed up, it seemed like they were desperate for players.”

Amber frowns. “Basketball is the most competitive sport here. The team takes itself really seriously—they've been undefeated for, like, five years.”

“So then why are they so desperate for members?”

“Because they're so tough—no one wants to join, because the girls that are already on the team are supergood and super cliquey. And the coach works them to death.”

“Ugh.” I drag another french fry through the ketchup. It's probably full of bad fats and things that are going to make me a horrible athlete. Am I going to have to become vegan or something? That definitely does not sound like fun.

“So what are you going to do?” Amber finally asks.

“I guess just try to do the best I can in practice. It's definitely too late to switch into something else.”

“No.” Amber holds up the letter. “I mean about this.” She takes a closer look. “‘You have until Monday to figure it out,'” she recites. “Well, that one's easy enough. Just ask Miss Cardanelli if she has a boyfriend.”

“Oh, right,” I say. “How could I do that? ‘Hi, I got a strange letter and I need to know if you're with Mr. Lang, otherwise darkness will befall me or something.'”

“There are ways,” Amber says. “I'm sure we can figure out something.” She drains the last of her milk. “You wanna get out of here? We could go work on our math in the library.”

“Sure,” I say, but the wheels in my head are turning. Amber's right. I mean, asking Miss Cardanelli if she has a boyfriend wouldn't hurt anything, right? And it will give me something to keep my mind off of everything that's going on at home. Besides, I definitely don't want to come
to some sort of bad end. I smile. It is kind of cute, what my pen pal's doing. That decided, I pick up my tray and follow Amber toward the trash can. As I do, one of my fries bounces off the tray and onto the floor. Yikes. I hope that's not some kind of sign.

The next morning, I get called down to the
headmistress's office before class. Getting called down to the headmistress's office is never good. Either something horrible has happened, or you're in deep, deep trouble. To make matters even worse, Crissa was the one who told me I had to go down there. Apparently she's a runner for the main office, which means she goes down one morning a week to run messages from the office to students. She showed up at our door this morning with a big grin on her face. She knocked on our door (yes, the door to her own room! She was totally doing that just to seem important) and said, “Rise and shine, Scarlett!”