Seven Ways We Lie (12 page)

Olivia lets out a disbelieving-sounding laugh. “Know what? Maybe you should meet Kat. I bet you guys would get along great,” and I'm like, “What's that mean?” and she's like, “It's clear you both have lots to figure out before you can act like civilized human beings,” and a defensive instinct surges up, and I say, “Shit-talking your own sister. Classy.” And she snaps, “Well, she's been nothing but awful since our mom left, not that my family is any of your goddamn business.”

I go quiet.

“Shit. I didn't mean that,” she says. “It's . . . she's weird these days, but it's not . . .”

I rub my forehead. “No, don't worry about—”

“All I meant was, if you don't know her, she gets tough to deal with.”

“Right,” I manage, suddenly hyperaware that although I've gone to school with Kat Scott for years, I've never talked to her, and I guess it's because she's so quiet. I don't know, there's this romantic idea about quiet people in movies and books, like,
Oh, they're so mysterious
, whereas in my experience it's not like that at all. It's more like,
Okay, you don't want to talk? Fine, I'll let you do your own thing, since you obviously don't want to associate with me
.

“Listen,” I say, “I'm sorry, okay? I keep . . . things just won't come out right when . . .” I can't finish the sentence. My thoughts are snarling up like yarn inside my head. Jesus, what is it about this girl that wrecks my ability to goddamn
talk
?

After a second, she rescues me: “Well, I sort of snapped, too, so . . .”

I search for words, but the knowledge about her family is a roadblock, detouring my attention. Their mom walked out. She and her sister have been fighting ever since. I've had this thing for Olivia for years, feeling like I knew all about her because . . . I don't know why. Because I've had a couple of classes with her. Because, like everyone else, I know the guys she hooks up with. Now, though, I picture her blue eyes and try to imagine the miles of thoughts hiding behind them, the years of history concealed back there, and I wonder why it took me this long to think of her as someone with a hundred thousand dimensions, of which I know maybe one. It was too easy to see her as a cutout doll of the perfect girl.

Then a shout bursts into my attention, ringing through my door: “—be
quiet
!” and I wince and smother my phone, but Olivia's already asking, “Everything all right over there?” and I'm like, “It's my parents,” because it's easier than a lie.

“That's rough. It's pretty late,” she says, and I sigh. I don't want her to pity me, but I do want her to know that I get what it's like, coming home to a house you can't deal with, so I shrug and say, “They've been like this since I was, like, ten. On and off. So I get . . . I hope your sister gets better. I hope you guys work it out. Because this shit drives you insane. You know?”

For a long moment, she doesn't say anything. Then her voice comes back, calm and slow. “Yeah, I know,” she says. “I get done with school and everything and come home to this, like, hovering atmosphere of—I don't know what I did, you know? I'm going
crazy trying to figure out what I did,” and I say, “You probably didn't do anything,” and she says, “What?” and I say, “I mean,
my
parents are always angry because they're miserable.”

Silence. I feel as if the words should have been hard to say, but they slid out as easily as thin liquid, not an ounce of resistance. I stare at my bedroom wall, and my voice trails on without me, careless, thoughtless. “My mom feels like she's wasting her fancy degree out here in bumfuck Kansas, and my dad gets all,
Why are you so ungrateful?
and nothing I do changes that. So, like, your sister? If I had to guess, she's probably going through something personal, and she needs to figure it out before she's ready to treat you like . . . I don't know. A person.”

Looking over at the windowsill, I realize my blunt has smoldered down on its plate. I stub it out, not even angry about having wasted half a joint, because, what the hell, when did this turn into an actual conversation? I'm perched, tense, on the edge of my chair, waiting for her answer.

Olivia says, “Where'd your mom go to school?” And I say, “Yale. She's a biologist.”

“How do you deal with the fighting?” she asks.

“I don't know.” I rummage around for a better answer but come up empty-handed. “I don't deal with it. I'm just here.”

“You don't try to stop them?” she asks, and I'm like, “Nah. Last time I tried was freshman year. Now I only speak up when they get Russell involved,” and she's like, “Your little brother,” and I look over at him, his mouth cracked open in sleep. “Yeah,” I say. “He's better than the rest of my family combined.” A breeze washes in through the window as I listen to her silence on the other end. I haven't talked like this in a long time, and
something in my heart is waking up, lifting its drooping head.

“What's, uh, what's going on with your sister?” I ask.

“She's missing classes, she never comes out of her room, and every time I, like, dare to seem worried, she snaps. It's like living with a . . . I don't know, a Venus flytrap. A large, deeply angry Venus flytrap.” Olivia chuckles, and it breaks, and she's quiet, and I rearrange my fingers on the hot plastic casing of my phone and wish I knew what to say.

“It's frustrating,” she goes on, “ 'cause we're both dealing with the same thing, you know? She's the only one who would get it, but we've never spoken about Mom, not once. I wish she'd talk to me. Jesus, I never thought I'd say this, but I miss middle school.”

“Makes sense wanting to rewind things, though.”

Her silent understanding rings through the phone. Me, I'd go all the way back to elementary school, before permanent lines settled between my parents' eyebrows.

“But also, fuck middle school,” I add, and she laughs.

Silence settles carefully, like ashes. “This is weird,” she says after a minute, and I say, “Yeah,” and she says, “I hate to, like, ruin your night—”

“You're not—”

“Let's just . . .”

“Yeah,” I say. “So, Saturday? My house? I can pick you up.”

“Okay, sure. I'll send you my address, and . . . yeah, great.” Her voice is uncertain, tense with the weird anxiety I'm feeling, too, and I get this image of her eyes bleary and her long dark hair draped over her shoulder, and it startles me a little, the reminder that she's a real, physical person, someone I'll see in the flesh tomorrow at school. What will it be like, meeting her eyes after
saying all this? I'm going to mess it up, won't I? The easy slide of this conversation will disappear, and I'll be back to my usual awkward mumbling.

“I'll read
Inferno
,” I blurt out, without knowing why. Somehow, even though I haven't done any required reading since I was twelve, it doesn't feel like a straight-up lie.

She chuckles. “I'm holding you to that. See you tomorrow?” And I say, “Yeah,” and she says, “Bye, Matt.”

When she hangs up, it feels as if I'm surfacing from a deep dream. I draw a long breath, dazed, and carry Russ upstairs to tuck him in. As I shut myself back in my room, easing myself into bed, I can hardly believe that somewhere across town, Olivia picked up the phone and something happened—I don't know what the hell it was—over the line.

A nervous voice creeps into my head, whispering,
You should pull back before this inevitably goes sour
. After all, twelve hours ago, I barely had the nerve to look her in the eye. But something else bounces around inside my head, louder than the creeping worry: the hesitant sound of her saying my name. I want to keep hearing it. I want to keep handing my voice back in reply. I grip my sheets tight at the thought and stare up at my ceiling, my jaw a little stiff and my heart a little fast.

The sound of her voice pins itself to my eardrum, echoing until I fall asleep.

ON FRIDAY MORNING, I HURRY THROUGH THE JUNIOR
lot, counting cracks in the asphalt as my tightly knotted sneakers hit them.
Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Twenty-five
. I don't look up for anything. Unexpected eye contact is one of my least favorite things. What do you do if you're acquainted with the person? Nod? Smile? Stare blankly?
Know thyself
, said the Greeks, and knowing myself, the blank stare is all I would be able to manage.

The passing conversations bore me in three-second increments: grades and teachers, sports and scores, pop music and celebrity breakups. As if any of that matters. Why is everyone around me so vapid? I'm starting to think they should rename so-called intelligent life.

“Freeeak,” a voice drones at me. I glance up, narrowing my eyes at the group walking by. It's half the swim team, uniformly tall and muscular, chuckling like one self-satisfied organism.

“Incredibly original,” I call after their retreating backs, in as scathing a voice as possible. I don't know why I'm engaging. I'm better than that. I'm better than
them
. I'm certainly better than vindicating their juvenile behavior with a response.

The one in the center of the pack, a curly-haired kid with a long nose, shoots an apologetic look over his shoulder. I glare at him. If he were sorry, he would say something to his douchebag teammate. It must be nice, being surrounded by an army of friends who'll be complicit in your behavior, no questions asked.

The swimmer guy looks at me a moment longer before turning back to his friends. He doesn't say a word.

That's what I thought.

I glance back down at my feet, but I've lost count of the asphalt cracks. Sighing, I look up. A girl leaning against a nearby car—Izby Qing: short, slender, hair dyed pink—catches my eye. She stands, laughing and hair-twirling, next to a freckled boy, transparently reveling in his attention.

For a second, I wonder what it would be like to have somebody's eyes fixed on me like that—or to look at someone the same way.

Soon enough, though, I fall back into dispassion at the idiocy of it all. It horrifies me that kids our age spend so much effort on this stuff. I thought we were all aware that the vast majority of high school relationships are fleeting and meaningless, but apparently not. People spend a huge percentage of their lives playing into this perpetual cycle of interdependence. They're all wasting their time, and on something with zero long-term benefits. God knows why.

“Hey, wait up!” A boy, sprinting to catch the swimmers, barges into my shoulder and spins me off balance. My periodic table water bottle bounces out of my backpack and away under the front of a car, toppling xenon over helium. I right myself, waiting for an apology, but the boy doesn't glance back.

I hate people
. I crouch, swatting under the fender to grab my
bottle, but it rolls out of reach. A hand grabs it from under the driver's door. “Got it,” says the voice attached to the hand.

I straighten up. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” the girl says. “Did that guy not even apologize? Jeez.”

I start, taking half a step back. That voice . . .

“You must've had this for a while,” she says, peering at the bottle. “Copernicium isn't named.”

Staring at the ground, I nod. “You, um. Like chemistry?”

“I love it,” she says, and the girl's voice in my head says,
I love you
.

It's her.

Sudden pressure clamps down on my skull. I look her in the eyes and know so much about this girl, all of a sudden; I picture her standing in the darkness of the faculty break room, staring up at a nameless face, promising that nobody will ever know—and I suddenly wish I could unknow this. It's too much to hold. I could ruin her life.

She tilts her head. Her eyes are beautiful, clear, and piercing. They dig into me.

I don't know her name. That's something. A tiny protection from this responsibility.

She holds out the bottle, and I snatch it. “I have to go.”

I hurry down the green toward the school, not looking back.