Seven Ways We Lie (28 page)

• My attention scattering—I can't defend myself like this.

Claire dives in with no prelude. She's efficient that way. “How long have you known?”

“Since, um, eighth grade.”

Her eyelids press tightly shut, showing off ridges of glitter that have built up in the creases. She takes a deep breath, then one more. “How'd you find out?”

“I mean, I had my first crush on a guy when I was maybe nine, but I didn't really put the pieces together for a bit. Eighth grade, I heard about pansexuality, and it made more sense than anyth—”

“What did you—
pan
sexual?”

“It means I could be attracted to someone of any gender.”

“So you're bi.”

“It's not quite the same. I . . . so, basically, there's not just male and female. Some people identify with other genders. And yep, now you look like I'm telling you that aliens have landed.”

“What are you talking about,
other
genders?”

“Well, gender's something society made up. I don't mean, like, biological sex—that's a different thing. But gender—so people think women are one way and men are this other way, but if you're a blend between the two, for example, then neither gender's a good description, so—”

“Lucas.”

“—pansexuals can be attracted to any gender, a boy or a girl or somebody off the binary, which, I mean, you can read about this stuff if you—”

“Lucas.”

“What? What is it?”

“I don't understand anything you're saying,” she says. “Would you hold on for a minute? Let's just . . . I'm not gonna bite, okay?”

There's a moment of quiet. Claire ties up her hair. It's brushfire orange, crackling with static electricity in the dry air. In my gut,
I have this feeling that none of this is real. Talking to her about this is unimaginably weird.

She fixes me with a skeptical look. “Okay. So. How do you know you're
not
bi? Have you met anyone who thinks they're not—you know, not a—a girl or a boy?”

I shrug. “How do you know you haven't?”

“I . . .”

“It's not like they'd be super public about it. Even gayness still has people being all, ‘Whoa, now, don't get so political; this is an awful lot to deal with.' ”

“Hmm,” she says. Not much of a concession, even by Claire standards.

It's not as if she would care less if I were bi. She just wants to be right.

I abruptly remember how little I miss arguing with her. Memories of our fights snap out of my mind, bite-size pieces of discomfort scribbling themselves down.

• “I hate when you get like this—”

• “Shut up and listen—”

• Her gimlet eyes.

• My endless apologies.

Here I go, doing it again. “Look, I'm sorry, okay?”

“I mean, yes, I think you should be. You could have brought it up so many times. Even if you'd copped out and told me through a text, or, for God's sake, on Facebook, it still would've been better th—”

“Claire, look. It was . . . easier, okay? It was easier not to.”

“That is such genuinely horrible reasoning.”

“Okay.” I avoid her eyes. We were together for over a year, and I knew the whole time, but somehow I don't regret staying quiet. I wish she'd figured it out somehow. I wish it didn't feel like this duty I have, to inform everybody.

It's not that it was easy to keep it a secret, either. I remember every time I almost spoke up. Images flash by lightning-fast: every time I lay beside her, kissed her, or held her in my arms, I felt an invisible wedge between us. And every time, I backed down from the plate instead of stepping up, for fear, and I felt choked. It isn't
easy
, keeping quiet.

But it's still eas
ier
. Easier than walking around as myself.

“Look, Claire, if I'd told you . . .” I realize I don't want to finish that sentence. Too late.

She crosses her arms. “What?”

“Well, the thing is, I knew if I told you, you'd make it a big deal.”

“It is a big deal.”

“Not to me. When we dated, you were the only one I was interested in, of any gender.”

“So you're pretending it's not an issue?”

“Don't do that,” I say sharply. “Stop ignoring what I'm trying to—don't derail this.” I don't snap often, but Claire has a unique talent for yanking it out of me. She makes me feel so much. It used to be exhilarating.

“I'm not derailing.” To my surprise, her voice softens. “If you purposefully don't talk about something, that doesn't mean it doesn't matter. If anything, that means it matters more.”

I open my mouth, then shut it again.

Is she right?

If they dragged me onto
The Confessor
, would they have to
pay me ten thousand dollars to face the swim team and say “I'm pansexual”? Twenty thousand to look Valentine in the eyes and say it? Fifty thousand to stand on our auditorium stage, walk up to the podium in front of the school, and say who I am? Because I haven't done it for free, that's for sure.

I've been telling myself that this is as much for other people as it is for me. After all, I go to church with kids from this school. I'm in a locker room with the swim team every day after school, and I don't want them to feel like they have to worry about anything. I've been thinking,
it's simpler this way, it's better for everyone, it hasn't come up
. But of course it's come up. It comes up every time they call each other fags, joking, jostling, and I stay quiet.

Suddenly, my silence feels like suffocation.

“And I'm sorry,” Claire says, “but let me be honest: it feels weird for me. I'm not saying you being pansexual is weird, but
I
feel weird about it. We broke up, and you've been treating me like—like I'm nobody. You don't say anything that matters. You look right through me. So we go from a hundred to zero overnight, and you turn into this stranger, and since then, I've been looking for a reason
why
you called it off, trying to come up with anything, because you never had the decency to explain. And now this, too? I don't know. There's more and more evidence that you're a whole different person than I thought you were.”

“Wait.” This conversation is veering off the course I'd expected. “You want to know why I broke up with you? That's what this is about?”

“Yes! I want you to tell me what I, quote, can't compare to, unquote.”

“I—what?”

“That's what you said in May,” she says, anger choking her voice. “ ‘You can't compare.' To God knows what. You don't remember?”

“Of course I remember.” I close my eyes. “Jeez, Claire, I wasn't saying you can't measure up to something or someone. I was starting to say, you can't compare
yourself to other people
, but then you were crying, and you tore off, and—”

She draws back, indignation glowing in her eyes. “I do not compare myself to other people!”

“Are you kidding?” I burst out. “That's all you ever do. Don't you see it? Don't you see how obsessed you are with everyone else? You used to talk about Olivia and Juniper like they were your biggest rivals, like they were teams you needed to take down in your next tennis tournament. And I—” I swallow hard. “I started counting it, I started keeping a mental list of it, and it was driving me insane. You treat everyone like measuring sticks for your own self-worth, and if we're being honest, I broke up with you because I hoped you'd work it out, but you obviously haven't. Look at you, talking to me as if
my
sexuality is some sort of personal insult to
you
. I didn't ask for this, okay? It's not like I asked for it!”

The stairwell is a megaphone. The words seem to go on forever. Twirl and leap off the stone.

I rock back on my toes. My fingers are wound in my hair. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

She's crying now. Claire calls herself an ugly crier, but I don't think it's ugly. I still remember the things she used to say about herself. The worst mental list I ever kept:

• “God, I'm stupid.”

• “Sorry, I'm so hopeless.”

• “Ha. I look even worse than I thought I did.”

• “Why can't I be more like her? Why can't I be like—why can't I be like—why can't I be like—”

She always turned to me to contradict her, but no matter how many times I told her the opposite, she never listened. I never lied, because what I noticed in Claire first was everything wonderful: how sharp she was, how determined, how challenging, and I used to love every aspect of her. But what did that fix? Nothing I felt could change the way she felt about herself.

“I'm sorry,” I say again.

“Don't bother with sorry.” She closes her eyes. Wipes the smudged eyeliner away. “Okay, we're done here.”

“Claire—”

“And I think it's better if we don't talk again. I think that'll be
easier
.” She leaves me to stare out the window at the morning sun, frustration building behind my sealed lips.

SECOND PERIOD TRICKLES BY, THEN THIRD, BUT MY
teachers' words don't sink in. I look down at my hands, which seem detached from me, trembling intermittently.

I bite my nails. I bite and bite and bite. The bitter coat of polish I slather on every morning sinks into my tongue, but the taste can't stop me today.

By fourth period, my fingers are bleeding. It's only when I see the blood that I realize I'm furious.

I still ache, as if somebody has hit me hard enough to bruise bone. My mind keeps rewinding to what he said, and the words throb in my ears, forcing my attention.

Compare yourself to other people. That's all you ever do
.

Well, at least I never lied to him, right? At least I didn't conceal some huge part of my identity from him. How dare he preach to me about self-esteem?

I haven't hated anybody since elementary school. Back then, Olivia was the queen bee of South Paloma Elementary, and I hated her. I was so envious, the sight of her used to make me sick. I wanted to slap her every time she smiled. She'd get that self-satisfied look that only eight-year-olds can perfect, and I'd
want to scream. But by eighth grade, I loved her so much, I would've told her anything. With some people, it's all or nothing: fierce affection or total detestation, a feeling like a rubber band in your chest stretched too far, about to snap. And for the first time since elementary school, that feeling's back.

By the time the lunch bell rings, the pent-up energy is too much for me to keep in. I shut myself into the bathroom, grit my teeth, and slam the stall door. One, two, three times. The piercing, metallic banging doesn't help. What could? What could fix the fact that I have, for two
years
, loved somebody who apparently thinks I'm a jealous egomaniac?

I storm out of the bathroom, making some freshman dart away with a terrified squeak. I pass classroom doors and advertisements for school photos. Everything is a blur in my peripheral vision until I reach the main entrance. A poster hangs across from the doors, advertising the swim team regionals tomorrow.
GOOD LUCK, LIONS
! it reads, with a huge picture of the team. My eyes go straight to Lucas's smile, second from the left in the second row. My fists clench.

Ridiculously, I wish I had hit him. I wish I had gone full bitchy-melodrama-ex and slapped the shit out of him. That would have been satisfying, right? Seeing his stupid, innocent, familiar face go wide-eyed with shock? Even the thought of it is satisfying.

I storm onward, gathering looks as I go, but I'm past caring. I storm by the art room, where we hid in the closet after school last March and made weird collages and kissed against the easels. I storm by the locker he had last year, where he kept lists of inside jokes we had. I storm past the guidance center.

And I slow to a halt.

A terrible thought sneaks into the back of my mind. It feels sickly gratifying, a guilty pleasure even in concept.

A thin plastic sleeve hangs on the guidance center door, filled with the questionnaires we had to fill out.
Do you have any information about the identity of any party who may be involved in an illicit relationship?

Slowly, I approach the door. I take a blank form, hatred pulsing sluggishly in my veins like mud. Nothing makes me feel more disgusting than hate.

Can I do this? Can I actually . . .

My heartbeat speeds up as I take the pencil from behind my ear and scribble out five words. I slip the questionnaire under the guidance center door.

I don't linger. I take off at the fastest walk I can manage.

Whoever's actually screwing a teacher, I hope they're grateful that I threw the administration off their scent.

I wonder if the school will believe me. Lucas will deny it, of course, and there's no actual evidence. His reputation as Mr. Social Wizard, though? Good as gone.