The Convenience of Lies (10 page)

“No, that's not true. What are you guys doing tomorrow?” As a good friend, I need to make sure everyone feels included.

“We really wanted to show you
28 Days Later
, so we didn't see it today. Let's see it tomorrow!” Apparently I have not dodged that bullet. But, I figure I can do this with them as a way to make up for today.

“Alrighty, sounds like a plan,” I say, knowing this will be the best way to make the boys feel better.

“It's a plan!” Cody says enthusiastically. “I'll give you a call tomorrow!”

Almost as soon as I get off the phone with Cody, I receive a phone call from Ramon, who wastes no time getting to the point. “Mackenzie, you know that we are just friends, right?”

“Yes, I do know that,” I say, resigned.

“I think of you as a friend, that's it. Alicia showed me the conversation you two had online. She made up what I said,” Ramon injects. I feel like my balloon has been popped. Suddenly I land back on Earth from the high I was in with Kira, and it's startling.

“Okay, bye.” I drop my cell like it's a poisonous snake, and is responsible for the words that just came out of it. But, as soon as it lands, I pick it back up and call Kira. Thank goodness Kira is back! I've needed a girl who I could confide in. I feel like I've been lost in a swamp as I try to wade through this confusing world of boys all on my own.

I tell Kira all that Ramon just said, and I find that I am actually not crying or anything. It's like I'm numb.

Kira says, “Yeah, it just didn't seem right that he liked you, but he didn't want to be with you.”

Right now, I feel like a fool. I looked like a fool when he gave me massages, and I look like a fool now because I still like Ramon even though he hasn't liked me back for many months. “What I need to do is seriously forget about him. Whenever I see Ramon, I just can't stop liking him. Until I find a new guy to invest my interests in, I need to stop hanging out with, or even talking to, Ramon. I won't be able to move on unless I find someone else to like, and that's not possible until I stop talking to Ramon.”
He will keep unintentionally hurting me if I don't stop liking him
.

“Once you start liking a guy, you have trouble stopping,” Kira agrees with me. “You're right, just be a woman about it and don't yell his head off or something,” she says seriously.

“Of course I will be good to Ramon, but I am still really mad at him. He fucking led me on all summer, and then hooked up with this other chick.”

Resolutely, I call up Ramon and ask him to meet up with me. And so I find myself facing Ramon at Pureza Elementary. The part of the campus we meet at has a nice patio that is surrounded by grass and buildings, making it very private. There is a metal overhang to protect the patio from the outside elements, and lunch tables are set in rows. I sit myself down on top of one of the tables.

In just a few precious minutes, I tell Ramon that I am hurting myself by talking to him. Until I get a crush on someone else, I won't be able to get over him. And so, we need to stop talking until I do. While I am telling Ramon this, I can feel my face turning hot, and by the end my face is just soaked with tears, and my nose is running so much it is getting all over everything. My heart is breaking, knowing this is the last I'll see of Ramon in a while. But, I know this is for the best.

Ramon just stands by himself, getting more and more withdrawn, which is how he shows displeasure. He doesn't say a word the whole time I'm talking. I hate that I am the one making him feel this way. But, Ramon needs to realize that our friendship has been hurting me.

When I finish my speech, I feel like I have been talking to a vacuum that has been sucking up all of my words into oblivion. And so, I conclude with, “Umm…yeah, bye.” Since he seems so unwilling to talk, I start practically running away from Ramon.

He says, “Mackenzie, wait,” and grabs me into a hug. I take a whiff of his cologne for the last time, imprinting it permanently to my memory. He holds me there for a second. “Sorry for all of the trouble I have caused.” He rushes by me, very surly, and starts climbing into his car. Suddenly he turns around and says, “I don't mean that in a bad way.” And he is gone before I can even respond.

I drag myself into my car and start the engine before I realize my eyes are so watery that I can't see two feet in front of me. I put my head on the steering wheel and bawl. I feel so small that I will soon disappear and never have to deal with anyone or anything again.

Crickets are chirping outside under the moonlight, forming the orchestra of the night. But, I barely notice them.

“They said they knew where I live, and if I don't tell them the information they need, they will come to my house and….” Shane is grappling for words as he talks into his phone. He's so terrified he's having trouble putting them together. I have never heard him so tense before.

It has been just over a week since I told Ramon I can't talk to him anymore. “Who are
they
?” I ask Shane, trying to sort out what he's saying.

“I don't know, but they keep asking for information about Brent Andrews and Scott.”

“What is the screen name?”

“YMS,” Shane utters. My worst fears have been confirmed. YMS is that local gang who gave Ramon so much trouble. They are not a really hard gang, just a bunch of bored kids out to cause trouble, but they can cause a lot of it. The only connection I have to them is through Ramon because of his one-time encounter with them. “Only eleven people have my screen name, and I have talked to all of them. None of them did it; I know that none of them would,” Shane adds. It is really not that hard to get a person's screen name, so this doesn't bother me so much. But then Shane says, “Not that many people know where I live. Just you and Cody.”

“What about Ramon?” I ask Shane. I already know the answer to this, but I want to remind him.

“Yeah, he gave me a ride home once a long time ago.” Shane seems to brush off this information.

“Ramon also has your screen name, right?” I point out; I'm trying to lead him to the conclusion that I have already drawn.

“He does, but I seriously don't think he did it.”

“I don't either,” I tell Shane honestly. “But he is the only connection you have to YMS, which is through me. If they know all this information about you through me, then somebody is stalking the both of us.” I feel a chill go down my spine. “Someone who knows that I was Ramon's friend probably followed me to your house.”

“Do you, do you really think that?” Shane stutters out. I can tell that I am not making him feel any better. But I don't know what to say to make him feel better, except try to figure out who is harassing Shane so that the situation is more tangible and hopefully easier to handle.

“Well, it's the only solution that I have.”

“Could you talk to Ramon about it?” Shane asks tentatively. I know he's asking me to talk to Ramon because I know him better than Shane does.

“Umm…. Well I guess I can. I'm not really talking to him right now. But this is more important.” The idea of talking to Ramon makes my blood stand still. We haven't talked since that fateful encounter. But, it seems like we have reached a dead end unless I talk to Ramon. “Alright. Well, I'll call him now and get back to you about what he says.”

As his cell phone rings, I feel the blood has drained out of my face. Is he going to answer? There's the third ring. There's the fourth ring. How many times does his cell ring before it goes to voicemail? Finally, Ramon answers. “Hi, Ramon,” I say timidly, not sure of what I'm going to get.

I know that he can usually recognize my voice on the phone but he still asks me, “Who is this?” I guess my voice sounds different because I am so tense. Or maybe Ramon can't believe that I'm actually calling him after what I said during our last meeting.

“Mackenzie,” I tell him.

“Hey,” Ramon says shortly, sounding disappointed and almost angry.

So, I just continue on, “I am only calling because some person from YMS is threatening Shane online, and I want to know if you know anything about it.”

“Shane?!?!” Ramon asks me incredulously, all pretenses dropped. “I don't know anything about that.”

“Okay, bye,” I say, practically hanging up on him. I have hit a brick wall, but I am still sure that YMS knows where Shane and I live. The only comforting thing for me is that Shane is the one being threatened, not me. But naturally, I am still concerned because Shane is probably getting threatened because of me – I'm not sure why he would be though. Right as I think this, my cell rings; and Cody is calling me.

“Hey,” I say, wondering why he's calling me so late.

“Have you heard about what happened to Shane?” he asks, like it is the most interesting thing that has ever happened to him.

“Yeah.” I fill Cody in with what I have deduced about the situation, and he agrees that I am probably right.

“Do you think Shane is in a lot of trouble?” Cody asks me with tension in his voice.

“Not really. All YMS has said is that they know where Shane lives, not that they want to beat him up. Until they say that, I think we have nothing to worry about.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. From what I know, all these people are trying to do is scare Shane. They'll only come through on hurting him if they directly say they will. YMS did not tell Shane to
watch his back
, or anything like that, so I'm sure he'll be fine.” I am saying this half because I believe it, and half because I am trying to make myself, as well as Cody, feel better. I try to inject as much confidence as I can into my voice.

Luckily, Cody accepts my word, and our conversation wanders. Eventually our chat turns into one of those really long, late-night phone calls, and slowly the time edges onto midnight. I have migrated into my sister's bathroom. Naturally Rachel is not home, probably off with her boyfriend, and if I go anywhere else in the house, my mom will hear me on the phone. Mom doesn't like it when I keep her up all night talking, so that's why I am taking refuge on the bathroom counter.

“I am so scared of the dark,” I tell Cody in a hushed voice.

“You are? I never have.”

“Well, it comes and goes over the years. But I am finding that lately it's getting worse.”

“I am sure that all this stuff with Shane is not helping either,” Cody comments.

“I know, seriously!”

“Shane's room is right in the front of his house. I can see YMS just driving up and riddling his house full of bullets,” Cody muses.

“I don't think YMS will do that. They don't ever do anything with weapons; it's all physical contact,” I say knowingly. “But it is a scary thought,” I add.

“Are you sure that they won't attack Shane with any weapons?”

“Unless they say so, I'm sure they won't. But now you are getting me very aware that my sister's bathroom is at the front of the house.” I say this light-heartedly even though I have started trembling, and my hearing seems to have gotten more acute, as if seeking out an evil-doer. Suddenly I notice how loud my neighbors are being; it sounds like they are watching the news. But then, it hits us how completely paranoid and ridiculous we are being, and Cody and I burst into laughter at our own foolishness. I barely hear the sound of a car drive slowly by. I peek out of the bathroom window, but the glass is translucent to keep anybody from being able to see into the bathroom. Or out of the bathroom, for that matter.

“All these people are driving by my house right now,” I comment. I tell myself that everything is fine and that I'm not scared. I half believe it.

“My street is not busy at all. Like nobody ever drives down it,” Cody comments. He doesn't seem to realize that's how my neighborhood is, too. Nobody would drive down my street at this hour unless they lived here.

“That's how my street is, too. That's why this is weird.” I hear a car drive slowly by again. I want to look out a better window, but I am scared to go into my sister's room where I can easily see the street. I don't want to expose myself that much. In fact, I don't want to expose myself at all.

“I'm going to sit on the ground so that nobody can see me through the window,” I tell Cody. We are in the process of laughing at our own paranoia again, when suddenly I hear a BANG! Just like a gunshot. Then tires screech.

Instantly all of my humor disappears. “Shit, what was that!?!” I screech into the phone.

“What?” Cody asks me. “What happened?”

“I just heard a big bang! It sounded like a gun! Somebody with a gun is outside my house!” I am flattening myself onto the floor as much as possible.

But after I say that, we both burst into laughter.

“Mackenzie, you would be a really funny drunk,” Cody says in between giggles. “You are such a spastic.” I agree that I am just being jumpy; the bang was probably just my neighbors' car backfiring.

Even so, I stayed flattened against the floor for the next several minutes, listening for anything else unusual while talking some more to Cody. Once I conclude that the danger has passed, I get off the phone with Cody, crawl as close to the floor as I can to my bed as an extra precaution, and hide in my bed for reassurance. I bury my face in my pillow.
I'm not any safer in my bed than I was in the bathroom
. Despite this thought, I still feel comforted and eventually fall into a deep sleep.

The sun is pouring in my window, blinding me as I wake up. I need to get out of the house early today and go to the bank. I roll over and look at the clock; it's 10:31. I smile as I think about how the summer is the best for sleeping in late.

I hobble out of my house and head for my car, still groggy. I'm blinking in the brightness of the sun, my eyes in pain as they adjust to the bright intensity of the light. I round around the driver's side of my car and stop right where I am. My jaw drops. There is a huge-ass dent in my trunk. Large chards of red paint are haphazardly scattered all over the street, and the metal is cracked. All I can do is stare for a second. Then, as I am looking at it, I think, “What could have caused that? Maybe it was a hit and run?”

After the initial shock washes over me, I call Cody on my cell, right there in the middle of the street, because I was talking to him last night when I heard the bang.

“Someone hit my car! There is a huge dent in it!!! What should I do?” I'm talking very quickly, and my voice is slightly shrill. Telling someone what happened makes it feel more real.

“Is your mom home?” He asks.

“No, she's at work!” My voice is sounding more desperate as I realize I have absolutely no idea what to do to handle this situation. I love my car. I don't have a ton of money. I don't know how much this is going to cost to fix.

Sensing how flustered I am, Cody tells me calmly, “Mackenzie, you need to call the cops. Not 911, but call the police station, the non-emergency line. Tell them what happened. You should be talking to them, not me.” As Cody gives me instructions, I feel myself getting centered again. It helps to have the steps laid out for me for what I should do next.

I call the non-emergency line as Cody advised, and sooner than I realize, a cop is in front of my house on an impeccably clean little white motorcycle.

“You want to report a hit and run?” He asks rhetorically.

“Yes, last night someone hit my car.”

“Do you know what time it was?” He asks. I tell him everything about what I heard the night before; he writes it down and then starts to inspect the damage.

“It looks like vandalism, like something fell on it,” he comments. “Look around for what could have fallen on it.” As he says this, both of us start scanning the ground around us. I marvel at how far away the paint chips traveled, some of them at least ten feet. But, I can't see anything else. There's just leaves, paint chips, and trash in the gutter. Nothing that looks like it could have caused this damage. As I look back at the dent on my car, I realize that if it had been hit by another car, the damage would also be on the side of the car, not just an isolated dent in the middle of the trunk. “I will write this up as vandalism, not a hit and run. Is that okay?”

I nod, trying to think of who would have vandalized my car. Then I remember what happened to Shane. Could it possibly have been YMS? YMS is known for doing vandalism, like what happened to Gameland's windows. The cop hangs out for a bit, writing out his report, and hands me a business card. “Here's my card, and that's your report number.” He flips over the card and shows me a hand written number on the back.

“Thank you,” I say, nodding again. The cop takes off, and I head into my house, tossing the business card into the trash. How could that information ever be useful to me?

I call up Kira on my house line as soon as I get inside and fill her in on all of the details.

After I'm done, Kira says, “I have to tell you, last night my brother's car was Tee-Peed and Brent Andrews's car was covered in ketchup.”

I am taken aback by this news. It can't be a coincidence that everyone who knows each other, one way or another, through Gameland had their car targeted in the same night. “It seems like someone was out to get us last night. But come on, ketchup and toilet paper doesn't quite add up to a huge dent.”

“Last night we heard my dog barking, so Dimitri went outside to see what was going on. When he saw his car was covered in toilet paper, he hid in the bushes and then saw Brent Andrews drive by in his truck. Dimitri followed Brent Andrews home, and he's the one who covered Brent's car with ketchup. But he saw one other person in the car with Brent Andrews. He wasn't sure who it was. Mackenzie, have you talked to Ramon?”

“No.” I feel my heart sink as I can guess what's going to come next, so I try to head it off with, “You know that we're not talking anymore.”

“Mackenzie, we need to talk to Ramon and see if anything happened to him.”

“No, no, I DON'T want to talk to Ramon,” I insist. I suspect that Kira is thinking that Ramon was in the car with Brent Andrews. If nothing happened to Ramon, then he could have possibly been the second person involved with Brent Andrews.

“Mackenzie, what is more important? Not talking to him, or your car?”

I can see Kira's point, so reluctantly we three-way call Ramon, and once he's on the phone, Kira tells him all that happened the previous night. I fill him in with my part of the story. I notice we are keeping a very crisp, business-like distance between us.

“What kind of truck was it?” Ramon asks when I am done telling him everything.

“Truck? Why a
truck
, Ramon,” Kira inquires. All three of us realize that he has just slipped.