The Convenience of Lies (11 page)

“Car, whatever, did you see it?” Ramon asks again, trying to brush off what just happened, trying to act like it didn't mean anything. I decide it's not a big deal; he may have been thinking one thing and said another.

“I only heard what happened; I never saw anything,” I tell Ramon.

“Last night someone hit up my house with paint ball guns. The only person who I know with paint ball guns is Brent Andrews,” Ramon tells us.

“So you think it was Brent Andrews?” Kira asks.

“I don't know. I will look into it and call you back,” Ramon answers.

“Okay, bye,” I say, hanging up on Ramon, leaving just Kira and me on the line. There is a long silence as our conversation with Ramon sinks in.

“Mackenzie, I think Ramon and Brent Andrews are the ones who vandalized your car and my brother's car,” Kira says. “I mean, you and Ramon just had a fight.”

“Yeah, we had a fight, but it's not like it was nasty. It ended as well as it could have. Also, his house was vandalized too,” I say in Ramon's defense.

“Yes, but nobody saw Ramon's house. How do we know that it was actually vandalized? He's probably angry because you were like his little puppy following him and admiring him all summer. It made him feel good, you know? When he realized he wouldn't have you around, he was mad that you weren't giving him attention anymore. So, he probably wanted revenge.”

Kira's points all make sense; whoever hit my car would have needed a reason to. It was not some random happening. My problem is that I just don't think Ramon did it. He was not
mad
when I talked to him, but sad. Also, Ramon has this thing against doing anything to hurt a girl. It would go against all of his morals to hurt me. Despite her logic, I am not quite satisfied with the conclusion Kira is drawing about the night's events.

* * *

“Do you want to go see
Seabiscuit
with me tomorrow?” Cody asks me. It is the next day, Friday, and
Seabiscuit's
opening weekend. I've wanted to see
Seabiscuit
all summer because every time I go to the theater, I see its preview. Also I think I will love it because my favorite kinds of movies are inspirational-true-stories, and it'll probably be thrilling with all those horse races.

So, when Cody asks me, I naturally tell him, “Yes.”

Shane calls me up early Saturday morning, “So, are you excited about your date tonight?”

“What?” I ask Shane. What is he talking about?

“You know, your date with Cody!” Shane says incredulously.

“Oh, that's not a date; we're just going to watch
Seabiscuit
,” I explain to Shane. Where did he get the idea that it was a date?

“Uhh, Cody was asking you on a date,” he answers my question.

“WHAT?!?! I had no idea! I thought he just wanted to hang out as friends.” This is like a fly ball coming out of nowhere.

“Nope, that's a date! Come on, what guy would watch
Seabiscuit
unless he's taking a girl out?”

“Oh no. If I had known, I never would have said yes. I don't want to give him false impressions.” My heart is sinking. Things are going to be really awkward. No matter how much I
want
to like Cody, I know deep down that I really don't.

“Mackenzie, I'll talk to him for you. I guess I should fix this since I'm the one who encouraged Cody to ask you,” Shane says, letting me off the hook.

“Thank you so much. I'm really, really sorry.” I mean this with all my heart.

As the evening rolls around, our non-date is approaching. Cody picks me up, and it's clear that he washed his car, a green Mitsubishi Eclipse. It's shiny on the outside and has that lovely clean smell that I enjoy so much on the inside. He is dressed nicely, but not too nice. I look down at what I'm wearing, and I'm wearing… well… what I always wear in the summer; spaghetti straps, short shorts, and flip flops. He drives us off for the movie, for which he has pre-purchased tickets.

It turns out it was not necessary for Cody to pre-purchase tickets for
Seabiscuit
because there's us and maybe three other groups in the theatre. As the movie unfolds, I end up enduring two hours of sitting next to Cody and all his ADHD, while watching a movie he would probably rather not watch. He keeps squiggling around and commenting to me about how slow it is. We are watching a really late night showing, scheduled to end around 1:30 am. About three-quarters of the way through the movie, Cody pokes my upper arm, snickering, and points to a fellow patron who is snoring. I didn't notice this until Cody pointed it out to me because I am focusing on the movie as much as I can. Then Cody makes quite the show of getting out a penny from his wallet and flipping in the direction of our snoring neighbor, who wakes up with a snort. Cody starts laughing, trying to muffle it, and I become painfully aware that between his coin flipping and snickering, Cody is making more noise than anyone else in the theatre, including the snorer.

After the movie is over, Cody pulls into my driveway to drop me off at my house. This is the part of the night I have been dreading. I know that it's almost expected that I give Cody a kiss to thank him for the evening, but I really don't want to do that. I'm not interested in kissing him, and I don't want to give him any wrong ideas. At the same time, I don't want to be rude to Cody. After all, he
did
just take me out to watch a movie.

But, Cody manages to save me from this dilemma. “It's really dark; I'll stay here so that I can turn on my car lights for you.” While this is not what I was expecting, I feel a wave of gratitude. I am fairly certain that Cody's real motivation behind this is to save us both from that awkward good-bye on my porch.

I go over to Shane's house several days later. He is pressuring me, as always, to fill him in on what happened to everybody, but I'm not so sure that is a good idea. As a compromise, I tell him, “The more you know, the more you are involved, and the more likely that something will happen to you, Shane. I'll just tell you what happened to everybody, but not what we know about who did what.” So, I tell Shane about all of the actual events that happened, but not about what Dimitri saw or any of that. “Do you want to see what happened to my car?”

“Sure.” We go outside, and I show him the huge dent. It is a deep, isolated dent directly above the driver's side turn signal on the trunk. Right at the place of the hardest impact, there is a cut in the metal in the shape of a crescent. It looks like someone took a bat to it, which is what I am in the middle of telling Shane when he says, “That was a left handed hit. Look at the angle of the dent.” He pretends to swing a bat at my car, and just by visualizing that a bat is actually in his hands, I see that Shane is right; the bat must've been swung by a left handed person.

This is a major breakthrough. All I need to do is find out who is left handed and tell Kira what we just discovered.

“Whoever hit my car was left handed,” I hurriedly whisper to Kira the next time I see her. “Just by looking at the dent, you can tell it was a left handed person.”

“Don't tell that to anyone, Mackenzie. We can use that to figure out who is behind all of this. But Mackenzie, I have to tell you something; Tyler's car window was broken a couple nights ago. Also, part of a cinder block was thrown through Ramon's window last night. But, his friend, Scott, did it.”

This was unexpected. “What?!? Someone did shit to Tyler??? How do you know that Scott broke Ramon's window?”

“Scott admitted to it. I think that Ramon sent Scott to break his window. I mean, nothing has happened to Ramon yet, so he wanted it to look like he was a victim also,” Kira says smugly. She is obviously proud of her conclusion.

“I don't know about that, but it's crazy. That really sucks. I wonder who broke Tyler's car's window?” I am totally shocked. I remember Tyler; he was the funny red-head I played cards with so long ago. He's a cool guy; I can't believe that anyone would do something to him of all people. “So, here's all of the vandalism that's happened this summer: Gameland's window was broken; my car was vandalized; your brother's car was tee-peed; he ketchup-ed Brent Andrew's car; Ramon's friend broke his window, and now Tyler's car window has been broken,” I comment, counting everything off on my fingers. “This is just never going to stop.” I can feel anxiety slithering into my chest like snakes that are preparing to strike.

“I don't know. Mackenzie, we need to do an investigation. We need to make charts of everyone involved, their connections, and see what it all could mean.” Kira clearly wants to start probing what happened, and I see that's probably our best course of action.

“Yeah, we do. We need to figure out who is behind all of this. It needs to stop.”

We start our investigation by getting out a bat so I can show Kira that it indeed had to have been a left-handed swing. She agrees, and so we move on to her room.

“Okay, so the people who are involved all know each other like an intertwining web.” Kira states, clearly thinking this is the best place to start. “So that includes you, me, Dimitri,” she is writing our names on a paper, “Ramon, Tyler, Brent Andrews, Kurt.”

“Who is Kurt?” I interject.

“He is Brent Andrews's best friend. So, then we have Shane and Cody.” She finishes her list, and puts down the paper, staring at it proudly. “We can eliminate ourselves because we know we are not doing it. We can also eliminate Shane and Cody because they don't really know anybody except me and you.” She crosses out these people. “Oh yeah, we can eliminate my brother.” She crosses out Dimitri's name.

“How could we be so sure about that? Do you know Dimitri was home when Tyler's car was vandalized?” It seems like Kira is being hasty to cross people off her list. I think we should have more solid evidence before we label someone as innocent.

“I know Dimitri didn't do it. He was home.”

I have to take her word, and as I think about it, I know it couldn't have been Dimitri because he would not have broken his own store's window. At this thought, I say, “We can also eliminate Tyler because he wouldn't have broken his own car window.”

She agrees, and pretty soon, our list includes only Ramon, Brent Andrews, and Kurt.

“What about Kurt?” I ask her, “He doesn't know me, so why would he damage my car?”

“True,” Kira agrees. “So, that leaves us with Ramon and Brent Andrews. I don't think it was Brent Andrews.” Kira picks up her pencil to cross him out.

“Wait, you can't cross him off; we don't know that he is innocent, and Dimitri
did
see his truck the night most of the vandalism happened.” I know that Kira is being biased toward Brent Andrews because she likes him. I also know that Kira is going to accuse me of being biased toward Ramon because I like him. But, despite my crush, I am willing to admit it could have been both of them, since Dimitri did see two people in Brent Andrews's truck.

And sure enough Kira responds, “Okay, we'll leave him on the list, but Ramon is our lead suspect because you guys had a fight right before your car got damaged.” Clearly, Kira is still being biased.

Since I don't hold Ramon any higher than Brent Andrews, I say, “We're not going to jump to any conclusions until we find out who is left handed, Ramon, or Brent Andrews.” I'm hoping Kira can agree that both of our suspects are equally suspicious.

To my surprise, Kira agrees, “Let's go and see if Ramon is left handed.”

I think about this for a minute because I have not seen Ramon since I told him I don't want to talk to him anymore. I find my insides wriggle at the idea of coming face to face with him again. This is going to be awkward. But I know we won't find out anything unless we talk to him, so I agree. We call Ramon up and are over at his house in less than fifteen minutes.

Ramon looks less than pleased to see me, which is exactly how I feel about seeing him. With this being the case, Kira starts the conversation, “Anyone who knows something about what's been going on is also guilty because they are not turning their information in.” Ramon suddenly looks really small, like he doesn't fit his clothes any more. It's as if he's a child wearing a grown man's shirt. He is acting very reserved.

“Do you want to see the dent in my car?” I ask him, rather severely because I would rather not be talking to him at all.

He looks at me, and his eyes look almost hollow. “Sure,” he says, his first word so far.

We lead Ramon to my car parked in his driveway, and he instantly looks in the back passenger's side corner. “It's over here.” I tell him, pointing to the driver's side. “We think it was hit with a bat.”

Ramon takes one glance at it and briefly looks shocked. “A bat didn't hit that,” he says straight away.

“Then, what do you think hit it?” I ask.

“I don't know, but
a bat didn't hit that
,” he insists.

“Well, see how the person would have hit the car,” I say, pretending to swing at it. Ramon shrugs, and we go back in his room.

“Do you want water?” Ramon asks Kira and me.

We both shake our heads, so he leaves and retrieves a water bottle. He holds it with his right hand, and twists off the lid with his left. Then Ramon switches the bottle to his left hand, and starts drinking with it. Kira and I share severe looks. It looks like Ramon is possibly left handed.

Despite this bit of information, I remember that today is Saturday, meaning Ramon had a boxing competition this morning. The competition spreads over several weeks, with new meets every Saturday morning. “How did the competition go?”

He looks at me and nods, “Good.”

“Did you win?” I am keeping my questions short, and to the point.

“Yeah,” Ramon says.

I am about to ask him when his next competition is when Kira interrupts. “Oh my gosh, why are we talking about this? We have something else much more important at stake.”

This shuts Ramon and me up. I can't see why Kira doesn't want to talk about something else other than the vandalism for once.

“We think that you may have been the one who hit Mackenzie's car because you had a fight right before her car was hit,” Kira says very business-like. I can't believe that she is telling Ramon straight out that he is a suspect, but I guess he already knew it.

“Dimitri saw two people in Brent Andrews's car,” I say, “So it may have been Brent Andrews, and he probably had someone with him,” I add to Kira's comment.

“Could we talk to Brent Andrews?” Kira asks.

“I don't know,” Ramon says, “I have to call him.” He gets up and goes back out onto his driveway with his cell phone.

Kira and I start goggling out of the window at Ramon, trying to hear what he is saying. Kira turns off the light so that Ramon can't see us, but he is too far away for us to be able to hear a thing. As we precariously crane our necks, Ramon's sister, Eleena comes into the room. Eleena is older than Ramon and is very pretty. She has a perfect complexion and thick, long, shiny, black hair. She is a good weight for her height with a voluptuous figure. Her face is round, soft, and sweet, but she gives off the energy of someone who should not be messed with.

“We are trying to hear Ramon,” Kira explains. We are both suddenly aware of how ridiculous we look.

“Oh,” she says. “I was wondering if you could tell me anything about what is going on. Ramon won't tell me anything, but I know something is up, and our window was broken last night.” She seems very curious.

“Someone hit my car with a bat,” I explain.

“A lot of other stuff like that has been going on too. Whoever hit her car was left handed,” Kira interjects.

“I won't tell Ramon anything about what you say,” Eleena assures us.

“Is Ramon left handed?” I ask her.

“No, he is REALLY BAD with his left hand. Listen I know for a fact that Ramon isn't doing anything,” she says very confidently. I can't help but take what she has to say very seriously. Eleena does live with Ramon, so I would think that she knows pretty much everything he is up to. Then Eleena continues, “Whoever it is will slip sometime. You're just aggravating the person by nagging everyone.” I am not so fond of this more passive approach. I don't see how anyone could slip up at this point.

Ramon comes back into his room now and glares at Eleena. She creeps out of his room, and Ramon says, “Let's go.”

“I'll drive since my car is blocking yours,” I offer, glancing at Kira. “You just need to tell me how to get there.”

We all clamber into my car and head over to Brent Andrews's house. It is pretty late, around eleven or so, and when Brent Andrews opens his door, he is in his pajamas. We enter Brent Andrews's house, and none of his lights are on. Brent blurts out, “I don't know what the fuck you guys want!?” He ambles over to the far corner of his kitchen into the shadows and crosses his arms.

Kira and I are looking around his house in utter amazement. It is completely barren and empty. It also looks like it went through some slight construction that was never finished. His whole kitchen is covered with glassy white tile, all of it very icy and forbidding. I look over at Brent Andrews, and suddenly want to run out of the door. He is fixing Kira and me with a glare so evil, I would pass him for being able to murder the two of us right now. My heart speeds up. I feel frozen, alert, waiting with baited breath to see what Brent Andrews' next move will be.

“Yes, my house is a dump. I'm poor,” Brent spits out as he watches our eyes take in the surroundings.

“Oh,” Kira says. I can tell she is feeling uncomfortable also. We settle down on the only two small, hard chairs around the tiny circular table, and Ramon sits on the floor.

“We want to know who is doing all of this vandalism,” Kira comes out straight to the point again.

“Well, I have no clue. Don't ask me,” Brent says savagely. This does not make me feel more at ease.

“Do you want to know what I heard when my car got damaged?” I ask Brent timidly.

“Sure.” For the first time he doesn't look completely withdrawn, possibly even slightly interested.

I explain to him about how I heard a car drive by slowly twice, the bang and tire screeches, and how I ducked because I thought the bang was a gunshot. Brent just shakes his head. I go on and tell him that the car was hit with a bat, and that I could tell from the shape of the dent.

“A bat?” He asks with a hint of surprise in his voice.

“Yeah, do you want to see the dent?” I offer.

Brent consents, and we go outside to take a look. “Damn, that's bad,” Brent announces and whistles. He picks at the rough, chipped paint that's sticking out so garishly.

“The paint was scattered all over the street,” I tell him.

“Why do you think it was a bat?” Brent asks me.

“Well, if I were to swing like this, a bat would fit in perfectly.” I pantomime swinging a bat again.

“I guess.” Brent Andrews is slightly reluctant about agreeing, but he starts checking out the different ways that a bat could have been swung.

We head back inside, and Brent settles on the floor next to Ramon.

“Do you know why we think it could have been either of you?” Kira asks Brent Andrews and Ramon.

“Because Dimitri saw my truck when his car was toilet papered,” Brent says in a monotone.

“Because Mackenzie and I were in a fight right before her car was hit,” Ramon says in the same monotone. The boys are acting like school children answering a teacher's stupid question.

“What do you think happened?” I ask them, ignoring their tone.

“I don't know,” Ramon says philosophically.

“It was probably random, a group of kids doing random shit just for fun,” Brent Andrews says.
Yeah, right
. There has been a clear pattern to all of the vandalism and who has been targeted. That couldn't happen by random chance.

The next day I go to visit Kira while she's working at Gameland. I find her in the front reception area where there is a sleek, black, leather couch with a low, glass coffee table right in front of it. She is deeply engrossed in a conversation with Tyler, who is sitting on the floor across from her.