The Darkest Lie (7 page)

We stride from the bonfire, and at first the adrenaline of what Sam did propels me forward. He faced my biggest bully—and got the best of him. We're walking away, with Justin looking like the fool, not me.

Not me. It's always been me. How could it possibly not be me?

And then the fear settles in, wraps around my stomach, and jumps my heart forward a few beats. Because if I know Justin at all, there will be repercussions. Big ones. Ones I'm not sure I'm ready for.

“I don't have a car,” Sam says, pulling me from my thoughts. We've crossed half the lawn, and more mud has mucked its way up my legs, so I feel like I'm wearing tights after all. Sludge tights. “Some knight in shiny armor, right? Whisking you off, without anywhere to take you.”

“It's okay.” I fish my car keys out of the pocket in my dress. “I drove tonight.”

We walk to the long line of cars parked on the gravel driveway. I'm not sure why. I can't leave yet since I'm Alisara's ride, but at least it gets me away from the party.

We reach my car, all the way at the end, and I unlock the doors, grab some paper towels, and begin cleaning the mud off my legs. I finish an entire leg before I realize Sam's staring. My pale flesh gleams in the moonlight, and with my foot propped on the running board, the short dress reveals more than I want of my thigh.

I stiffen, and my mom's topless photo floats through my mind. Her sunset hair, the round, heavy breasts. So this is the way it's going to be, even with him?

Something hot and fierce moves through my body. All I wanted from this year was to be left alone. Maybe meet a guy who likes me for me. No such luck. My mom's in the grave, but she's still here. Still messing things up for me.

I drop my foot to the ground. “So that's why you stood up for me, huh?” The laugh scrapes out of my throat. “You wouldn't be the first. Everyone says we look alike, you know. So if you're wondering? Yeah, I can confirm that's exactly how I look topless.”

“CeCe, I'm not interested in you like that.” His Adam's apple jumps in his throat. “I mean, I am, but your mom has nothing to do with it . . .”

He trails off, and I yank the hoodie off my shoulders. “Go ahead. Look all you want. Apparently, my boobs are public property, since the whole world's seen my mom's.”

To his credit, Sam keeps his eyes on my face. “I saw the photo, but only for a second. I didn't stare at it. I sure as hell didn't get off on it. The only thing I thought was how it would affect you.”

The hoodie droops from my hands, and I toss it on the trunk. Sam takes off his sweatshirt, too, and throws it next to mine. I realize how warm I've gotten. Whether it's from the bonfire or the confrontation with Justin, my skin's hot and sticky. Sam probably feels the same way.

The anger flees as quickly as it came. Sam's on my side. He didn't do anything wrong, but I leaped to conclusions. Maybe there are nice guys left in this world, after all. Maybe all the nice ones, I just manage to drive away.

“Why did you help me out back there?” I mumble.

“I may be the new guy at school, but I'm not oblivious.” His voice stumbles, as if it's on uneven ground. But like the boy on the Rollerblades, it glides brazenly, unflinchingly on. “It didn't take long to piece together how they've been treating you. You don't deserve that. Nobody does.”

I don't say anything. I can't. No one's been this kind to me in ages, except maybe Alisara. In the weeks after the funeral, she would sit by my bed for hours, carrying on a monologue about who hooked up with whom and did I want to try her raspberry lipstick and how she might go to Homecoming with Brian Finnigan. Innocuous gossip in which she only had a mild interest, conveyed in hopes of drawing me out.

But even Alisara has her limits, and after a few weeks of our one-sided conversations, her visits became further and further apart until they stopped completely.

I've told myself I'll be wary around Sam. He's writing an article about my mom, and he's determined to root out every last salacious detail. But I feel myself tipping toward him. A magnetic pull that has me teetering on the edge. Involvement. If there's a way to be around Sam and remain detached, I haven't figured it out.

Maybe I don't need to. Maybe the best way to control what he finds out is to stay near him. Keep my enemies closer and all that.

Except when I look into his face, silhouetted by the moon, the last thing he feels like is my enemy.

“I can't go anywhere because I'm Alisara's ride.” I chew on my lips. “But could you . . . hang out with me? I don't want to be alone right now.”

I've said it to myself dozens of times over the last year, in different ways, but it all adds up to the same thing.
I'm so lonely. I feel alone. I miss my mom.

It's funny how I never felt alone before. Even when I was up in my room, studying late at night with only my earbuds for company, I didn't feel alone. I knew I could always find my mom somewhere in the house, and no matter what, she would drop whatever she was doing and have a cup of tea with me. It's not that I sought her out often. I didn't always agree with her advice, and most of the time, I didn't want to hear it. But she was always there, always available. The equivalent of a teenager's security blanket.

The feeling washes over me, and I lean against the car, tilting my head up to the black sky. The stars are hidden somewhere beneath a thick blanket of clouds, but I feel their beauty as an ache inside my heart, even if I can't see them.

Kind of like my mom. I can't see her or talk to her, but she's still here, living inside me, the good parts and the bad.

I turn to Sam, my eyes wet for no reason I can understand, and what I see in his face takes my breath away. A yearning so raw it peels away every layer of myself, leaving me more exposed than my mother's topless photo.

“I'm not going to kiss you,” he says in a strained voice. “After the night you've had, I don't want you to mistake a kiss for anything but what it is. But I want you to know, just because I don't kiss you doesn't mean I'm not thinking about it. Doesn't mean I'm not going to dream about it. Doesn't mean I won't want to do it, next time we're together.”

My heart sprints, each beat trying to outpace the other. My second almost-kiss in the space of one hour. When I can count my lifetime number of such encounters on one hand. I have to swallow twice before I can speak. “Duly noted.”

“Good.” He grins, the lens of his glasses reflecting the moonlight. “I just wanted to make that clear. Wouldn't be a very good investigative reporter if I didn't set the record straight.”

I'm late meeting Alisara at the cabin. Like thirty minutes late. She accepts my apology without saying much, and we drive most of the way home in silence. The headlights cut through the darkness, giving us disjointed flashes of the familiar. The worn wooden sign directing us to Lakewood Cabins. The dilapidated playground next to the elementary school, with its creaky swings and peeling paint. The crumbling public library on the way to Alisara's neighborhood.

By day, Lakewood resembles an empty tuna can—plain, rusty, and a little sad, holding traces of something that wasn't all that great to begin with. Once the railroad pulled out of town a decade ago, so did the jobs, leaving the people to make a life out of the leftovers.

At night, though, the town takes on an almost spooky quality, a feeling that makes me grip the steering wheel a little tighter as I navigate the streets.

“I don't mind that you were late,” Alisara bursts out when we turn onto her road. “But I saw you walk back into the cabin with that new guy. Are you really not going to say a word about him?”

I jerk, and the car swings toward the curb. “What . . . what do you want me to say?”

“I don't know, CeCe,” she mutters, looking out the window. A passing street light paints a stripe over her ear, making her look like the heroine in a slasher flick. “What you two were doing? How hot he is? If he's a good kisser?”

“I didn't kiss him,” I say, heat creeping up my neck. “We hung out by the car and talked. But I, uh . . . I think he's cute.”

She turns to me, her features softening. She doesn't press me for any more details, and I realize she doesn't actually want the information. Like her running monologues by my bedside, this isn't about gossip. It's about giving her a sign of my friendship.

My throat tightens. Because Alisara is my friend. Maybe, after these last few months, the only friend I have left.

“Alisara,” I say hesitantly. “At the party, did they talk about my mom's photo a lot?”

“Yeah.” She glances down, but then brings her gaze right back to my face. “The guys were pretending to masturbate to the picture; the girls were saying they always knew she was a slut by the way she dressed.”

I pull into her driveway and turn off the ignition. “And what did you say?”

“I said sure, those button-downs and linen pants were
really
sexy. I'm surprised the school board didn't come down with a ban on pearl earrings. Scandalous.” She places a hand on my arm. “She was seventeen, CeCe. You don't know why she posed for that photo. You don't understand the context.”

“So, what, I'm supposed to give her the benefit of the doubt?”

“She was your mother.”

“That doesn't give her a free pass.”

Except she wasn't a mother in name only. What about all the times she drove my forgotten homework to school? The years she served as room parent? She had less time after she went back to teaching, but she was just as attentive. Just as loving.

Does that count for anything?

I don't know. Six months after her death, and I'm still no closer to an answer.

* * *

My phone rings as I slide my key into the front door. The “suspense” ring tone. I push the button to end the call. It rings again as I tiptoe up the stairs. I switch it to vibrate.

A light shines underneath the door to the guest room—where Gram sleeps. But she's not waiting up for me, no siree.

“Gram, I'm home,” I stage-whisper as I push open the door.

She's at her desk, spectacles perched on her nose and laptop in front of her. “I'm not waiting up for you.”

“Didn't say you were.”

She scowls. “Your father's puttering in the den, doing god knows what, and I've been here all night, losing my life's savings to a bunch of yahoos who can't tell a flush from a straight. I'm not going to ask if you've had a good time. I don't want to know if you've been drinking. And I really don't care if you've climbed into the backseat with any boys.”

I smile. “No, no, and not really.”

She takes her glasses off and rubs her eyes. “You're a good girl, CeCe.”

I bend down and kiss her forehead. Her skin is as soft and warm as bread dough. With Gram, I have a bit of the same relationship I had with my mom. Even though she's my paternal grandmother, she charges headlong into life the way Mom did, and the only time I ever relax anymore is in her presence. “You haven't really lost your life's savings, have you?”

“Nah. I've got that trip to Vegas in a week and a half, remember? Gotta save for that.” She hands me a five-dollar gaming chip she won at a Kansas City casino. “Here. For your bank account.”

My bank account, as she calls it, is a briefcase under my bed, filled with the clay discs Gram dispenses like candy. “This is an investment in your future,” she explained a few months ago. “When you're of age, you can decide if you want to redeem your chips—or if you're going to follow in your Gram's footsteps and gamble it all on a single hand. You could lose it all, or turn a single coin into a hundred. But what is life if not a risk?”

For her, maybe. Not me. Life's hard enough without betting it all on something I can't control.

“CeCe?” Gram says as I turn to leave the room. “Your father tells me you're not applying to Parsons. Is that true?”

I frown. “You're on the verge of hovering, Gram.”

“Not even close. In my profession, we can't afford to hover. We have to go all-in with our pocketbooks—and our hearts.” She drums her fingers on the laptop. “What I'm trying to say is: If you're staying in Lakewood on account of your father, don't. He can take care of himself. And I'll be around.”

“No offense, Gram, but your version of a home-cooked meal is a Lean Cuisine. And you dry-clean all of your clothes, even your underwear. You probably haven't touched a laundry machine in the last decade.”

She flashes me a smile. “Made it sixty-five years, didn't I? Life only deals you one hand, CeCe. But how you play it is up to you.”

“I'll think about it,” I say, more to get her off my back than anything else.

She turns back to her computer. “Good.”

I go to my room and lie on my bed, the phone nestled against my chest. It vibrated a couple more times while I was talking to Gram, but I don't bother to check the number now. Probably a random student calling the hotline after the party, wanting to gossip.

Instead, I sit up and type the Web address for the Parsons School of Design into my phone's Internet browser. Once the page opens, I read about the Parsons Challenge, an exercise all undergraduate applicants must complete. This year's challenge is to explore something that you normally overlook in your daily life.

As always, my insides clench as I read the words. Because there's one thing I've been deliberately, systematically overlooking for the last six months. My mother.

Her picture is facedown on my dresser. The clothes we shared are shoved to the back of my closet. Even the sandalwood jewelry box is buried in the mix of old shoes under my bed.

Sighing, I lower my phone. Even if I were willing to share such a personal viewpoint with a random admissions officer, I can't leave my dad now. Maybe he takes the laundry and the meals for granted, but at least he's clean and fed. That's what Mom would have wanted—if she bothered to think of us at all in her last moments.

The phone pings in my hand. Not a call this time, but a text message. That's different. Must be Alisara, wanting to see if I'm still awake.

I check the number. I don't recognize it, but that doesn't mean anything. I wouldn't be able to call Alisara if her number weren't in my contacts. And then, I read:

The breath bursts in and out of my lungs. I throw the phone across the room before I crush it beneath my fingers. I'm NEXT? Next for what? And how exactly am I poking into anybody's business? I'm like one of those turtles who lives her whole life inside her shell, afraid to venture five inches in front of her.

And then I remember I'm volunteering at the hotline. Trying to uncover my mother's secrets. Confronting Tommy Farrow. So maybe not such a turtle, after all.

I cross the floor and pick up my phone, where it bounced harmlessly on the shaggy carpet. Getting back into bed, I type “Hotties We Love” into the browser, and my mother's topless photo pops up.

We look at each other, her seventeen-year-old self and me, and I see something her naked breasts distracted me from before. Her eyes.
Help me,
they seem to implore through the photo, across the years.
Find out my secrets. Don't let them get away with this.

And before I can think clearly about what I'm doing, my finger flies over the screen and I text back: