The Lies About Truth (4 page)

I ran in my sleep that night—a route much longer than usual. In my dreams, I searched for Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth, and I was convinced finding it was the key to everything. I awoke tired until I remembered Max.

He was back, and we were going to hang out. Social time
:
A posse ad esse.
He had promised he’d call as soon as he finished everything his mother needed. If I knew Sonia, she’d have him tied up until late afternoon. That meant I had time to go out to the salvage yard.

In the still-dark morning, I scribbled a one-word note—
Out
—for my parents, checked the mailbox—empty—and hopped on my scooter. The scooter was a compromise. Mom and Dad didn’t want me dependent on them. I didn’t want to drive. Fletcher suggested the scooter as middle ground. So I
chose a black Spree and a really expensive helmet. It was—basically—one step above a golf cart, and I drove it like an old man.

It was too damn hot to walk everywhere, so it was a good battle to lose. Plus, the air felt good on my skin. Jenni, owner of the Donut Barista, leaned out the pick-up window of her shack and waved. I cut the Spree’s engine, pocketed the key, and left my helmet on to order.

“The Friday usual?” she asked, bubbly as ever.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Coming up in two shakes of a dog’s tail. Lovely day, isn’t it?”

If today were a category five hurricane, it would still register as a lovely day on her scale. Jenni loved doughnuts and coffee and serving people the way preachers loved long prayers. She wore her heart in her eyes, and I liked her more than I knew how to show. I’d never seen her outside the shack, but I imagined her as a grandmother. At home, she probably wore jeans with an elastic band, a pair of mall-walker white shoes, and answered to little kids who called her Nana.

I liked to imagine things about people.

There weren’t many people in my life anymore, so for the few I interacted with, I tried to cultivate real relationships.

“Jenni, you know Max? The guy I’ve been telling you about.”

“Absolutely. He’s your sweet honey in El Salvador?”

I nodded. “He came home yesterday.”

She howled with delight. “You want to make this a triple?”

“Naw, we’re getting together later. I just wanted to tell someone.”

She heard how happy I was. Hell,
I
heard how happy I was. It sounded strange.

“You’ll have to bring him by.” She fitted the lid on one steaming-hot cup of joe and stuck a straw in my iced latte, patting my hand before reaching for my credit card.

I flipped up the visor on my helmet and thanked her. There was something very satisfying about knowing someone in small percentages.

“Thanks, Jenni.”

“You are most welcome, Sadie Kingston.”

Jenni made note of my whole name on the first day and repeated it once a visit. I added a three-dollar tip to the card. I couldn’t afford to do that all the time, but today was special. I felt generous. No envelopes in the mail, Mom and Dad were satisfied with my going-to-the-airport effort, and I was pretty sure I’d get another hug from Max. Maybe more.

Jenni felt generous too. The weight of my doughnut bag equaled more than my order.

Sprinkler systems on the main drag forced me to back streets and the back streets led me into the country. The sun sprinted up the sky, and sweat tickled my back in a matter of minutes. By the time I rolled up to the gates of Metal Pete’s Fine Salvage Yard, I’d sucked down half my iced coffee and considered chugging the rest.

“Cool it down, Florida,” I pleaded.

Florida stuck out both middle fingers and zapped away the tiny breeze.

I hiked my sleeves to three-quarter length, parked the Spree, and grabbed Metal Pete’s breakfast.

The auto salvage business fascinated me. From the road, it looked like an unorganized metal shit-fest. Up close was a different story. Row after row of damaged cars, in various states of decay, took up fifteen acres of land. Every car, truck, RV, school bus, motorcycle, and boat had been inventoried and arranged with customers in mind. I’d been here dozens of times, and the ocean of debris still made me stare in awe and sadness.

“Metal Pete,” I called out.

Headlight came instead, tail wagging, and nosed the doughnut bag with interest. “Where’s Metal Pete?” I asked her.

Both ears rose into spikes as she trotted ahead to the office. The door was open, and I sauntered in as if I worked there.

“Hey there, you.” Metal Pete glanced up at me as he worked some sunblock into his weathered face. “I thought you’d forgotten about your favorite salvage yard.”

“Been trying to cut back,” I told him. Although he knew I didn’t mean it.

I placed his breakfast on a table that had once been in the galley of some yacht, and played with seat-belt riggings that held fern planters. Everything around here got repurposed.

Metal Pete peeked inside the bag, rubbed his nonexistent belly, and said, “Me too.”

The man never met a pastry he didn’t like, but he walked this place every day, refusing to ride in the Gator the way I’d suggested. The yard was his gym, and it was pretty damn effective. His old never sagged.

“You look different,” he said, tossing a doughnut hole into his mouth.

“Max is back.”

“And you’re here? Kid, I haven’t been your age in a long time, but that’s not how dating works.”

“He’s busy this morning, and we’re not dating, exactly, we’re just . . .”

“Dating,” Metal Pete concluded. “And . . . like usual . . . I’m your distraction.”

I smiled around my straw.

“Okay”—he drummed his fingers on his cheek—“I’ll give you a dollar if you can find a 1998 red Chevy Impala with an intact bumper.”

From there, I followed the script of a conversation we’d had many times. “You know exactly where it is.”

“Yeah, but you don’t, and you, my dear, are looking peaky. Why don’t you go wander around in the sunshine?”

“For a dollar?”

“You drive a hard bargain. How about two?”

“Make it five, and you’ve got a deal,” I told him.

This was a game we played. He wanted to pay for his breakfast, and I never let him. Scavenger hunts were a different story. I charged him double for those.

“Give me a hint of which direction to look.”

Metal Pete devoured his doughnut in three bites and scratched his chin. “It’s close to where you’ll end up anyway.”

Metal Pete and I understood each other. His wife died of cancer five years ago, and so far, I’d never seen him out of the yard, never seen him in anything but his gray Hanes V-neck, and never seen him interact with anyone who didn’t have grease on his hands. Junked metal was easier to sort out than a broken heart. I was his exception and he was mine.

I filled a cup of water and gave the ferns a drink on my way out. “I’m taking Headlight with me.”

“Thief,” he said.

“Cheapskate.”

“Red. Chevy. Impala. Go.”

He pointed, and I laughed. We were oddball friends.

I liked to imagine he needed me as much as I need him.

As soon as I rounded the first corner of cars and was out of sight, I stripped down to a tank top and hung my long-sleeve shirt off the busted mirror of an old S-10 pickup. I stood there for a moment, exposed, staring at the sky as if it were a show.

“Good morning, sky,” I whispered.

I swear I heard God say, “Bring on the vitamin D.”

Okay, it wasn’t God, but I liked the idea that the sky was listening. Trent and Gray used to say
Bring on the vitamin D
when
I’d warn them about not wearing enough sunscreen. They’d both worked for Relax Rentals, the company that managed chairs and umbrellas for the high-rise condos on the beach. Gray was probably there today. In a different reality, the one without the wreck, I’d be there helping him drill umbrella holes in the sand or carrying chairs. In this reality, I was in the salvage yard, wishing it was already evening so I could see Max.

But still, I thought about Gray as I walked. How he looked both good and bad the other night at the beach. Fit. Too fit. He needed to lay off the protein and weights until his neck matched his head again.

But what did I know? I wore long sleeves and hung out in a salvage yard. There were certainly worse obsessions than excessive fitness. I guess it all came down to this: even on the days I hated Gray Garrison, I wanted him to be okay.

And he didn’t look okay.

I wished I could do something about that, but absolution dangled in front of me like a carrot on a ten-foot pole.

I stopped thinking about Gray and found the Impala. Using some tire grease, I wrote the location on my arm and headed in the direction I’d been going all morning.

Trent’s Toyota Yaris.

No matter how often I visited the Yaris, the first glance sent my stomach to my throat.

The metal beast was quiet and picked over, twisted and sad. The front-end damage was so severe there was never much to salvage. Someone had since purchased the backseat, a rear taillight, and the two rear tires. The first time I came to Metal Pete’s, he walked me through the yard, offering a warning that it wouldn’t be easy to see the car. I wasn’t the first survivor to arrive on his doorstep searching for closure.

In an average week, I spent four or five hours lounging in my makeshift tire seat as if it were a raft and this row of cars my lazy river. I was here more than that, playing Karate Kid to Metal Pete’s Mr. Miyagi, except without the karate. He ran me here, there, and everywhere, pretending it was the price of
sitting time at Metal Pete’s Fine Salvage Yard.

I greeted the crushed roof with a sympathetic pat, as if I owed it or someone an apology, and said, “Hello, Yaris.”

The Yaris didn’t answer.

It had been very vocal on June 29 and silent ever since.

I still told it the truth. “Max is home. I might bring him for a visit.”

Seeing the Yaris the first time was as excruciating as Metal Pete had promised, but now, there was no way to look at the twisted heap without thinking,
How did anyone walk away from that?
The Yaris reminded me that Max and I were miracles. Considering that the hood and the front seat were practically one, I hated my scars a tiny bit less.

Coupled with that miracle was guilt, and I searched for an answer to
Why Trent? Why not me?
in every twist of the metal, every tiny rusted flake, every shattered piece of windshield.

When I told Fletcher about my visits to Metal Pete’s, he explained survivor’s guilt to me and said it was normal. Then he’d asked, “Sadie, do you have a time machine?”

“No.”

“So there’s nothing you can do to change what happened at Willit Hill?”

“No,” I’d said, feeling the trap in his question.

“Then, somehow, you have to accept that you’re still here, and that maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason. Find the reason.”

“Find the reason.”

I repeated those phrases, “Find the reason” and “I don’t
have a time machine,” regularly.

Time machine or no, I had good memories in that car. Gray and I making out in the backseat. Trent, Max, and I going on boiled-peanut runs on Saturday mornings. Gray and I, and Gina and Trent, riding to dinner before the guys’ junior prom. Trent made a little magnet for the Yaris that said
Limo
, and we all cracked up because the car was not much bigger than a go-kart. I tried desperately to replace the last memory with those happy ones, so that maybe, I’d get my ass behind a wheel again.

“I will drive again. Right, Headlight?”

Headlight sat down in shade of my shadow and put her nose on the ground. Knocking the dust off her coat, I gave her a good long rub and watched her knobby tail attempt to wag. She reminded me of the cars, the way she limped, looped, and sighed with the effort of walking, and yet she had parts that still worked fine. Metal Pete salvaged more than cars.

“What do you say, buddy? Do you think I can do it?”

Headlight stood up, put two paws on the tire, and licked my cheek.

“Good. I do too,” I said, and gave her a scratch between the ears. “But not today. Today, I’m just gonna look.”

She settled down and closed her eyes. I followed suit, giving myself permission to remember many other good things about the Yaris.

I didn’t hear Metal Pete until he stood over me. He wore a visor bigger than his best grin. Before I could ask, he dropped
my long-sleeve shirt into my lap, and I put it on.

“You’re roasting like a pig on a spit,” he warned.

“I was just thinking.”

“Well, think with some SPF.” He tossed me lotion from his pocket.

I applied a thick lather of sunblock while he rolled an abandoned wheel rim near me and sat down. I flipped the lotion back his way. “Better?”

“You’ll be old someday and I’ll be too dead to thank, but you’ll remember that Metal Pete’s the reason why your skin’s still pretty.”

Pretty and my skin didn’t belong in the same sentence. “I’m
sure
.”

“Don’t get sassy with me, Sadie Kingston.”

“No, sir,” I said, knowing Metal Pete’s threat was as harmless as Headlight.

“Five dollars for your thoughts?” he said.

“Is that five for the Impala and five for the thoughts?”

His thick shoulders lifted in a half shrug. “It’s all Monopoly money anyway.”

I tried to keep the fear from my voice. “My folks are making me go back to school in the fall.”

Metal Pete toed the bottom of my tire. “Sounds wise of them.”

“You’re supposed to be on my side.”

He held out his hands in an
I call it like I see it
way.

Even though Metal Pete would gladly listen to me ramble
about anything, I read the location of the Impala to him and held out my hand.

A five-dollar bill landed in my palm.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Thanks for the doughnuts.”

The end of the conversation came the way it often did, with Metal Pete saying, “Well, I guess I’d better get back to the phones. Catch ya next time, Sadie May.”

Some Emails to Max in El Salvador

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: August 6

Subject: RE: the video

Max,

I like the video of the convent. Being able to see where you are helps. I imagined something much worse than cinder-block walls, your own room, and McDonald’s ten miles away. The shower is pretty old school, but at least you have running water. Can you drink the water there? Have you been sick at all? I forgot to ask in my last email.

You have to climb that volcano mountain. You’re not lacking in views. It’s beautiful there.

Sadie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: August 8

Subject: Nightmares

Max,

I can’t believe they told you just to go on and drink the water and get sick. Ugh. That sounds awful.

I’m glad you brought up the nightmares. No, I doubt they have to do with you being sick. I have them too. I’ve been having them so frequently that my parents forced me to see a therapist—Dr. Fletcher Glasson—last week. Believe it or not, it wasn’t terrible. We mostly did paperwork and, as a first assignment, he suggested I “free-journal” about the wreck.

Do you think it is safe to tell him how I feel? I don’t want to write everything down if he’s going to tell my parents. These are my feelings and if my parents knew all of them, they’d just worry more than they already do. Fletcher (which is what he asked me to call him) said he wouldn’t unless he
had to
. I want to believe him.

Sadie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: August 15

Subject: what I remember about June 29th

Max,

Good idea. But, if I’m going to free-journal with you, then you have to stop apologizing for letting me take shotgun. You didn’t know we’d crash. Deal? (The problem with writing
Deal
is that you’re in a whole other country.)

Here goes. I remember a lot about that day, but I’ll start with when we got to the cars.

Gina and I hosed off the coolers and stowed them in her Jeep. You and Trent and Gray strapped the YOLO boards to the top of the Yaris. Trent mentioned kiteboarding and Gina said we didn’t have to go ninety-to-nothing every day. Trent and Gina walked back up to the shelter to “discuss” something.

When Trent came back down the walk, he told you and me to hop in the Yaris, that we were going home. Gina had tears in her eyes, and Trent didn’t crack a single smile. I hugged her bye and told her to call me after she’d taken Gray home.

Gray leaned into the car for a kiss and whispered, “If they break up—”

“They won’t,” I told him.

That was a lie. As much as I wanted us all to be fine, and be in each other’s weddings and other epic crap like that, the
water was draining out of the sink for them. Trent had been . . . restless. He’d told me he’d planned a breakup. Did he ever talk to you about this?

I tried to stay out of it. They were both my friends, and I didn’t know what the group would look like if they broke up. I didn’t want to take sides, and I was worried they would want me to.

That was the wrong thing to worry about.

The three of us sat in the car for a moment, but I don’t remember why. Maybe Trent was on his phone or picking a radio station or just waiting for the car to cool down. My eyes closed in a sleepy way that only a day in the sun can do to you. I tried not to think about whatever Gina and Trent had discussed for twenty minutes at the pavilion. You wanted to roll down the windows, and Trent said it was “too damn hot.” Whether it was all the waiting or the sleepiness, I never fastened my seat belt.

Once we were on the road, we sang along to the radio. Not the Eagles, but some old band he loved. They sang “You Shook Me All Night Long,” and he went on about how vinyls were back and he wished the Yaris had a turntable. I knew the words to the chorus, but you two knew every verse. I think I gave you shit about it. Do you remember that? Or did I make it up?

After the song ended, Trent brought up St. Augustine and the Fountain of Youth Park. He said he was in an explorer mood.

I said, “Let’s go tomorrow,” and he said, “Bright and early,
Sadie May. I’ll knock on the window.”

“Really?”

He nodded, and I remember thinking,
He’s serious. We’re actually going to road-trip.

“I’ll text Gina and Gray and tell them to take off work.”

“Yep,” he said, and that made me feel better. Whatever happened between him and Gina at the pavilion wasn’t too serious. Yet. The next day we’d all hop in the Yaris and head east to St. Augustine. I closed my eyes and made up a story about us finding the real fountain of youth when we were old and in our thirties. It was probably in some swamp in the Everglades, but we’d have a helluva time looking.

“I think I’m gonna go see if Callahan will let me ride the motorcycle later,” he said.

That felt like code-talk to me. “You want me to go with you?” I asked.

“Maybe. I could use some Sadie May perspective.”

“As you wish.”

I know I said that because Trent loved
The Princess Bride
, and he always gave me a goofy grin when I quoted the movie. Then, I fell asleep. The next thing I remember was our car swerving to the right.

My eyes snapped open. Gina and Gray were stalled out in front of us. My heart rocketed from sixty to a thousand beats, and I grabbed the door handle.

“Hold on,” Trent told us.

I screamed.

I never saw the tree.

The Yaris screamed. Metal on bark.

Time either stopped or slowed down, because I remember far too many details from that moment than are possible.

Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.
I hear those words in my sleep.

Fletcher asked me to describe that moment. I told him I was a peach in a blender.

Only the pictures afterward and Gina’s explanation—the compacted hood, the U-shaped roof—let me understand what happened after the impact ejected me. Gina had stalled the Jeep at the bottom of Willit Hill. Trent swerved to avoid them, and we barreled into a stand of trees.

You were trapped in the backseat. I went flying. Trent . . .

I can’t write any more. Sorry.

Sadie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: August 20

Subject: restitution

Oh, Max, I’m so sorry. All this time, I didn’t know you were conscious. That you held his hand. You’re . . . braver than anyone I know.

Don’t beat yourself up. There’s nothing you could have done. It’s okay to feel. Jesus, I sound like Dr. Fletcher Glasson.
Ignore that shit and do whatever you want.

I just want everything back the way it was. For you. For me. For our families. I want Trent to knock on my window . . . want to get in the car tomorrow and drive to the Fountain of Youth.

Okay, I’m out of juice. I’m going to turn out the light and pretend to sleep.

Sadie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: August 25

Subject: Trent

Max,

I want to go back to your last statement:
I don’t think my brother trusted me the way he trusted you. He only told me what he had to.

Max, Trent absolutely trusted you. As for confiding in you about breaking up with Gina, you can’t go by that. There are a million reasons why he hadn’t told you he was considering it. Maybe he was embarrassed or something? He always had this idyllic vision of how you saw him, and he wanted to protect that. But more than likely, he wasn’t ready to act and didn’t want to upset the group chemistry until he understood how he felt.

Sadie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: August 28

Subject: Seafood festival

Max,

Thanks for understanding.

No, Gray and I aren’t going to the seafood festival. No need for you to be jealous about missing out on the food. I’m still not going out in public, and Gray . . . well, who knows about him right now.

We wrecked more than the car.

Sadie