The Secret to Lying (12 page)

My chest seized, and my eyes flicked open. The room appeared gray. I stared at the pattern of springs on the mattress above me. Touching my face felt no more real than it had in the dream, except there was no blood. Still, my jaw ached.

The clock on my desk said it was 5:47 AM, but I didn’t want to risk going back to sleep. I staggered to the bathroom. My breath caught when I looked in the mirror.

Black lines stained my face. Written in large block letters across my forehead were the words
BEAT ME.

THE MARKER MUST HAVE BEEN
permanent, because no matter how much I scrubbed, it didn’t come off. Dickie had lines on his face, too, but not nearly as bad as mine. I guess that was the advantage of sleeping on the top bunk.

I tried wearing a bandanna low across my forehead, except it made me look like a demented hippie. Dickie decided to pretend everything was normal and let other people freak about it. Easy for him to do — he didn’t have any words on his forehead (although they had colored the tip of his nose red, and I noticed that he tried very hard to get
that
off).

The best I could do was to scribble over the “B” with another magic marker so instead of
BEAT ME
it said
EAT ME.
It wasn’t much, but I thought it made a better statement.

By the end of first period, at least a hundred students had asked about my forehead. I started making up ridiculous stories to explain it. I said it was a political statement, and I said it wasn’t marker, but a tattoo. Then I told Beth Lindbergh, who was incredibly gullible, that it was how they marked admission at this nightclub in Chicago, and I made her swear not to tell anyone I’d snuck off campus to go there. She nodded, taking it very seriously.

In a way, the nightclub story felt the most true to me. My memories of the burrows were as vivid and real as anything I’d experienced in my waking life. I even grew nervous walking around corners, as if White Blade might be waiting to attack. Logically, I knew the writing on my face had little to do with my dreams. It wasn’t hard to guess who the real culprits were, and the Steves’ laughter when they saw Dickie and me only confirmed my suspicions. Still, I couldn’t shake the sense that it was more than coincidence. My dreams didn’t feel like dreams anymore. They were spilling out. Taking over.

Dickie and I decided to pretend that we’d marked ourselves. We didn’t want to risk having the administration get involved. Fortunately, no one made a big deal about the marks — at least not until last period rolled around and I had to go to Mr. Funt’s English class.

Since his divorce, Mr. Funt had become a bit too focused on school. A balding, unpublished writer with a ponytail, he hung around campus for long hours after classes ended, grading papers, drinking coffee, and sponsoring every club that crossed his desk. He was a good teacher — smarter than most of the adults at ASMA. While a lot of teachers resorted to bragging about their advanced degrees and hiding behind their grade books, Mr. Funt treated us as equals. When we discussed stories, he could always point out a few things no one else had noticed, yet he never acted like he knew everything. If you said something interesting, he’d wrinkle his forehead and say, “That’s interesting,” and sound like he meant it. Overall, I liked Mr. Funt, but he had an annoying habit of reading too much into things.

He stopped me and read my forehead when I came into class. “Hmm . . .” he said. “I don’t find that funny.”

“Oh, well,” I replied. “There’s no accounting for taste.”

A few students snickered. By this time, my various
EAT ME
explanations had spread throughout the school.

Mr. Funt frowned and started class. I thought that was it, but later on, while everyone was working on the creative writing assignment he’d given us, he asked me to step outside. The room grew quiet as I stuffed my things into my backpack.

“James,” he said, after closing the classroom door, “I think you should see the counselor.”

“Why?”

“That”— he gestured to my forehead —“is very distracting. I can’t help but wonder what your true intentions were.”

“It’s nothing,” I said.

“No. It is definitely not ‘nothing.’ I take this sort of thing very seriously. I’d like you to talk with the counselor.”

“Is this optional?” I asked.

“Everything’s optional. But I plan on stopping by Chuck’s office later to make sure you showed up. Understand?”

“Yeah, I understand. I’m in trouble, even though I haven’t broken any rules.” I scowled. “Why don’t you just give me a detention?”

“You’re not in trouble, James.” Mr. Funt brushed his hand over the strands of side hair that formed his scraggly ponytail. The ends of his fingers were tinted yellow from smoking. “I’m asking you to go because I’m concerned about you.”

“Right,” I replied. “You got me. This is clearly a cry for help. I woke up this morning and wrote EAT ME on my forehead because I’m thinking of killing myself. Thank God you noticed.”

“I don’t know why you did it, but you shouldn’t expect me to pretend that it’s nothing,” Mr. Funt said. “Besides, that isn’t the only reason I want you to go.”

“This is stupid.”

“Humor me.”

“Fine.” I slung my backpack over my shoulder and walked away. I guess I should have been happy to have gotten out of class, but it bothered me that Mr. Funt thought I needed to see a shrink. Just because I’d done a few strange things lately didn’t mean I was crazy. It was the people who tried to seem normal all the time who were really messed up.

I got so worked up thinking about how Mr. Funt had singled me out that by the time I reached the hall where Chuck’s office was located, I was sweating. The administration had recently turned on the heat for the winter, and they kept it several degrees too high.

I walked past the door to Chuck’s office, trying to gather my thoughts before going in. My only experience with Chuck had been at the beginning of the semester, when he’d come to our wing and done the trust fall, but I’d seen him around campus since then. He’d learned every student’s name in the first few weeks of school, and whenever he saw someone, he’d say, “How are you doing,__________?” pronouncing the person’s name real loud as if to prove that he knew it. Then he’d stop and stare at the person, like he really wanted to hear how they were doing. That was the freaky part, because of his one eye. The thought of him asking me questions and staring at me with his empty socket made me want to hork.

I considered ditching and heading back to my dorm to take a nap, but then Mr. Funt might have Chuck do an emergency intervention or something. Nope. The only way out of this was to stay calm.

After waiting for the hall to clear of other students, I walked back to the door for Health and Student Services and pushed it open. Linda, the secretary, sat at her desk, shuffling papers. Behind her loomed the door to Chuck’s room and the door to the nurse. A radio on Linda’s bookshelf droned light rock. The muffled sounds of someone talking leaked through Chuck’s door. Linda probably kept the radio on to drown out the counseling sessions.

“Hey, Linda.” I leaned against the post near her desk, attempting to play it cool. “How’s it going?”

“Busy.”

“I like your earrings,” I said. It was the sort of thing Dickie would say.

Linda touched her earrings to remind herself what she was wearing. The dangly clumps of bright beads clashed with her necklace and striped shirt.