The Secret to Lying (13 page)

“They’re bold,” I added. “They go well with your necklace.”

“Thank you.”

“Amber’s my favorite stone. If you can call it a stone, since it’s not really, is it?”

“I think it’s tree sap,” she said.

“Okay. So amber’s my favorite tree sap.”

She chuckled and shook her head. “What can I help you with?”

“Nothing. Just wanted to say hello. Oh, and I’m supposed to see Chuck.”

“Really?”

“Yup.” I leaned forward and pulled my hair back to give her a good look.

“Oh, my,” she said, reading my forehead. She slid out a sheet from her files and frowned at it. “I’m not sure what category to put that under.”

“It’s not meant to be an insult. One of my friends snuck into my room and elfed me.”

“Elfed you?”

“Wrote on my face while I slept,” I explained. “Like elves do mischief in the night.”

“You kids,” she said. “You’re so funny.”

“Mr. Funt didn’t think it was funny. That’s why he sent me here.”

“Well, Mr. Funt . . . he’s dealing with a lot right now,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

“Yeah. His divorce.”

We both nodded.

“It’s not our policy to force students to talk with a counselor,” Linda said. “So is there anything you’d
like
to talk with Chuck about?”

“Nope. I’m feeling pretty sane today. In fact, I’m the sanest person I know, appearances aside.”

“I try not to judge by appearances.”

“Then is it okay if I leave?”

She shrugged. “I don’t see why not. But if ever you
do
need to talk with someone . . .”

“Linda,” I said, “I always want to talk with you.”

“You’re such a charmer.”

“Oh.” I turned back, as if I’d just remembered something. “If Mr. Funt stops by, will you tell him I was here?”

“No problem.”

“Great. Don’t work too hard.”

I headed for the exit. So far, so good. No one had seen me here, and Linda would cover for me. I was about to make a clean getaway when the door opened and I ran into the Ice Queen. She sidestepped, trying to get around me, only I stepped in the same direction and we collided, chest to chest. It would have been comical if it wasn’t so embarrassing.

“Excuse me,” she said, sounding annoyed. “I need to get a Band-Aid.”

“Sure,” I replied. My face burned, and my stomach did flips. All the cool drained out of me.

The Ice Queen gave me a strange look. I had this overwhelming desire to impress her, while at the same time I wanted to ignore her because she couldn’t care less about me. And beneath all that, there was something else — a sense of déjà vu that kept me frozen in place. We’d stood this way, blocking each other, before.

“Forget it,” she said, turning. A wisp of her blond hair fell across her blue eyes. She hurried off, keeping her head down, the way movie stars do when they want to avoid being photographed.

I tried to tell her to wait, but no words came out. It suddenly hit me why the situation seemed familiar. It had happened last night.

The Thief in my dreams was Ellie.

O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell,
and count myself a king of infinite space,
were it not that I have bad dreams.

—
HAMLET, ACT 2, SCENE 2

THE COLD CAME QUICKLY.
Leaves fell from the trees until the branches stood black as cracks against the sky. Winter at ASMA was a lonely, exposed affair. The nearby cornfields were all cut down, leaving nothing but frozen mud and dead stalks, while overhead the pale sky loomed oppressively large, with no hills or leaves to challenge its emptiness. Winds swept through campus, blowing icy snow and dust into muddy drifts against the dorms. Nothing about it looked pretty.

The worst part was that daylight practically disappeared. By December, it was dark at seven in the morning when I first shuffled to school for breakfast, and dark at four in the afternoon when I got out of my last class and headed back to my room. The lack of windows in the main building meant I pretty much went for weeks without seeing the sun.

Everything blended together. The dark of the day merged into the dark of my dreams. Asleep, I wandered the city, not daring to descend into the burrows again since I feared losing control. But after a few weeks of binding demons, the surface streets stood empty. There were only the Nomanchulators, watching hungrily from the shadows, filling the silence with their deadening buzz.

To pass the time, I swigged cough syrup. It wasn’t a great high, but it tweaked things enough so I could get through the dreary winter days without driving myself insane. And when the dreariness became too much and the deadening buzz of the Nomanchulators started to creep up on me, I’d cut myself. The bright hot pain always drove the deadness away.

Dickie and I got the Steves back for elfing us by breaking into their room and attaching a car battery to their toilet — one terminal to the water and one to some copper threads we’d taped across the floor. The Steves were such slobs, all we had to do was shove the battery behind the toilet and throw a towel over it to make things look normal. Dickie tried to persuade me to test it out, but having grown up in the sticks, I knew what happened when you peed on an electric fence. The basic mechanics of this were the same.

We hid in the stairwell near their room so we could listen to the fruits of our labor. When Steve Lacone returned from basketball practice, he went to take a leak and
ZING!
— twelve muscle-freezing volts coursed up the stream, causing his voice to shoot through the roof in an unprecedented falsetto. The best part, though, was that Steve Dennon didn’t believe anything had actually happened, so he used the toilet right afterward and got zapped, too. Dickie and I nearly gave ourselves hernias holding in our laughter while the Steves cursed about their shocked wankers.

Other than the pranks, I broke up the winter dullness by messing around with Jess. We’d skip class and sneak into dorm rooms or custodians’ closets and maul each other. Rumors spread about how we’d done it in the RC’s office or on the roof of the school. Although most of the rumors weren’t true, neither Jess nor I did much to contradict them. The stories fit my image. Still, no matter how intense things got with Jess, I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering. The more wild my life became, the less I felt like I was living it.

Jess must have sensed my distance. “Earth to James,” she said one night when we were in the laundry room together. “What’s wrong?”

I shrugged. “I’m sick of winter.”

She pursed her lips and studied my face. A few times, she’d asked me what I thought of Sage or Sunny. I think she suspected that I might be into someone else. Of course I denied it. If Jess left me, I’d be worse than alone. I’d be no one again.

“I got you something,” she said.

“A present?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why?”

“Thought you might need a pick-me-up.” Jess reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a silver flask with a red bow tied around it. “Surprise!”

I held the cool metal in my palm. “I can’t believe you bought this for me.”

“Don’t get too excited — I stole it from my old man when I went home last weekend. But I did fill it.”

I unscrewed the cap and flinched at the sharp smell of whiskey. “To winter,” I said, and took a swig. The whiskey burned a trail to my stomach. It sure beat cough syrup.

Jess and I passed the flask back and forth until it was almost half gone. She grew giddy and threw her arms around my neck, kissing me.

I tried to match her passion, but images of Ellie kept popping up in my head. It wasn’t like I was imagining kissing her. Instead, I saw her standing in the doorway with a disapproving look on her face. It annoyed me that I kept thinking of Ellie. I didn’t even like her. Granted, she was pretty, but she acted like a cold, elitist snob — exactly the sort of person I couldn’t stand. Why she, of all people, appeared in my dreams was beyond me.

Jess pulled back. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I lied.

She smirked and bit my shoulder. Then she slipped her hands under my shirt and dragged her nails across my back.

We kept messing around until curfew.

When I returned to my room that night and took my shirt off to go to bed, Dickie freaked. “Jesus,” he said, “were you whipped?”

“What?”

“Your back, man,” he said. “Look at it.”

I craned my neck to see my back in the mirror. Rows of red marks rose out of my flesh from where Jess had scratched me. “Funny,” I said. “I didn’t feel a thing.”