The Secret to Lying (9 page)

“I HEARD YOU AND JESSICA KEEN
hooked up,” Frank Wood announced in his typical booming voice. It was a few minutes before physics class started, and Dr. Choi hadn’t arrived yet. “Concerned citizens want to know: what happened in the closet?”

“Dude, what do you think?” I replied, glancing at Ellie. She pulled a notebook out of her backpack and slapped it onto her desk.

“Oh, man,” Frank said, his eyes widening. “So are you two going out?”

“I don’t know.”

Frank nodded. “Right. I get it.” Then he gave me a sly, guy-to-guy look. “That’s cool.”

Dr. Choi walked in and Frank hurried back to his desk, but his question kept nagging me. I really didn’t know what to make of Jess and me. We hadn’t talked since Friday. When I saw her at lunch, sitting at her usual table, she didn’t wave me over or leave her group to sit with me, and I didn’t cross the cafeteria to join her.

It wasn’t until a few nights later, while I was out chipping golf balls with a five iron during social hour, that Jess came up to me. Dickie was off with Sunny somewhere, and Heinous was playing video games. I wasn’t a big fan of golf, but chipping balls gave me an excuse to walk around alone outside without looking like a loser.

“I always thought golf was something bald guys with beer bellies did,” Jess said as she approached.

“Not danger golf,” I replied. “Danger golf’s different.” I explained how the object of danger golf was to hit the ball in a random direction without breaking anything. It was the sort of game I figured I’d play, even though I never had.

Jessica pointed me toward the tennis courts. “Okay, hotshot. Go for it.”

I lined up and took a full swing. The ball landed smack in the middle of the far court and bounced over the fence.

“Want to give it a try?”

“Sure,” she said. “But I don’t know how to swing.”

I tossed out a ball and passed her the club. “It’s easy.” With my hands on hers, I guided her through a swing. “See?”

We swung together, my arms wrapped around her body and my cheek brushing hers. After a few swings, she took her hand off the club and touched the inside of my forearm. The cuts I’d given myself had healed, leaving raised, pink scars. “How’d you get these?” she asked.

I pulled my arm back. “Fighting,” I said. “I used to fight a lot.”

“Really?” She sounded skeptical.

“Really.”

“Who’d you fight?”

“Other kids. Jerks mostly.”

“Did they carry knives or something?”

“Not exactly.”

“What does that mean?”

I hesitated, hoping she’d drop it and let the scars be a mystery.

“Come on. You can tell me,” she pressed.

“Swear you’ll never tell anyone?”

“Yeah.”

I pointed to a few scars and described the street fights that had caused them. Some details I invented, and some I pulled from the fights in my dreams. Jess seemed to buy it.

“Sounds like fun,” she said.

“Not really,” I replied. “But it was exciting.”

“My man.” She brushed her fingers along my arm.

My cheeks burned. I felt a little funny that she believed me. Then again, it wasn’t that far from the truth. What difference did it make if I cut myself or if someone else cut me?

I pointed to the ball. “You have to hit it as hard as you can. Them’s the rules, missy.”

“No problem.” Jess lined up and swung. She lifted her head, so the ball didn’t go far. I gave her a few pointers and her second shot was a beauty. The ball landed in the bleachers, hitting the metal with a loud
thunk!

“Pretty good,” I said.

“I’m a fast learner.”

We went back and forth, daring each other to hit balls toward riskier targets. At one point, Jess pointed me directly at the faculty parking lot. I got under the ball, so it went high and came down next to Hassert’s van. Luckily, it took an odd bounce and rolled away.

Jess told me all about how she’d grown up in the city sneaking into clubs and watching shows. When she was fourteen, she could pass for twenty-one. She talked about bands that I’d never heard of, and how she wanted to be a DJ. In addition to knowing a lot about music, she’d played a few concerts herself. Not rock concerts, though. Jess played classical piano. “Mozart’s pretty hard-core,” she said. “Seriously. Put in the third movement of Mozart’s Requiem Mass, crank it up, and tell me you don’t want to thrash your head and slam someone. Chopin is good, too.”

I pictured her onstage in her black combat boots and fishnet stockings, blowing the stodgy audience away. “Maybe sometime I can hear you play,” I said.

“Sure. You’d be amazed by what I can do with my hands.”

I duffed the ball I was supposed to hit toward the school. Then Jess took the same shot and chipped it onto the roof. After that, we had to look for some of the balls we’d already hit.

“So besides fighting, what do you do?” she asked.

“I write letters,” I said. “Long, gut-wrenching, protean letters.”

“Protean letters? What’s that mean?” She gave me a coy smile. I wondered if she really didn’t know what I was talking about, or if this was part of her game. “Are you one of those geeks who spends all his time in chat rooms?” she asked.

“Could be.”

“That doesn’t sound very exciting.”

“Depends who you’re writing to.”

“I guess.” Jess glanced away, as if avoiding something.

The silence became awkward. I thought of what ghost44 had said, about how she could only be herself in secret. I didn’t want to risk losing her by asking too much, so instead I changed the subject. “I’ve also been in thirteen car accidents,” I lied.

She laughed. “Thirteen?”

“Well, they weren’t exactly accidents.”

“You mean they were intentional?”

“Call it purposefully accidental. My friends and I would borrow cars and drive them to the country to do
Dukes of Hazzard
moves. On dirt roads, I could usually pull a few 360s.”