The Thing About the Truth (19 page)

“Home,” she says. She’s almost running now, and the mall is kind of crowded, so I’m pushing through people in an effort to keep up with her.

“Home?” I say. “But we haven’t talked.”

She’s still walking. I follow her all the way out to the parking lot. I don’t say anything. She keeps walking and walking, weaving through the rows of cars.

“How did you get here, anyway?” I ask. “Since you don’t drive?”

She doesn’t say anything. There’s an island in the middle of the parking lot with a tree on it. She kicks the curb.

“Wow,” I say, “anger issues?”

She whirls around and looks at me. “Isaac,” she says, “you have no idea.”

I nod. “I can respect that.” She starts pacing up and down the parking lot, through a bunch of empty spaces, making sure her feet stay between the yellow lines. I sit down on the curb and watch her, waiting.

“That,” she says, “was my best friend in there. Or, at least, she
was
my best friend. And she lied to me about where she was.” She raises her eyebrows and looks right at me. “I hate being lied to,” she says. “I hate, hate,
hate
it.”

I nod. “That makes sense.”

“I lied to you,” she says, “when I told you I stopped going to private school because my parents couldn’t afford it. The truth is, I got kicked out. Just like you.”

“Wow.” I’m kind of shocked. I never would have guessed. She seems so in control and, like . . . I don’t know, into rules.

“Are you mad?” she wants to know. “Because I lied?”

I think about it. “No,” I say honestly, “I’m not.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m sure you had your reasons,” I say.

She nods. “I did,” she says. “I was embarrassed.” She’s still pacing. “But I’m sick of all the lying. No more lying. I’m not doing it anymore.”

“Good idea,” I say.

“So why did she do it?” she asks. “Why did Rielle lie to me?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “What kind of person is she?”

“She’s . . .” She sighs. “I’m not sure. I mean, I thought I did, but . . .” She sits down next to me, and I hand her the lemonade that I’m holding. She takes a sip.

“I didn’t lie to you,” I point out, just in case she’s forgotten and is getting any ideas about throwing her drink at me.

“Not technically,” she says, “but you sort of did.”

“How?”

“You kissed me. And then you kissed someone else.”

“So?”

“So a kiss is like a promise.”

“It is?” I move a little closer to her now. “What kind of promise?”

“A promise that you won’t kiss anyone else.” She looks away then, thinking about it. “At least for that same day.”

“What about if the person you really wanted to kiss wouldn’t come and meet you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, shaking her head. “You still shouldn’t kiss someone else on the same day you kissed the first person.”

“What if I didn’t know it was a promise?” I say. I inch even closer to her, so that our legs are touching. “And what if I promise that this time, I won’t kiss anyone else?”

“For how long?” she asks.

I tilt my head and look at her. I remember what she said about how she really hates when people lie to her. But what I’m about to say won’t be a lie. I really, really mean it. So I say, “As long as you want me to.”

And then I kiss her again.

Isaac

“Kissing Marina Ruiz has nothing to do with it,” I say, because this is such bullshit. Kelsey’s the one who lied to me,
she’s
the one who fucked everything up, and for her to bring up Marina Ruiz is insane. It’s old news. And if Kelsey didn’t think—no, if she didn’t
know
—that this whole thing was her fault, she wouldn’t have even brought it up.

Dr. Ostrander is looking down at the paper in front of him. I wonder if it’s the police report. “It says here that Marina fainted and was also taken away. It says that some girls from Concordia Prep assaulted her.”

“Those girls were Kelsey’s friends,” I say, giving her a look. “You should ask her why they went ballistic on Marina.”

“They’re not my friends,” Kelsey says. “Things between me and Rielle are weird. You know that, Isaac.”

I don’t like the way she says it. Like I’m supposed to know things about her life. I don’t want to know things about her life. At least, not the same way I did before.

“All I know is that they got into a fight because of you.” I shrug and look at the superintendent, like,
“What can you do? This whack job obviously set up some kind of community-building day and then invited all her enemies.”

“Who assaulted her?” Dr. Ostrander asks. “Because Marina claims that you hit her, Ms. Romano.”

“
You
hit her?” I gasp.

“No,” she says, “I didn’t hit her. I was trying to get those girls to stop, and she freaked out and started screaming, yelling at me to get off of her.”

“I don’t know,” I say, giving Dr. Ostrander a pointed look. “Kelsey does have a history of violence, so maybe we should look into this more.”

“You’re an asshole,” Kelsey says.

“Ms. Romano!” Dr. Ostrander says. “I thought I told you that kind of language would not be tolerated.”

“Sorry,” she says. Her cheeks turn pink, and my heart starts to ache. I want to pull her close, to hold her against me and tell her it’s going to be okay. I know how anxious she must be about this whole thing, how badly she wanted to make sure she did well at this school. I know she must be stressed out about what’s happening, that it’s probably been keeping her up at night.

“Look—” I start to say to Dr. Ostrander, because this whole thing’s gotten out of control, and I’m sick of being here. What good is rehashing all this stuff going to do? I want to know my punishment, and then I’m out of here.

But before I can voice any of this, there’s a knock on the door. “Dr. Ostrander?” the secretary asks, poking her head in. “There’s someone here to see you.”

“I’m in the middle of an important meeting,” Dr. Ostrander says. He sounds really exasperated, and then he looks at me and Kelsey and kind of rolls his eyes like,
“Can you believe how stupid this woman is?”

“Yes, I understand that,” the secretary says. Her name is Ellie Winters. I know because I saw her nameplate when I got here. She looks like an Ellie Winters too, with gray hair piled up into a tight bun. “But it’s Mr. Brandano.”

“Mr. Brandano is right here, Mrs. Winters,” the superintendent says. He points at me, then takes his glasses off and puts them on his desk. He still has one of those old-fashioned calendars, where you write things down on a grid. Doesn’t he have an iPad or a BlackBerry or something? Is he that out of it? Obviously, he must be, since he’s calling his secretary Mrs. Winters. No one calls women “Mrs.” anymore. Everyone is “Ms.” This dude is completely behind the times.

“No, I mean the sen—” Ms. Winters starts to say, but before she can finish, I hear my dad’s voice out in the lobby.

“Is he in there?” he’s asking, trying to sound like he’s a
personal friend of Dr. Ostrander or something. He’s acting like he’s at a party, not like he’s trying to worm his way into his son’s disciplinary meeting.

I look over at Kelsey and try to apologize to her with my eyes. I know how this is going to go now—my dad will come in here, and Dr. Ostrander will fall all over himself trying to make sure that everything gets smoothed over, and poor Kelsey will be left out in the cold.

But she’s not looking at me. She’s just staring down at the floor. “Senator Brandano,” Dr. Ostrander says as my dad comes pushing his way into the room.

“Hello, Dr. Ostrander,” my dad says, and smiles. He adjusts the buttons on the cuffs of his suit and gives the superintendent a big smile. To my knowledge, the two of them have never even met. But that’s how my dad is. He’s built his career on getting people he’s never met to instantly like him.

“Senator Brandano, this is highly inappropriate,” Dr. Ostrander says. Which actually makes me kind of like the dude. Because behind the times or not, he’s right—this
is
pretty inappropriate. “Parents were not invited to this meeting. If you’d like to speak with me, you’ll have to make an appointment with my secretary.”

Poor Ms. Winters. She’s standing by the door looking nervous. Probably because she’s afraid my dad and/or Dr. Ostrander is going to flip out on her.

“That won’t be necessary,” my dad says. “I’m just here to pick up Isaac.” He comes and stands behind me, resting his
hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure by now you’ve realized that he had nothing to do with this.”

His tone is careful and calculated—it’s friendly, but there’s also a hidden meaning behind it. The meaning being that even if I
did
have something to do with it, it better be overlooked because if it’s not, the school is going to incur my dad’s wrath. He’s tried similar things at the other schools I’ve been to, and it works, for a while. But then inevitably some other richer, more important parent starts to complain about me, or the school gets worried about its reputation, and then I have to go. But since this is the first time I’ve been in trouble here, my dad probably figures his little dog-and-pony show is going to save the day.

“We’re still figuring everything out,” Dr. Ostrander says, “so if you don’t mind, I’m sure Isaac will call you when he’s done.”

My dad’s grip on my shoulder tightens. He looks like maybe he’s about to say something else. But instead, he just keeps that fake smile pasted on his face and says, “Fair enough. Isaac, call me when you’re done. And I’ll talk to Ms. Winters about setting up a meeting with you, Dr. Ostrander.”

“You do that,” Dr. Ostrander says, not sounding too pleased at the prospect of a meeting with my dad.

“So,” Dr. Ostrander says once my dad’s gone, “where were we?”

I don’t say anything. I just stare at the floor. I’m sick of this whole thing. I don’t want Kelsey to suffer anymore. I don’t feel like getting revenge. I’m not even angry. I’m just tired. And I want to go home.

“We were talking about my violent past,” Kelsey says.

“That’s right,” Dr. Ostrander says. “Mr. Brandano, it’s your belief that this past led to what happened? Even though you’re the one who was violent?”

“I was only violent,” I say quietly, “because I was the last one to
know
about Kelsey’s past.” And then I turn and look right into her eyes. “And I hate being lied to.”

Kelsey

Okay, so the thing is? Isaac and I are kind of together. And when I say “kind of,” I mean, like, completely. At least, I think we are. We’ve spent, like, every day together for the past two weeks. We hold hands in the hallway. We sit by ourselves at lunch. We spend the day texting and making plans to meet up after school. We’ve gone to, like, five different movies where we spent the whole time making out.

And the most surprising part? Isaac is
nice
. He’s always asking me how I’m doing, if I’m okay with things. He’s always looking out for me.

Like right now, for example.

We’re having a Face It Down meeting to draft a letter to
send to the head of the student council at Concordia Prep. It’s a small meeting, a committee we put together just to work on the letter—me, Isaac, Isaac’s friend Marshall, Chloe, and Marina. If it were up to me, Marina wouldn’t have even been on this committee, but she insisted, and I couldn’t exactly tell her no just because she and Isaac kissed. I mean, hello, jealous girlfriend. So she’s here and she’s being a little bit . . . I guess you could say, um, annoying. Like, she keeps muttering things under her breath and questioning me on
everything
.

“I don’t understand why we have to send it to the head of the student council,” she says. “Wouldn’t it be better to just send it to the principal?”

“Well, we’ll definitely send a copy to the principal, too,” I say. I’m sitting at my laptop, reading over the draft we’ve put together, checking it for any typos or inconsistencies. “But the point of Face It Down Day is really to connect with the students. We want the
students
to be the ones who come together.”

The fact that we’re sending this letter to the student council is definitely a carefully constructed plan on my part. First of all, because I really don’t think the principal of Concordia Prep is going to be too excited to see anything with my name on it come across her desk. And second, because the fewer adults involved, the better. That way I can make it out to colleges like I’m the one who put this whole thing together.

“Great,” Marina says. “And I guess the rest of us don’t have a say in it?”

Isaac and I glance at each other nervously.

“Not really,” Isaac says.

“You do have a say,” I tell her, mostly because I’m afraid she might get all psycho. “We can take a vote if you want.” I already know I have the votes to do it my way; otherwise I wouldn’t have offered. And Marina knows it too.