The Thing About the Truth (25 page)

“Of course not,” I say, mirroring Dr. Ostrander’s same offended look. “We would never ask you to leave your own office. That would be disrespectful.” I shoot Kelsey a look like she should know better.

“Oh, now you’re worried about being disrespectful,” she says. “Where was your sense of decorum when you were punching out Rex?”

“I didn’t punch him out,” I say. “And honestly, I don’t think we should be talking about that. We’re getting ahead of ourselves. We should go back to the reason I was mad at him in the first place, the reason you told Rielle to keep him away.”

She’s out of her seat in a flash. “Isaac,” she says. “Outside. Now.”

I sigh like it’s a big inconvenience, then put my hands in the air, palms up, as if to say to Dr. Ostrander,
“What can you do? This girl’s obviously crazy.”

“Isaac and I have to talk about a, um, personal matter,” Kelsey says. “We’ll be right back.”

I follow her out into the hall. When I was in the office, I was enjoying making her upset, making her nervous, making her squirm. But now that we’re out of there, I just feel beaten down again.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she says, her eyes flashing.

“What do you mean?” I put a confused look on my face.

“You know exactly what I mean!” Her face is flushed, and she pushes her hair back. “You can’t just go in there and start talking about my sex life.”

“Oh, now you have a sex life,” I say. “That’s so interesting, because last time I checked, you said you didn’t.”

Her eyes blaze with anger, and for a long moment we just stand there looking at each other. It’s like a face-off, and whoever blinks first is going to lose. She wants me to promise that I’m not going to bring up the real reason things got out of control on Face It Down Day, and I want her to give up and go back into the office. She knows there’s a chance I won’t actually tell Dr. Ostrander what happened, but she can’t be sure, and so she’s frozen out here.

Then suddenly her face crumples, and she slides down the wall and onto the floor. There’s a run in her stocking, and she traces it with her finger, looking at it in confusion like she can’t believe it’s there.

“What happened?” she whispers.

“What?”

“What happened?”

“With us? Um, you lied to me. And then you got caught.” It’s more complicated than that, obviously. Because the truth is, I wouldn’t care if she lied to me, except for the fact that I love her. And once you love someone, you can’t really put up with them lying to you. It just doesn’t work. It makes things into a big mess. It makes you start running around punching people in front of the nightly news cameras.

“When did things get so complicated?” she asks. “I just . . .” She looks frustrated now. “I just want things to go back to being
easy
.”

“They were never easy,” I say. And then I sit down next to her.

She turns and looks at me. “You can’t forgive me?”

I think about it. “No,” I say.

She nods like she already knows. But it’s the first time she’s asked me this, and so I think about it again,
really
think about it instead of just giving in to the fact that I want to punish her, that I want to hurt her as much as she hurt me.

“Maybe,” I say. She looks at me, her eyes hopeful. “But first you have to tell me exactly what happened. Everything. The complete truth.”

“Everything?”

“Yes.”

She looks nervous, but then she nods. And then she starts to talk.

Kelsey

I didn’t sleep with Isaac. Or, actually,
he
didn’t sleep with
me
. I think it was because I told him I was a virgin. The weird thing is, I didn’t even know that I was lying. I mean, I
did
know I was lying, but to me, it kind of wasn’t a lie. I don’t count sleeping with Rex as sleeping with someone. Why would I? I just want to forget about it.

I wouldn’t have slept with Isaac anyway. At least, I don’t think I would have.

“I don’t want to make you do something you’re not ready for,” he said, kissing my forehead. “We have all the time in the world.”

And I believed him.

The next day, Isaac and I are supposed to get together at Barnes & Noble with Chloe and Marshall to come up with some questions for Face It Down Day. But when my mom drops me off, Isaac isn’t there yet, leaving me to deal with Marshall and Chloe. Who are not in good moods.

“Yesterday was a disaster,” Chloe moans. She puts her head down on the table and looks up at me forlornly. Her curly hair is a big mess, and there are dark circles under her eyes.

“You’re telling me,” Marshall says. “I spent the whole night puking my guts out.” He still looks a little green.

“Shouldn’t you have stayed home?” I ask, inching my chair away from him. I know he probably just got sick from all the cake and all the jumping, but if that was true, wouldn’t he have only thrown up once? Why was he puking all night? I knew that cake was sketchy. Hopefully, I’m okay. Sometimes food poisoning can take days to show up. Not that I was Googling all night or anything.

“No,” he says, “I didn’t want to let you guys down. Plus I need to start studying for the math test I have on Monday.”

“You need to study all weekend?” Chloe asks, lifting her head.

“Yes,” Marshall says. “I need to get a good grade if I’m going to pass the class.”

Wow. I admire his fortitude, at least. He doesn’t seem like the type to put his academics above his physical well-being, but whatever.

“I’d rather be throwing up than have a broken heart,” Chloe says. She throws her head back down on the table and
closes her eyes like she can’t even take being alive.

“Your heart is broken?” Marshall asks. “Why?”

Chloe keeps her head on the table but moves her eyes so that they’re on Marshall. “Were you even
there
yesterday? Did you even
see
what happened with me and Dave?”

“You guys seemed in love,” Marshall says, shrugging.

“We aren’t in love!” Chloe yells. “We hooked up once!”

“Guys,” I say, “please, can we focus?”

“I don’t think so,” Chloe moans.

“I can, Kelsey,” Marshall says, pulling a pencil from behind his ear and licking the tip. “I can focus.”

“Good.” I nod. “Now, listen, the Concordia Prep students are going to be here in two weeks. And we need to come up with some good questions to ask them, some topics of conversation to get everyone talking.”

“How about ‘What’s your favorite color?’” Marshall asks. He sets his pencil down, then pulls out a thermos and a Styrofoam cup. He unscrews the top of the thermos and starts pouring hot water into the cup.

“Well, um, that’s a good way to get to know someone,” I say. “But we’re looking for something a little more in-depth.”

“Dave’s favorite color is orange,” Chloe says. “Do you know how hard it is to find cute clothes that are orange?”

Marshall takes out a tea bag and starts dipping it into his cup of hot water. He picks up the cup and takes a sip. “Hey, we could ask people about how they lost their virginity,” he says.

I feel my face flame hot. Chloe catches my eye over the
table, and she raises her eyebrows. I look away quickly and then say, “That’s good. But I don’t think we should ask specific questions like that. Maybe something a little more generic, but still along those same lines, like how everyone feels about sexuality and the pressures teenagers are facing.” I make a note on my paper about that.

“Good question, Marshall,” Chloe says. She’s still looking at me with that curious look, and I wonder if she can tell just from looking at me that something almost happened with me and Isaac yesterday. Or maybe she can just tell that there’s a situation with me and sex and secrets and—

Isaac comes walking up to the table. He’s wearing a crisp white T-shirt under a navy zip-up hoodie, and a pair of black track pants with a white stripe up the side.

“Whoa,” Marshall says. “Looks like you’re slumming it today, huh, Brandano?”

He gives Marshall an easy grin as he slides into the chair next to me. “I slept in,” he says, “and I’m just trying to fit in with the unwashed masses.”

I wonder if things are going to be weird and different between us now, but Isaac leans over and kisses me briefly on the lips. Chloe’s eyebrows go up even more, and she gives me a look. A
“We’ll talk later”
kind of look.

“So, what’d I miss?” Isaac asks.

“We were just talking about virginity,” Marshall says. He takes another sip of his tea.

Isaac gives me a look.

“No, we weren’t,” I say quickly. “We were just talking about how we can bring up sex as a topic of conversation when we have the kids from Concordia Prep here in a couple of weeks.”

“Good idea,” Isaac says.

“Yup,” I say, deciding it’s time to change the subject. “Good idea, so let’s think of other things. You know, um, besides sex.”

“How about relationships?” Chloe asks. “Broken hearts, that kind of thing?”

“That’s good,” I say, writing it down. “That’s really good.”

“Want some tea?” Marshall asks Isaac, holding the cup out.

“Um, no,” Isaac says. “That’s okay, bro.”

“Kelsey?” Marshall asks.

“No, thanks.” Doesn’t he know that no one’s going to be too psyched to share a drink with him when he was just puking his guts out all over the place?

But when he offers it to Chloe, she asks, “Is it caffeine free?”

“Yes,” Marshall says.

“Then no.”

These people are crazy, and I love them.

We brainstorm for a little longer, and then Isaac and I decide that later we’ll type the questions up into one document and then the four of us will meet up again next week to go over them.

“Let’s go have lunch,” Chloe says on the way out. “You want to?”

“Sure.” I turn around to ask Isaac and Marshall if they’re up for it.

“Unh-uh,” she says, shaking her head. “Just you and me.”

“Um, okay,” I say, a little nervous about why she wants to get me alone. “Is that okay?” I ask Isaac. “I know we had lunch plans, but—”

“Fine with me,” Isaac says. He slings his arm over Marshall’s shoulders. “Looks like it’s just you and me for lunch, Marsh.”

“Can we go to Chili’s?” Marshall asks him. “I’m in the mood for Mexican.”

•  •  •

Chloe and I decide to walk over to McDonald’s because it’s close and cheap, and because it’s a gorgeous day out. On the way over she immediately starts in on me.

“So,” she says, “you and Isaac had sex last night?”

“No!” I say.

She raises her eyebrows at me skeptically.

“I swear,” I say, shaking my head emphatically, like that will make her believe it. “We didn’t.”

“So then what was all that weirdness just now?” she asks.

“What weirdness?” I look down at my feet, pretending that I’m superfocused on putting one foot in front of the other. It helps that the shoes I’m wearing are superhard to walk in.

“Oh, please,” she says. “You freaked out when Marshall brought up sex.”

“I didn’t freak out,” I say. I love Chloe. But talk about being dramatic. I mean, I most definitely didn’t freak out. Yes, I might have, you know, had a reaction. But it was slight.

“You definitely acted weird,” she says, “and I saw the look Isaac gave you when he came in.”

Isaac gave me a look? I want to ask her what kind of look, but I don’t want to add fuel to the fire. “It’s nothing,” I say. “It’s just that yesterday we were making out, and things got a little, um, heated.”

“But you didn’t?”

“No.”

“But you wanted to.” She grins.

I think about it. “Not really,” I say. “I mean, I did, like, hormonally.” She laughs. “But we haven’t been together that long. And the last thing I need is to get myself into another situation where sex complicates everything.”

The words are out of my mouth before I realize I’ve said them, and I quickly try to figure out a way to backpedal. “I mean, not
another
situation, just a—”

“Please,” Chloe says. “Save it.” We’re at McDonald’s now, and she reaches out and opens the glass doors. The smell of salty French fries assaults my nose, and the cool air of the restaurant makes me shiver. “Who’d you sleep with?”

“Shh!” I say, looking around to see if anyone I know is here. The last thing I need is rumors starting up about my sex life. “No one.” I start hustling her up to the counter.

“Don’t lie,” she says, shaking her head. “I hate liars.”

Me too. Or at least, I thought I did. Can you hate something that you, yourself, are? Actually, I think you can. It’s called being a hypocrite.

“It . . . there was a guy at my old school,” I say. “My ex-boyfriend.”