There Will Be Lies (3 page)

And then it pretty much explodes off the bat, as you continue your arc, and it flies like a bullet to the other end of the batting cage.

Except that all this happens like:

that
.

As I shift my head, getting in the stance again, I catch gym rat’s eyes. He mouths,
holy crap
. He has this look that I recognise: it means he’s going to ask me out when I leave the cage. He’ll say something like,
you feel like hooking up?
This is how guys are: half of them hate it when I hit the ball. The other half want to do me.

I ignore him and concentrate on sending the next ball straight down the cage. I mean straight: like a beautiful flat line. Whoosh. I can feel gym rat’s gaze on me. I don’t think anyone knows whether they’re hot or not, I mean, not really. Not unless you’re some kind of model. But guys do look at me sometimes, I guess, so I’m not repulsive evidently.

Of course, the guys who check me out, they don’t see my scars to begin with, because of the jeans. They don’t see my scars ever, actually, because I’ve never gone out with any of them. My mom would freak out. And anyway I’d be too scared.

Another ball flies back; this one hits the machine and
pock
, it flicks up into the top of the cage, ricochets.

I get them all: I never miss. A couple of times, scouts have been at the batting cages, and they’ve asked me to play for teams. One guy talked to Mom and offered me a full scholarship to Arizona State, as long as I passed my SATs. Mom said no. She says I wouldn’t be safe at college, that people would take advantage of me. I don’t mind, too much, that she says no. I mean, I would like to go to college. To study and make friends. But I know my mom is looking out for me – she always has.

Anyway: I’m not interested in playing baseball. I’m just interested in the fast batting cage, the feeling of connecting the motion of the bat with the motion of the ball, of reversing something fast and inevitable. This is the lesson of the baseball cage: everything can be vanquished; everything can be beaten; everything can be turned around.

The ball’s going like that, quick as snapped fingers:

And I make it go like that:

It’s like, in that cage, I can beat anything.

Even time.

Even death.

Gym rat doesn’t say,
You feel like hooking up?
but he does say,
You feel like hanging out?
so I was close.

I shake my head as I walk past, and I see his mouth say,
Bitch
, silently.

So yeah, sad face. I really missed out there.

I make a gesture that leaves him standing with his mouth open, and I go over to Mom. She’s, it turns out, got one of those patterns in her bag, because she’s doing the antlers of a stag standing in a glen when I get up to her.

I roll my eyes when I see it. I mean, she’s obsessed. But then, I think, there are worse things to be obsessed with. And it’s not like she drinks any more, I mean, hardly ever. And I guess it’s kind of cute, the stitching thing. Also crazy! But a little bit cute.

Those antlers are huge
, I say, because I can’t think of anything else.

Beautiful, isn’t he?
says Mom. She looks up.
I ever tell you my dad’s family came from Scotland?

No, Mom
, I say.
I don’t think you ever mentioned it
.

Oh, well, they were from
–

She catches my eyes. Then she shakes her head.
Very smart, Shelby Jane Cooper
, she says.

I was wondering
, I say.
I was wondering if you could tell me about how cold it is in Alaska. I don’t think I’ve heard
–

Ha-ha
, she says. She gets up.
Coming?

I nod and we leave the batting cages and go to the ice-cream place. It isn’t hard: it’s right next door, within this parking lot square, which is about as close as Scottsdale gets to a downtown. There’s a family restaurant too (ten kinds of burgers!) and a bookstore that’s surprisingly good. Sometimes we go in there, but Mom can’t afford to buy too many books, and unlike the library they get pissed when you read stuff and don’t buy anything.

We pull up stools at the counter, and Mom orders the usual, talking to the barstool of course instead of the girl with the pink hair and piercings who nods blandly as she scoops the ice cream. A mint choc chip cone for Mom, and a cup for me, with one scoop of butterscotch and one scoop of cookie dough. I reach over to the toppings rail and hit mine with chocolate sprinkles, popping candy, chocolate sauce, edible glitter, M&Ms, the works.

Mom says,
You’ll give yourself a stomach ache
, as she does every time, but it’s like a ritual, or an actor saying lines in a play, because I always have the same, and I never get a stomach ache. Mom told me once that I got my sweet tooth from my dad – it’s one of the only things she ever said about him. I mean, I know that he died when I was very young, and I have this dim memory of him hugging me in a room somewhere, wood panelling on the walls, so I guess maybe this was some cabin in Alaska or something; the way he smelled of pine trees. But that’s it. His face isn’t there in my memory. Mom doesn’t even have any photos of him.

Sometimes I think: I’d like him to come back, not because I miss him, but just to see what he looks like. Mom hates talking about him so much, it’s almost like he never existed, and I’d like to undo his death
just so I can know that he really did exist, once. It’s hard to explain. Anyway, the problem: in the baseball cage, you feel like you can turn back time. But you can’t. Not really.

Mom’s smiling as she watches me destroy my ice cream, so I figure it’s a good time to mention my birthday again.

Mom
, I say.
You know I’m going to be eighteen soon
.

Mom flinches, like I’ve just pulled out a knife.
Yes?

I was thinking, you know, about what we talked about before. Me taking my SATs, maybe. So I can study
.

She sighs.
It’s not safe, Shelby. College! Think of all the young men. Think what they’d do to you
.

I nod. I’ve seen the news. I’ve seen the films, with Mom. I know what young men do. Even if there’s a tiny bit of me that would like to find out for myself. With Mark from the library, for example. Sometimes I think about him, late at night. I mean, he doesn’t seem like a serial killer or a rapist. Of course Mom would say that you can never tell.

What about, like, training to be a librarian?
I say.
That would be mostly girls and you can’t get safer than a library
.

We’ll discuss it later
, says Mom.

Later when? I’m eighteen in a couple of months
.

Just later, Shelby
, she says, and I know the conversation is over. Her face has gone all weird, like a shadow has come across it. Now I feel bad for making her worry so much.

When we’re done Mom calls a cab. We go out on to the street and she walks on the outside of me, like always, as if a car is just going to jump up on to the sidewalk and hit me. I don’t know if she even knows she’s doing it – the habit of protection is so deep inside her, like oil rubbed into wood.

At the corner, our cab pulls up. Then she reaches out and turns my face towards her as the car idles by the sidewalk.
OK, honey, I’ll see you at eight
,
sharp
, she says.
The judge will want to wrap it up. It’s Ricardo: he likes to get to his cabin at weekends
.

OK
, I say.

And you’ll go straight to the library?

Yes, Mom
.

She kisses my forehead.
My little princess
, she says.
I love you …

… all the way to Cape Cod and back
, I finish.

She smiles, and more or less shoves me into the cab. She tells the cab driver to take me to the library, then starts to walk towards the courthouse. I love you too, I think. I don’t know why it gets harder to say that as you get older, but it does.

I do love my mom, though, even if we’re really different. I mean, everything: our personalities, our hair colour – she’s a redhead – our physique, our eyes. It’s like we’re not even related at all. Plus she is officially the most nervous person in the world and I’m, as she puts it, reckless. So when I was younger, I thought for sure, because of all the fairy tales and kids’ stories she used to tell me, that I was really a princess, put here with my mom by accident, that my real mother was a queen who lived far away in a beautiful castle.

Now I figure that every kid thinks this kind of thing. Me and my mom, we may be different, but she looks out for me. She keeps me safe. She teaches me. And yeah, sometimes I feel stifled, but that’s life, isn’t it?

The driver pulls away. After two blocks he stops.

He turns to me.
Here you are
, he says.

I can tell from his expression that he thinks it’s weird, me using
a cab to go, like, half a mile. I mean, people don’t walk here, but people dressed in Walmart clothes like Mom don’t blow ten dollars on a pointless cab ride either. I shrug at him, like, what do you want me to say? It’s like he’s never had a mother. I count out the money Mom gave me and hand it to him, then get out.

The library is just in front of me. If you’re imagining something with columns, like on TV, then stop. Pretty much everything in Scottsdale and most all of Phoenix is just flat, single-storey: bungalows, malls, offices. Every building, including the library, just looks like an unbranded Rite Aid, for real. The only variation, I guess, comes from a few fake adobe things, made to look like old Mexican houses.

Fake, because Scottsdale is new. Really new – since the silicon boom in the Eighties, mostly. A whole patch of desert just turned into city, in a decade. Mom says, the thing about the silicon boom is that before that, there were all these kids in Phoenix with no future and a meth habit.

Now there are still kids with no future and a meth habit, but because of the companies making computer chips, now they have people to steal from.

Then, she will wink and say,
hey, it keeps me gainfully employed
.

I go in and the AC settles around me like a cocoon of coolness. I have a tingly feeling that I get when there are books all around me. The library! I know it’s geeky but I love it. Just sitting between the shelves of books, reading – it’s the safest feeling.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve loved the place. Mom used to bring me here, ever since we moved to Scottsdale, would read me stories from the kids’ section, mostly fairy tales. I’d sit on her knee – she’d be cross-legged on the floor – and she’d tell me about princesses and curses and old crones making magic spells, and little girls who could outwit wolves.

It was like a doorway into another world. Just, you know, a doorway that smelled a bit like old ladies. Now, still, I love coming here to read, while Mom’s working. I’m safe here, inside, with the books – she knows where I am, and so neither of us has to worry. And anyway, I can just pick up a book and be anywhere I want, even if we don’t ever physically leave Phoenix.

Although …

Although, there is another reason I love the library.

There is the Boy too.

I don’t see him at the desk as I come in, and my stomach clenches
with disappointment. I walk further into the library, not really aiming for anything in particular. At the rear, there’s a Native American section. It has a colourful rug on the floor, photos on the walls of people dancing, wearing masks. A drum sits on a shelf.

I’ve never been in this part of the library, fiction is more my thing, but on the table in the middle, there’s an open book. I stroll over, meaning to pick it up and put it back on the shelf. When I get close, I glance down at the page. I see a line that says:

If Coyote crosses your path, turn back and do not continue your journey. Something terrible will happen
–

But just then I sense movement behind me and I turn. It’s the boy, Mark, and he reaches past me to snare the book, flips it shut with one hand – and smiles at me as he puts it back on the shelf. It says
Navajo Ceremonial Tales
on the cover.