Liar (12 page)

That first time it was me, Zach, Chantal, and Brandon. A quartet of nonreaders stuck together. At any other school that would be no big deal, but our school is full of readers. Didn't surprise me that Brandon doesn't read, he can barely talk—but Chantal wanted to be an actor. I always thought actors read a lot. It's their job, isn't it? Reading words, memorizing them, saying them out loud.

Not Chantal.

I don't read, but I do like libraries. I like order, and libraries are all about order. Every book has a place. It's quiet, too: no music.

I watched Zach at the other end, framed between shelves, gathering up books left on desks, on couches, on the floor. Brandon helping. Though not really. He kept trying to talk. Zach would say “yes” or “no” or grunt. He likes quiet. He likes that I talk as little as he does.

My job was to scan the shelves for books in the wrong place. Of which there were many. I was doing fiction. Chantal, nonfiction. I looked for numbers where there should be letters; she looked for letters where there should be numbers.

“My cart's full,” she called out to me. “Time for you to shelve them.”

Mine wasn't, but it wasn't far off. I wheeled it over to her. Hers was less full than mine. This meant she wanted to talk. Chantal is so afraid of silence she will even talk to pariahs like me.

We swapped carts. I pushed hers in the direction of fiction.

“Did you hear that Zach and Sarah split up?” Chantal asked, to stop me from going back to fiction.

I hadn't. I hoped it wasn't true. I looked over at him. He didn't look any different. Maybe it wasn't true. I looked at Chantal. She nodded. “Happened yesterday.”

We were both staring at Zach. I was willing it not to be true. Him and Sarah being together was what made me and Zach possible.

“They'll be back together in seconds,” Chantal said.

I hoped she was right.

“Pity. He's gorgeous. But those two can't live without each other.”

Zach was on the ground reaching for a book under the couch. Tables and chairs obstructed my view, but I could see his legs, calf muscles clenching and unclenching, and the top of his head. Brandon was telling him something. I heard the words “class” and “shit” and “no.” Brandon liked to talk, I decided, as bad as Chantal.

“He's cute, isn't he?” Chantal said.

“Brandon?” I asked.

She laughed. “No! Zach. I'd date him in a heartbeat. Wouldn't you?”

I wouldn't. I liked our secret. If he and Sarah really were broken up that meant our secret would be broken, too. I couldn't think of anything worse than Chantal and Brandon and the whole school knowing about us.

AFTER

Halfway to school I turn around and head home. I was planning to go, but as I'm crossing Broadway I lose heart. The strength that's been holding me together slides away. I can't take another day of being stared at. Of listening to rumors and innuendo. Of Sarah interrogating me. Of classes that I cannot follow. Of Zach everywhere and yet nowhere.

Of stupid talk about Erin.

I'm not sure I can ever go back to school.

Dad is flying out this morning on assignment to Jamaica to stay in Ian Fleming's house. It's 8:15. His flight is at 9:00. Even with his love of close calls he should be gone by now.

I don't remember the last time I was alone in the apartment.

Every step I take toward home is lighter than the one before it.

I turn the corner and there's Dad getting into a cab.

I step back.

Just like Dad to be crazy late. How's he going to make it? Well, if—really, when—he misses the plane, surely they'll put him on a later one. It should still be ages before he turns up. But I want to throttle him. It feels like he did it on purpose to thwart me.

Once I'm sure the cab is gone, I climb the stairs to our apartment. The only time I like it is when it's empty. Especially after Dad has gone on one of his trips. He says he can't pack unless the apartment is neat, so he cleans and polishes and tidies. That's how he likes things: clean, shining, orderly. As unlike the farm as possible.

It is the only thing we have in common.

I walk in and shut the door behind me. Lock it. The stupid girl next door has her music up loud.

I go directly to the brat's room. It's not clean or orderly. There are dolls and trucks everywhere. Though the brat calls them action figures. It drives him crazy when I call them dolls. So I do. It's what they are. Fake people that you can dress and play with and accessorize. What else would you call them?

I start with the toy boxes, going through each one. Then his chest of drawers.

And there it is, in the second drawer, underneath his pajamas.

Zach's sweater. I hug it. Press it to my nose.

It doesn't smell like Zach anymore. It smells like the brat.

Doesn't matter that I also have Zach's jersey, which reeks of him; I stole that. The sweater, Zach gave me. It's a direct connection between us.

I'm going to kill the idiot boy.

I take the sweater into my room and put it in the one place I know the brat will never go, even if he's stupid enough to brave my room again. I push back the cloth over my metal desk, lift up the lid, and put it inside.

AFTER

When Brandon follows me after school he is much more stealthy than Sarah. Which isn't hard. For a while I don't notice him because I am lost in playing dodge the crowd, floating in the movement of air currents. Me and my backpack in space, weaving around everyone, listening to the rhythms of feet on sidewalk. Forgetting anything that isn't weaving and dodging. For whole seconds at a time I am not thinking about Zach.

Part of me must sense Brandon following because I am jangled. I am off my game. I keep misjudging the distances—narrowly, the merest touch—the corner of someone's coat grazing my backpack, the clip of the back of a heel. Stupid. Annoying. Back I go to the start of the block.

It isn't till we're in Central Park that I spot him. If you can call it that. He wants me to see him.

I'm going through one of the stretch routines Zach taught me. My heel resting on a low fence, I lean forward till I feel it along my hamstrings. My skin prickles, not from the stretch, from something else. I look up.

A couple are making out on a blanket under an elm tree. There's a family with four kids and one mother picnicking on a much larger blanket. The kids are laughing. The oldest, with braids, is tickling the youngest; the mother is moving the cake out of the way of the toddler's flailing feet.

Then there's Brandon sitting on the grass, staring at me, smirking. He stands up, walks toward me, sits on the fence.

“Stretching, huh,” he says, as if there's something sinister about it.

“What do you want?” I say, and immediately wish I hadn't. I should ignore him. He wants to get me riled. But I want to know why he's here. He doesn't like me. I don't like him. We have nothing to say to each other.

Half a dozen runners stride past. I watch them go. They're wearing the same shorts and T-shirts. Yellow and green. I wonder what kind of team they are because they're not runners. Their technique is all wrong. Barely lifted knees, arms swinging all over the place, heels pounding flat-footed.

Zach taught me to run more on my toes. To strike only lightly on my heel and have full flexion through the foot. It made me even faster.

I resume my stretch. Brandon pulls out a pack of cigarettes, lights one, inhales, blows smoke at me.

I lean deeper into my hamstring stretch. I'm thinking about how much stronger I am than Brandon. I doubt he realizes that. Boys never do. He should be scared of me. Because I
really
don't like him and I'll hurt him if I have to.

A single runner pads past. A real one this time. I don't have to turn; I can tell from their stride: no drag, no pounding of heels.

“You do this a lot, don't you?” he says. “Especially here.”

I switch legs, ignoring the foul smoke, ignoring Brandon.

“ 'Cause I heard they found the body in Central Park. Not far from here actually—and I thought, shit, Micah's always here. What are the odds? Specially with her and Zach being so . . .” He pauses, takes a long drag on his cigarette, blows the smoke in my direction.

I have to stop myself from looking up. From telling him that Central Park is not exactly unpopulated. Hundreds, no, thousands of people are here all the time. Night and day. Is he blind? Does he not notice the kids on blades who just floated by? All the runners? What about the family on the blanket and the couple making out not six feet from where he was sitting on the grass? There's hardly an empty patch in Central Park this time of year. Even in winter there are people out in it, tromping through snow, past leafless trees, seeking a respite from concrete and steel.

I want to ask Brandon how he knows where Zach was found. Was it really here? Where exactly? What else does Brandon know? But if he knows, then someone else at school does, too. Maybe I can find out without asking Brandon a thing.

I take off at top speed, knowing he couldn't keep pace even if I went at a slow trot.

FAMILY HISTORY

I wouldn't mind going upstate so much if my family went with me. Well, okay, they take me up—Mom and Dad and idiot brother—but they don't stay. Just me. Sometimes I'm afraid they won't return. I'll be stuck there forever.

My parents have excuses for not staying but it feels like they want to be rid of me.

Dad says he can't work there. Not without electricity. His laptop has at most four hours of life. He has to go into town to work. Mom hates it. “I can never get clean,” she says. “The water is so cold.”

Jordan would stay but the Greats don't want him. He doesn't say anything in front of me but I know he's jealous. I've heard him whining to my parents about wanting to play in the woods. “Why doesn't Grandmother like me?” he asks. Because you're a sniveling useless brat, I want to tell him. But I'm not supposed to have heard. Our apartment's so small that we always pretend we can't hear the things we're not supposed to. It's a good rule.

I'm happy the Greats don't want Jordan, but I wish my parents would stay.

The Greats have a thing about the oldest child.

Which is me.

The Greats teach me woodcraft—tracking, hunting, skinning, how to find my way in the forest, how to find food, make shelter. It's more work than school. But if the world ends we'll be ready. That's the idea: survivalism.

Some of their neighbors are that way. They have basements full of canned food, dried beans and fruits, secret wells, bows and arrows.

The other neighbors are sheep farmers who think the survivalists and the Greats are crazy. But then they're always complaining about coyote taking their sheep. Coyote bigger and tougher than any coyote previously known to the universe, Grandmother says. “I've never seen one,” she always says. “Man with coyote-skin jacket, maybe. What would Hilliard have said about that?”