Lie for Me (6 page)

“I remember.” I watch her fingertips tap the lines of Wick's hair. “You're not getting better, are you, Mom?”

She shakes her head, stops. Blinks. Blinks again. I'm not the only one surprised by her honesty.

“No, baby,” she says at last. “I'm not.”

“What are we going to do?”

Her smile is so small. “Take care of each other like we always do. We're making it work, right?”

“Right.” It's so automatic to reassure her I don't stop to think about it . . . until now. If this is “making it,” then why do I feel like I'm drowning?

I stuff both hands into my khakis' pockets, feel my phone. Still no return text from Wick. I'm going to have to find another way to earn Carson's pay.

Mom wobbles a bit as she turns for her bedroom door, and I realize it's going to have to be sooner rather than later. That means going directly to Bender. Which also means going to my uncle.

“Watch a movie with me?” Mom tugs at the loosened ponytail holder sliding down her hair. “It'll only take me a minute to change.”

No, it won't, but if I tell her I'm not interested, it'll be another round of You're Just Like Your Father and I can't handle that right now. “Yeah. Okay.”

As soon as the bathroom door shuts, I dial Paul.

“Who is this?” My uncle sounds like I've woken him up. I have no idea if that's because he just went to bed or because he never got out of it.

“Hey, it's Griff.”

“Griff, my man. Heyyyyyy.”

“Look.” I pause, listening to make sure the shower has cut on and my mom can't hear me. “I need work. Think you can help?”

“What kind of work?”

“I heard your friend Bender might need a hand.” I pray that Paul gets so wrapped up in the compliment that Joe Bender is his friend that he doesn't think to ask me where I “heard” about anything.

“I could make a call,” he says.

Relief makes me sag. I plug our ancient VCR into the television and look through the pile of tapes lying next to it. “Great. I appreciate you doing that.”

“I'll text you if he wants to meet. This number?”

“Yeah.”

“This could be a good opportunity for you,” Paul says, and there's a scrape and puff on the other end as my uncle lights a cigarette. “You could forget about that pansy art shit and get a real job.”

Like you?
I want to ask. “I gotta go, Paul. Keep me posted on what he says.”

“Will do—hey! Hey, Griff?”

“What?”

He takes one drag and then another. “You in trouble?”

The shower shuts off. She's singing now.

I give the videotapes a kick. “Nothing I can't handle.”

7

To my surprise, Mom crashes. We're not even twenty minutes into the VHS tape of
Superman
(she likes when he catches Lois Lane) and she caves, going to bed with promises to actually get up in the morning, leaving me pacing in the dark.

There is something supremely unfair about the fact that she'll be able to sleep tonight and I'll be up for hours.

I check my phone repeatedly, but there's still no return text from Wick. If Paul can get me in, it won't matter. She's blowing me off and that's fine. Not even really that surprising. We're not friends . . .

I flex my hand, somehow still able to feel her skin against my fingertips.

I swallow, shake myself. I'm being an idiot. It's not like I need Wick to respond. I can stick to the plan, go through Joe Bender. He's Michael Tate's right-hand monkey. Together, they run most of the meth dealing in our area and, rumor has it, expanded into credit card scamming. Tate was arrested—and escaped months ago. I don't think anyone's heard from him or seen him, but Carson's point makes sense: Someone's got to be helping him. It's probably Bender though. He keeps their businesses going. It's the secret people from our neighborhood know, but people from our neighborhood don't talk about. It can get you killed.

I lean against the kitchen counter, check my phone's screen again. Still no text. I am officially getting blown off. I should take the hint.

I don't think I'm going to.

Maybe it's because I know I'm not going to sleep or because I'm tense or maybe it's just because I
can
, but I open the browser on my phone and search for Wick's new address. I know her foster parents' names from some of the local newspaper articles, and after spending a few minutes on Google, I have an address: one of the upscale neighborhoods on the north side of the city. It'll be a bit of a walk, but it's doable.

I lock up and head for the street. Normally, I'd rather ride, but the Honda isn't exactly the quietest, and with my luck, I'd wake the neighbors and they'd call the cops.

I don't reach Wick's until nearly eleven. Unsurprisingly, her house is dark except for one open window, the warm orange light illuminating the tree underneath. I stare up at it, knowing full well I have pretty much bypassed Concerned Classmate and rocked straight into Creepy Stalker.

Then, as I watch, something—a person—passes in front of the window.

My breath hitches. It's Wick. So she
was
blowing me off. Honestly . . . I'm not really used to that. It's not like I'm a model or anything, but girls like me. I sigh, shake my head. It would be easier to want a girl who wants me back, but there's something about
this
girl. . . .

It's aggravating and inconvenient. Carson wants answers and I'm going to get them.

I laugh. I'm an effing liar if I tell myself
that's
the reason I dig the toe of my sneaker into the tree trunk and grab a low-slung branch. I kick myself higher, moving from branch to branch and praying that nothing breaks.

There's a scrape above me, like a chair's being pushed. Someone's there. Wick again? Crap, if she's going downstairs—I hustle up the last three branches as a shadow crosses above me. It's definitely Wick. She's all pale again, wide-eyed. She's—she's about to shut the window!

I smack one hand onto her window ledge, pop into the light.

“Sorry.” I twist my legs around a branch, feel it start to buckle. I am nanoseconds from a broken clavicle and I'm grinning at her like a damn idiot. “Didn't mean to scare you.”

Wick's pale eyes narrow. “If you weren't trying to scare me, then why the hell are you climbing a tree outside my window?”

I hover. Hmmm. This could go really bad, really quick. “I wanted to see you.”

“What the frick for?”

“You never answered me.”

She blinks and those weird eyes go even lighter, brighter. “Why do you care? It's not like we talk that much.”

“Yeah, I think we should fix that.” I stick my head inside, look around. Good. She's alone. Her bedroom's twice the size of our kitchen, done up with painted white furniture that doesn't seem anything like Wick. “So can I come in?”

“Uh. Okay.”

No way. I grin. “Great!” I kick against the tree trunk and start to pull myself in. Stop. Our faces are suddenly inches from each other. We've never been this close and she's not moving.

I raise one eyebrow. “Um, a little space?”

“Oh!” The tips of her ears go bright pink and it hits me low in the gut. She's embarrassed? Wick? I would never have guessed she had it in her. I nearly laugh—until she scrambles backward. Did I scare her?

Possibly. Probably. I did just climb a tree to talk to her in the middle of the night. I grit my teeth and hoist myself over the window ledge and land in her bedroom, still grinning. “Didn't think you'd actually agree.”

Wick retreats to desk chair, sits on her hands. The embarrassed girl is gone and the prickly one I know from school is back. She's gone hooded again. Shuttered. I can't tell what Wick sees when she looks at me, but I really want to know.

I also want to know who thought Wick would like that bed. It's white with tall, curlicue posts, completely girly-girl.

“What do you want?” she asks.

I shrug, look around like I don't know what I'm doing. Which is kind of true and kind of not. Wick goes red and embarrassed like the other girls I know, but she also goes dark and pointed like
no one
I know. Which is the real girl?

“I always wanted to see where you lived now,” I say.

“Why? Were you expecting a coffin or something?”

“Of course not. You sleep hanging upside down, right?”

She glares at me—no,
tries
to glare at me. There's a smile fighting the corners of her mouth and I can't stop my grin. She's not immune to me.

Well, not entirely.

Wick chews her lower lip. “Why are you being so . . . so . . .”

Flirty? Pushy? Whatever it is, she won't say it. There's something under Wick's words, like she's biting down all the things she wants to say. Maybe I am too.

“Because I wanted to the moment I saw you, but mostly because Matthew Bradford threw your lunch into the school fountain last week, so you let the air out of his car tires.”

Her shoulders go rigid. “
Tire
. I only did one.”

“Yeah, I know. I did the other.”

“How did you . . .”

“Know you were there?” I stand and, for the first time ever, I feel her eyes follow me. Everywhere they touch I go hot, tight. I'm used to girls watching me, but I'm not used to reacting like this. “I was one car over, hiding out instead of going to lunch. You're the first girl I've ever met who's smart and never plays stupid. You're small, but you don't back down.”

It sounds like a line but it's probably the most honest thing I've ever said. I'm glad we're not facing each other. If she's rolling her eyes, I'd rather not know. I study Wick's bookshelves instead, touching the spines of her paperbacks with one finger. Stephen King, Jodi Picoult, Courtney Summers, and . . . is that
Eat Pray Love
? I pull it off the shelf. “So is that a good enough answer?”

Wick's mouth moves like it might very well be, but then her computer chirps and her eyes go hard. Flat. She spins the chair around, hands already reaching for the keyboard.

“What is it?” I ask, watching her . . . watching the computer. I take a couple of steps toward her and she doesn't notice. Her eyes are pinned to the screen. “Something going on?”

“No, nothing.”

Yes, something
. Whatever she's seeing has her breath coming fast, shallow. She's freaked. Why?

I edge closer and peek over her shoulder. It's the usual computer home screen: Microsoft Office icons . . . Mozilla icon . . . There's nothing special until I notice the pop-up message at the corner of her screen. The writing's too small to see what it says, but I recognize the symbol on the left-hand side of the notification: a bone-white skull with a crooked crown on a red-and-black background. That's the Pandora Code symbol.

It's a virus. I've seen the icon but, thankfully, never been infected. I've heard about it though. There was that credit card scam last year . . . but it doesn't look like Wick's infected with the virus.

She's running it.

My stomach falls three inches. Carson was right. Or, at least, partially right. If Wick's using the virus, she's involved in some kind of hacking.

She's not who I thought she was . . . so where's my disgust?

“What are you doing?” I ask softly.

Wick jerks to her feet, blocking the computer screen with her body. “You have to go now.”

I cock my head, smile at her like I'm confused. It's not exactly a stretch. I need a reason to stay. “But I just got here.”

“You have to go.”

I glance at the computer, barely visible beyond her shoulder, and then to Wick. Her mouth has a hard set. She's not going to budge. This isn't ending like it was supposed to.

“Okay, fine, but close the window after me.” I grin at her and straddle the windowsill. Definitely not the way this was supposed to go.

Then again, now I have a reason to keep coming around.

My grin widens. “You never know who might climb up that tree again, Wicked.”

8

I nearly break my damn ankles hitting the ground. Wick slams the window above me, but she lingers for a beat. Is she looking down at me? The blinds snap shut and I scowl.

Christ, of all the effing jobs I could've gotten.

Sighing, I turn for the street, crossing Wick's front yard and heading for the sidewalk. I'm almost to the nearest streetlamp when I hear it. Crunching. Like dead leaves underfoot.

Great
. I start to jog. I don't belong around here and the last thing I need is a nosy neighbor calling the cops, but then the leaves crackle again—right
next
to me—and I stop. Listen.

I'm face-to-face with an ancient magnolia tree, its overloaded branches dipping toward the dirt.

Could've been an animal
. I stare into the darkness beyond the leaves, willing something besides shadows to take shape.
Awfully heavy for an animal
.

I stand a little straighter, rolling my hands into fists. “Who's there?”

Nothing. Maybe I imagined it. I swing my head side to side. Still nothing. Somehow though . . . I don't think I imagined it and I don't think it's someone's dog or cat. I slowly pivot, scanning the deserted street until I'm looking up at Wick's house again. You can see her bedroom window perfectly from here.

I turn back to the magnolia tree and my skin crawls. I feel like someone's looking at me. Farther up the street, a car slows, turning into a nearby driveway. From the corner of my eye, I watch it pause. The driver's noticed me. I need to get going.

I take one step, another. No one lunges out of the dark and nothing moves. I turn on my heel, hustling along the sidewalk until I reach one of the paths near the woods. This time of night I'm pretty much alone except for a stray golf cart or two that pass me.