Poser (5 page)

“I said I didn't care,” he said finally.

Hard to argue with that. That's what I like about Chan and Frey. They never ask where I've been or what I've been doing. They just talk to me like I've been there the whole time. This stupid conversation about shoelaces was comforting, somehow.

As I slid into my desk, I looked over at Shay. He was still staring at me, his eyes narrowed. I hate it when that happens.

I'd rather people didn't look.

INTERRUPTION BY MACY #2

“Oho, BEAUTY BOY! Here we go,” called Macy from the computer. “Slinkee Jeans is looking for ‘rebels and rockers' for its revolutionary new ‘Teen Jean Scream campaign!' Sounds pretty radical, hey?”

Radical
? Is it 1985?

You know me pretty well by now. Would you describe me as a rebel? A rocker? A revolutionary? Me neither. Can you imagine me in anything called Slinkee Jeans? They sound tight. If they want a kid looking pained, awkward and uncomfortable, I'm their guy.

“Ehhhhnnngh,” I said loudly, like someone hitting the Wrong Answer button. “No way.”

“I think we need some more information on this one, cranky-pants,” Macy murmured, typing.

I lowered my head to the table, banging it softly.

CHAPTER SEVEN

LEADING US INTO (ONE OF) MY BIGGEST LIES EVER

Macy's steamrolling ahead now, booking more and more modeling gigs. It's every weekend now, some weekdays, even a few evenings. All part of her master plan to completely ruin my life.

Well, I'm thinking there can be two master plans.

Old Spin might have a few surprises up his size-twelve sleeve.

“You'll have to miss some school, honey. Quite a lot of school,” my mom said, looking worried. She was staring at all the bookings on The Calendar That Rules Our Lives. I hate that calendar. It doesn't even have any pictures. Just huge squares and red ink.

“Busy month coming up,” she said.

I always do well in school, so missing some days has never seemed to be a big problem. But grownups are supposed to worry about kids missing school. Not Macy. For Macy, the modeling always comes first. I think Macy sees it as our ticket to the big time, to the huge contract that is always just around the corner.

But Mom is different. With Mom, school comes first. She actually reads my report cards, even all those cut-and-paste sentences that every kid in the class gets. This was a good time to complain a little. And exaggerate.

“You know, Mom, I'm finding it hard to keep up, missing so much school,” I said, looking up from watching highlights of the Flames–Canucks game. It wasn't true though. Chan took great notes, and I studied when I was on the road. I like school. I hate missing classes.

“Really? That's not good. I had no idea. Look, I'll talk to Macy, okay?”

Excellent. Macy listens to Mom. Mom is about two feet shorter and a lot quieter, but she's tough too. She's had to be, to put up with Macy for all these years. There was nothing much she could do about the dates that had been booked, but maybe she could sort of slow Macy down.

“Hey,” she said, looking over at me. “Everything else okay?”

Here was my chance. My chance to complain, whine and rant about Macy ruining my life. I opened my mouth. It was hard to know where to start.

“Well, you know, Mom, lately...”

The front doorbell rang, long and loud. Macy. She had a key but never seemed to use it. She just rang whenever she needed to get in. She came in fuming about some appointment she'd had, and the conversation that Mom and I were about to have never happened.

After dinner, Mom knocked on my door. She was shrugging into her coat. Mom is always rushing somewhere. She takes evening classes at a community college toward a diploma in business management and administration. I'm proud of her for going to school while she works full-time. Other than being freakishly busy all the time, she seems to like it.

I, on the other hand, clearly have no future in business, because all her courses sound stupefyingly boring. Beyond boring. Deathly. “Corporate Structure and Governance,” “Statistics and Quality Assurance,” that sort of thing. Blah-blah and blah-blah. Just the words make my brain turn off. They make my science unit on “The Structure and Organization of the Plant Kingdom” sound wildly exciting.

“I know it's not
scintillating
,” she said
once, “but it's important. I'm actually becoming qualified for something
other than reorganizing the sympathy-card section. I'll get a better job, a
career
...” She had big plans.

She stood in the doorway, winding a scarf around her neck.

“BB, I have to get to class, but I will have that talk with Macy. She's booking too much during school.”

“Yep, couldn't agree more, Mom.”

“But we do need to let the school know why you'll be gone so much,” she said firmly. She knew I wanted to keep the modeling a secret, but she didn't approve of lying.

“Look,” she said. “Your principal will probably be totally impressed! Ever thought of that?”

For a smart person, my mom could be completely clueless. It wasn't about anyone being impressed or not; it was about making sure I could survive junior high. She just didn't understand that lying had become totally, utterly necessary. If I told Mrs. Walker, how could I trust her not to tell anyone else? How could I ever be sure? I'd live in fear and dread that the secret would get out.

“Look, Mom,” I said, “you'd better write me a
note. Just something
vague
, about me missing school. I'll
talk
to Mrs. Walker and let her know why. Leave it to me.”

She looked at me hard. The woman is no fool.

“Nothing in writing, hey? Okay, listen, Luke, if I write you a general note, you
promise
me you'll tell Mrs. Walker the details?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. Lie.

“So I can trust you on this?” she continued.

“You can trust me,” I lied confidently. I'm such a jerk.

She smiled, then glanced at her watch.

“Yikes, I'm late. Okay, general note...” She sat down at my desk, grabbed a piece of loose-leaf and wrote.

“Done. Got to go. Love you.” She kissed the top of my head and left.

I read the note. It said:

Dear Mrs. Walker,

My son, Luke Spinelli, will have to be absent for quite a few days in the next little while. I will let him explain to you why he'll be absent, and we would like that reason to be kept
private
. He will keep up with his schoolwork, so please let his teachers know.

Thank you for your understanding,

Kathy Spinelli

This was good. Nice and vague. Now all I had to do was come up with a reason.

A reason that was way,
way
different than the truth.

A reason that was believable, but didn't lead to much investigation.

A reason that was a question-stopper.

It was going to be a lie. That wasn't an issue. The issue was how big a lie I was comfortable with.

Pretty big, as it turns out.

* * *

An hour later I was still at my desk, gnawing on the end of my pencil. (Everyone tells me that's a disgusting habit. It probably is, but that doesn't seem to stop me from having to floss orange pencil paint out of my teeth.)

Anyway, this was significant gnawing. Important gnawing. I had to invent a disease. Ever invented a disease? Not an easy thing. The thing is, when you think
disease
, you think of all the ones you know.

All the ones you've heard of.

Here's the problem. I knew I was a jerk for going behind my mom's back, inventing a disease and planning to tell the principal it's the reason I have to miss school. But somehow, I wasn't quite such a jerk that I was going to use an actual disease that actual people are suffering from. Even jerks have a code they live by. A jerk code of honor. And, bizarrely, it appears that lying about having an actual disease is against my jerk's code of honor. Who knew?

So what I needed was a completely new, very serious, totally made-up disease. This was a very tricky thing to do. It had to
sound
legit but in reality be
not legit.
Believable, but a complete lie...

So I gnawed. I have to tell you, I was coming up with nothing but blanks.
Think illness, think disease
... I tried body parts, but that just got ridiculous. I mean, who was going to believe I had Multiplestomachosity?

I got out my dictionary. There was a chart of some bits of words that go before and after a real word to make it sound more Latin-y. I've noticed many illnesses have a Latin-like name. Or Greek, probably, but I only had the Latin.

I needed a main part to attach the Latin-y bits to. The main part of the illness.

Think, Spin, think
...I looked around my room. My eyes fell on the games stacked on my shelves. The ones we never seemed to have time to play. Hmmm... After scribbling and scratching out such obviously lame fake diseases as Battleshiposity and SupraClue Trauma, I hit on Cranium. Cranium...Cranium
ectomy
! I started to get excited. That sounded super Latiny. That is, until I figured out that it meant “surgical removal of the brain.” Not, maybe, exactly what I was looking for.

Scrabble, Candyland...wait,
Candyland
? What am I, four years old? Mental note: clean room.

And then, there it was. The game I was sure I could work into a disease. Monopoly. Only I'd change the spelling a bit—Monopoli—and add a suffix.

Monopoli
osis
? Monopoli
itis
? I kind of liked the cool double
ii
of the last one.

Now, to do a lie properly, you have to sell it. If I went in there whining “I have MONOPOLYitis,” Mrs. Walker would obviously just think I was some kid who'd made up a disease out of the board game. Am I right?

That's why you pronounce it “mono-poli-itis”. Emphasis on all three parts, see? And you say it seriously, while looking the person in the eye. And maybe you gesture to your chest or something.

I heard the front door slam. I opened my door a crack and peeked out. I was in luck. Macy, the house computer hog, was outside “stretching her legs” (which I knew really meant having a quick cigarette out by the Dumpster).

I hurried over to the computer. I felt like one of those heroes in action movies who have to type really quickly because they're doing something they shouldn't be, maybe trying to hack into a bad guy's computer while he's coming down the hall... But I had to be sure. The jerk code book was telling me I had to be sure.

I googled M-o-n-o-p-o-l-i-i-t-i-s.

Ka-ching!

No matches. Not one.

Entirely made up.

What do you know? I think I have my disease.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I UNLEASH THE MONSTER LIE

“Yeah, most people haven't heard of it,” I said, staring Mrs. Walker straight in the eye. “It's a rare disease, but serious.” I closed my eyes for a second, as if feeling the pain. “But we're really hoping the operation might help.”

The principal stared at me. So long that I began to wonder if I was as good a liar as I thought. My heart began to thud loudly.

Finally, she sighed.

“I'm so sorry, Luke. This all sounds like quite an ordeal for you.”

I nodded bravely.

“Yep, so that's why I have to miss those big chunks of school. Surgery. Recovery. Uh, therapy. Mom is so upset she can't talk about it. She just can't. Really, don't talk to her about it. At all.”

“Of course, of course,” Mrs. Walker murmured, wiping her eyes behind her thick glasses. “I'm sorry, but I hate to think of you, a
child
, going though such pain.”

Okay, I have to admit that when she started crying, I felt totally horrible. I thought she'd be kind of businesslike about it—ask for doctor's notes and stuff like that. I just about caved when those tears welled up.

I should have remembered that Mrs. Walker is emotional. She tells kids
who get sent to the office all the time, like Shay, that she
believes
in them. She puts
together these inspirational, be-all-you-can-be PowerPoint presentations for our assemblies,
sets them to very lame, sappy music, and sits and tears up at how wonderful we all are.

She's a good person. And it sucks lying to good people. I could lie to mean, stupid people all day long, but the nice ones make a good lie almost impossible.

I sat there feeling miserable, and not just because of the fake disease. There was nothing I could do now. I mean, I couldn't all of a sudden say, “Just kidding!”

She asked me a few gentle questions, like “Are you in pain?” and “What's the prognosis?”

Hmmm, if I knew what that word meant, I might be able to answer you
, I thought. I just shook my head sadly. That seemed to do the trick.