Seven Ways We Lie (20 page)

“Yeah, I don't know.”

I set my stuff at the Second Circle station with a sigh. If it's only been a week and a half since the assembly, and they're already dragging the teachers in for questioning, they'll probably be planting bugs in our cars over the Thanksgiving break.

Matt's woeful expression catches my eye. “Hey, you okay?” I ask.

“What?”

“You look, uh, sort of woeful.”

“Nah. It's nothing.” Matt takes a seat at the Fifth Circle station, running a hand through his hair. It phases through a variety of hilarious bed-head positions before drooping back to its usual state. “I'm just not great with the public-speaking thing.”

I tug our script out of my bag. “Hey, don't worry,” I say, strolling over to hand him a copy. He glances over the highlighted pages as I climb onto the desk next to him, resting my feet on the chair. “Just talk loud. And you only have to fake interest for, like, fifteen minutes.”

“I don't have to fake it,” he says. “Cool book, I thought.”

“I guess, if you're, like, super into agonizing punishments.”

After a split second of silence, I realize how that sounded. “Oh my God,” I say. “I didn't mean, like. Um.”

Matt makes a valiant try at keeping a straight face. Then he bursts into laughter.

My cheeks flood with heat. “Oh my God,” I mumble again, burying my face in my hands.

“Let's do our presentation on that, instead,” he says. “Way better topic.”

I swat at him, and he dodges, grinning up at me.

García enters the classroom, holding a folder overflowing with papers. “Olivia, mind hopping off the desk?” he says. “People put their faces on that. Not that they're supposed to, but they do, so . . .”

I slide off the desk, my face still burning. “Right. Yes.”

“Is—is something wrong?” García asks.

“Nope,” I say loudly, and Matt sputters back into laughter.

“I see.” García sits behind his desk, spinning in his chair.

“Hey, Mr. García,” I say, aggressively changing the subject, “how strict is the fifteen-minute rule? Like, if we have fourteen minutes and fifty-nine seconds' worth of presentation, is that . . .”

“Fourteen fifty-nine is fine,” García says. “Fourteen fifty-eight, of course, earns an instant F.”

I laugh. He flips his folder open and adds, “By the way, I saw you're both running for junior class president. I hope there hasn't been too much, uh, political strife here.”

“Yeah,” I say, “get ready for the next Watergate.”

“No offense,” Matt says to me, “but I think we're both sort of doomed, running against Juniper.”

“Nope, totally agreed.” I glance at Mr. García for an opinion, but he's busy sorting his papers into neat little stacks.

As the class trickles in, I start feeling as nervous as Matt looks. I could probably talk in front of a whole auditorium, no problem, but there's something about standing at the front of a classroom, people's eyes so close and so focused, that makes me lose my shit.

The script hardly feels like five minutes, let alone fifteen, but by the time Matt and I take everyone to the nine stations, letting them sort themselves into circles of hell, we're already pushing twenty. After a heartening round of applause, everyone moves their desks back into place with the sort of horrifying screeching that does, in fact, suggest a land of infernal torture.

As I sit down, Matt's gaze brushes mine for a split second. I give him a thumbs-up. He smiles, a shy smile that lifts dimples into his cheeks. Weirdly, for the rest of the period, I feel his presence three rows behind me, quiet and reassuring.

When the bell rings, Matt and I file out the door beside each other. He turns the same way I do, and we walk down the hall in step, close enough that he must know I'm there, but far enough that the silence doesn't feel uncomfortable. I want to say something about the presentation, make some sort of small talk, but the silence feels charged. I can't make myself break it.

Finally, as we cross over into the old wing, he gives me a quick look. “Olivia?”

A flash of heat darts across my palms. “Yeah?” I say, stopping by the water fountain.

He halts a pace away, his eyes resting on mine. “You're,” he says, “I, um. This was . . .” He looks up at the ceiling and takes a deep breath, making the boxy frame of his canvas jacket rise and fall. “I guess, I'm sort of . . .”

“Olivia!” says a voice. Claire jogs up to me, her ponytail bouncing.

“Hey, lady,” I say, not looking away from Matt. His expression is tough to read, the crease between his eyebrows half hidden by his hair. What was he going to say?

“Glad I ran into you,” Claire says. “Can we walk and talk? I'm starting to worry about Juniper's party. I think we should set up damage control.” She glances up at Matt. “Hi.”

He lifts his head the tiniest fraction, in something that could be interpreted as a nod if someone were feeling generous.

“Come on, Liv,” Claire says, taking my arm.

“Sure, yeah,” I say, giving Matt a tentative smile. “Later?”

“Yeah.” He rubs the back of his neck. “See you around.”

As Claire and I cross farther into the old wing, she says, “What was that about?”

“What, with Matt? English stuff.”

“Didn't look like it.”

“All right, KGB, no need for the intelligence probe.” I try to say it jokingly, but my hold on my binder tightens. She's got to get off my back.

“Hilarious,” she says, sharp and scathing. “So, what, is he one of your thousands of unwanted suitors now?”

All right, that's it
. I stop short by the stairwell and move out of the path of the crowd. “Claire, why do we keep going back to this?”

“Back to what?”

“Did you not listen to anything I said Saturday? Like, what do you want me to do at this point?” I lower my voice, scanning passing faces to make sure nobody's listening. “You want me to, like, swear off social interactions with male humans and become a nun? You want me to say some dumb, passive-aggressive shit like, ‘Sorry guys are into me sometimes'? What is the problem here?”

An honest-to-God sneer curls her upper lip, an expression I've never seen in six years of knowing her. She looks like a different person. “It's not about you,” she says. “God.”

With that, she strides off, leaving me bewildered and more than a little pissed.

SCIENTIFIC STUDIES HAVE PROVEN THAT FRIDAY
during lunch is the best time to smoke outside the gym, because none of the gym teachers wants to eat lunch by the track, so everything is deserted. Burke and I sit under the bleachers, finishing the last bit of a blunt, thin slats of light illuminating the sequined velvet jacket he's wearing today. As the blunt burns down completely, I stamp it out, searching for another rolling paper in my pocket.

“Well,” Burke says, waving an empty bag, “we're out,” and I say, “I got some in my car—want me to grab it?” and he says, “How long until lunch ends?” and I check my watch. “Twenty minutes,” I say, and Burke nods solemnly. “Do it.”

I maneuver my way through the maze of bleacher supports and into the open, stroll across the track, and head up the thin, concrete path toward the main building. As I veer past the trailers at the base of the auditorium hill, their white roofs and walls burn with the noon sun, making me squint through a shield of teary water. It reminds me of snow glare, the snow from the banks on Chestnut Peak, where my family went skiing six Januaries ago, where my dad fell and cracked a vertebra but insisted on staying so that my
mom and I could have an actual vacation. Probably the last time I can remember him doing anything generous for anyone.

My vision starts blackening and discoloring in the trailer glare, a line of blisters like bruised fruit edging the painful whiteness, and I hold up a hand to block out the light, about to turn away, when I realize there's a tiny figure on top of one of the trailers: Valentine Simmons, clambering toward the edge of the roof. I slow down at a huge oak tree, wondering for a second if he's going to fall off, although it wouldn't do much damage, since the trailers have such low roofs, it's like taking classes in shoe boxes. For a second, the tree bark in front of my face distracts me: a dotted line of red ants scrolls up along the grain of the trunk, and I feel I could have a whole discussion about what this means in the context of humanity, but I forget it fast, because Valentine breaks my focus by dropping off the roof and turning back to the trailer door with a cocky grin on his face, as if he's expecting a nice surprise, which turns out to be true enough, because in the next second, someone steps through the threshold and gets so close to him, I could swear they were kissing—

Wait. Are they?

I peer around the tree, trying to get a better angle, but I can't tell whether they're spit-swapping or just standing at an inconvenient angle to have some sort of intense conversation.

But when they move away from each other, I can tell that the other person has curly dark hair and a white swimmer's T-shirt and a strong jaw and a perpetual eager smile, which all adds up to Lucas McCallum, and given what Lucas asked me the other day, I guess they could've been making out, but holy shit,
Valentine Simmons
? Valentine Simmons is gay?

Then Lucas half turns, and I whip behind the tree, staring down the school building as if it's conspiring against me, and I try to rein in my thoughts. I guess Lucas's got enough smile for both of them. Maybe opposites do attract.

I keep my head down and hurry back up the path, heading for the parking lot, but as the path meets up with the green, I smack into someone heading from the main building. I back up, lifting my hands, and as I realize who it is, I blurt out, “Olivia,” cursing inwardly because she's going to ask me what I wanted to say yesterday, and that's not something I want to deal with when I'm this high.

“Matt,” she says, and I'm like, “Hey, hello.”

We look at each other for a long second, and my eyes brush over the smattering of freckles on the tops of her cheeks and the stubborn point of her chin, and in the breeze, wisps of her hair drift across her face, and she tucks them behind her ears with fingers whose nails are painted bright gold, and I say, “Um,” and she says, “Did . . . yesterday, did—” and I break in with the first thing that comes to mind, trying not to sound too panicked: “Me and Burke are smoking under the bleachers. Do you want to join?” and she says, “I don't smoke. Thanks, though,” and I'm like, “Right, yeah, you don't seem like you would,” and she's like, “Aren't you worried you'll get caught out there?” and I'm like, “Nah, it's a ghost town—only people I saw are, like, Lucas and his boyfriend or whatever,” and the second it comes out of my mouth, I freeze, because he explicitly asked me not to say a word.

And the look on Olivia's face. Her eyes—those bright, oceanic universes—are wide and disbelieving. “What?” she says. “His—his boyfriend?” and I'm like, “No, it—” and she's like, “Holy shit,” and
I'm like, “No, he told me not to say—don't tell anyone, Olivia, please?” and she backs up from me. “I have to find Claire,” she says, and I start to call her back, but she's already disappearing back toward the main building.

“Shit,” I say, “shit,
shit
,” and I turn, staring back down the path to the trailers. I have to do something. What is there to do? Why am I so fucking stupid?

Heavy iron shame pushes down on my chest, depressing my rib cage inch by inch, and I want to shrivel up and hide from my panic, but instead I yank out my phone and text Burke.
Dude I messed up I messed up

He's a fast texter, as always:
Orly?

Yeah I think I sort of accidentally outed someone, like from the closet.

????? Why would you do that though…………

It was an accident!

He takes a while to reply.
Well say it was you, they deserve to know it's your fault! Seriously, Matt, what in the hell I leave you alone for like 5 minutes

I told you. Accident. Plus I'm so high

Dude that is a hilariously bad excuse, I was high during my last calc test and I nailed that shit so you got no license to pin it on that

Sorry

Bro don't apologize to me! You think it's my place to say it's fine?

I tuck my phone away and head back down toward the trailers.

Valentine's already gone when I reach the bottom of the hill, and Lucas is folding his lunch bag into the overflowing trash
can. When he sees me approaching, he brightens. “Hey, Matt,” he says, and as he meets my eyes, nervousness tremors through me. “Lucas, hey,” I say, and every instinct I have screams at me not to admit this, but I fold my arms and think,
You're a coward, Matt
, and with a deep breath, I say, “Look, dude, I've got to tell you something,” and he says, “Sure, what's up?”