Seven Ways We Lie (27 page)

“I'm not
anyone else
,” I say, affronted. “I should have known better.”

“Wait, were you drinking?”

“No, of course not. I'm just—I'm bad at telling when people are lying. It's always been a problem.” My cheeks burn. “When I was younger, I didn't understand sarcasm, either. It took me ages to learn it. So would someone else have realized she wasn't being honest?”

Lucas shrugs. “Dunno. We all believe lies sometimes. That doesn't make her choices your responsibility, dude. She wouldn't blame you, and I sure don't.”

His confidence is disproportionately reassuring.

“I get it,” he says. “Watching things explode like that is hard. You want to do something about it, and there's nothing to do.
But it's not your job, okay? You don't have to worry for the rest of the world. The world will do its own worrying.”

“Sure.” I look back at the lake. My eyes are bright, cleared by adrenaline, as if I've run a mile, rather than done something as mundane as talking about my feelings. How do people do this all the time, put their vulnerabilities on the line every day? How are they not perpetually exhausted?

“Do you like it?” I ask, gesturing at the water.

He bounces on his toes like a child. A six-foot-three, square-shouldered child. “Do I like it?” He laughs. “Do I
like
it? Come on. Look at this. It's going on my list of favorite places.”

But he's not looking at the lake. He's looking at me, as if there's something in me that's deserving of his happiness.

I look away, back out at the still water, which blackens with the coming night, hiding a million complexities. Lucas starts telling me about the pond behind his aunt and uncle's house in Florida; when he was young, he caught tadpoles in that pond by the handful. I tell him about the southern Darwin's frog, whose tadpoles mature in the mouth of the father until he spits them out as full-grown adults. He tells me that's disgusting. I agree.

We settle into a rhythm of conversation—a rhythm that's starting to feel familiar—but it's the pauses that wake me up. The moments where he stops his eager babbling to look out at the lake, or to wait for my voice to have its turn.

It's remarkable. For once in my life, there is nothing here I find unsatisfactory, nothing worthy of critique. There is nothing I would change about standing here on this muddy bank, talking with a friend as the dusk bends down over our heads.

IT'S DARK BY THE TIME I GET HOME. I SET THE GROCERY
bags on the table, jog up the steps, and knock on Kat's door. Not that she asked about Juniper, but she could use the knowledge that one of my best friends isn't dead.

After Kat's usual grumble of admission, I push my way in. “Hey,” I say. “I saw Juni.”

She pauses her game and looks up. In moments like this, I see the old Kat flicker in her blue eyes, a hint of concern giving her away. But her voice, deadpan to the point of sounding robotic, shields any notion that she might care. “She's okay, I'm guessing?”

“Yeah.”

“She's really let herself go.” Kat taps her game back to life.

“Come on. Juni is having a tough time. She's not
letting herself go
.”

“All right, whatever.” Kat glances at the door. “So, want to leave?”

“You realize that's rude, right?”

“It's my room.”

I realize my hands are shaking. I've reached the last of my patience.

“Why are you so angry?” I ask, meting out the words syllable by careful syllable.

“I'm—”

“And don't say you're not. Don't say you're minding your own business, so I should mind mine. You are my business, and you treating me like this? That's my business, too, and it's not normal. At least, it didn't used to be. So spill.”

“I'm treating you like I treat everyone,” she snaps.

“There it is. There's you lashing out because you've forgotten how to do anything else.” I advance on her bed. “Kat, something's messing up your life. You have got to figure it out.”

“God, leave me alone, would you? I'm better off alone.”

Before I can reply, she barrels on: “You'd be better off alone, too, but you don't know, is the thing. You don't even know who your friends are. Like, Claire? In CompSci, she sits there listening to these guys making slut jokes about you. Doesn't say a word. And Juniper . . . well, Juniper's a whole other story.”

“Stop it,” I say sharply. “Stop deflecting. My friends aren't the point: you are. Answer me, would you? Why are you so obsessed with shutting me out?”

No answer.

I look hard at my sister, at her sharp chin and her gaunt cheekbones. She stares resolutely at her computer screen. I've lost her. Every time she goes quiet like this, I feel her leaving me a little more, like a word written on the back of your hand that wears away with every washing. Soon she'll be completely gone.

Panic rises in the back of my throat. All of a sudden I feel the last two years draped over me like chains. I'm so exhausted from carrying them this long.

“It's Mom,” I say. “Isn't it?”

Kat slams her laptop shut. She says, low and dangerous, “I do not want to talk about her.”

“I know. That's why we've never talked about her: because you don't want to. Which, if we're being honest, isn't fair. Like, did you ever think I might need to talk about it? You think anyone could understand as well as my own sister?”

Kat slides out of bed, her feet hitting the floor hard. “Cut the guilt-trip bullshit,” she says. “You want to talk about her, and I don't. Your side isn't more valid than mine.”

“Kind of looks like it is,” I shoot back, “when you not wanting to talk about Mom has turned into you not talking about anything.”

A mutinous gleam enters her eyes. “Oh, okay. You want to talk? About
boys
and
makeup
and
parties
? That'll work out great.”

“Wait, is that a joke?” I almost laugh. “When have I tried to talk to you about any of that? And when did you start judging me for wearing makeup and going out?”

“Maybe since you started judging me for staying in and gaming.”

“I'm not judging you for staying in, I want you to—to—”

“To what? Be exactly like you?”

“No, I want you to tell me what's going on in your head!”

“Here's what's in my head.” She stalks toward me. “You always want to talk about Mom, but last time you said anything about her, you acted like she didn't
break
Dad and like we should forgive her.” Kat stops a foot away. “Like hell I'm going to forgive her. Forget her, maybe. Throw her out with the rest of the trash, maybe. Forgiveness? Yeah fucking right.”

“You don't miss her?” I say, reeling with the onslaught. “Not at all?”

Kat laughs disbelievingly. “Of course I miss her—that's the point! If I didn't miss her, and if you and Dad didn't miss her, it wouldn't have mattered that she left. But we do, all the time, and she dropped us like we meant nothing. No calls, not even a text on our birthday. And the three of us are fucked up because of it.” Her thin eyebrows draw together in fury. “I hope it's hanging over her head every day. I hope she feels guilty for the rest of her life, because God knows I'm going to hate her for the rest of my life. That's all she deserves.”

“No.” My voice surges up. “Mom's a good person, Kat, but she hated this place. What, should she have stayed in Nowhere, Kansas, with someone she didn't love anymore, going through fights and—”

“Yes! Yes, she
absolutely
should have. Would it have killed her to hang on four more years? We only had high school left. Who looks at their kids and says, yeah, high school, that'll be a goddamn piece of cake—they can do that by themselves.”

“Four years is a long time—”

“Oh, stop. ‘Four years is a long time,' ” Kat mimics, looking disgusted. “Jesus. You think you're taking the moral high ground? You're just taking her side. Why aren't you on your own side here?”

“There's no sides anymore. Don't you get it? The game's over, and everyone lost, and sometimes that just happens, and now we've got to clear the field and sort our shit out, Katrina!”

“
Don't
call me that,” Kat snarls, slamming her palm into my
shoulder. I stagger back against her desk, and she storms up, jabbing her finger between my collarbones. “Stop trying to be our fucking mother, Olivia. Stop acting like she's a misunderstood saint, and stop trying to be my therapist and rescue me. I don't fucking need it. I don't need
you
.”

Her words flood cold over me, numbing the ache where her finger hit my chest.

“Being like Mom,” I say hoarsely, “is the last thing I want.”

Silence settles in the space between us. Strands of my hair have fallen over my face, fluttering with every shallow breath. As I brush them back, my fingers shake visibly, and something like regret slips across my sister's face. But it's gone so fast, maybe I imagined it.

“So. You don't need me?” I repeat.

She opens her mouth. Nothing comes out. Her expression has a note of resolve, like she's determined to stay furious.

“Okay,” I say. I slip out from where she cornered me. I walk out the door, and I don't bother to shut it behind me.

WALKING INTO SCHOOL ON MONDAY, MOVING
through the halls, I seem to see the same five people over and over. The Scott sisters, Matt, Valentine. Then there's Juniper herself. They all pass in the hallways, smiling or blank-looking, preoccupied with their phones or laughing with their friends. It occurs to me how rarely people see each other afraid.

Every time one of them meets my eyes, the knowledge about Juniper yells out in the back of my head so loudly, I'm sure people can hear it. Guilt fills me up, rising like mercury in a thermometer, but I don't know what I feel guilty for. Staying quiet? I would probably feel guilty if I told the administration about García, too.

I grew up feeling guilty. Given my parents' altruism, growing up to realize I'm a selfish person was tough. I think back on elementary school, the times I hoarded crayons inside my desk or didn't share my food when other kids asked, and I remember overwhelming guilt. These days, I'm better at managing it, but it still springs up fast. I'm always apologizing. I'm always wondering what I did—I can look at one angry face and feel I've ruined everything, that I'm responsible for war and disaster and every tiny evil.

So, of course, I descend into panic when Claire finds me at my locker during the break between first and second period.

In the aftermath of Saturday night, Claire's finding out I'm not straight faded into the background, but now the accompanying anxiety revs back up full force. I knew this confrontation was coming the moment Matt apologized to me. I should have saved up my energy, instead of staying out so late last night, driving, laughing, learning about Valentine.

Thinking about him makes me fidget. I'm too interested in him. I want to talk to him and only him. I want to win his laughs, and I want to pick up every word he says and paste it between the pages of my journal. He's an equation I never want to solve.

“Hey,” Claire says. “We need to talk.”

I catalog Claire. Her voice is clipped, her gaze blistering. She wears green eyeliner today, with the usual thick mascara and glittering eye shadow—a hypnotically weird combination with her pale blue irises. She's zany in her own rigid, dogmatic way. After we broke up, life was too mellow for a while.

She frog-marches me away. We end up in a stairwell in the old wing, beneath the stairs. Gray light echoes through a dirty window. The bad signs check themselves off in my head:

• Claire's arms, folded—heralding a yell.

• That twitch at the side of her nose—she's trying for control.