Tell Us Something True

We Are the Goldens

The Summer I Learned to Fly

The Things a Brother Knows

How to Build a House

Harmless

A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2016 by Dana Reinhardt

Cover art copyright © 2016 by Chris Silas Neal

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Wendy Lamb Books and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Reinhardt, Dana.

Title: Tell us something true / Dana Reinhardt.

Description: First edition. | New York : Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, [2016]. |Summary: “After River Dean's girlfriend breaks up with him, he stumbles upon a teen group and unintentionally fakes an addiction”—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015026155 | ISBN 978-0-385-74259-7 (hardback) | ISBN 978-0-375-99066-3 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 978-0-307-97582-9 (ebook)

Subjects: CYAC: Self-help groups—Fiction. | Honesty—Fiction. | Interpersonal relations—Fiction. | Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / General.

Classification: LCC PZ7.R2758 Tel 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

ebook ISBN 9780307975829

Random House Children's Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

v4.1

ep

For Daniel. Fate, luck, whatever the force that brought us together, I am grateful every day for you.

Up until the afternoon Penny Brockaway dumped me in the middle of Echo Park Lake, I didn't believe in fate.

Before you start conjuring visions of me in a zippered body bag sinking to the bottom of that filthy water, I mean to say she dumped me, as in she broke up with me, as in she took my heart and stomped on it while wearing a pair of those clunky boots she liked, and then she got behind the wheel of her SUV and she drove over it before picking up what flattened pieces were left and tossing them in the compost bin.

We took out one of those little pedal boats.

I did all the pedaling.

We'd heard about the boats from her best friend Vanessa, who'd told Penny you could take boats into the middle of Echo Park Lake and doesn't that sound romantic? To be out in the middle of a lake with the person you love?

It didn't sound all that great to me, but Penny wanted to do it, and doing anything with Penny was romantic. Watching her brush her hair. Or tie her shoe. Or blow a bubble with her blue sugar-free gum. I didn't need to be in a boat in the middle of some fake lake to feel all warm and fuzzy about Penny. I was just as happy sitting on the back steps of her house watching her three-legged dog try to outrun the sprinklers. Or keeping her company while she babysat her fat little brother, Ben.

But she wanted to go on those goddamn boats. I should have just said no, but I didn't. And then it took us four months to find a Saturday afternoon we could drive out to Echo Park, and we finally did, and when we got there we had to wait forty-five minutes for a boat, and we finally got a red one, and we climbed in and I pedaled us out to the middle of the lake, and that's when she said, “Riv,” followed by a big sigh and a longing look back at the dock, where I'd paid some teenager in a stupid vest twenty bucks for the privilege of renting the boat on which my girlfriend was about to dump me. “I just can't do this anymore.”

The funny thing is, I thought:
But I've done all the pedaling.

What happened next is sort of a blur. Some people talk about having an out-of-body experience in moments of tragedy, like they're somewhere up in the clouds looking down at a miniature version of themselves. Some people describe feeling like they're underwater, where everything moves in a distorted slow motion. Me? My body turned to ice and my head caught on fire. Like I was some reject superhero with totally useless, self-harming powers.

She obviously said more. She must have. But for however many minutes—or maybe it was hours, because it was like the sun shifted, the light out on the water changed—for whatever time passed between when she said
I can't do this anymore
and
It's just that you aren't really…the kind of person I think I deserve,
I didn't hear a thing. And I don't think whatever she said is living somewhere hidden inside me, like those little black boxes on airplanes that record all the critical data, because I've searched deep. I've practically meditated on it, and all I come back with is silence.

“What kind of person do you deserve, Pen?” I wish I'd asked this in a deep voice, with maybe an Argentinean accent, something manly, instead of croaking it like a frog. Something was happening to me that made it hard to speak.

“Someone…I don't know….” She looked back at the dock again. Was it that guy in the vest? Was that who she felt she deserved? Someone who sold tickets for “romantic” pedal boats where love goes to die? “Someone…with more interest in stuff.”

“Interest in stuff.”

“Just more…I don't know…more…” Usually Penny was smart and quick and funny. So I knew she was struggling, which felt good, I guess, because it was clear she hadn't spent time rehearsing what she wanted to say, so I could hold on to the hope that she was acting on an impulse.

“More…?”

“Riv, stop making this so hard on me.”

I wish we'd taken a rowboat. I'd have dropped the oars. Then we could have sat out in the middle of Echo Park Lake forever, or at least until she realized she was making a terrible mistake.

But then she started to pedal. Slowly. Like she was hoping I wouldn't notice, except that when she moved her pedals, mine moved too, they were connected. Simpatico. Just like we used to be.

The dock and the idiot in the vest were drawing nearer. I'd paid for a full hour. We'd been gone fifteen minutes.

“Look,” she said as her pedaling hit its stride. She bit her upper lip in that way I found totally adorable. Penny never wore lip gloss like all the other girls. Why try to improve on perfection? “You don't reflect. You don't think about things. You just follow along and do what you think you're supposed to. You don't even try to understand yourself and your issues, because, you know, River, you
do
have issues—”

“I love you, Penny.”

“I know you love me. I'm pretty clear on that.”

“I mean, I really, really love you.”

“That's sweet, but—”

“That's sweet?”

“Let's just—”

“Is this because of Vanessa? Because I think when she told you about going out on a lake with someone you love, she meant you and her.”

“You're crazy.”

“I am. About you.” I wish I hadn't said that. God, it was so tacky. Right out of one of those crap romantic comedies Penny made me watch.

She rolled her eyes. I wasn't even looking at her, I couldn't bear to, but I knew she rolled her eyes. As she pedaled us up to the dock, the kid in the vest called out, “Toss me the rope.”

I clenched it in my fists.

“Let him have the rope, River.”

“No.”

“He needs the rope to pull us in.”

“No.”

“Whatever,” she said as she stepped out of the boat. She had to lunge to bridge the distance. She grabbed the arm of the kid in the vest as I sat alone in the boat with the rope in my hands.

“Come on, River.”

“No.”

I didn't know what I was doing or why, but I'd made up my mind somehow. I wasn't getting out of that boat.

“I want to go now.”

“So go.”

“We're in Echo Park. How are you going to get home?”

“I'll take the bus.”

“Very funny.”

“I mean it.”

“You've never taken the bus in your life.”

“So?”

She sighed and threw a look at the kid in the vest, like:
What am I supposed to do with this guy?

“Fine,” she said, digging in her purse for her car keys and then dangling them in front of her. “I'm leaving now. Last call for a ride home.”

“Pass.”

“Good-bye, River. Good luck with…” She gestured to the lake. “…everything.”