The Girl Who Kissed a Lie (5 page)

We go to Salem Willows. Andy drives. He’s the only one with a license, and he uses a Zipcar to get us up there. Apparently, he pretends he’s his mother to get the Zipcar, using her account. I wonder if this is supposed to impress us. Kelsey doesn’t seem very impressed. She says, “Is your mother going to have to pay for this?”

Andy hesitates, then says, “I guess?”

“Well, that’s rude of you.”

“She won’t even notice,” Andy assures her.

Kelsey looks stonily out the window, plainly offended by all of this, and I’m not sure why.

The car feels awkward now, with Andy clearing his throat uncertainly and Kelsey staring silently out the window and Brody staring silently at me. I desperately start a conversation to break the awkwardness, but, because I’m an idiot, what I say is this:

“Do you think it’s a big deal that Mrs. Bourne sews?” I ask.

The silence in the car feels stunned at my idiocy instead of awkward. So at least I accomplished that?

I fail at being normal.

Kelsey twists around in the passenger seat to look at me, where I’m sitting behind the driver’s seat. I expect Kelsey to look at me like I have thirteen heads and say,
No, of course not. Why would that be a big deal?
Instead Kelsey looks thoughtful. “I guess,” she concludes, “it depends on what she sews.”

She sounds so much like Ben that I can only gape at her.

“What?” she asks defensively. “I mean, I was thinking that it would be spooky if she was sewing people’s skin. Like, putting body parts together like Frankenstein or something. You’re the one who got it into my head that she might be a witch!”

“Mrs. Bourne’s a witch?” says Andy.

“Of course she’s not a witch,” says Brody.

“Dr. Frankenstein wasn’t a witch!” I point out.

“It’s the
same
idea
,” Kelsey insists. “Spooky Halloween stuff.”

“She’s sewing lace,” I tell her. “There’s just a lot of lace back there. Piles and piles of lace.”

Kelsey doesn’t look assuaged, which was what I was going for. She looks thrown. “Really?”

“It’s pretty lace,” I tell her. “It’s not creepy lace. It’s not black lace with spiders on it or anything. It’s just white lace.”

“Sure,” says Kelsey. “Fine. Just…why does she have so much of it?”

“I don’t know,” I say helplessly. “I guess she just…really likes it?”

Kelsey looks dubious and I’m annoyed.

“Why can’t she just be a normal old lady?” I complain.

“Oh, I’m sure she is a normal old lady,” Kelsey tells me. “It’s just that normal old ladies are weird. That’s what makes them normal.”

I think about my aunts, who are very weird old ladies. So does that make me normal?

Brody says, “I agree. Sewers can be very peculiar.”

“Sewers can be?” I say to him. “People who sew?”

“Yes.” He looks at me. “Don’t you think so?”

I’ve never thought about it. I think it’s weird that he apparently has. But then I think of my aunts and decide that maybe I’m not the best judge of weird.

When we get to Salem Willows, Andy reaches for Kelsey’s hand. Kelsey lets him take it, although she looks a bit undecided about it.

Andy says, “Want some cotton candy?”

“Cotton candy?” says Kelsey. “Really?”

Andy laughs. “Let me make up for that time, okay?”

Kelsey smiles, ice broken, tongue between her teeth. “Yeah, okay.” She looks at me. “Okay?”

I know this is supposed to be some kind of meaningful moment, the moment when my date with Brody begins, but it doesn’t feel meaningful to me. “Yeah. Okay.”

They walk off, holding hands. Andy says something to her, and Kelsey smiles again.

I don’t even ask what the deal was with the cotton candy. Andy and Kelsey have all sorts of shared history from before I joined them at school. Brody shares it too. Brody probably knows all about the cotton-candy incident. Kelsey usually doesn’t let them talk about the past too much, which I know she does for my benefit, and I appreciate it. I wonder if I’m not as naturally comfortable with all of this as Kelsey is because she’s known these guys forever—and because I’m fighting with the only guy I’ve known forever.

Brody says, “Want to take a walk out to the pier?”

I can’t think of anything else for us to do. I don’t want to follow Kelsey and Andy; that would just be awkward.

I shrug and follow him toward the pier. It stretches out from the little mini-forest grove of willow trees that gives the place its name, out into the cove. It’s a gorgeous summer day. Behind us little kids shriek on the crescent moon of beach, but the pier is quiet and relaxed, with only a few fishermen positioned along it. It should all be incredibly romantic, standing out on the pier, surrounded by blue water and blue sky. I feel keenly aware of how romantic it should be, which is terrifying.

And then Brody grabs my hand, stilling me, pulling me back to him. I turn to face him and he smiles at me, and in that moment he is
gorgeous
. He is the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. His eyes are beautiful and his hair is beautiful and his nose is beautiful and his smile is beautiful. His
mouth
is beautiful.

“Selkie,” he says to me, still smiling, and my name is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard anyone say before.

I blink at him, feeling dizzy and off-kilter, like my mind has gone all fuzzy around the edges. Somehow, I am closer to him than I was just a moment before, drifting toward him. His hands move up and catch my face, framing it, his thumbs brushing along the corners of my mouth.

“Selkie,” he says again, his voice barely higher than a whisper, a murmur breathed out against my lips.

I hear myself give a sharp little inhalation, trying to gather my wits, to feel a little less upside down and twisted all around, and then he kisses me, his lips brushing against mine, and when I gasp again, it’s into his mouth. He catches my gasp, pulls me closer, wraps his arms around me—

And I feel a moment of sudden, claustrophobic, suffocating panic. I can’t breathe. I can’t
breathe
. I push, wriggling, tearing my mouth away from his, trying to get air.

“Selkie,” he says, his face still very close, still dazzling in its beauty, and I squeeze my eyes shut against it.

And I can see Ben in my mind’s eye, clear as day. Ben, who is in many ways incredibly obnoxious, but it would have been much righter for Ben to be my first kiss.

I open my eyes again, and that’s what I intend to tell Brody, that this was a mistake, that he is the wrong boy, except that when I open my eyes, it’s not Brody I see in front of me. It’s a terrible monster. It’s hideous. It has paper-white skin covered in warts that are so enormous that they themselves have warts. It has no nose; instead it has two huge, gaping nostrils that quiver as it breathes. It has eyes that are an unearthly swirl of black and crimson. It has pointed ears that reach up above its bald head, and there is hair sprouting out of those ears, the only hair on it. It has an open, snarling mouth, filled with gnashing teeth, and it is drooling some sort of disgusting neon-green drool. And it smells terrible, a stench that overwhelms me, rotten and sickly.

I stare, and then I try to kick myself free. Whatever it is that is now holding me snarls and snaps at me, and I panic against its grip, which is too tight for me to do much. My hand happens to be near my pocket though, and in my pocket is a pin that I found in the junk drawer at Bourne’s ages ago, and this is why I’ve been carrying stuff around in my pockets all my life, apparently, waiting for
this
moment
. I find the pin and jab it into the thing that is holding me, at whatever part it is that I can reach. It flinches, startled, and that’s enough to loosen its grip so that I can shove, and then it tumbles backward into the water. The fishermen nearest to me are all giving me funny looks, and that’s the only reason that I don’t start running immediately, because they’re all looking at me like I’ve gone insane.

I look down at the water, horrified, because what regains the surface is…Brody. His shaggy, sandy-brown hair is plastered to his head now, and he’s furious as he glares up at me, treading water.

I
am
losing
my
mind
, I think in horror. I am going to end up just like my father, in an institution. It is my biggest fear, and it seems to be coming true—right now.

“I’m so sorry,” I gasp. “I’m
so
sorry.” I reach a hand down to help him out of the water.

The hand that grasps my own is not human. It’s five times the size of my hand, and it has three talons instead of fingers. It curls hard around my wrist, the talons closing in, drawing blood.

Wide-eyed, I look from it to Brody’s face, and before my eyes, Brody transforms back into the monster he had been when I shoved him into the water.

I scream. I can’t help it. I scream, not because of the monster, but because I have lost my mind so thoroughly that I can
feel
the pain of the cuts the talons are making in my wrist; I can feel the blood running down my arm and dripping onto the rocks and into the water.

And then I hear other people around me start screaming. Panic. There is panic all around me. I look up, away from Brody or the monster or whatever it is, and the fishermen are abandoning their lines, fleeing from the pier, casting terrified glances back at the water.

It’s not just me
, I think. It’s not just me, and the relief of that distracts me enough that it is a moment before I think to struggle against Brody’s hold. Brody tugs me, trying to pull me off the pier and into the water with him. I flail with my free hand, trying to throw my weight backward.

And then Kelsey grabs my hand. Our gazes connect. Kelsey glances at the water, where Brody, snarling, continues to pull, kicking up huge amounts of water that cascade over Kelsey and me, where we are struggling together against him. I kick and manage to collide solidly with the thing’s head as it is advancing toward us, and I feel its grip weaken, and I kick again and manage to get free, squirming away from the edge of the water.

I stumble to my feet, and then Kelsey and I, in wordless agreement, run, joining the mass exodus. The people on the beach had been close enough to see what was happening, and they had started running too. As we all run, our panic is infectious, catching up the rest of the park-goers who didn’t see anything but still register that there is something terrible to see. I look over my shoulder as we reach the willows, and the monster is drifting farther into the harbor, still splashing up huge amounts of water as it flounders around.

Andy is standing by the car, frowning at the melee all around him. He frowns at us too. “Where the hell have you been? And what happened to you?”

Kelsey pulls open the car door. “Get in the car and drive, Andy,” she snaps.

I dive into the backseat. It doesn’t seem like the monster is following us, but I don’t care to find out.

“Hang on!” Andy exclaims. “You’re
ruining
the car!”

“
Drive
,” Kelsey shouts at him and shoves him into the driver’s seat.

“Where’s Brody?” Andy asks.

Kelsey, having joined me in the backseat, leans forward, grabs the car keys out of his hand, pushes them into the ignition, and turns them. “Drive,” Kelsey tells him. “Right now.”

“Monster!” someone running by the car screams at us. “There’s a
monster
!”

“See?” says Kelsey. “
Drive
.”

Andy slams the car into drive and squeals us out of the parking lot. “What the
hell
?” he says. And then, “We can’t just leave Brody.”

“We didn’t,” Kelsey assures him and turns to me. “You okay?” She is examining the wounds on my wrist, the bright red blood still pooling out of them, although less urgently now.

I am soaking wet and freezing, but I don’t think my teeth are chattering from the cold. “Yes,” I say.

“We didn’t?” Andy says. “What the hell do you call this?”

Kelsey looks at me. “Was that monster Brody?”

“Was the
monster
Brody
?” echoes Andy from the front seat.

“I think so,” I say, locking my gaze with Kelsey.

She believes me. I can tell she believes me. I no longer feel like I’m going crazy. The boy I was kind-of-sort-of dating just turned into a hideous monster while I was kissing him. Why can’t I just be
normal
?

No wonder my aunts don’t want me to leave the house.

We get back to Beacon Hill, and I am still shaking uncontrollably. Andy just keeps saying, “What the hell? What the
hell
?” over and over again. Kelsey is biting furiously at a nail. She is silent most of the ride, which I appreciate, because I am exhausted and my head is pounding.

“What should we do?” Kelsey asks as we drive up Beacon Street. “I mean, we should tell someone. About Brody. We should—”

“We can’t tell them Brody turned into a
monster
,” Andy says from the front seat. “Are you crazy? That’s not what happened. He’s
Brody
. He’s…terrible at beer pong.”

Maybe I did imagine this whole thing. It seems like I could have. And yet other people saw it. I don’t know. I’m so confused.

I close my eyes for a moment, trying to think. “I don’t know,” I say eventually. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll ask my mom,” Kelsey decides. “She’ll know what to do. Don’t worry about this. I’ll take care of it.”

It feels good to hear that, because I don’t have any idea what to do next. I feel helpless and powerless and, frankly, on the verge of collapse. I refuse Kelsey’s offer to come inside with me, and in fact, I don’t go inside at all. I sit on the front steps shakily and watch Andy’s car drive off.

And I’m sitting there, terrified that I’m losing my mind and terrified that I’m
not
losing my mind, and what I want at that moment, more than I want anything else in the world, is
Ben
. Ben, who doesn’t think I’m normal and thinks that’s
fantastic
.

I find myself dashing across Beacon Street and onto the Common in search of him, and he is standing behind his lemonade cart. I don’t even know whether he’s serving a customer or not. I just fly directly at him, and he catches me awkwardly with a little
oof
noise.

“All right,” he says soothingly, his arms lifting up to enclose me against him, and I don’t feel claustrophobic; I feel safe. “What happened? You’re soaking wet.”

And Ben hates to be wet. The thought changes my sob to a bubble of laughter, and I lift my head up. Ben is Ben. Not a monster. He is Ben, with his thick, curly, dark hair and moonbeam eyes. He looks at me, concerned, like I’ve lost my mind. But I only thought I lost my mind today. Today, the craziest thing actually
happened
. Maybe everything I think is crazy in my life is actually
real
, and I’m not crazy at all. Maybe my father is the sanest person of all.

Maybe, after all, this
is
normal. My version of it anyway.

“I kissed a boy, and he turned into a monster and possibly tried to kill me,” I tell Ben. “I don’t think that’s normal. Is that normal?” I feel almost like laughing as I ask the question. It’s possible I’m hysterical.

Ben, to his credit, barely blinks at this story. Because Ben has never expected—or apparently even desired—normality. He says, “What did you do to him?”

“Pushed him into the water.”

“Good,” says Ben.

Good
, he says. I tell him this crazy story and he just says
good
. “I don’t think he could swim. I think I killed him.”

“You didn’t. He’ll be fine.” Ben is walking us now, away from the lemonade cart and the subway station, toward my house. His arm is still protectively around my shoulders, even though I’m wet, and I’m grateful for that.

“How do you know that?” I ask.

“Because I know everything,” replies Ben. “Because I am older and wiser than you. And an expert in things that aren’t normal.”

“Shut up,” I say weakly, and he grins at me, and I can’t help it—I should be angry at Ben, but I’m not. Not anymore.

“And the things I could tell you, Selkie,” Ben continues as we cross Beacon Street. “Like sometimes attractive men are goblins. And sometimes people who sew are sewing much more than lace.” We stop at the foot of the stairs leading to my town house, and I face Ben, and Ben looks down at me solemnly. “And always you are the most important thing, and I just want you to be safe. And even though it might make you safer, I would never wish, not for even a heartbeat, for you to be normal. Because then, if you were normal, I would have missed out on
you
.”

He is being very serious, I can tell. I look at him in bewilderment. There is too much in this speech. And none of this is normal. “I don’t understand what that means. Nothing makes any sense.”

“Everything makes sense. It’s just a different sort of sense. Your type of normality. I’ll tell you all about it someday.”

“Someday when?”

“Not now. Someday later.”

“When?” I demand again.

“Years from now. Or tomorrow. Depends on how you’re keeping time.”

“It isn’t the clock that’s wrong,” I say, thinking of the grandfather clock in my house. “It’s the time that you’re keeping that’s wrong.”

“Who told you that?”

I shake my head a little bit. I don’t want to get into it now. My head hurts and I am tired, and the normal boy I tried to kiss turned into some kind of monster right in front of me. I can’t keep up with it. This is apparently what happens when I go out looking for something normal. I get all of this.

“You’re keeping the right kind of time, Selkie. Trust me.”

I look up at him. “Do you really think I should? I still don’t know anything about you. And that isn’t normal.”

“Would you want me another way?” asks Ben, and I can’t tell if he is anxious about this or just teasing me.

“I’m done with boys,” I tell him wearily. “I’m done with dates. I’m done with
being
normal
if this is what it’s like.”

“Good,” he says and grins. Then he picks up my hand and bows over it, playful. He looks at me and winks and brushes his lips over my knuckles, mockingly formal. And I know he means this as a joke, but my heart stops beating and then claws its way into my throat, and I freeze there, heat pulsing where his mouth brushed my skin.

“Good,” he says again and turns and crosses Beacon Street, disappears onto the Common, and I stand and stare after him, hot and cold and kind of embarrassingly in love.

***

I don’t tell my aunts what happened at Salem Willows. I don’t know what to say about it. Maybe if I don’t say anything, it won’t be real. Maybe I’ll find out it was all a dream.

They say, “How was your day?”

And I say, “I…” because I don’t know what else to say about it.

And they say, “Would you believe that the birds have taken up gambling again?”

And I say, “The who?”

And they say, “Also, the gnomes are trying to live in the window boxes.”

And I end up saying nothing. I go to bed practically shivering with confusion about what I should do.

When I drag myself into Bourne’s the next morning, thinking only about talking it out with Kelsey, the newspapers are full of news about the “sea monster” spotted in the harbor near Salem Willows. Really a shark, the newspaper tells us. In a very rare sighting. Who grabbed a Boston teenager who happened to be too near the water.

Kelsey and I read the story together, and then read it again. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I think of Brody, turning into a monster in my arms, of his talons closing onto my wrist. I look down at the wounds those talons left behind. But they’re not there anymore. Did I really imagine all of that? I’m so confused.

“That’s not how I remember it happening,” I tell Kelsey.

“No,” Kelsey agrees. “That was no shark.” She pauses. “Maybe our brains tricked us? Maybe it’s a coping mechanism, to help us deal with what we saw?”

“So really what happened was a shark attack? And instead of letting us remember a shark attack, our brains have decided it’s better if we think we remember a boy turning into a monster while I kissed him?”

“I don’t know.” Kelsey sounds exhausted, which is so different from how energetic and bubbly and enthusiastic she usually sounds. “Poor Brody.”

I want to feel something about Brody being involved in a terrible shark attack. But I can’t feel anything. I’m numb. All I can think about is opening my eyes to see Brody as a monster in front of me. Maybe that’s why my brain isn’t letting me remember it the way it happened. Or maybe I’m just going insane like my father.

***

I go to Brody’s funeral. I don’t tell my aunts where I’m going. It is mostly populated by his friends, and the word goes around that his family was too distraught by everything that happened to be at the funeral. I can understand that.

Afterward, Kelsey and I go and sit on the Esplanade, watching the sun set behind the buildings. Twilight is falling, and it is bringing a chill with it. The summer is almost over, dying right in front of our eyes. I am really sick of death.

Kelsey says, out of nowhere, “My dad left us last year.”

I look at her in surprise. “What?”

“That’s why we had to move. Dad left and… The thing is, he is my real dad. My mom’s not my real mom. She adopted me. And she’s the one who’s still here. She’s the one who really loves me. Does that make any sense? It doesn’t seem
right
.” Kelsey sounds so frustrated and so hurt. “I’m so glad I have my mom. I love my mom more than anything. But I can’t stop being angry at my dad.”

“I know,” I say understandingly, and then I say something I’ve never said, not once, in my entire life. “My mom left me too. When I was just a baby, she left me on my father’s doorstep.”

Kelsey looks at me. “Really?”

I nod.

“Which do you think is worse?” Kelsey asks musingly, but she asks it with a forced lightness, like she is trying to make it into a joke.

“Let’s just agree that both situations are pretty bad,” I tell her.

“Deal,” she says. There’s a pause. The sky is nearly entirely dark now, just a few red clouds clinging to the idea of day. “Do you ever think of trying to find her?”

“Do you ever think of trying to find your dad?” I counter.

“No,” she says firmly. “If he wanted me, he could come find me. It’s not like I’m hiding.”

I wonder the same thing about my mother, really. I say, “Sometimes I think I’d like to know more about her than I do. But it just doesn’t seem like the right time yet. I just don’t feel like I’m ready.” I think of all the weird things that happen around me, all the things I can’t make sense of. And I don’t know anymore:
Are
they weird? Are they perfectly normal and my sense of normality versus weirdness is skewed? I had no idea Kelsey’s father had left her. Maybe it’s more normal than I think, my odd home life. It’s not like I have any other experience.

And my life is
my
life
. It’s weird and crazy, but I don’t really want another one. Would I like to know my mother? Yes. Of course. Would I like to really know my father? Yes to that too. But I love my aunts, and I know they love me. And I love my father, and I know he loves me; and if I start to push against these things, would I lose everything I have? In favor of what? Things I don’t have?

I
don’t ask questions
, I think. I never ask questions. Boys turn into monsters while I’m kissing them and the sewing of lace is cause for alarm and the gnomes are getting smarter and breaking into the oven. And I
don’t ask questions
. I let it all wash over me. Because I’m such a huge coward.

I bring my knees up and wrap my arms around them in the chill of the twilight and press my face into my lap. Kelsey sits next to me, silent and accepting, and I feel better for having her there. And I realize this is what it means to have friends. How perfectly, utterly, beautifully normal.

And maybe Kelsey and I can find our way to normal together. Maybe we’ll find my mother and we’ll find Kelsey’s father. Maybe I’ll learn Ben’s last name, and where he’s from, and why he thinks that my particular brand of normality is the best sort of normality. Maybe together, Kelsey and I will shake up all the boring normal of Boston’s Beacon Hill, all of its unchanging-ness, and have amazing adventures, and we will just change the
world
.

Or maybe we’ll just find our way to making our own sort of normality.