The Lies About Truth (6 page)

“Gray, I’ve told you before that there was nothing between me and Trent.”

“But there was,” he argued.

“He was practically my brother.”

Gray grabbed my hand. “He told me stuff, Sadie. He said he was going to break up with Gina. Hell, he half told me it was for you. Like it was a warning. The day of the . . . accident, when I brought it up, you said they wouldn’t, but that was a lie, and we both know it.”

Trent, dammit, why aren’t you here? Why did you leave me to deal with this?
“You’ve got it all wrong,” I said.

“That’s what
he
said.”

“Well
you
misunderstood.”

“Maybe you’re lying now.”

In a way I was.

“And now you’re with Max?” he asked. “That’s as effed up as me and Gina. What gives?”

“My life is none of your business anymore.” I grabbed my tennis shoes and stood up.

“You know, I used to be jealous of everyone,” he admitted. “Trent, because he lived next door. Gina, because she got to have sleepovers with you and listen to all your secrets. Hell, I was even jealous of your parents. They got to be in the house with you every night. I loved being with you. Even after. When you’d pretend to sleep instead of talking to me. I just wanted you to know I was there. But you turned to Max.”

“You turned to Gina,” I snapped.

We spoke at the same time and said the same thing.

“He understood.”

“She understood.”

Gray couldn’t leave it at that. “That night on the beach,” he said. “The night you caught us kissing.”

“You were on top of her.”

Gray dug his hands into his dark hair. “Yeah, I know. Not that it matters now, but we didn’t sleep together. It was only that one kiss, and I was wasted. And you should know”—Gray chewed on one of his knuckles—“she punched me afterward. We were just talking about Trent and she said she was lonely and I said I was lonely and then all of a sudden I was kissing her. And then, I’ll be damned if you weren’t there watching.”

If words could give someone vertigo, these made my world swim. “Are you drunk now?” I asked.

“Maybe a little,” he admitted. “All I’m saying is, don’t be mad at Gina. I was the
cheating asshole
.” He pulled that quote from one of my past verbal assaults.

“I was lonely too,” I said. I wanted to grab him by the shirt and yell,
Look at me!
but I didn’t. So I turned off my anger and asked, “Gray, why are you telling me this now? We’ve both moved on. There’s no magic time machine.”

“No, there’s not.” He sounded very sober. “I’ve been worried about you, Sade. And maybe Max will make you happier now that he’s back, but I can’t get you off my mind.”

“I don’t need checking on.”

“Maybe you don’t . . . but maybe I still need to check. You were my life for . . . most of my life.”

Then he said the magic, terrible words.

“I still love you, Sadie Kingston.”

What was I supposed to do with that? I mean, I still loved him, too, in a way—how could I not? But, this was the one area in which I’d made forward progress. I wanted to protect that.

The three words I said were not the
I love you too
he wanted.

“I gotta go.”

He caught my arm, just above Tennessee, the scar at my elbow. Before I could stop him, he closed his eyes and kissed me hard on the mouth.

“I’ve wanted to do that for months—”

“But you didn’t until now.” Pain replaced my anger. “Do you know how that felt?”

Do you know how it feels that you, you of all people, won’t look at me?

“I couldn’t deal,” he admitted. “But Sadie, if you need me . . .”

How nice to have the option of not dealing! I held his eyes for two seconds with a stone-cold gaze. “I needed you eight months ago. I’m a little over it now.”

If we kept having conversations like this, I’d be writing
Forgive Gina and Gray
for the next decade.

I woke up the next morning before everyone in my house, but not before the sun. The run from last night must have done its job better than I expected. After I left Gray, I ran farther than I’d ever gone, before turning around.

Gray’s words swam through my brain.
I still love you, Sadie Kingston.

When he said that, I remembered the boy I’d fallen in love with rather than the one who hurt me.

It took me a long time to tell Gray I loved him—five years, to be exact—but I knew it the summer after fourth grade. It happened at a paint-your-own-pottery camp. I roamed through various summer camps in elementary school—everything from surfing to creative writing to science. Mom needed
somewhere to put me while she worked, and I needed something to obsess over.

I’ve always been a tad obsessive.

Gina and I read about the class in the school newspaper and convinced our parents to sign us up. That was a tipping point for Trent. He’d had his eye on Gina since she’d beaten him in a race on Field Day. Trent convinced Gray that pottery class wouldn’t be too lousy, and our four mothers happily sealed the deal during one of their Wine-Down Wednesday book clubs.

One thing followed another followed another, like ants on their way to a picnic.

Gray was really skinny. He had an older sister, Maggie, and he wore her Marvel T-shirts. Being an only child, and having no T-shirts to thieve, that was super cool to me.

I set down my book and told him I loved comics.

He told me his mom read him the book I was reading. I’d read
Where the Sidewalk Ends
dozens of times, but I kept that to myself.

When Gray chose the seat next to me, I was glad he was there, rather than sad that Gina was at another table. That week I painted five things—one for each day. Gray painted one. It was a vase with a
Where the Sidewalk Ends
poem and drawing on it.

Secretly, I coveted that vase. I wished I’d thought of the idea, but I wasn’t a copier.

The last day, when we were allowed to take our pottery home, Gray didn’t show up to class.

All those hours he’d spent perfecting lines and painting and
repainting the picture of the sidewalk broke my heart.

“What will happen to Gray’s?” I asked the teacher.

“We’ll put it on the sale wall. It’s really good. Someone will buy it.”

I stuck out my lip and promised my mother an extra week of sweeping sand out of the foyer. She bought Gray’s vase for five dollars.

The night of our first date, four years later, I tried to give it back to him.

He laughed and said, “Pass me your cell phone.”

He directed the light into the vase’s small opening.

I read the scratches.

For Sadie.

“I didn’t know how to give it to you, so I told my mom I was sick,” he said, his face growing as red as a hazard flag.

“You could have just kept it for yourself,” I told him.

“No, I couldn’t. It was always yours.”

After our relationship ended, I’d thrown out the love letters and theater ticket stubs and given him back his T-shirts in a box. I’d kept the vase.

I still love you, Sadie Kingston.

I huffed.

On the bedside table were all the things Max had mailed me over the past year. I liked everything I saw—maybe I’d ride over to Willit Hill and throw the vase into the woods. After all, that was where the sidewalk ended for us.

It was far too early to think that much.

I poured a glass of orange juice and jogged out to the mailbox, enjoying the solitude of six a.m. on our street. Between the house and the end of the driveway, I convinced myself the mailbox would be empty.

I changed my mind when I tugged open the door. Another envelope with my name typed across the front was inside. I treated it like poison. Lifting it by the corner, I walked quickly back to my room so I could look at it and Big at the same time.

The typing and placement were the same as before. The secret was new.

I dared Gray to jump off the Destin Bridge. It backfired. He double-dared me to jump with him. So we did.

—From a friend

I didn’t think anyone else had known about that. People, mostly Air Force guys, jumped off the bridge pretty regularly. It was dangerous, and illegal, but the cops rarely found out in time to stop it. As a confession, this was fairly innocuous. But still, someone had been through my stuff, and that made me want to throw knives.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said aloud.

From a friend? Bullshit. A friend would talk to me. A friend wouldn’t jerk me around like this. A friend wouldn’t invade my privacy.

Someone close to me had rummaged through Big, and I couldn’t wrap my mind around why, much less who. If his or her motive was good, in some distorted way, why was he or she picking these particular memories from Big’s arsenal of thoughts? He or she had to be picking specific things. I was convinced of that. But skinny-dipping and bridge-jumping? Those were hardly blackmail-worthy events. Was the culprit leading up to something else?

Both of those nights were fun.

Was that the point of this?

Regardless, I added this note to the first one and put them between the pages of an old book. Even with them out of sight, I couldn’t sweep the questions from the corners of my mind.

Gray
randomly
appearing on the beach last night, telling me he still loved me. Was that a coincidence? He knew exactly where our spare key was. Knew I jotted down ideas and memories and put them inside Big.

It could be him.

Except this didn’t feel like him.

Gray was many things; theatrical wasn’t one of them. Trent could have hatched something like this, but Gray was a straight shooter. This was sideways and cockeyed.

I worried it was Max. Thanks to our emails, he had more than enough information to pull this off.

Stop following. Start leading.
Here was an opportunity. I needed to eliminate someone as a suspect, and I’d start with
Gray, the
friend
I could afford to lose. Throwing on a pair of crops, a loose long-sleeve shirt, and a straw hat, I hurried back outside.

Three claps greeted me from the McCalls’s back porch hammock. Max lowered his graphic novel and waved.

Gosh, he looked like Trent. Except Trent hadn’t been a reader or a sci-fi fan. Trent would be paddleboarding or fishing at the pier or renting a kiteboard or something else outside to offset the impending threat of attending college away from the beach.

“You’re up early,” I said, heading over to Max’s porch so he wouldn’t have to strain to speak.

“Jet lag. What about you?”

“Life lag,” I said with a laugh.

“You’re not bailing on shopping, are you?”

“I wish. I’m running out to see . . .” I didn’t lie to him. “I need to ask Gray something.”

Max pressed the novel flat against his chest and raised his eyebrows. “You sure about that?”

“I’ll make short work of it.”

He kept most of his thoughts to himself and instead chose to quote one of my emails to him from last October. “Remember, the edge of darkness is one sand-filled step after another looking for the right thing in the wrong place.”

“I know. I know.”

When I’d cried my heart out last October, all the tears ended up on Max’s virtual shirt. After living through the Gina
and Gray betrayal, I didn’t want Max to think this trip to visit Gray was romantic in nature. I also didn’t want to pony up about the letters. Not yet. Not while I still suspected everyone.

“This is a business call,” I said.

“You promise?”

I put my hand on Max’s shoulder and walked my fingertips up to his chin, skimming lightly over his neck. My touch brought sunshine to his dark eyes. The intimacy of that action didn’t strike me until I imagined him doing the same to me.

His hand near my mouth. His fingertips touching Idaho. His mouth on mine.
I liked to imagine things like that. Imagination was a gift I kept in my front pocket.

“Hmm,” Max said as he laid his hand over mine. We sighed ourselves into a pair of smiles. “Do I get the rest of that later?”

So far we’d made the jump from emails to flesh better than I’d expected. Now, if I could just keep my shit together and be normal . . . “We’ll see,” I said playfully.

“Hurry back.”

“I’ll try.”

“My mother hasn’t been to a mall in a year. I’ll never get her out of there without reinforcements,” Max said.

Mom and I had argued about the mall last night. Much like the home-schooling discussions, I lost with flying colors.

“Don’t worry. My attendance is mandatory,” I told him. “Spawn of Satan, remember?”

He changed his tune when he saw how anxious I was. “It won’t be that bad.”

“Says you.”

“I’ll get you out of there if you need me to.”

“How?”

“Who knows? Shoplifting. Choking. I’ll tell Mom I have to drop a deuce.”

We both laughed.

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said.

He raised his novel and said, “Me either. Now go, so you can come back.”

The trip to the beach took all of five minutes and an eternity. People were out enjoying their weekend. Joggers and walkers and bikers with bells. Military hard-asses and women in spandex. Old people in golf carts.

I tucked my chin and sped up, remembering Fletcher’s insight into my paranoia about being in public.

“Sadie, the whole world doesn’t get up in the morning just to watch you,” he’d said. “They have songs on their iPods, worries at work, relationships that suck, kids to feed. Most of them don’t have time to consider your scars.”

I’d argued that might be true for people
his age—
I’d stuck that knife in deep—but my friends were visual. We were a tattooed generation of Instagrammers. Hell, we invented the selfie.

His answer: I wish you would take a selfie.

My return: Maybe I will.

I would not be taking a selfie today.

In an hour, the beach would be full of more eyeballs. Thankfully, Gray was alone, setting up chairs and umbrellas.

I toed off my flip-flops and left them on the wooden walkway, watching Gray carry a load of twelve chairs in a box formation. This job suited him—it required someone strong enough to lift and charming enough to get the tips. The stretch between the Worthy Wayfarer and Blue Waters had been Gray’s territory since he was old enough to work.

Sweat dripped down his back as he set the chairs in place and came back for another load. He was fast and efficient, unaware of anything but his job. I waited to walk down until he started setting umbrellas. He drilled a hole in the sand with a bit longer than my leg, dropped in the umbrella, and popped it open against the wind. Gray was about to add the rubber band that kept it closed to the others around his wrist when I automatically stuck out my arm.

He slid the rubber band over my hand.

“I certainly didn’t think I’d see
you
today,” he said.

I shrugged and played it cool.

He set down the drill and tugged on my shirt. “Wish you’d go back to short sleeves,” he said.

I stared at the sun until I saw spots. “I’m used to it.”

“You want to make yourself useful?”

I didn’t, and I did. I’d promised Max this would be a quick visit, but probing Gray for information too quickly would be a mistake. Staying would make him more amiable.

I nodded.

We tag-teamed the beach the way we’d done in the past, him carrying chairs to locations, me setting them up. Him opening umbrellas, me wearing the rubber bands. We finished before the first families brought down their coolers and wagons of beach crap. Gray dusted off two chairs for us, put his clipboard on his lap, and grabbed water bottles and lotion from his backpack. “You need sunscreen?” he asked.

I did. The rays were terrible, and I’d already been out too long without SPF. Add that to yesterday’s burn, and I was on my way to lobsterdom. “Bring on the vitamin D.”

“That’s right,” he said happily.

I accepted the lotion and noticed how he still wouldn’t meet my eyes. That didn’t keep him from flirting, though.

His smirk lit his face. “You need some help with that lotion?”

I wasn’t about to let him rub down Idaho or Tennessee or any of my other scars. Shoving him away with a laugh, I said, “I got it.”

“See, don’t you like the way that works?” He slid his chair closer to mine.

“What?”

“Me flirting. You laughing.” His hand landed on my elbow
again. The same way it had been last night when he kissed me. I jerked away, not so hard that it looked rude, but hard enough to send a signal.

“Gray, you know I’m with Max.”

He passed back the water, released my elbow, and asked, “Why’d you come down here then?”

Now or never.

“So,” I began. “Any chance you put something in my mailbox recently?”

“Huh?” He lowered his cheap aviator sunglasses and stared directly at the left side of my face. “Like what?”

“Don’t play with me. You either did or you didn’t.”

“Jeez, Sade, you don’t have to be all locked-and-loaded every time we’re together.”

“I’m not all locked-and-loaded. It was a simple enough question.”

“Then, I’m not telling you if I did until you tell me what was in your mailbox.”

“An envelope.”

“Wow. Now, there’s a stretch.”

“Don’t be a jerk,” I said, even though he wasn’t being a real jerk, and I
was
a little locked-and-loaded.

“Just tell me,” he said, drawing on all his patience.

“I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?” That question had an edge to it.

I ignored it and asked my own. “Did you ever tell anyone we jumped off the Destin Bridge?”

“No.” He lifted his hand into the air. “Scout’s honor.”

“You weren’t a Boy Scout,” I reminded him.

“Not a liar, either.”

He said that, but then stared at his toes, flexing them up and down in the sand until he’d buried them in the white crystal beach. “You remember that night?” he asked without looking up.

“The night we jumped off the bridge?” I asked, a half smile already forming on my face. I wiped it away.

“Yeah.”

“Of course I do.”

Every. Single. Thing.

“I liked that night a lot,” he whispered.

I don’t know why, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of agreeing. And then I made it worse.

“You jump off the bridge with anyone else?” I asked.

“Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” I frowned at him.

“You stab the happy the second it’s in sight.”

“I’m pretty sure, of the two of us, I am not the one who stabbed the happy.”

His facial features fell like dominos: eyebrows down, eyes closed, dimples flattened, chin lowered into that thick neck. He lifted his collar to his hairline, giving himself a short break from the sun. Or a short break from me.

I leaned back in my chair and stared off toward the pier. Maybe he did the same. Maybe he teared up. Maybe he thought
about his plans for the evening.

“Well, I’ve got to go—”

“Check on the renters,” I finished, without turning toward him.

He tapped his clipboard and stood up. When he was four feet away, he turned around and came back.

“Two things.”

I knew before he put up two fingers that my straight shooter was back in town.

“One, I don’t care about your damn mailbox. And two, I didn’t.”

“Didn’t what? Put something in the mailbox?”

He shook his head at me, as if he couldn’t believe I didn’t understand the reference.

“I haven’t jumped off the bridge with anyone but you.”

He walked away.

“Gray.”

He kept walking.

I raised my voice. “Gray.”

Either the wind ate my words, or he didn’t care. I wouldn’t chase him. Not into the horde of people. And I didn’t want to. Chasing someone was a lovers’ game.