The Secret to Lying (18 page)

JESS ARRIVED TUESDAY EVENING.
She stood on the front steps in a black skirt and dress shoes, even though snow blanketed the ground. Her shirt was buttoned high enough to cover the Japanese characters tattooed on her chest. She kept her dark hair in a ponytail, with a few loose strands arranged over her cheek and eyebrow piercing. To top it off, she held a bouquet of irises between both hands like a flower girl in a wedding.

“Here you go, Mrs. Turner,” she said, handing Moms the bouquet.

My jaw dropped. I’d never heard Jess call anyone Mrs. — not even teachers, who she usually had perverted nicknames for.

“Goodness, flowers in winter,” Moms said. “You are the sweetest thing.” She hustled Jess into the kitchen to get a drink of hot chocolate and warm up. Jess smiled at me as she passed, but with Moms talking up a storm, we didn’t have a moment to ourselves.

“Now, you have to tell me,
Jessica,
” Moms said, “how do you get your hair to do that? It’s adorable. Do you think I could get away with it?” Moms pulled her hair back into a ponytail, letting a few strands fall onto her cheek. Her hair was longer and curlier than Jess’s, so it looked frumpy. “Or am I too old?”

“Too old? I can’t believe you’d say that, Mrs. Turner,” Jess replied. “You look great.”

“Please, call me Hannah. If you call me Mrs. Turner, I’ll have to check into a nursing home.”

The two of them went back and forth like that, talking about haircuts and fondling each other’s clothes. Moms offered to give Jess the “grand tour” (which only lasted a few minutes since our house isn’t very big). She explained the “themes” she had for decorating each room, and how she planned on getting the couch re-covered and finding new curtains. I waited for Jess to roll her eyes and yawn. Instead, she kept encouraging Moms, acting interested at all the right moments.

“You have such beautiful things,” Jess said.

“It’s a work in progress,” Moms replied. “I keep getting ideas from magazines.”

Dad worked in the basement until dinner was ready. “I won’t shake your hand,” he said when he finally emerged. He held up his hands to show Jess the grease stains he’d gotten from repairing a TV. That was his hobby — he had a whole wall of old TVs in the basement that he’d fixed. I don’t know why he bothered. No one ever watched them.

We ate in the dining room. Moms had made me set the table with her “silver” and “nice” plates before Jess arrived. Jess commented on how pretty things looked, even though the dishes had been out of style for at least ten years. I figured Jess’s comment must be ironic, but Moms didn’t catch it. She lapped the praise right up and went on to describe her plans for redecorating the dining room, and what light fixtures she wanted, and how muted colors were in, rambling on and on as if changing the color of the walls would magically turn our drab house into a palace.

“Who cares about crown moldings?” I said.

Moms glared at me.

“Actually, I like hearing about design,” Jess said. “I’m thinking of majoring in design.”

“See, honey?” Moms replied. “I know what I’m saying.”

Dad muttered something about how all the changes would cost a lot. Which got Moms talking about her business selling Avon.

“Oh, I love Avon,” Jess cooed.

“Me, too. It won’t be long before I’m driving a pink Caddy.”

“That’s Mary Kay,” I said.

“Avon gives out pink Cadillacs, too. Or is it a red one? Red’s better.”

“Red’s my favorite color,” Jess said. “But it has to be the right shade of red. I can’t stand weak reds.”

Moms started listing all the different shades of red that Avon carried. I kept looking at Jess, trying to share some inside joke with her, only she didn’t look back. Luckily, there wasn’t any dessert, so we were able to slip away on the pretense of getting ice cream.

Moms raised her eyebrows. “Ice cream? In winter?”

“Let them go,” Dad said.

I couldn’t leave the house fast enough. Jess had borrowed her dad’s car — a green Ford with splotches of rust around the wheel wells. She offered to let me drive since I knew the town. “It’s no race car,” she said, handing me the keys.

“I’ll be gentle.” I hopped behind the wheel, neglecting to mention that legally I wasn’t supposed to drive after dark with a learner’s permit. We went to 7-Eleven and bought a pint of Chunky Monkey, then sat in the parking lot, eating it with plastic spoons.

“Told you I was good with parents,” Jess said.

“Great. I hope you win a flipping Oscar.”

“I think your mom likes me.”

“Sorry about that,” I said, prying out a fudge nugget.

“About what?”

“My mom.”

“Why? She’s nice. Your parents aren’t what I expected at all.”

I nearly choked on the ice cream. “How so?”

Jess shrugged. “After some of the stories you told me, I pictured your dad passed out on the couch with a case of Bud Light on his belly while your mom chain-smoked and ran a phone sex line.”

“I wish.”

“You’re lucky to have nice parents,” Jess said.

“Nice is the same as boring.”

“Believe me, I’d take boring over messed-up and missing any day.”

I stared out the window. Jess had told me once that she hadn’t seen her mother in years. Compared to what she’d been through, my problems seemed childish.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

Jess put her hand on my thigh. “So what do you do around here for fun?”

I thought of my dreams, and how I’d betrayed White Blade. My leg jerked, shaking her hand off.

She gave me a perplexed look.

“Let’s go someplace,” I said.

“We are someplace.”

“You want to go someplace that isn’t a parking lot?”

“Fine.” She shoved the lid back on the ice cream and tossed the pint onto the floor. “It’s your call.”

I drove for a while on backstreets. There weren’t many cars out, and the sky had this eerie, orangish glow from the streetlights reflecting off the clouds. I headed out of town, pretending that I was leaving for good.

“Where are we going?” Jess asked.

“This place I know.”

“Where?”

“It’s just a few miles,” I said, even though I had no clue where I was heading. The road I’d turned onto didn’t have any signs, and there was nothing but cornfields on both sides. Fog swirled in the headlights, making it hard to see more than thirty feet ahead. “Just wait,” I added, trying to sound mysterious. “You’ll love it.”

“Do you even know where you’re going?”

“Of course.” I gripped the wheel, hoping that something would come up — some park or abandoned barn. Some place worth seeing. If I could just keep driving, things had to change and I could tear away from my past and shed my nightmares like they were all part of a lame costume I’d been wearing. Then I’d be reborn as someone different. Someone better.

Jess slumped in her seat, putting her feet on the dash. “You’re so full of it,” she said.

“Trust me, okay? It’s going to be great.”

“What is?”

“Don’t you want to get away from all this?”

“Get away from what?” she asked.

“From everything.”

“From me?”

I thought of my nightmares again. The deadening buzz of the Nomanchulators filled my head, pushing closer now. “You don’t understand,” I said. “People are after me.”

“You’re such a liar.”

“I’m not lying.” I pressed on the gas, and the road blurred beneath us. The stubble of cut-down cornfields on both sides sprawled into an endless gray emptiness. There had to be something more than this.

A yellow sign with a curving black arrow emerged out of the fog.

“Slow down!” Jess yelled.

I turned the wheel, but it was too late — the car kept sliding forward. We slammed into the ditch and spun across the frozen mud. Snowflakes sparkled in the headlights with sudden, exquisite clarity. I don’t know if I had my foot on the brake or the gas, but it seemed to take a long time before we finally stopped.

Each heartbeat shook my chest, rattling me awake. Jess stayed silent, staring straight ahead.

“Wow,” I said, when my breathing had calmed enough to talk.

Jess didn’t respond.

I reached for her hand, but she pulled it away. “Are you all right?” I asked.

She buried her face in her arms and cried.

. . . this thing of darkness I

Acknowledge mine.

—
THE TEMPEST, ACT 5, SCENE 1

WE ENDED UP HAVING TO CALL
a tow truck to pull her dad’s car out, but Jess had roadside assistance, so it wasn’t a big deal. Luckily the car seemed to drive okay, although it had gotten pretty muddy. Jess wouldn’t speak to me for the whole two hours it took to get the car out and drop me off. I e-mailed her a few times in the days that followed, offering to pay for anything wrong with the car. She didn’t reply. Ghost44 didn’t log on again either, so the second half of my break ended up being lonelier than the first.

Even my dreams were lonely. I didn’t want to see the guides anymore — not after how they’d tricked me into binding White Blade. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stop dreaming. Nearly every night, I wandered the empty streets of the city alone, terrified that it was only a matter of time before the Nomanchulators caught me.

The one good thing that happened was that I did okay on my exams. No one from the administration called after my grades were reported, so I figured I wasn’t kicked out. I couldn’t wait to return to ASMA.

Dad drove me back to campus early Sunday afternoon. He offered to help me carry my stuff into the dorm, but I only had a backpack full of books and a laundry basket of clothes that Moms had washed and folded for me.

“I got it,” I told Dad, slinging my backpack over my shoulder and grabbing the basket.

Dad pulled a plastic grocery bag out of the trunk. “Your mom packed some snacks for you.”

Through the plastic, I could see the outline of several ramen packets. “Can you put them in the basket?”

Dad looked at the door. “You sure you can carry all this?”

“No problem,” I said.

He must have sensed that I wanted to be on my own, because he didn’t argue with me. Instead, he tucked the bag into the corner of the laundry basket and gave my shoulder a pat. “Stay out of trouble,” he said.

I told him good-bye and hurried into my dorm, eager to see friends, and hang out, and be someone again, but when I entered my room, things looked different.

It took me a moment to realize that my bed was missing. Everything — the mattress, sheets, pillow, comforter — had disappeared. Dickie’s bed was gone, too, and I couldn’t find any of the clothes I’d left in my closet. I was about to check the number on the door to make sure I had the right room, but duh — my posters still covered the walls.

Maybe I’d been kicked out after all, I thought. The RCs might have put my stuff in boxes, and Dickie might have moved to a different room. Everyone probably knew I wasn’t supposed to be here anymore.

I searched my room again. Then I opened the bathroom door. All the missing things, including my mattress, had been jammed into the shower.

I had to admit the prank was pretty impressive, but my relief at realizing that I hadn’t been expelled quickly changed to cursing when I opened the glass door and water poured out. The Steves had turned the shower on.