The Thing About the Truth (22 page)

“Why not?”

“Because then someone might
know
.”

“Okay,” I say, shaking my head. “We need to start over. What the hell are you talking about?”

“Me and Dave.” She pulls a Jolly Rancher out of her bag, unwraps it, and then starts sucking on it nervously.

“What about you and Dave?”

“We hooked up.”

“Ohmigod!”

“I know.” She’s whispering now, and her eyes are huge.

“Why are you looking so scandalized?” I ask. “This is a good thing, right?” I launch myself up onto the stack of gymnastics mats against the wall and sit there, my legs dangling over the side.

“I’m not sure,” Chloe says. “And you can’t tell anyone! I don’t want anyone to know about it.”

“Like who?”

“Like any of my friends.” She looks around again, like these alleged friends might be hiding behind the shelves of volleyballs, ready to jump out and catch her in the middle of her Dave story.

“Why not? Won’t they be happy for you?”

“No,” she says. “None of them know that I like him.”

I stare at her, and my mouth drops open. “None of your friends know that you like Dave?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Um, hello,” she says, pulling herself up and sitting next to me on the mats. She pulls out another Jolly Rancher and offers it to me. “Because it’s embarrassing.”

“It is?” I ask, taking the candy and popping it in my mouth. Watermelon. Yum.

“Yeah,” she says. “I mean, think about it. If I told my friends I like Dave, they’d always be asking me about it and giving me sympathetic looks when he hooks up with other people, and just . . . ugh. Annoying.”

This, I understand. When I first started liking Rex, I
didn’t want anyone else to know, even Rielle. Actually, especially Rielle. Rielle’s one of those people who’s used to getting whatever guy she wants. She doesn’t understand why you might want to keep your crush a secret. More than likely she would have wanted me to go for it, which I wasn’t ready for. When Rex and I finally did get together, Rielle was shocked, but I played it off like I’d just started liking him.

“Plus I didn’t want him finding out,” Chloe says, “and my friends kind of have big mouths.”

There’s a knock on the door to the gym closet, and Chloe and I freeze. I hold a finger to my lips.

The knock comes again, and then Isaac’s voice. “Kelsey? Open the door. I saw you go in there.”

“Oh,” I say, letting out the breath I’ve been holding. “It’s just Isaac.”

“Come in!” Chloe calls.

Isaac appears in the doorway, followed by Marshall.

“Hey,” Isaac says. It’s the first time I’ve seen him all day, and I smile. He looks gorgeous in a soft-looking navy-blue cashmere sweater and jeans. “What are you guys doing in here?”

“Making out?” Marshall asks hopefully.

“No,” I say, “we were just . . .” I try to think of a plausible excuse for why we would be hanging out in a closet. I don’t want to tell them Chloe’s secret. It’s not my place.

“I was telling Kelsey about how I hooked up with my friend Dave,” Chloe reports like it’s nothing, and then jumps down from the mats.

“What?” I screech. “How come you can tell them?” Did she not just remember that she was supposed to be keeping this a secret?

“They’re not going to tell anyone,” she says. “They don’t even know Dave.”

“Who’s Dave?” Isaac asks.

“Dave Cash?” Marshall asks. “Who graduated last year? That dude’s a tool.” He’s bouncing a basketball on the ground, weaving it between his legs. He actually has really good ball control, which you’d never be able to guess just by looking at him.

“I need a male perspective,” Chloe says, turning to Isaac and ignoring Marshall’s comment. “What do I do now?”

“You want to hook up with him again?” Isaac asks.

“Yes.”

“Oooh, you should go over to his dorm with lingerie on,” Marshall says. “And high heels.” He leans back on the stack of tumbling mats and looks her up and down. “Maybe under one of those trench coats. You know, like a flasher. Hot.”

“Way too obvious,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t want him to know how much I like him.”

“So you want to keep it casual,” Isaac says, nodding. “Invite him out somewhere. But not on a date. To a party or something. A small one, though, so you don’t end up getting all drunk and separated from each other.”

“A small party! That sounds perfect.” Chloe looks over at me. “Can you have one?”

“A party?” Is she crazy? Then I realize she doesn’t understand or know anything about my family situation. “No,” I say, “I definitely cannot have a party.”

“Please?” she says, walking over to me and holding out another Jolly Rancher as a bribe. “Just a few people. Not that many.”

“I can have a party,” Isaac says.

“You can?” Chloe asks, whirling around and looking at Isaac like he’s her savior.

“Sure.” He shrugs. “Why not? We can pretend we’re working on our project or something, and let my dad take a picture for his website. He’ll love it.”

“But we won’t really be working on the project, will we?” Chloe asks, sounding kind of panicked.

“No,” Isaac says. “We’ll really be providing a place for you and Dave to get it on.”

I push him on the shoulder.

“What about me?” Marshall asks. “Am I invited?”

“Yes, you have to come,” Chloe says. “Otherwise, it will be like a double date. And I don’t want Dave to think I set it up that way.”

“Okay, so it’s all settled,” Isaac says. “We’ll do it this weekend?”

Chloe nods. “But in the afternoon,” she says, “so that it doesn’t look too obvious.” We all go traipsing out of the closet, with Marshall muttering something sarcastic about how fun it is to be the fifth wheel.

•  •  •

Later that afternoon I get called down to the main office. There’s a letter waiting for me there from Concordia Prep saying that they accept our invitation for Face It Down Day and will be sending a select group of students over. Kristin, the president of the student council, writes that she can’t wait, and asks me to let her know if there’s anything else she can do. Which there isn’t, partly because I’m on top of it, and partly because I don’t want her getting too involved because then she’ll be able to take some of the credit.

When I read the part about her selecting a small group of students, I have a moment of panic. That small group of students better not include anyone I don’t like and/or want to avoid, like Rex or Michelle or Anna. But how can I make sure of that?

I text Rielle, inviting her to meet me after school at our fave bakery, Pria’s.

“You want something,” she says as soon as I walk in.

“No, I don’t,” I say, putting a fake shocked look on my face. “I’m totally just here out of the goodness of my heart.”

“How good is your heart?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean is it good enough that you’ll buy me a cupcake?”

“Of course.” I stand next to her in the line in front of the counter. Rielle came right from school, and so she’s still wearing her uniform. It’s kind of hot out, though, and so she’s rolled down the top of her skirt to make it shorter. She’s also unbuttoned the bottom of her shirt and tied it in the front, revealing
the tiniest bit of stomach. Most of the guys in here can’t keep their eyes off her. She’s like a schoolgirl fantasy come to life.

We order our cupcakes (cherry jubilee and vanilla for her, chocolate buttercream for me), and head over to the side of the café and sit down at one of the few empty tables.

“So,” Rielle says, “how are things?” She gathers her hair up into a ponytail and then takes a bite of her cupcake.

A guy in a suit next to us is practically drooling as he tries to pretend he’s not looking at her. Rielle, of course, is oblivious. Not for the first time, I wonder what it would feel like to be like that, to be so beautiful that you don’t even realize people are watching you, to be so confident that you don’t ever have to worry about being nervous or feeling self-conscious. I’ve spent what seems like my whole life trying to pretend I’m that way. What would it be like to have it just come naturally?

“I’m good,” I say. “You?”

“Excellent.” She takes another bite of cupcake.

I decide to cut right to the chase. “So listen,” I say, “have you heard about this Face It Down Day thing that we’re doing?”

“Sort of,” she says. “You’re inviting a bunch of us to your school, right?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Are you going to come?”

“Of course,” she says. “It gets us out of classes for the whole afternoon.”

“Awesome,” I say. “Any idea who else is coming?”

“Dunno.” She shrugs and licks a bite of frosting off her lips. “Probably the usual suspects. Whoever’s on Kristin’s good side.”

“You’re on Kristin’s good side?”

“For now,” she says. “She beat me on a math text last week.” Kristin’s always been supercompetitive when it comes to grades, and she sees Rielle as her biggest competition. So if she’s beating Rielle, she’s nice to her. When Rielle beats Kristin, Kristin hates her.

“Perfect,” I say. “So can you make sure that Rex doesn’t get invited?”

Rielle sets her cupcake down. “Gasp!” she says. “Kelsey! Is it true that you’ve invited me here to ply me with processed sugar in an effort to get me to agree to some plan you’ve concocted to make sure certain people you don’t want to see don’t end up at your event?” She pretends to be outraged.

“Yes,” I say. She gives me a look. “Come on,” I say, “you knew I was up to something.”

She thinks about it. “And how am I supposed to accomplish this crazy task you’ve laid out?”

“Go to the student council meetings? And make sure you bring up objections to the final list?”

“Ooooh, Kelseyyyyy,” she says. “Those meetings are so long and boring.”

“Please, Rielle,” I say. I think about bringing up the fact that she lied to me a couple weeks ago, but I don’t really want to go there if I don’t have to.

“Fine,” she says finally, “I’ll do it. But you are so buying me another cupcake.”

Kelsey

“So you were sent a list of people who would be coming to Face It Down Day?” Dr. Ostrander asks. “From Concordia Prep?”

“Yes.” I nod. “It was a list of about fifty students, all different grades, all different types.” My heart is beating a million miles a minute, I guess because now we’re getting down to it. Now we’re going to really talk about what happened that day. And I don’t know how it’s all going to turn out.

“And you and Isaac went over that list?” Dr. Ostrander asks. He pulls a copy of it out of the file folder in front of him and runs his eyes down the students’ names.

“Yes.” I nod again. “And then we put an open call out to our school asking for volunteers from Concordia Public. We
got a huge response, so we made them all fill out a questionnaire asking them about themselves and why they were so interested in Face It Down Day.”

“And you picked fifty students from our school as well?”

“Yes. Isaac and I went through the applications, along with Chloe and Marshall.”

“Kelsey had the final say,” Isaac reports.

“No, I didn’t.” It’s true, too. I didn’t. We all went through the applications together, and we all picked the students together.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Isaac says, giving a sarcastic laugh. “That’s right, I got confused. She didn’t have the final decision about the students from
our
school. But she did try to keep certain people off the list from Concordia Prep.”

“Is that true?” Dr. Ostrander asks.

I want to know how Isaac knows this.

“I told my friend Rielle that we didn’t want any drama, and that she should keep that in mind when deciding which Concordia Prep students got invited to Face It Down Day,” I say. Semantics, but whatever.

“So you tried to fix it,” Isaac says.

“And that’s why this Rex person snuck into the school?” Dr. Ostrander asks.

“No, he wasn’t . . .” I shake my head because now I’m starting to get confused. And then I feel myself start to tear up. I clear my throat and blink hard because I really, really do not want to start crying now, not when we’re so close to finishing up this meeting.

“He didn’t sneak into the school,” Isaac says. “He was invited.” He points at me. “
She
invited him.”

“I didn’t invite him,” I say. “In fact, I didn’t want him there at all.” It’s true. I specifically told Rielle not to bring him.

Isaac snorts. “You see?” he says to Dr. Ostrander. “She’s lying.”

“About what?” I ask, frustrated.

“Well,” Isaac says, talking to Dr. Ostrander, even though I’m the one who asked the question. “You just heard her say that she didn’t try to keep certain people out. But now she’s trying to say that she didn’t want Rex there at all.”