White Lies (6 page)

“Come on,” Monica said, taking her arm. “Let's go back to the table. You're missing the fun.”

They returned to the rowdy group of teachers just as the waiter brought two more pitchers of beer. Katrina sipped hers, ate a couple fries, and tried to enjoy herself. She failed spectacularly. Twice she glanced down the table at Zach and saw him chatting with a female teacher. About what? About her? About the encounter on the highway? Was he telling the truth or the Chubby Reefers version?
So the new teacher, Katrina, picks me up and we get talking, and she invites me back to her cabin on the lake. But I say slow down, woman, and she's furious and swings to the shoulder and kicks me out, in the middle of a goddamn storm. Can you believe that?
Katrina clenched her jaw. Should she go break them up? But how? Monica, she realized, was still speaking to her, telling her about some of the art galleries around town, asking her if she wanted to visit one this weekend. Sure, she said. Why not? The replies were robotic, her mouth on autopilot. Her mind was still parked down at the end of the table.

What were they talking about
?

Katrina got up and went to the bathroom, mostly to walk off the nervous energy zipping around inside her like a bad caffeine high. She stared at herself in the mirror. Told herself she was overreacting. So what if Zach told everyone what happened between them. So what. It was just an embarrassing misunderstanding. It wasn't the end of the world. Let him talk. She didn't care.

Only she did.

As soon as she returned to the table, Zach stood up, looking tall and gangly. He tapped his glass with a fork until he held everyone's
attention. “I know tonight was meant to celebrate seeing everyone again after the summer vacations,” he said with a crooked smile, and the butterflies in Katrina's stomach started beating their wings. “But I don't think it would hurt for it to double as a welcoming party for our newest teacher, Miss Katrina Burton.” Everyone clapped. Someone even whistled. “So,” he added, raising his mug and sloshing a little beer over the lip, “here's to Katrina!”

Katrina looked at Zach guardedly, the way you look at carnival barkers promising you an easy win at one of their midway games. Because was that it? That's all he wanted to say? God, she hoped so. She reluctantly stood as the table toasted her. “Thank you for putting me on the spot, Zach,” she said to a few chuckles. “As you all know, this is my first day at Cascade High School. But from what I've seen of it so far, it looks like a wonderful place to work, filled with wonderful people. Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to really get to know anyone here yet, but I look forward to doing so in the future. As a matter of fact, once I get my house together, why don't you all come by one night for dinner or something along those lines?”

This was met by a cheer and a jumbled consensus that it was a fine idea.

“Why not have it at your place on the lake?” Zach asked. His voice seemed to slice through everyone else's like a very sharp knife.

The talking stopped. Katrina's heart felt as if it had halted mid-beat. She glowered at him.

“What's this?” someone asked.

“She has a cabin on Lake Wenatchee,” Zach said.

Katrina wanted to smack him. He'd set her up from the very start.

“Really?” said Bob the math teacher. He was a bear of a man with a short, neatly trimmed beard and the booming voice of a tenor. “I think I can handle that!”

Suddenly everyone started talking at once, asking questions,
making plans. Katrina was amazed at the speed it was all happening. She felt like she was watching a tornado coming straight for her house: she knew there was nothing she could do to stop it, only pray it would change course. So how could she make the current party talk change course? Come clean and confess? Tell everyone she'd only told Zach she had a cabin on the lake because he'd frightened the bejeezus out of her and she'd wanted him out of her car? Given everyone's inebriated state, they might have laughed it off. At worst she might become a Suzy Limmick, an ostracized tattletale. After all, it seemed Zach was not held in especially high regard by anyone present. Unfortunately, this wasn't the path she chose to take.

“Actually,” she said, “this weekend's no good.”

“Why not?” Zach asked, clearly amused.

“Because—” She could feel everyone's eyes on her, expectant. A second inched by, followed by another, as equally distended and painful. Then some brain cells kicked in. “Because I don't have any furniture.”

“So what?” Zach said. “Does anyone care if there's nowhere to sit?”

The collective insisted they didn't.

Katrina wished she'd been able to think of something better to say, but any longer deliberation would have appeared to everyone to be exactly what it was: an excuse.

“So it's all good?” Zach said.

“How far is it?” Monica asked.

“Half hour,” Zach told her. “You know that.”

“I mean door to door.”

“Almost an hour,” Katrina improvised hopefully.

“I'm not driving,” someone said.

“Me either.”

“I ain't if I'm drinking.”

“Cabs?”

“Expensive.”

Just as Katrina's hopes were rising, Zach said, “What about a
bus? We can charter one. No, even better—we can get Lance to drive one of the school buses. If everyone chips in five bucks, that should cover it.”

The excitement was renewed. Katrina opened her mouth to object but couldn't think of anything to say. Monica, who must have noticed her distress, said, “Listen, hooligans. Nobody's been invited yet.”

Thank you, Monica
.

“What?” Zach said to Katrina, that knowing glint still in his eyes. “You don't want us to come?”

“Sure. Of course. To my house. When it's ready.”

“What's wrong with your cabin?”

Her mind was racing. What could she possibly say? Nothing. She was at a dead end with her lies, and she'd taken it too far to come clean with the truth. Not that she would give Zach the satisfaction of seeing her cave. She looked at him. He was smugly awaiting her response. Fury built inside her. All this was his fault. He was like a big dark cloud hanging over her that refused to go away. God, she'd never detested someone as much as she detested him right then. He was actually getting off on this.

“So?” Zach pressed.

Her protests were getting her nowhere. The more fuss she put up now, the more difficult it would be to tell a credible excuse later in the week, when she'd had time to think of a proper one. So she shrugged, which everyone took as an invitation.

It was a circus. It was a nightmare.

For the remainder of the evening, Katrina put on a show of having a good time, though she was having anything but. She felt like an absolute phony. Which she was. No doubt about it. And that's what bothered her the most. The fakeness of it all. She never lied. She was an honest person. The kind who would bring a wallet to the local police station if she found one on the sidewalk.

During the drive back to the bungalow, Katrina went over everything that had happened, and she began to realize just how close-knit the community was she had joined. At Garfield High, where she had taught in Seattle, most of her colleagues never saw
each other outside of work, choosing to hang out with their non-work friends—friends who would not bring their days home with them. Would not kill the night complaining about problem students or heavy workloads or curriculum changes. But in Leavenworth, with a population of a little over two thousand, the buffet table was slim pickings and you couldn't be so choosy. If Gary the baker was having a party, you went to Gary the baker's party. Why not? What else was going on? There certainly were no expensive clubs or restaurants. No see-and-be-seen social scenes. People, it seemed, were just people, all up for a good time, whatever and wherever that may be.

Such as a party at a cabin in the woods that didn't exist.

How had things spiraled so far out of control
?

Doesn't matter, Katrina told herself decisively. It was done. Now she had to fix it. She began thinking of excuses to get out of the mess she'd gotten herself into, but by the time she parked her car in her driveway, she hadn't been able to think of a single one.

Zach cracked open his eyes. Darkness. Had he overslept? Was he late for work? No. The room was ink black. No morning sunlight slanting through the basement hopper windows. He turned his head toward the clock. It was 10:03 p.m.

He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and sat up. The entire room tilted crazily. Christ. He noticed he was still fully dressed, jacket and shoes included. His first thought: he'd drunk too much again. Second thought: where the hell had he been? He remembered. Ducks & Drakes. The teacher thing. He'd stayed until—when? Didn't know. But it had just been getting dark when he'd wandered up his driveway. Which meant he'd only been asleep for a couple hours or so.

He stumbled to the bathroom and flicked on the light, which was way too bright for his liking. Then he took the longest goddamn leak of his life. He shook, tucked, zipped, and felt a heave in his stomach. He doubled over and vomited into the toilet bowl, which he hadn't had time to flush yet. He vomited again and again until his throat stung with gastric acid and his eyes watered with tears. A deep breath. Some relief. But he didn't get off the floor. There was still more that wanted to come out.

Zach had a fear of public spaces. He had first begun to dread them while he was a freshman in high school, and to this day he tried to avoid them, especially crowds. They made him feel exposed and anxious. At the age of thirteen he'd experienced his first panic attack while at a festival at Peace Park in Seattle. When the attacks began to occur more and more often, he did some research and concluded the culprit to be agoraphobia—a fear of
open places. Actually, it was a little more complex than that. More like a fear of places from which escape would be difficult in case of a panic attack. In a sense, people like him were afraid of their own fear. A retarded disease if he'd ever heard of one. Up there with performance anxiety, or werewolf syndrome. But that's what he had, what he had to live with.

Nevertheless, in January of his senior year everything changed. His parents had gone east to Spokane for the weekend to visit friends, and Zach had invited his buddy Marcus Elliot over for a sleepover. They broke into the liquor cabinet and took sips from all the bottles of spirits, getting smashed in the process. Marcus suggested they go cause some shit around the neighborhood. Zach's standard reaction would be to decline, but this time, numbed by the booze, he found the prospect of leaving his imagined safe place didn't bother him in the slightest. Booze was the ticket, he realized. His magic pass. It changed his life, for good and bad. The good: he could go out at night and socialize, as long as he was juiced up. The bad: he became a bit of an alcoholic in the process.

Up it came, the beer and the fries and whatever else was in his stomach, a burning projectile. Zach dry heaved until there was nothing left but fumes. But it was good for him. More relief. He felt less nauseous. Less blah. He went to the kitchen and rinsed out his mouth with a glass of water. Gave the cupboards above the counter a perfunctory glance. Nothing. At least nothing easy to prepare. He wasn't really hungry, but he wanted something to line his stomach. Needed something if he didn't want to be a walking zombie all day tomorrow. The Country Store Mini Mart would still be open. Even better, the McDonald's across the street from it.

Zach carried his Trek mountain bike up the basement stairs and hopped on it. He started down Birch Street, thinking about Big Macs and McNuggets and cheeseburgers. The night was cool, the bluish-black sky filled with stars. Not for the first time he wished there was a strip joint in Leavenworth. There wasn't. The closest was the Rainbow Roadhouse, a bar-cum-strip club outside of town. That's where he'd spent Friday night. Where he'd met
Kandy, a new dancer with nice hips and long legs and hair that smelled of watermelons. He'd paid her for a dance, then asked her out. She told him some bullshit about not dating customers. He called her a whore and spent the rest of the money in his pocket—his taxi money—on dances with other girls, to spite her. All in all it had been a shitty evening. Being caught in a downpour on the way home had made it even shittier.

And then Katrina Burton had picked him up.

Lying bitch.

The details of Ducks & Drakes might be a blur, but he could recall enough to know he didn't believe her cockamamie story about having two places, one on the lake and one in town. It was just as bad as Kandy's lie about not dating customers. Did everyone think he was a fucking idiot? Well, he got back at Kandy, sort of, and he got back at Katrina too. He smiled, replaying the toast he'd made. But surprisingly, she didn't buckle. Which meant she was either incredibly stubborn, or she was telling the truth. Where was it she'd said she lived? he wondered. Wheeler Street? Well, maybe he would do some detective work and swing on by. Because if she could afford a cabin on Lake Wenatchee, she would more than likely have something pretty grand here in Leavenworth. Simple deductive logic.

He made a quick U-turn—Wheeler was over on the west side of town, pretty much as far away as you could get from McDonald's, which was on the east side, near the school—and reached the street some five minutes later. Each property was fairly isolated from the next. Most windows were dark, except for one or two in which the bright flicker from a TV set seeped out from behind closed curtains. Zach pedaled the entire length of the road until it ended at someone's farm. He didn't spot Katrina's black Honda Civic, and he became more suspicious than ever. Had she lied about where she lived in town as well? He couldn't think of any reason why she would. Unless she was a genuine pathological liar. That would make his day, hell yeah.
Hey Bob, you hear the latest on the new teacher? Yeah, a pathological liar. Crazy. If she says she's not, she's lying. Ha
!