Believing Lies

by Elizabeth, Anne

“Alright, let’s go,” I told Marie. Suddenly, the sound of a door opening and closing rang through the house.

  Crap.

  Marie looked at me with wide eyes, holding on to my arm.

  “I’ll go see,” I whispered, pulling her hands off my bicep. I went for the door but felt a pull on my back. I turned around to Marie, who was trying to zip my bag.

  “What?” I asked her.

  She sheepishly held up a flashlight, swinging it around.

  I turned back around and walked out the door. I tip-toed down the hall as quietly as I could. The sound of television became louder with each step I took. I peeked into the living room to see a woman sitting on the couch. She had short black hair, and her feet were up on the table.

  Caroline.

  I felt a hand grab my shoulder, and I opened my mouth to yell but was soon muffled by another hand. I turned to see Marie standing behind me. I pushed her away from me, giving her a look.

  “I got curious,” she whispered. “Who’s that?”

  She nodded her head toward Caroline, who was chugging a beer.

  “Caroline, Ms. Cloud’s girlfriend.”

  “Does she have a daughter?”

  I slowly turned to stare at Marie. “I don’t know. Why don’t you go ask her?”

  She scrunched her face up, turning back to head to Luke’s room. I followed suit, trying to come up with a plan. When we got back to the room, I closed the door gently.

  “What now?” Marie asked, waving her flashlight.

  I looked around his room and noticed a window. I pointed to the window, sliding it open. I looked out and realized it led to a rooftop.

  Luke’s house is strangely built. His first floor is up pretty high because he had about seven feet in between the ground and his porch. His basement is above ground. It was fun to hide under the porch when we were younger but a pain right now.

  I scanned an escape plan from outside and realized what we had to do.

  “Okay, so we will go out this window and onto the roof. Then we can jump to that tree over there, climb down it enough to safely land before running.” Marie gawked at me, thinking about the plan. She nodded before stepping out of the window. I followed behind her, my feet touching the tiled roof. I watched her grab a thick branch and start monkey climbing her way to the trunk. I let her climb down and get off the tree safely before I went. I held my hands out, grabbing the same branch. My feet were still resting on the roof when I looked down. The fall was quite far. I felt a shift in the tree, and when I looked up, the branch was starting to snap. There was no backing out from the position I was in, so I had to look for a new way out.

  Splinters were cutting into my skin while I was finding a new branch. I spotted one a little closer to the ground. I swung my legs a little before jumping. I heard Marie gasp as I flew. But I caught the branch and slowly started to make my way down. I reached the grass before realizing that we didn’t have our shoes.

  “We need to grab our shoes,” I told her. I ran to the front of the house, Marie following me. I saw that the bench where our shoes were was right in front of the living room. One wrong move, and Caroline would catch us. I gulped as I climbed up the stairs, as quietly as I could. Creaking was heard all the way up, but I didn’t think it reached her ears because of the TV. Once I got to the last step, I lay down on my stomach so she wouldn’t see me from the windows. As I army crawled my way to our shoes, wood stabbed my abdomen. I finally reached the bench and grabbed our things. I repeated the same process back and handed Marie her shoes.

  “Thank god, now let’s get out of here,” she exclaimed, grabbing my wrist.

  “Marie,” I said, looking at her hands. “Where’s the flashlight?”

  She stopped in her tracks before turning to me with a terrified look on her face. I groaned, running my fingers through my hair.

  “I’ll go grab it,” she said, walking toward the side of the house. “I know where it is.”

  I watched as she scaled the tree perfectly. Then I realized something. I walked to the door and knocked on it. The TV noise shut off, and footsteps approached the door. Caroline appeared in front of me.

  “Kyle, right?” she asked. “They aren’t home right now.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “I left something here last time in Luke’s room. I was wondering if I could grab it.”

  “Of course! Take off your shoes, though,” she warned me. I slipped them off and placed them in the same place I did before and walked inside. I said thank you before running to Luke’s room. I slammed the door open to see Marie’s back. At the sound of the door opening, her body turned into a cat’s one when they get scared.

  “Who are you?” I gasped in a girly voice. Marie turned around, fuming. She started hitting me with the flashlight.

  “That’s. Not. Funny!” After she was done, she asked me, “How did you get in here?”

  “I asked Caroline.”

  She hit me a couple more times after that. I just laughed and took the hits.

  “You’re mad now, but…” I said, taking the flashlight from her. “She only knows about me, so back out the window you go.”

  Marie’s mouth gaped open, and she narrowed her eyes at me. I left Luke’s room, closing the door behind me. I said thank you to Caroline one more time before slipping out the door and grabbing my sneakers. I ran to the front of the house, just in time to see Marie jump to the tree again. Before she did, she gave me the finger.

  She handled the jumps perfectly and found her way to the ground, running at me. She put her boots on while swearing. She grabbed the bag from me and started marching down the street and back to my house. I followed closely behind her, scared of what she was going to do next. The entire walk was silent.

  When we got to my house, she just walked right in and up the stairs. I followed behind her, seeing Mom stare up the stairs. She turned to me and asked me who that was.

  “Marie,” I explained. “My new friend.”

  Mom huffed. “No girls in your room—”

  “She’s gay!”

  I ran to my room where Marie was already waiting for me. She had the bag on the floor, and she was sitting on my bed.

  “I’m sorry, but I didn’t think about it until you were already on the roof!”

  She huffed. “Whatever, let’s just look through the phone.”

  She slid off the bed and onto the floor with her back against the bed frame. I sat across from her, reaching my hand into the bag. I felt around for the phone when I felt something else. It was a book. I took it out and showed it to Marie. It had a faux leather cover and a buckle that snapped open.

  “What is this?” I asked her, throwing it in her lap.

  “A journal I found in his room,” she said, holding it in her hands. “I bet you if he did this or had any idea about it, it would be in here.”

  “I thought we were only taking the phone?”

  “We were,” she said, “until I saw this.”

  She unbuckled the book and started flipping through the pages. I went back into the bag for the phone until I felt it. I pulled it out and went to unlock it when Marie started talking.

  “Kyle, you need to see this.”

  She shoved the book in my face to show me a very disturbing drawing. There was a boy with a knife through his chest. The blood was running down his shirt, and his face was drawn to look like he was screaming for help.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “This journal is filled with them.” She began flipping to another page. This time it was a little boy drowning at the bottom of the pool while another boy stood above the water looking at him.

  I snatched the book, staring at the picture.

  Is that Max?

  Is that me?

  “I think it’s Luke’s drawing journal,” Marie said. I stood up, dazed by what I was seeing.

  “It can’t be,” I said. “There must’ve been a mistake. Luke wouldn’t have drawn these pictures. He wouldn’t do that.”


  “Did Luke even know Max?”

  “No,” I told her, “but kind of. He knows of him, and he knows what happened to him.”

  I threw the book onto my bed, hearing it hit the mattress. Marie stayed silent, sitting on the floor. She picked up the phone and handed it to me.

  “There’s only one way to really know if Luke would do this.”

  I grabbed the phone and sat back down. I turned it on and was greeted by Noelle and Nick. I unlocked it for the third time and was shown all his apps.

  “Where to first?” I asked Marie.

  “Texts.”

  I clicked the messenger app. The last one was from me telling him to meet me by the woods. After that, it was Noelle, saying she had a wonderful time. Then his mom asking what he needed from the store.

  An uneasy feeling rose in me, guilting me into turning the phone off. I handed it to Marie, unable to go through it any more. He was dead. It felt like I was betraying him.

  Again.

  Marie opened it, asking for the passcode. I told her, letting her look through it.

  “What are you going to look through?”

  “Deleted messages,” she told me without looking up. “I mean, if you had the phone of someone you just murdered, wouldn’t you delete messages that would seem fishy?”

  I waited a few seconds before thinking that the whole thing was ridiculous. I stood up and started pacing the room, unsure of what to do. After a few minutes, I was ready to give up.

  “Luke is disturbed, but he’s not a murderer.”

  “I wouldn’t say that just yet, Kyle,” Marie answered, throwing the phone in my direction. “Look at that.”

  I caught it, looking at the screen. At the top, it read, Deleted Messages From: Luke. I scanned the messages until one of them caught my eye. It was sent from Luke.

  Dude, I’ll kill you.

  21

  Day Thirty-Four

  “Are you serious?” Noelle asked, putting the phone and journal down. “Luke had these things?”

  Marie and I were in Noelle’s living room, giving her all the evidence we found. We told her that morning that we were coming over because we had something to show her. When we got there, I had to explain that it was about Nick. I pulled everything out of the bag and gave it to her. She scanned the pages of the book, then looked at the text messages Luke sent to him the night that he died.

  “We were in his room, and that’s where everything was,” I admitted, sitting down next to her.

  She shook her head. “No, Luke wouldn’t do that.”

  “Exactly what Kyle said,” Marie said, pacing around the room. “But it was all there.”

  Marie said she had swiped the journal from under his mattress. It was sticking out, and she noticed the cover, so she grabbed it. She knew that I wouldn’t have taken it if I had known, so she just put it in my bag.

  “No,” Noelle said in disbelief. She took a breath in, shakily letting it back out. “Luke, he wouldn’t do that. Or draw those things. Especially the thing with you and Max.”

  The drowning picture wasn’t the only thing that had Max and me in. There were multiple sketches where Max was dead at my hands. I tried to hide that it affected me so much; that one of my closest friends believed I murdered my little brother.

  “I know,” I agreed. “But they were all in his room.”

  Noelle nodded. “Yeah…” I watched as her eyes began to water a little bit. She sniffed, wiping her nose. “Nick was shot. Luke hates guns.”

  “So, we go back,” Marie stated. “Look everywhere in his room. No gun? Then he’s in the clear, and someone tried to frame him.”

  She watches too many crime shows.

  She paced the room, thinking. “Or it means he has a partner that did it for him, and he just did the beating part.”

  Noelle let out a small sob, muffling it with her hand. I tried to comfort her, placing my arm around her shoulder, but she pushed me away. My hands fell to the couch cushion, and I just stared at her.

  “Or,” Marie said again, “he already got rid of the weapon.” She looked at Noelle and realized she was crying. “Oh shoot, sorry.”

  Noelle faced the other direction, shielding us from her teary face. “No, it’s fine. I just need a minute.” She got up and went down the hall and into a room. After a few moments of silence between Marie and me, I decided to go see if Noelle was okay.

  I walked down the hall and recognized the room she went into. It was the library. We used to spend so much time there together. I barely read, but Noelle always had her nose in a book. I knocked on the door and opened it to see Noelle facing the bookshelves. The entire room was lined with oak wood shelves. You couldn’t even see the color of the walls. Bean bags sat around the room as reading spots. There was one big comfy chair in the middle of the room. It looked very odd, but with all the bookshelves, there was no other place to put it.

  “What, Kyle?” she barked, not bothering to even turn around.

  I walked further into the room. “I came to check on you.”

  “Since when do you care?”

  What the hell?

  “You know I care about you, Noelle. Why would you think—”

  “Because of everything, Kyle!” She cut me off, throwing her hands in the air as if she had just given up on something. She whipped her head around to look at me. “Last time you were here, you said that I belonged with Nick. The time before that, we kissed. And then today, you tried to hold me.”

  I shook my head. “Noelle, I was trying to help you today. You were sad—”

  “So, you decided to screw with my feelings?”

  Her whole body was facing me now. She had her arms across her chest, holding onto her shoulders. She was shaking, tears streaming down her face. She had to keep wiping them away. She stood on the other side of the huge chair as if it was a shield.

  “No,” I said cautiously. “Noelle, I never meant to hurt your feelings. I care about you because you’re my family. When you cry, it makes me upset because I don’t like seeing you hurt.”

  “That’s not love?”

  I shook my head. “It’s a different type of love. You kissed me because you were lonely and thought I was your only option.”

  Her head snapped to mine. “That’s not true.”

  “Even if it wasn’t true,” I continued, “I’m not okay with being second best.”

  “You’re not second to me,” she said.

  She walked toward me, placing her hands into my hair. Her eyes stared into mine. For a split second, I let myself think of what life would be like if I did love her like I thought I did. I let myself wonder if I could have been happy with Noelle. If we would’ve lasted forever.

  I pushed her hands away, facing the door. “Noelle, I don’t want you like that.”

  I could tell it was harsh. I felt her move away from me, taking steps back. But I knew it was needed for her to understand. Anything that I thought was love wasn’t with Noelle. She played me. Maybe not intentionally, but she did. She toyed with my feelings, and perhaps I did the same to her, which is why we wouldn’t work.

  “You said that you hated seeing me hurt.” She sniffed. “Yet you cause me the most pain.”

  I thought I would’ve been more upset about what she said, but she was simply scared. She lost her boyfriend and didn’t want to lose her best friend.

  “Noelle,” I called softly, “you don’t understand. You don’t love me. You love having someone. I was your next option.” She paused for a moment, thinking about it. “But you don’t need a boyfriend to survive.”

  I left the room, leaving her in the library. I felt like I was having the same conversation with her over and over again. She needed to get it into her head that her boyfriend was dead, and she didn’t need to replace him.

  I realized that I only wanted Noelle because I couldn’t have her. When she wasn’t dating Nick, I had no feelings for her whatsoever. I never even thought of her like that until Nick told me he did. Slowly it
started, the obsession with needing her. Noelle wasn’t trying to stop me either, though. She liked the attention. She liked having options.

  I walked back into the living room, where Marie was sitting on the couch. She stood up when she heard me coming.

  “You heard?” I asked.

  “The walls aren’t soundproof,” she said. “I’m sure the neighbors heard.”

  I laughed, plopping down onto the sofa. Marie sat next to me, kicking her feet up on my lap. Noelle came out a few moments later, her face bright red.

  “Okay, so what’s the plan?” she asked, sitting on the ottoman. Marie gave me a side-eye, and I just shrugged.

  “We haven’t gotten that far yet,” I admitted. “This was kind of the last thing we planned out.”

  Marie nodded, looking at Noelle. “We know that we should keep our distance from Luke. Unless there are other people around.”

  We all agreed, saying that it was safer that way. My phone went off, and the name Luke appeared on my screen. I stood up, fear running through my body. I felt my throat go numb, inhibiting my ability to swallow.

  “What’s wrong?” Marie asked. I showed her my phone, and her eyes went wide.

  Noelle sat up. “What?”

  “Text from Luke,” Marie told her.

  From: Luke

  Hey, I just got home from the charity event in Connecticut. I was wondering if you wanted to hang out at my house later? My mom is going out with Caroline again.

  “What does he want?” Noelle asked, trying to peek at my phone.

  “He wants to hang out with me later when his mom won’t be home,” I explained. Marie snatched the phone from my hands. Noelle shuffled over to her to see the text as well. The air around me felt thick, making it harder to breathe. I didn’t know what I was afraid of.

  Noelle said, “Just tell him you can’t. Say you need to see Mark or something.”

  I nodded, still focused on trying to catch my breath. Marie started typing something, her fingernails clicking against the screen. She turned it to Noelle for approval. Noelle grabbed the phone, read it over before pressing Send.

  I sat down. “What did you say?”