Lying Out Loud

by Kody Keplinger

  “If you want me to,” I said. “I just figured it would be the three of you. A family trip or something.”

  “You are family.” Wesley said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Like it was something no one could deny. The sky was blue, the Earth revolved around the sun, and I was family.

  I felt an embarrassing, unexpected lump rising in my throat. Luckily, Bianca chimed in before I had to.

  “Of course you’re invited,” she said. “Do you think we’re assholes who would talk about the trip right in front of you if you weren’t?”

  “No, but —”

  “Besides,” she said, cutting me off. “Everywhere Amy goes, you go, right? You two are like a package deal.”

  I glanced at Amy, who was selecting a french fry from the basket. Maybe we were a package deal, but lately, it hadn’t been a pretty package. She was still acting a little distant, and she practically shut down any time I mentioned Ryder, giving monosyllabic replies until she found a way to change the subject or a reason to leave the room.

  Maybe getting away from it all, taking this trip with Wesley and Bianca, would be good for us.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m coming.”

  Bianca smiled at me.

  “Excellent,” Wesley said, a twinkle in his eyes. “Someone will have to keep Amy occupied while Bianca and I sneak off to —”

  “Ew!” Amy and I both shrieked.

  “Perv,” Bianca said, but she was laughing.

  “I was going to say to go hiking,” Wesley said, all mock innocence. “It’s you three who have your minds in the gutter.”

  “Sure. Whatever you say.” Bianca popped the last fry into her mouth. “Now can we go? I’m almost twenty-one. I feel like a creepy old lady in here.”

  On our way out, I risked a glance over at Amy. She caught me and gave a small smile. It wasn’t fake, but it wasn’t quite real either.

  I told myself I would fix it. That a few days in the mountains would bring us closer again.

  Unfortunately, things got worse before they got better.

  * * *

  “Hey, Sonny?”

  I looked up from the suitcase I was packing to find Amy standing in the doorway of the guest room. There was a sweater slung over her shoulder and a pair of boots in her hand, and I knew she must’ve been packing, too. We were set to leave for Tennessee early the next morning. We’d be gone only a few days, but Bianca had warned us that it would be cold in the mountains, so layers were required. Pretty much my entire wardrobe was folded into the suitcase, plus a pair of snow boots I had borrowed from Mrs. Rush.

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. I was just wondering if I could get my phone back from you?” she asked. “Now that you have one, I figure you don’t need mine anymore.”

  “Oh, right.” I stood up and glanced around, trying to remember where I’d left it. “I’m sorry. I completely forgot to give that back.”

  “No big deal. It’s not like I missed any calls.”

  I found it in the pocket of some dirty jeans, wadded up on the floor. I held the phone out to her and she took it with her free hand.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Are you almost done packing?”

  “Yep. Got everything but my toothbrush.”

  “Definitely don’t forget that.”

  “Amy, are you saying I have bad morning breath?” I asked, feigning insult. “I’m devastated.”

  She gave a little giggle, but I noticed she didn’t deny my accusation either. “I’m looking forward to this,” she said. “This trip, I mean. I think it’ll be good to get out of Hamilton for a few days. Just the four of us, you know? No school. No distractions.”

  No Ryder.

  She didn’t say it, but she didn’t have to. I knew what she was thinking.

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “Well, I should finish packing. Thanks for the phone.”

  “Yeah. No problem.”

  When she was gone, I went back to my suitcase and began to zip it shut. I’d only moved the zipper a couple inches when I heard the little trill from down the hall. The familiar sound of a text message coming through on Amy’s phone.

  Amy’s phone.

  Amy never got text messages.

  Except from Ryder.

  Then I realized with horror that I hadn’t deleted the last few text messages we’d sent. They were from a few days ago — before Christmas, before our almost-kiss in his car — and, to make matters worse, they were of the sexier variety.

  “Oh, shit!”

  I jumped to my feet and sprinted down the hall, flinging open Amy’s bedroom door.

  But it was too late.

  She was holding the phone, staring down at the screen with wide eyes.

  “Amy,” I said slowly, my heart racing.

  She looked up at me, her shock melting into an expression I’d rarely seen her wear.

  Fury.

  “You’ve been texting him?” she asked. “You’ve been texting him these messages and pretending to be me?”

  “I can explain,” I said. Because that’s what everyone said in a situation like this. In reality, though, I didn’t even have a good lie to cover my ass.

  “I don’t think you can,” she said. Her voice was so calm, so quiet, that it sent chills up my spine. The sharp contrast between her tone and her blazing eyes was terrifying. “You were supposed to be making him not like me. You were supposed to be scaring him off so he’d like you. So we could be done with this. But all this time you’ve been …” She looked down at the phone again. “He thinks I sent these?”

  “Amy …”

  She threw the phone on the bed and turned away from me. “I have to finish packing.”

  “Amy, I’m —”

  “Just go, Sonny.” She wasn’t looking at me. “Just … Just get out of my room.”

  It was the first time she’d ever kicked me out of her room. Before it had been my choice, my decision to give her space. But this time …

  This time she was telling me to leave.

  And she had every right to.

  Because I’d really fucked up this time.

  It was an almost-seven-hour drive from Hamilton to Bianca’s grandfather’s cabin in Tennessee.

  And it was possibly the most painful seven hours of my life.

  Though I would say the feeling was mutual for everyone in the car, for one reason or another.

  To start with, Wesley insisted on taking the Porsche.

  “There are four of us,” Bianca argued. We were standing outside the Rushes’ house the next morning, ready to go.

  Amy hadn’t said a word to me since she’d kicked me out of her room the night before.

  “There are four seats,” Wesley said.

  “Are you actually counting that backseat as a seat?” Bianca asked. “Because, having sat back there before, I’d beg to differ.”

  “Well, we can’t take your car,” he said, picking up her duffel bag and tossing it into the trunk. Although, is it called a trunk when it’s at the front of the car? I was really confused about this, but it didn’t seem like the appropriate time to ask. “You still haven’t gotten that heater fixed. And I know Sonny’s car is out of the shop, but do you really trust that thing to get us across state lines?” He picked up my little suitcase and shoved it into the trunk, too. It was a really small trunk, and I wasn’t sure all of our stuff would fit.

  “What about Amy’s car?” Bianca asked.

  Wesley put the last bag into the trunk and, with what seemed like great effort, shut the hood. “Too late,” he said. “We’re already packed.”

  Bianca groaned. “You’re such an ass.”

  “An ass with a nice car.”

  “A nice, impractical car.”

  “And having a broken heater for three years is practical?”

  “I’m hardly ever home to drive the thing!”

  I glanced over at Amy, who — rather pointedly, if I may say so — did not look at me.

>   Since Bianca and I were the vertically challenged members of this foursome, we were placed in the, as previously noted, tiny-as-hell backseat. My knees were cramping within ten minutes, and we had a long way to go.

  And in a car that small, there was no hiding the tension between two best friends who were not on speaking terms. Particularly when the other two passengers were of a bantering nature.

  “Oh my God, Wesley,” Bianca said. “We are not listening to this shit all the way to Tennessee.”

  “Billy Joel is hardly ‘shit,’ thank you.”

  “I like Billy Joel, but not seven hours of Billy Joel.” Bianca turned to me. “He’s been obsessed with ‘New York State of Mind’ for months. I can’t anymore. Sonny, Amy, back me up.”

  But Amy just shrugged, and I felt too weird arguing with either Bianca or Wesley, even if it was in jest. My gut was telling me to keep my mouth shut for once. At least around Amy. My foolish hope was that if I was quiet long enough, she’d cool down about last night’s little discovery. I didn’t want to fan the flames by saying something unintentionally infuriating.

  “Silence?” Wesley asked. “Really? From you two?”

  “Seriously,” Bianca said. “Are you guys okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Amy said. But there was that little inflection, that slightly clipped tone, that told me she definitely wasn’t.

  “Me, too,” I mumbled.

  “Okay …,” Wesley said.

  I noticed his and Bianca’s eyes meet in the rearview mirror.

  This went on forever. And Bianca and Wesley just didn’t know when to give it a rest.

  “No, that wasn’t our exit, Bianca. I’m positive.”

  “Excuse me? Who in this car has actually been to this cabin before?”

  “And who has the worse sense of direction?”

  “I do not.”

  “You got lost in midtown Manhattan. This year. You’ve been going to school there for how long?”

  “It could happen to anyone.”

  “The streets are numbered,” Wesley pointed out. “It’s a grid.”

  “I might trust you more if you used the GPS on your phone to get us there.”

  “I can’t. The voice is annoying.”

  “Your voice is annoying,” Bianca snorted.

  “Aw. I love you, too.”

  She laughed. “Okay, let’s ask the rest of the car. Ladies, who do you trust to get you to the cabin safely? The person who has been there before —”

  “And who gets lost in her own dorm building.”

  “Shut up. That’s not even true.” Bianca cleared her throat. “The person who has actually been there, or the cocky jerk who won’t even use a GPS?”

  But all they got were shrugs.

  They made a few more attempts before finally giving up on convincing Amy or me to speak.

  They talked a little more, but eventually even they fell silent, swallowed up by the potent blend of hostility and unease filling the cab of the Porsche.

  Even as my knees ached, I stayed as still as possible, worried my movements may jostle the back of Amy’s seat. It was dumb, I knew. It wasn’t like nudging her a little to get comfortable would make her hate me any more than she already did, but the fear had crept up inside of me and wrapped itself around my chest like a boa constrictor.

  The wide, flat highways eventually turned into narrow, winding back roads that twisted their way through rolling, faintly blue hills. My anxiety and aching knees aside, it was a beautiful drive.

  At long, long last, Wesley made a turn onto a gravel driveway that twisted through tall trees before coming to a stop in front of a quaint little cabin.

  It was small but well kept. The front porch had a swing in one corner, and a layer of snow covered the roof. Honestly, it looked like the picture you’d find on a Hallmark Christmas card.

  “Oh, thank God,” I heard Bianca mutter under her breath as Wesley shut off the ignition.

  Ditto, I thought.

  The four of us climbed out of the car and retrieved our stuff from the front-trunk. Bianca found the hidden key beneath the doormat and unlocked the door.

  The interior was pretty plain, but cozy. There was an old box TV, a fireplace, and a hallway that led back to the bedrooms.

  Of which there were only two.

  Which meant I was back to sharing with Amy.

  “This will be your room,” Bianca said, opening the door to the smaller of the two rooms. It was plain, too, with a small closet and a queen-size bed shoved up against the far wall.

  Amy and I glanced at each other, then back at the small room.

  “Yeah,” Bianca said slowly. “I’m gonna let you two settle in.” And then she ducked out of there so fast she might have been mistaken for a cartoon character on the run.

  I shut the door behind her before turning to Amy and offering a small smile.

  “Cute house,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’ll be a fun trip.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “Nice to get away for a few days.”

  “Definitely.”

  That was all I could get out of her: one-word answers.

  But it wasn’t as if she was like this with everyone. As the first night and next day wore on, I caught her talking to Bianca and to her brother, laughing with them, even. But the minute I entered the room, her mouth shut.

  She’d been distant since Black Friday, but nothing like this.

  And with no cell phone service and nowhere else to go, it didn’t take long for the silence to start getting to me.

  * * *

  It was freezing in the mountains.

  Although it was far colder inside the cabin than out.

  Bianca and Wesley tried to fill the silence with banter and mock arguments. Or maybe not “mock” arguments. It was always hard to tell with them. I wasn’t sure how aware they were of the intense teen angst that was brewing, but I had to give them some credit for attempting to defuse the awkward.

  Still, I spent most of my time outside, hiking in the snow and bitter wind. Melancholy mood aside, I couldn’t deny how pretty the mountains were. They were blue and misty, and more low and rounded than I’d realized. They’d been quite aptly dubbed the Smoky Mountains, because they really did look like billowing puffs of smoke.

  On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, I headed out of the cabin for another hike. My skin was dry and cracked from all the hours I’d spent in the freezing cold over the past few days, but it was the only way to keep from going insane.

  So I put on my boots and pulled a hat down over my curls before heading out the door.

  And ran right into Bianca and Wesley.

  Making out on the porch.

  “Jesus,” I said as they broke apart. Bianca looked appropriately sheepish. Wesley, on the other hand, just grinned. “You two have your own room. In the house. Where it’s warm.”

  Bianca cleared her throat and shook the car keys in her hand. “I was just … on my way. You need anything from the grocery store, Sonny? I’m getting lots of snacks for the ball drop.”

  “Thanks, but I’m good. Not really feeling that festive.”

  Bianca and Wesley glanced at each other, then she started backing off the porch. “Well, give me a call if you change your mind.”

  “There’s no cell reception,” Wesley reminded her.

  “Then I hope you don’t change your mind. I’ll be back.”

  She hopped off the porch, her feet crunching in the snow, and unlocked Wesley’s car before sliding inside.

  “You let her drive the Porsche?” I asked him.

  “I let her do whatever she wants,” he said.

  I wasn’t sure if there was a lascivious note in that response or not.

  We watched as the Porsche drove off, disappearing down the long, winding driveway. Once it had gone, I started down the wooden steps. “See you later.”

  Wesley followed me. “Where are you going?”

  “On a hike.”
r />   “I’ll join you.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  We made our way around the side of the cabin, toward the thickest part of the woods and some of the best trails. Snow clung to the bare, skeleton trees, some higher than any I’d ever seen. Neither of us spoke for a few minutes, and I started to think that this walk might actually pass in silence. But, of course, this was Wesley. He wasn’t known for being quiet.

  Or for minding his own business.

  “So what’s going on with you and Amy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  But even I, convincing as I typically was, couldn’t play dumb on this. Especially not with Wesley, who’d known both of us since we were toddlers.

  “Come on,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You’ve barely spoken since we got here. Amy might be the quiet type, but you are most definitely not.”

  “That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me and Amy.”

  “Yes, it does,” Wesley said. “She’s acting weird, too. Come on. Just tell me. I’ll nag you until you do.”

  Unfortunately, I knew he wasn’t bluffing. I also knew that if I didn’t tell him on this walk, he’d get Bianca in on helping him and I’d never escape. Might as well get it over with.

  I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my coat. “It’s … it’s about a boy.”

  Wesley raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? A guy is what’s coming between you two?”

  “No,” I said. “Well … yes. But not in the way you think. It’s complicated. Amy doesn’t like him. I do.”

  “So what’s the problem, then?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “As you’ve said. But we have lots of time to hike. Which means lots of time for you to explain.”

  God, he was persistent. How the hell did Bianca put up with it?

  I ducked under a low-hanging tree branch, both to avoid his eyes and to save myself from getting smacked in the face. “He’s new in Hamilton, and he’s kind of a tool. I thought I hated him, but then I got to know him and he’s not so bad…. He’s kind of great, actually.”

  “Doesn’t sound too complicated so far.”

  “Well, here’s where it starts, then, because he likes Amy.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  Wesley thought about this for a long moment as we wove between the trees, our feet sinking deep into the snow. “Does this guy — this kind of a tool, kind of great guy — know that you like him?”