Dreamers Often Lie

by Jacqueline West

  Pierce’s profile went rigid. Of course, I realized a second too late, all he’d seen was me beaming at the memory of another boy.

  “What’s his name?” he asked.

  “Rob, I think. Rob Mason, or something.”

  The BMW was moving faster. We skidded toward a stop sign, barely decelerating before racing on to the next block.

  Pierce stared straight ahead. A muscle in his jaw clenched and unclenched. “How did you two get to rehearsal so early?”

  “Um . . . Well, I left algebra class because my head was killing me. And I guess he got lost on the way to chemistry or screwed up his schedule or something.” Casual. Careless. Like you can barely remember. “So we both ended up in the auditorium, like, fifteen minutes before everybody else. Maybe ten minutes.”

  “So it was just a coincidence? You two being there alone?”

  “Yes. Total coincidence.”

  Pierce gave something so small it might not even have been a nod. “Was he bothering you or something?”

  “Bothering me?”

  The tires skidded around another corner. My head slammed sideways, and I let out a little gasp. Pierce didn’t look at me.

  “He looks like—I don’t know,” he said. “Like a creep. Like one of those guys who think they’re a rock star even if they’re just a loser who wears jewelry and black leather. That kind of guy.”

  “He’s not,” I said, too quickly. “I mean—he seems fine. We were talking about other plays we’d done. That’s it.” Change the subject. Quick. My mind threw itself at a question I hadn’t planned to ask. “Hey . . . did you ever smash this car? Maybe a year or two ago?”

  Pierce frowned. There was a beat that stretched so long, I almost repeated the question. But then he said, “Smash it? Like in an accident?”

  “No, like—with a trophy or something? Somebody told me they thought they saw you.”

  The frown flickered and broke. “Oh, god. Yeah. Not too long after—uh—after your dad was gone, we placed fourth at a meet for the first time. The first time ever. Like, we had never not placed first—or maybe we placed second once, like ten years ago—but we had never gotten fourth. I was pissed. So, yeah, I smashed the car with that fourth-place trophy.” A smile raised the corner of his lips. “Then I had to pay to fix it, of course. But that’s what happened.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  It was believable. It made his anger seem fair. Almost noble.

  Still, imagining Pierce’s fist swinging a heavy trophy, denting metal, shattering glass . . . My stomach twisted.

  I wasn’t going to ask any more questions. Shakespeare’s eyes shifted back and forth between us in the rearview mirror.

  Pierce didn’t speak again. A not-totally-uncomfortable quiet filled the car, and gradually, I let my head sag against the window. The cold glass was soothing. At that angle, the dark blue gaze from the backseat couldn’t quite reach me.

  After another minute, I let my eyes slide shut. I could still sense Pierce beside me. The warmth of him. The silence that had started to feel less angry than protective.

  There was a gentle bump as we turned into my driveway. The car stopped. I heard Pierce shift the gear into park. A second later, something brushed my cheekbone.

  I opened my eyes.

  Pierce’s face loomed over me, gigantic and golden. A strand of his wavy hair touched my skin. His eyelids were lowered. His lips were moving toward mine. It was like the sun had slid out of the sky and crashed into the car beside me.

  I was so startled I almost smacked him.

  Instead, I jerked backward. My head slammed against the windowpane. There was an audible thunk.

  “Jesus.” Pierce sat back. “Are you okay?”

  Behind me, Shakespeare was laughing so hard, he wheezed.

  “I’m fine,” I said, even though fissuring black clots were shooting back and forth in front of my eyes. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure? That sounded like it hurt.”

  “No. I’m fine.” I groped for the door handle. “I just—I just need to get out.”

  Before Pierce could unlatch his own door, I flung mine open. I toppled out backward, not even trying to catch myself. Shakespeare let out another hoot of laughter. My bare hands landed in icy slush. I could feel the wetness soaking through my jeans.

  Pierce jogged around the front of the car. “Hang on,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “Just hold on to me.” He hauled me up the walkway to the front door, one arm wrapped tight around my waist.

  The door flew open in front of us.

  “Oh my god.” Sadie appeared on the threshold. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  “I just bumped my head,” I muttered, pulling up my collar to hide my flaming face. Pierce released me, and I shuffled forward into the warmth of the living room. “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine. Should I call the hospital?”

  “God, Sadie, no. I’m just a klutz.” I turned back to Pierce, waiting in the doorway, but I couldn’t force my eyes any higher than the collar of his coat. “Sorry, Pierce. I’ll be better tomorrow.”

  “Okay.” He hesitated, glancing at both of us. “Well—I’ll see you then.”

  His feet thumped away down the porch steps.

  Sadie closed the door after him. Neither of us spoke for a second. Then Sadie asked, “Which part of your head did you hit?”

  “The back. Not the bad part.”

  “Do you want an ice pack? Or some water, or anything?”

  “No. I am really, truly okay. I just want to go lie down for a while.”

  I trudged toward the staircase, dragging the weight of Sadie’s stare behind me.

  Without taking off my coat, I sank down on my unmade bed. If I turned my head sideways, there was less pressure on the bruised spot. Unfortunately, it also forced me to look straight at the dressing table, where Shakespeare had settled himself on the ledge.

  “My care hath been to have her matched,” he began, as if he were talking to an invisible crowd. He picked up a nail file and began grooming his left hand, his face and voice exasperated. “Having now provided a gentleman of noble parentage, stuffed, as they say, with honorable parts . . .” He filed faster. “Proportioned as one’s thought would wish a man . . .” He pointed the file at me. “And then to have a wretched puling fool—”

  I whipped a pillow at him. It hit the closet door instead.

  Flopping over, I buried my face in the blankets, not caring that the fabric rubbed my raw skin, or that the weight of my own skull pressed the ache forward until the world turned gray.

  My father’s eyes were brown. Had been brown. So it definitely wasn’t the color that made Shakespeare’s eyes remind me of him. It was the way they looked at me.

  God, I’d seen that look so many times. Disappointed. Scornful. Faintly disbelieving, like I might be some imposter who’d snuck into Jaye Stuart’s skin. I’d seen it when I broke curfew and lied about why. I’d seen it when I claimed I couldn’t miss rehearsal, so I couldn’t come along on the family trip to watch Dad run in Chicago. I’d seen it on the awful night of the eighth-grade spring dance. I’d tried to let this memory fade, but it clung to my brain like a tooth hanging by a stringy root.

  Empty stage, I thought. Empty stage. But the words were just noises. I couldn’t turn the memory off.

  We weren’t going to go to the dance at all, Nikki and Tom and Anders and I. We weren’t the kind of people who went to school dances. We weren’t the kind of people anyone asked. But that Saturday night, as we lounged on the swaybacked couches in Nikki’s basement, not going had started to seem even stupider than going.

  It was Nikki who came up with the plan: We’d go to the middle school, but instead of just joining the crowd in the gym, we’d sneak into the costume shop, put on the craziest things we could find, and then make a gra
nd entrance on the dance floor. Two of Nikki’s older cousins from North Minneapolis were with us that night—I’m still not sure why; the two of them spent most of the time talking to each other and laughing in a way that made it impossible to tell what they were laughing at. But it was one of them who managed to pick the lock on the costume shop door.

  The shop was full of clothes from last fall’s The Wizard of Oz and our upcoming Alice in Wonderland, mixed with leftovers from a bunch of thrift shops and fairy tales. Nikki dressed up as a flying monkey. Anders was a tree—one of the apple-throwing ones. Tom found a dinosaur suit somewhere. I was playing the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, so I zipped myself into the fuzzy bodysuit, complete with hood and floppy ears. The cousins, who were really too cool for any of this, just put on long black robes. They looked like scrawny executioners.

  There was a little stir when we all strutted out onto the dance floor. Some people pointed and stared. A few came up to us, laughing, complimenting. Most of them ignored us completely.

  Standing around on a crowded gym floor in heavy costumes got dull pretty fast. I can’t remember if it was one of the cousins who suggested the next part, or if it was Nikki, or if it was just something that happened because we were bored and restless and tired of being noticed and not noticed at the same time. I just remember that it was already dark when we crept out of the gym and through the side doors onto the athletic field. Anders led the way across the grass, his papier-mâché branches rattling softly. A stack of crates was propped against the back of the field house, and suddenly we were all climbing up onto the broad tarpapered roof.

  We lay down on our backs and stared up at the night sky. Above us, the stars were small and white as spilled sugar. The fuzz of the rabbit suit tickled my neck. One of the cousins took out a little tin box and some rolling papers, and we all passed the first joint around. The smoke seemed to swell inside of me until my lungs ripped like cotton batting. Tom had some cigarettes and a bunch of tiny plastic bottles of brandy, all stolen from his stepdad, and soon I was floating, and the stars were cycling gently, and we were all laughing, and I don’t know if it was the smoke or the brandy or just being together at night on top of the school field house in a bunch of ridiculous costumes, and then the police came.

  The next hour is a blur. The entire crowd from the dance—all the students and teachers and chaperones—lining up to stare while the officers questioned us. Police lights strobing with the music that still poured out the doors. Red and blue flashes on Tom’s fabric scales, Nikki’s wings, my own fuzzy white feet. Tom’s mom and stepdad. Nikki’s mother. My father coming to pick me up. The terrifyingly silent drive back to the house.

  All at once, the whole night seemed impossible. I couldn’t really be sitting next to my dad in the front seat of the car, with a brain full of mist and stars, wearing a white rabbit suit. I could hear Dad breathing beside me. Like a dragon. If he’d turned toward me and started yelling then, I’d have been crackled up in a rush of fire.

  But he didn’t. He didn’t say anything.

  Somehow that was worse.

  When we pulled into the driveway, Dad still hadn’t spoken. He got out of the car without looking at me. I followed him inside, keeping my eyes fixed on the tight, straight line of his back, feeling like my own feet weren’t quite touching the ground.

  Mom was waiting in the living room. Her eyes flicked between the two of us. “Go up to your room,” she said.

  I shuffle-floated up the steps. Shut inside, I took off the rabbit suit and hung it awkwardly over the back of my chair. Its fur smelled like smoke. Then I sat down on the very edge of my bed, like it didn’t belong to me.

  My parents’ voices simmered softly through the door. I couldn’t decipher any words—just the low, angry thrum of Dad’s, and the higher, almost inaudible tone of Mom’s. Eventually things got quiet. A few minutes passed before I heard the thud of the front door.

  I got up, swaying slightly, and went to the window. In the patches of light beneath the streetlamps, I could see Dad in his running clothes, flying up the sidewalk, dwindling quickly out of sight.

  My heart rocketed up into my head.

  He was leaving. I’d pushed him away. It was too late to catch him; he was already gone.

  I scrambled back down the steps.

  Mom looked up, startled, as I raced into the kitchen.

  “Where is Dad going?”

  “He needed a run.” Mom turned back to the dishes in the sink. “It’ll help calm him down.”

  “Oh.” I hung on to the doorframe. My heart was still torn loose, knocking around somewhere in my skull. “So . . . what’s going to happen?”

  Mom’s lips were tight. “We’ll talk about that later.”

  “Am I grounded?”

  “Jaye—”

  “Am I? Please, just tell me.”

  “Yes. You’re grounded. No visitors. No phone. No after-school activities.”

  “For how long?”

  “A while, Jaye.”

  “What about the play?”

  Mom sighed, bracing her hands on either side of the sink. “Your dad thinks you should be done with that too.”

  “What?” Don’t scream. Calm. Mature. Head spinning. Heart floating. “But everybody—Mom—the show’s only three weeks away.”

  “After what you kids did tonight, you’ll be lucky if the school lets any of you participate. Did you even think about that before you made these great choices?”

  Of course not. My stomach writhed. “Mom, please . . .”

  Mom lifted one hand, not looking at me. “Stop. I’m not doing this with you. And your dad feels even more strongly than I do.”

  “When will he be back?”

  Mom stared down into the dirty water. She let out a long, slow breath. “A while.”

  I hurried through the living room, out the front door, and sat down on the top of the porch steps. The night had gone pitch-black. I had no idea how late it was, but the air felt cold and wet, and the streetlights shut out all but the very brightest stars.

  After a few minutes, I started to shiver. I wasn’t sure if it was cold or anticipation. But I wasn’t going to go inside to get a sweater and risk missing the moment when Dad jogged up the driveway, risk having him not find me here, looking humble and cold and sad and small. I wanted him to see me shiver.

  It seemed to take forever. I started to wonder if maybe he wasn’t going to come back at all. If running until he wasn’t angry at me anymore would take him all the way out of the state, find him still racing along at daylight, somewhere far away. But at last I heard the soft slap of shoes on the sidewalk, turning up into our driveway. His gray WILSON HS TRACK T-shirt flickered through the shadows. His breathing, still fiery, but steady now, came closer.

  He jogged up to the steps, stopping a few paces away from me. In the yellow glow of the streetlights, I could see tiny wisps of heat rising from him, floating out with each breath.

  He didn’t say anything.

  I waited for a second. “Dad . . . I’m really sorry.”

  A stiff nod.

  “I won’t ever do anything like that again.”

  He didn’t even nod this time. He picked up his left foot, stretching his quads. I thought I heard him give a snort, but it might just have been an exhalation.

  I put on my most mature voice. Meryl Streep. Plus a little Julia Roberts, for charm. “I totally agree that you should ground me.”

  Now I heard the snort. “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “But I’m . . . please . . .” I swallowed the panic. “Please let me stay in the play. Please. Not for me. I’d be letting everybody else down.”

  Between breaths, Dad’s voice was low. Sharp. Hard. “What do you think you did tonight?”

  “I . . .”

  “And since when do you worry about ‘everybody else’?
When do you worry about anybody else?”

  I felt my mouth fall open, but my brain was still too fuzzy to put the right words in it.

  Dad dropped his left foot and picked up the other. He wasn’t looking directly at me, I realized, like he didn’t even want to touch me with his eyes. “Do you know how many strings I’ll have to pull to keep you from getting suspended? Or expelled?” His jaw rippled. His voice got even lower. “Don’t you get enough attention? Now you have to get caught by the police, on drugs, on a rooftop, in a rabbit costume, in front of the entire school? What kind of statement are you trying to make?”

  “I’m not—it’s—it was just a mistake.”

  “Yeah, it was. And you’ve been making plenty of those lately. Did you think, for even a second, about how all of this reflects on us?”

  “No. It’s not about you.”

  For a beat, I thought Dad was going to explode. His mouth tightened. His eyes got wide. I shrank back against the steps.

  Dad glanced around, quickly scanning the street. He dropped his right foot and leaned against the front of the house with one hand, moving on to the next stretch. If any neighbors were watching, all they would see was him going through his usual routine, me sitting nearby, watching him.

  “You think this doesn’t reflect on us? You think what you do doesn’t damage and embarrass all of us?” Dad’s voice rang softly off the wall as he leaned forward. “You know what? Things are not going to go on like this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I don’t want you spending time with Tom Leung or Nikki Vega or Anders Larson anymore. They are messed-up kids from messed-up families. You need better people in your life.”

  “But they’re my friends.” Don’t panic. Calm. Pitiful. “They’re my only friends.”

  Dad frowned. “What about Pierce?”

  He might as well have said What about your unicorn?

  “Pierce?” I repeated. “He’s in high school. We’re not even in the same building anymore. And even if we were, he doesn’t—we aren’t—he hasn’t even talked to me in months.”