Sometimes We Tell the Truth

by Kim Zarins

  I tap his shoe. He doesn’t pull away, or freeze in horror, or kill me. He smiles.

  “I loved that one too,” Mr. Bailey says brightly. “All in favor?”

  Sophie blushes, and when everyone except a few grouches lifts their hands, she gasps with a little laugh-cry. “I’ve never even written anything before.”

  “You better write something now,” Mari says, and our eyes meet like we’re in a writerly family plagued with writerly weirdness, yet also still family. A new writer has been born today.

  But Mari knows only the half of it. Because I know what I’m going to write next, and I can barely contain myself.

  People cheer with varying degrees of enthusiasm—a mix of appreciation and jealousy. Mostly, though, everything feels anticlimactic. The contest is over, and people are over it. They’re eyeing the Lincoln Memorial like they want to get moving. It’s like all they care about is D.C. or something. I don’t get it at all. I’d jump in the bus right now if we could keep telling stories.

  “Well, that was easier than I thought it would be,” Mr. Bailey says. “And for the rest of you, just behave yourselves this weekend and the whole senior prank will be forgiven. And who knows? Maybe we can play the game again on the way back.”

  He’s generous. He might not know about the cloud, but some of his students trashed his house, and as far as he knows, one of them might have bought a phone on his card. And he’s willing to forgive and move on.

  “Well,” Mr. Bailey declares, “onward to the Lincoln Memorial!”

  People get up, and according to their personalities—rowdy, reserved, horny, happy, whatever—they make their way.

  “Race, guys against girls!” Rooster shouts, and he lumbers off.

  Cece gripes about separating people by gender. She folds her arms like she’ll have nothing to do with his sexist race, and he wasn’t including her in the first place, really—he was egging on Alison, who takes the bait. Like a herd of cats, everyone starts splitting up, even as they head in the same direction. People revert back to their own social groups, Kai and the cool crowd in a cluster, Reiko and Frye leading another, Reeve and Mr. Bailey at the tail of things. It’s the weirdest sight, but kind of expected.

  The social laws have been reinstated. Our revels have ended.

  But not mine. Not by a long shot. Because I am going to put all their souls on paper, and there, like a monument, the revels will never end.

  From behind, his hand touches my shoulder.

  It’s like old times, and I can tell him anything. I wave my arm to encapsulate the Lincoln Memorial and the pool and the whole gaggle of them getting farther and farther away. “I’m going to write this whole thing. I’m going to write everyone’s stories and make a novel of it. A novel. Not just the stories, but everything. The interruptions, the bickering, the coffee breaks. It’s going to be about loneliness and finding each others’ truths on the slant through the stories they tell. It’s going to be about lies and big reveals and how we shuffle and deal the cards and bet our souls away. It’s going to be about everything.” I waggle all ten fingers for emphasis on everything, though I don’t mention Cannon will be in the novel as part of that because I want Pard in a good mood.

  “I love it, Jeff.” He beams at me. Not in a Parson way. Parson beams at anything. But when Pard praises you, you’ve really hit on something. I want to put a frame around his face and keep it forever.

  Then he rubs his chin and worry clouds his eyes. “Hmm. You do realize that’s kind of stealing everybody’s stories?”

  I think of Reeve accusing others of cheating, and Cannon actually doing it. I’m not a thief. For a second, I’m defeated. It feels awful to hear another guy call your story his own. I could ask for everyone’s permission, but there’d be at least a few who’d say no. And I need them all. Dammit.

  But then I bark a laugh, because this story is totally different: I’ll still be giving credit where credit’s due, openly saying the tales are theirs. I’m just the narrator. Problem solved.

  I grab Pard’s hands and twirl him in a ludicrous circle because I’m totally high. “I’ll use all their names, and we’ll have an Acknowledgements section in the back! It’ll have this real-life angle to it that way. It’s going to be the best thing I’ve ever done. I’ll start tonight. I’m writing a novel.”

  I let his hands go, and it feels a little more intimate letting them go than it did grabbing them in the first place. The novel will be full of paradoxes like that too.

  He looks oddly shy. “Do you think you’ll need an illustrator?”

  My smile might be wider than my actual face. “Yes! We’ll be a team.”

  He nods, shy and relieved, and I almost grab his hands again. He’s back in my life. My happiness is fizzing out in all directions.

  “So,” he says, recovering his sly decorum. “The plot is the storytelling competition on the bus. But what about the love story?”

  My smile falters. “Love story?”

  “Yeah . . . for the hero.”

  Huh. Maybe we’re not on the same page after all. The stories had a lot of sex, but not a lot of love. Maybe he means the people on the bus, but that makes no sense either. “You mean Kai and Briony? You can’t want that. I mean, it’s not a love story. It’s a group of people getting together over some storytelling. And I’ll end with this scene of everyone headed to the Lincoln Memorial but starting to regroup back into their own lives. See?”

  “But what about you?”

  It’s like a Marcus question about silly story logistics. “Oh. I’ll add myself running after them in the final scene. Whatever. I can change things around.”

  His face is gentle, and sly, and so, so sweet. “Jeff. As the star of your novel, you need a romance. It’s practically required of you.”

  I think he might want to kiss me.

  I laugh through my nose, which is so embarrassing, and try to keep my focus and explain things to the non-writer. “No, you don’t get it. I mean, I get you’re flirting with me, which I . . . appreciate. But in terms of art, I’m not a hero, not even a protagonist. I’m just the narrator in the background. You’re not even supposed to notice me.”

  He takes a step so the space between us fills with him. “Far too late.”

  Then he nuzzles my neck, and my fingertips touch his sides just barely. His hair brushes against my mouth. The thing about ultra-thin hair is that it’s very, very soft.

  We just breathe like that, sorting out the way we fit.

  I speak into the hair. “You smell like animal pelts.”

  He squirms and reverts a bit to his snarky self. “Thanks—it’s called oily hair reek. Just kiss my mouth like a normal boyfriend?”

  “No, I like it. You smell feral. Like an albino sea otter.”

  Instead of pulverizing me, he laughs. “It always comes back to the fake albino thing. Fine. Triple myth. Will you kiss me, you kinky thing?”

  I hesitate.

  “I don’t want to rush you.” His lips brush my neck with each word and snake over my jaw. It makes me tighten my grip, and I feel the shape of him. I start trembling.

  “I’m sweating.” I wasn’t supposed to advertise that.

  “How feral,” he purrs.

  “What if I kiss you . . . and you don’t like it?”

  “Impossible.” He tugs my earlobe and gazes at it like it’s the only thing in the world. “I remember the bad kisser conversation. You’re not. But even if you were, then that’s what I’d want. Lots of sloppy, feral, badly executed kisses.” He bites my ear.

  I’m terrified by the jolt that goes through me.

  I gasp. “One more problem.”

  His growly hmm warns me. “If this is about not being gay . . .”

  I mouth a voiceless no, and a lump mushrooms in my throat. If I speak, I’ll lose my shit. But I’m losing it anyway. My brain plays out a montage of me ignoring him in the hallways as if he weren’t there. Especially fall of sophomore year, hurting him over and over. “I .
. . I treated you like crap every day. And now I just walk up and kiss you? I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve—”

  “But I do!” His mouth tugs hard in a miserable line.

  I pull him to me and feel the tremor in his chest, or maybe it’s mine. He’s clinging to me and frowning so fiercely to wall in whatever is inside. I touch his neck, his face, and then I bend down and kiss that softest peach fuzz corner of his mouth, and it’s the most beautiful part on any human body ever born, and there doesn’t seem to be any reason not to kiss him there again, so I do. He smiles, and his eyes shimmer and overflow.

  “I’m so happy,” he says, sniffing. We take turns kissing each other’s tear trails like total saps in love. “You can’t imagine how happy.”

  We brush lips to lips, back and forth, back and forth, and it’s like I just invented this lip-brushing thing, and I don’t want to stop. He tastes like salt.

  “I should have done this earlier,” I say against his mouth. His mmm-hmm vibrates through my lips.

  He kisses my eyes again. My tears.

  When we’re drier, he gives me writing advice. “You should end the novel here. Or in bed, at the hotel.” His eyes are puffy, and not thirty seconds ago he was wiping his nose on his sleeve, but he’s trying to look hot and skanky, so I have to honor that.

  “No way. I’m ending with the Lincoln Memorial. Fits the story better than a tearful make-out scene with my first boyfriend.” I said it: the B-word. I thought it would be like crossing a finish line, but it’s more like a beginning. Like I can say anything now.

  A popcorn machine in my brain turns on. There are so many words that weren’t there before.

  “What?” He rouses, knocking very nicely against my hips.

  I look at his blotchy face, and it confirms everything. “The words found their places. They’re hopping from me to you, like the atoms did earlier, but it’s different. Like atoms wearing capes.”

  He’s a little too sob-and-kiss woozy for this incoherent Word Nerd speech, but he’s trying to listen. “What?”

  “The words I couldn’t use, I can use them now.” I caress his cheek—he’s so soft—and say the words I could never think, let alone say. “Love, lovely, lover, beloved, boyfriend, beautiful, kissable, you. And others. They’re all snapping into place, to the places they’ve always belonged to. All the labels in my spice rack are attached to all the right jars. The words know right where they want to go. Right at you.”

  “Took you long enough,” he says, with a bit of an I told you so vibe, and his face turns cautiously tender in case I might tear up again.

  But I act chill. “Yeah, the words will come in handy. I have a novel to write.”

  His lopsided smile gives me a good view of that peach fuzz corner. Now I know it’s as soft as it looks. But I kiss him there again, just to make sure, and he holds my face and kisses me open-mouthed, and I do the thing where I breathe him in and in, and it’s like he’s saving my life all over again in the best way possible.

  Mr. Bailey shouts our names, and I break off in panic like maybe we’ve been seen, and we run/walk/jog the length of the pool. But not before Pard flashes his predatory smile to let me know he’s not finished, and that our own story is to be continued.

  When Mr. Bailey sees my innocent baby face and hears my dishonest little cough, he lets us off easy. “Ride with Pard,” he orders, and I dutifully board the bus with Pard for the ride to the Museum of Natural History. We sit together, right next to each other. Our hands keep touching, without Mace sitting across the aisle to see. The Lincoln Memorial disappears from the window, and we’re on our way to see dinosaur bones.

  When the bus pulls out and turns, people in the back row dramatically crash into one another, and Mr. Bailey roars Rooster’s name, and Reeve is all too happily transcribing incriminating details. But I’m not actually sure what Rooster did, and it’s all cheerful background noise, because I’m holding my hand out for Pard’s sketchbook, my eyes asking. It’s been a long time. His breath catches, and he gives it to me. With my eyes on the page, my leg knocking into Pard’s to reassure him, I see a whole world open up to me. His.

  I’m in it.

  And we move forward.

  AFTERWORD

  I find it extremely cool when readers don’t realize that I’m retelling Chaucer’s amazing poem, The Canterbury Tales. But for readers who want to know how I went about retelling Chaucer and his story, and translating that to a modern teenage experience, I thought I’d share what I was up to.

  Chaucer (1343?–1400) was a survivor. As a child he lived through the Black Death (1348–1350), the plague that wiped out roughly one-third of England’s entire population. As a teenager, he went to fight in France and was taken hostage, then fortunately ransomed. He’d later watch the city of London get overrun in the Rising of 1381 (also called the Peasants’ Revolt), in which peasants and other people angry over taxation briefly took over the city and decapitated the archbishop of Canterbury, burned palaces, and demanded an audience with the teenage king of England. I couldn’t realistically include such events, but I wanted to craft a modern teenager who was also exposed to death and uncertainty. Chaucer may have had a sister named Katherine, but when I added Bee and imagined Jeff’s Morpheus story, I was thinking of Chaucer’s poem The Book of the Duchess, which was originally about the death of the wife of Chaucer’s powerful patron, John of Gaunt. I fudge it when I say Jeff is having writer’s block after the success of his Morpheus story. It’s true Chaucer didn’t finish The House of Fame, but he did write some other amazing poems. I’ve tinkered with Jeff’s output, but I liked the notion Paul Strohm proposes in a recent biography that Chaucer was writing The Canterbury Tales at a transition in his life, when he’s between jobs and between cities and maybe unsure what is coming next, which describes the transition to college that high school seniors are excited and worried about. In writing The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer finds his magnum opus, and it’s something entirely unlike anything done before. Not just by him—no one had ever written something like The Canterbury Tales, which dramatizes a road trip with such varied characters: men, women, clergy, knights, merchants, laborers, not to mention their colorful, complex personalities that range from the pious to the villainous. As John Dryden put it best, Chaucer’s vibrant full cast gave the world “God’s plenty.”

  Chaucer’s cast relies on stereotypes—i.e., the Knight is valiant and cultured, the Miller strong and loud. I tried to stay true to that: Kai and Briony are in the popular crowd, as befits their stations as quarterback and cheerleader, or Knight and Prioress. Meanwhile, the Canon and his apprentice, who both show up very late in The Canterbury Tales, are alchemists who supposedly turn lead into gold but actually trick people into losing their gold; I similarly made my Cannon a charismatic scammer and schemer. Where I especially diverge is downplaying the role of the clergy, about one-third of Chaucer’s cast. Chaucer pointed out the hypocrisies and abuses of power in the religious system of his day, but since our culture is secular, I de-churched Frye, Mace, Briony, Mari, Cece, Pard, and the bus driver. I kept Parson, though I made his sermon at the end less gloomy than it is in the original.

  My other main change to the cast is including more women. Chaucer, of course, created the one and only Wife of Bath, and he also includes the Prioress and a woman only called the Second Nun. I then converted some of the male characters into women. Having more women—and vocal women—gave me the opportunity to emphasize how misogynist some of the characters and the stories can be. It also was fun pairing up some of them and letting us see characters in action. For example, Chaucer’s Friar (Frye) is a womanizer, so having him flirt with Reiko (formerly a male Physician) lets us see some of Frye’s flirtation rather than just be told it happens. I also played around with the order of the tales partly for these considerations of gender.

  And then there’s Pard, the Pardoner of Chaucer’s text. Details like his lack of facial hair, high voice, and thin pale hair (“yellow as wax” in c
olor, though I went with platinum blond) come from Chaucer’s poem. Chaucer describes him as a gelding or a mare—either a castrated male horse or a female horse. What do those metaphors mean? Is he castrated? Feminine? There’s a lot of scholarly discussion about the Pardoner’s body and what’s called “the Pardoner’s secret.” There are no firm answers and never will be, but I ultimately went with him being gay and intersex. Most medievalists probably wouldn’t say the Pardoner is intersex (although the argument was proposed in the 1960s), but then again, it’s only in recent years that intersex has been receiving significant public awareness. I liked the idea of claiming the text for this current moment. I also made sure Pard was a central character and a desirable one. This is all a rather big change from the original Pardoner, a bitter outcast whose sexually suggestive comments make the pilgrims uneasy. I didn’t want a LGBTQIA character to be condemned to the marginalization and rejection the Pardoner experiences in Chaucer’s text. I took out his villainy but hopefully kept his eloquence. I hope you like what I did with him.

  Chaucer’s premise and cast make his Canterbury Tales unique in medieval literature. That said, a lot of Chaucer’s story material derives from classical and medieval authors. There were no intellectual property laws. Retelling a story by another author was fair game, whether you declared your sources or not. Readers were not obsessed with originality as much as we are today and, like a proto-fanfiction culture, had something like a passion for retellings. However, if I made open references to Ovid and Boccaccio, for example, a modern audience would possibly be rather bored . . . but that’s only because modern audiences might not know how amazing Ovid and Boccaccio really were. If Chaucer were a teenager writing today, he’d likely pull from culturally known material to make his own stories. So what I did is offer a medieval retelling hidden behind modern fanfiction. For example, Mari respins E. B. White, when Chaucer really is retelling Aesop, possibly respinning the retelling of Aesop by Marie de France. Jeff in turn acts like his Morpheus story came from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman instead of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Lupe’s Twilight story about Edward’s vampire-crow tattling on Bella is really Ovid’s story of Phoebus Apollo and his raven. Franklin’s Tale uses Snape to tell Chaucer and Boccaccio’s tale of a lovesick young man promising to pay a magician (Snape) richly to do an amazing feat of magic, in turn to ensnare a woman with her own promise. These stories resemble modern fanfiction, but Chaucer’s version and its borrowings are right there underneath, to give modern readers the same layered encounter of a tale retold.