There Will Be Lies

by Nick Lake

  His name is Mark, but I suspect it isn’t, really. He looks like a cross between Tyler the werewolf from The Vampire Diaries and Bradley Cooper—he has this whole hot Latino thing going on, but with easygoing charm laid on top of it like smooth turf over bare earth.

  Mark leans against the shelves.

  Cue angelic music. Cue the end of Shelby Jane Cooper.

  Not literally, though. That comes later.

  Mark has this tattoo, I think it’s a dog, just above his collarbone, and when his top shirt button is undone as it is now, you can see it. It’s meant to make him look badass, obviously, but it’s kind of cute. And his neck muscles, I can’t even.

  I can’t. Even.

  I notice then that one of his hands is behind his back. He takes it out, and there’s a book in it.

  For you, he says.

  I take the book. Thanks, I say. You think I should read this one next?

  He looks uncomfortable. It’s not the library’s. It’s a gift, he says.

  I look at it. Grimm’s Fairy Tales, in hardcover. It looks old.

  They’ll blow your mind, says Mark.

  Wow, I say. Thank you. No one’s ever given me a book before. Apart from, like, my mom. As soon as I say this, I think, wow, super lame thing to say to a boy. At the same time, I’m thinking, where am I going to hide this from Mom so she doesn’t know I’ve been talking to a boy? I’m a bit old for fairy tales, I say. Don’t you think?

  No one is too old for fairy tales, says Mark.

  Yeah, that’s what my mom says. She loves them. She’d still read them to me now if she could.

  Mark smiles. These are not like the fairy tales your mother told you, he says. They’re the originals. They’re dark.

  Dark? I ask. What, like, Cinderella is a serial killer?

  No. Like her stepsisters cut off their heels and their toes, to try to make the slipper fit.

  I raise my eyebrows. That was NOT in the version Mom told me. Oh, okay, then, I say.

  After that we talk for a bit about what I’ve been learning with Mom, and he tells me some books he thinks I should look at that relate to some of the topics. Says again that I should start thinking about college, about what I could major in. I ignore him. My mom doesn’t even like me to walk on the street on my own. She isn’t going to let me go to college.

  But, you know.

  I do think about majoring in English lit.

  Sometimes.

  As I’m thinking, Mark gets called away by someone who’s looking for something.

  Thanks for the book, I say as he heads away to hunt.

  He turns and says something that I don’t understand, in another language, maybe.

  I read a bit longer, but it’s nearly eight and Mom has a cab booked for me, so I head outside and nod at Mark as I leave—he’s talking to a different patron now, and he smiles back at me. Something twisty happens inside me when he does that. I mean, sure, he’s a year or two older than me. But the guys at the batting cages never made my stomach lift like he does.

  As I’m approaching the door, he’s suddenly beside me. I don’t know how he did that; it’s like he teleported. I stop abruptly.

  Listen…, he says. Things are … starting to happen. Do you think you could meet me, later? My shift ends in a half hour.

  My heart stutters. I can’t, I say. Sorry.

  I really am sorry—I mean, there’s a part of me that wants to. A big part. But I’m not stupid: he’s a man and much stronger than me, and if I meet him somewhere alone, somewhere that isn’t a library, he could overpower me, he could do anything he wanted to me. He’s hot and he’s kind and I like him, but he’s still a man.

  He’s still dangerous.

  So I lower my eyes like my mom does and I turn away from him, just catching his frown out of the corner of my vision. But I don’t turn back.

  Outside, the automatic door closes behind me and my cocoon vanishes, and the heat rushes into the vacuum, like air into lungs, and in fact the heat is in my lungs, so it’s outside me and inside me all at once.

  Ugh. Sometimes I feel like I’d like to have some cold in my bones, like Mom, to carry around with me in Arizona.

  I go out onto the sidewalk, and walk to the spot where the cab will pick me up. I glance at my watch—it’s about four minutes before she’s due to arrive, and she always arrives when she’s due.

  I stand there for a moment, holding the book. I don’t know how I’m going to explain it to Mom. I guess I’ll just say it’s from the library and hope she doesn’t look inside and see that it doesn’t have a stamp.

  I look at my watch again. Three more minutes, and then Mom will be there to take me home.

  But no.

  That doesn’t happen.

  What happens instead is:

  A car, which is actually a Humvee, and as it will turn out is being driven by a driver considerably under the influence, bounces up onto the sidewalk, takes out a trash can, slows just enough not to kill me instantly, then collides with my body hard enough to throw me ten feet through the air.

  Lying there, on the concrete, I don’t feel any pain at first. I am on my side and there is a warm trickling feeling all over my leg which doesn’t seem to forebode anything good, though I can’t just now remember how I got to this position.

  I am facing the library, or at least the gap between the library and the next building, which I think is a software company. In the cool dark shadow between the buildings, I see two eyes, gleaming.

  A coyote steps out and toward me, right there in the dusk. I’ve never seen one before—I know people do at night, especially in North Scottsdale, but he’s my first. I sense that it’s a he.

  He, the coyote, comes closer and sniffs at me. He’s beautiful—this wild thing, here in low-rise suburbia. Like walking into a bedroom and seeing a tree growing in there. His fur is red like sunset, his eyes are shining and telling me something that I don’t know how to read, but there’s a kind of light of intelligence in them.

  I think: of course, it’s not a dog, Mark’s tattoo. It’s a coyote. I don’t know why I thought it was a dog.

  I stare at the coyote. There’s a crackle about him, almost a halo, like his life is running at a voltage different from other living creatures. Like he’s magic. I could really believe that. Then I believe it even more, because the coyote speaks directly into my head, or that’s what it feels like.

  There will be two lies, it says. Then there will be the truth. And that will be the hardest of all.

  There’s something weird about the way the coyote says this, like the words are somehow inside my head, echoing, but I can’t put my finger on it. It’s like grasping a slick frog—it squirts out of my hands.

  Then something startles him and he backs away, turns skittishly, almost falling over, and runs back into the shadow where he disappears.

  And it’s like he was never there, and I feel bummed about that. This is all wrong, anyway, I think, remembering the book in the library, the open one. You’re meant to see the coyote BEFORE the horrible thing happens to you. Not after.

  I roll a bit and look up and see the moon, pale in the still-light sky, looking down on me like a parent looking down at a sick child.

  This is— I think.

  And then blackness.

  7…

  Chapter 6

  When I open my eyes again I’m lying in a bed next to a flashing machine with a wave on it that I realize is my heartbeat. I think how it’s weird to suddenly see something that before I’ve only felt or heard.

  Then I think that the fact I’m thinking means I’m not dead.

  I look around and see that, as far as I can tell, I’m not in the ER, or on ventilation or anything. There’s a drip in my hand connected to a tube on a stand, and that thing monitoring my heart, but that’s it for machines. I check my arms—fine. I’m in a blank white-walled room, old-fashioned flowery curtains on the windows. A granular light seeps in, the kind that has been filtered through a thin white
blind or netting.

  Then a memory tweaks at me. My leg.

  I sit up a bit and see this ENORMOUS BOX THING covering the lower half of my right leg, with the bed covers sort of drawn over it so I can’t see what’s under there. I mean, I hope it’s my fricking FOOT under there but who knows? They might have had to amputate it.

  Oh my god, they amputated my foot.

  I jerk forward, to try to move the box, and there must be something stuck to my chest because instantly the heart machine starts flashing in a way more full-on way, the wave flatlines, and the door opens.

  A doctor comes in, followed by Mom. The doctor’s eyes do this quick flicker from the line on the screen to me, then back to the screen, and I can practically hear his thoughts as he realizes that it’s just me accidentally pulling off the sticky things. He has a mustache and his name tag says Dr. Maklowitz.

  Shelby, honey! says Mom. I’m so glad to see you!

  She comes close and holds me and when Dr. Maklowitz is leaning forward to adjust the monitor, she says just to me, What the hell were you doing out on the street?

  I don’t answer any of this.

  What’s the deal with my foot? I ask.

  Shelby, says Dr. Maklowitz, speaking slowly like I’m special or something. We’ll come to your foot. But you sustained a pretty bad head injury—we need to make sure that …

  He walks over to my bedside and takes a small flashlight from his shirt pocket. Then he flicks it on and shines it in my eyes. Look left, he says. Right. Up.

  I do.

  Okay, he says. Who is the current president of the United States?

  Barack Obama, I say out loud. The sounds feel strange in my mouth—my tongue is dry and feels too large for the cavity it is in; I don’t seem to have full control over my lips. Painkillers, I guess.

  Good, says Dr. Maklowitz. Good. We need to do more tests, run the whole inventory of the Belfast [ ], but I think with the scans too we can probably rule out major brain damage or [ ].

  He’s speaking fast and my brain is slow, affected by the drugs, so I don’t catch everything he says.

  You also had some wounds that we have stitched up, he says. To your leg, mostly—we think you fell on some glass. And your ankle is—

  You could have died, says Mom.

  Dr. Maklowitz gives her a look, like, shut up. We stopped the bleeding, he says. You’re going to be okay. Some scarring, but of course you already have … He tails off. Anyway, we’ll have you out of here soon. For now, you just need to rest.

  I look at him. Will I … walk again? I ask hesitantly, looking down at the box over my lower leg.

  He stares at me for a moment and then laughs. Of course! Yes, of course you will. Sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you. We think you must have damaged your foot and ankle when you fell—you must have [ ] and twisted it. Actually most of your injuries—and they’re fairly minor ones—come from falling, not the car itself. We should be able to discharge you soon, once we’ve—

  What about her foot? says Mom. She seems weirdly impatient.

  Two things, says the doctor. On the ankle, a stable oblique fracture of the lateral m[ ], and on the foot, a displaced extra-[ ] fracture, requiring—

  Oh God, says Mom.

  He smiles again. No, no, those are okay. I mean, the best kinds of fractures. We need to give you a small operation, reduce the displacement of the [ ], but it’s easy. We can do it under local.

  I nod.

  You were really very lucky, he says. An SUV like that … It’s actually remarkable what little damage you have suffered.

  Will she need a wheelchair? asks Mom. Crutches?

  He shakes his head. Should be fine with a …, and then he says something like camera.

  A what? says Mom.

  Dr. Maklowitz goes over to a corner of the room and brings back a sheet of paper, which he hands to Mom. They cost a couple hundred dollars, I’m afraid, but they’re amazing things.

  Show me, I say.

  Mom tilts the paper and I see CAM Walker. Oh, so that was what he said. There’s a picture of a massive boot on someone’s leg—like the bottom part of a storm trooper’s armor or something. It’s plastic, robotic.

  I have to wear THAT? I ask.

  You’d prefer a wheelchair? says Dr. Maklowitz.

  I shake my head.

  He smiles. I like his smile. It’s only for four weeks, he says. And you can take it off at night. Of course. Like I say, you were lucky. If the car had been going a bit faster …

  I lie back. I don’t feel very fricking lucky. But I do feel about 159 times more relaxed now I know they didn’t saw off my leg.

  Mom and Dr. Maklowitz take a step away from me and lower their heads to have a conversation, so I don’t catch all of it. But I follow some. To start, Mom is timid, facing the ground, as usual. And the doctor is tough, assertive. His words fly flat at her, like projectiles, like baseballs; hers fall at his feet, like a mouse being offered in tribute by a cat.

  But as they keep talking, Mom’s head slowly comes up, as if there’s a string attached to it and someone is pulling on it. She’s still hunched, still nervous, but she’s pissed and she’s not backing down.

  Interesting, I think.

  Mom: [ ]

  Dr. Maklowitz: We can’t discharge her immediately after the operation.

  Mom: But they said at the desk that [ ]

  Dr. Maklowitz: Yes, that’s right. The law requires [ ]

  Mom: [ ] So we’re paying for everything at this point? I mean, for tonight, and the next operation?

  Dr. Maklowitz: We stabilize patients in the ER, regardless of insurance status. Everything after that has to be paid for. If the patient is uninsured, then they or their legal guardian must pay.

  Mom (head fully up now and pulling severe angry face): She’s hardly stable, she’s got furniture on her—

  Dr. Maklowitz: She’s stable in the sense that she’s no longer dying. That’s what it means. Even after the operation, even after she has her CAM Walker, we’re going to need to—

  Then Mom makes another face at him and pulls him to the other end of the room, which is totally out of character, and they turn away from me, which makes the rest of the conversation just [ ]. I can tell from Dr. Maklowitz’s body language though that he is uncomfortable dealing with someone like Mom, who has to push two hundred pounds and can be a real badass when she wants to be.

  But from what has already been said, I gather that:

  I am not insured, which is news to me, because I figured I was on Mom’s work insurance.

  Mom is going to have to pay for the rest of my treatment, however long that takes.

  Mom is behaving really weirdly, facing up to people and dragging them around rooms and stuff, being all amped up and unlike herself.

  Dr. Maklowitz leaves the room, looking stressed, and Mom comes back to the head of the bed.

  How can I not be insured? I ask.

  It’s complicated, says Mom. She seems tense, and I guess she must be worrying about the money.

  But this will be thousands of dollars, I say.

  Mom smiles, only I can tell she’s doing it just for me. Then a nurse comes in, with a tray. Dinner, she says. It’s mac and cheese.

  Oh good. I hate mac and cheese. It’s like eating barf. I leave it on the nightstand. Mom starts trying to talk about the food but I’m not letting her off the hook.

  The money, Mom, I say. What are we going to do?

  Don’t worry, she says, you know we have something saved away for a rainy day.

  It never rains in Arizona, I say.

  Exactly, Mom replies.

  Chapter 7

  The rest of the day is boring as hell and I would be happy, actually, to never spend another hour in a hospital, ever.

  Mom does figure out how to get the TV working, using her credit card, which is all forty-nine flavors of awesome, though. Then she opens the blind and because we’re in Phoenix General we’re actually up in the air and you can see
the city, and the mountains beyond. It’s almost like when I climb up in the desert, and look at the land all around. When I can make Mom drag herself up a hill with me anyway. It’s not like she would let me go hiking on my own.

  They also bring me some food, and even though it’s gross it’s welcome, because I realize suddenly that I’m starving.

  I eat mechanically, not thinking about anything.

  Then I go cold all over.

  Mom, I say. My bat. What happened to—

  She smiles and reaches under the bed and pulls out the DeMarini and I’m so happy I totally die right then and there. So this is my ghost writing now—hey, how are you? Me, I’m good, thanks, because I’ve got my five-hundred-dollar bat back and nobody cut off any of my limbs, even if I am a ghost and—

  They had to dispose of your bag, Mom says, in a tone that makes me stop stroking my bat like some kind of freak. It had blood on it.

  I should be more careful with that stuff, I say. Shouldn’t go spilling it everywhere.

  Mom laughs but then a tear is all of a sudden in her eye and she brushes it away, and I feel ashamed. She reaches down and picks something up—something flat and oblong.

  Oh, no—Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

  You know anything about this? she says.

  I stare at it, keeping my expression flat. No, I say. Why?

  It was lying near you, on the sidewalk.

  I was outside the library, I say. I guess someone dropped it.

  Hmm, she says.

  There’s a moment of very UNcomfortable silence. Mom stares at me icily. She is really bringing her A-game to this chilly make-your-daughter-feel-bad thing. I need to get her off this topic.

  Mom…, I say. Is it really expensive?

  The hospital?

  Yes, the hospital.

  I don’t know … ten thousand dollars.

  Oh, I think. I mean, I knew it would be thousands, but ten thousand? That, as junkies would say, is mad bank. I don’t even really know what to say. Oops, I cost you ten grand?

  We watch TV for a while—America’s Next Top Model. Mom puts the closed captions on, of course, so we can fully appreciate the inane comments of the models.