Seven Ways We Lie

by Riley Redgate

  Over my shoulder, I give him my most contemptuous look. Some people say there are no stupid questions, but here’s a perfect counterexample if I ever heard one. “The cafeteria is filled with people I have absolutely no use for,” I say coldly.

  He lets out a generous, tumbling laugh, as if I’ve cracked the funniest joke all day. I round on him, not bothering to mask my glare. “What?”

  “It was funny,” he says. “Was that not a joke?”

  “I mean. No.”

  “Oh. Okay.” He forces a serious expression. “So, what, you eat off-campus?”

  “No.”

  “Then where?”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Just a question. Doesn’t need any analysis or anything.”

  “Oh.” I frown. “Okay. Well. Analysis is sort of my modus operandi.”

  He’s smiling again, for no reason. The unforgiving hallway lights illuminate the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. He glows with inner contentment, and I don’t know where he gets it, but it must be nice. He’s probably from some other planet, where the sun always shines and everybody is unconditionally nice to one another and puppies frolic around the streets.

  “Outside,” I say. “By the trailers.”

  “Isn’t that cold?”

  “Better being cold than having to deal with what’s in there.” I nod to the cafeteria. “Shallow conversation and popularity contests—ugh.”

  A line appears between Lucas’s eyebrows. What is that? Surprise? Confusion? Irritation? “Other people aren’t as cut-and-dry as you think,” he says. “Everyone’s got stuff they hide.”

  “Right.” I roll my eyes. “I’m sure you have so many dark secrets under the surface.”

  He doesn’t laugh. For a minute I think, Well, then, he must be a serial killer. Really, though, what secrets could this kid have? Nobody so grotesquely happy is ever interesting.

  I shoehorn my hands into my pockets. “Whatever. Regardless of what people show or hide, they annoy me, and I’m weird, and no one likes me, either. It’s mutual.”

  Lucas cocks his head. “Hey. I’m sorry.”

  “What? Don’t be. Who cares? It doesn’t matter.” I give my head a sharp shake. Why am I still talking to this kid? Not bothering with a good-bye, I stride down the hall.

  But before I get too far, I could swear I hear him say something like, “ ’Course it matters.”

  THEY CALL ME IN FOR MY STUDENT INTERVIEW AT THE start of sixth period. The brief exemption from class is a blessing. Our AP Latin teacher has contracted a nasty cold, and those of us in the front row keep getting subjected to her sneezes. I’m determined to dawdle all the way to the guidance center and back. Aimless wandering is a definite improvement on the phlegm war zone.

  On the way there, I peruse the student-government campaign posters adorning walls and lockers, some taped to the banisters in the stairwell. Most are for the overzealous freshman presidential candidates, of which there are eight. The juniors only have three, one of whom is Juniper. I wonder how she can focus on extracurriculars, but if posters indicate anything, she’s set to win: her advertisements are the only ones that look vaguely official. Olivia’s blare out from the cinder blocks, so brightly colored that my eyes cry out in protest. And Matt Jackson’s, God help us, have the sentence YOUR VOTE MATTERS! written in Comic Sans.

  I push through a set of double doors, crossing from the new wing to the old wing. No more plate glass and constant brightness. Here, high windows cast narrow, dramatic shafts of light onto dark, pitted floors. I knock my plastic hall pass against the padlocks on the lockers, making them swing. Getting assigned a locker on this side of the school is a bad draw—they’re so spacious that people get stuffed into them, à la every high school movie made before 2000. For somebody my size, it wouldn’t even be uncomfortable. I could set up a nice little table in there and finally have a peaceful spot to read.

  I trot down to the first floor and enter the guidance center’s tiny cluster of offices. My mother, the head of the office, sits at the front desk beneath a poster of a motivational kitten. HANG IN THERE! it says. The kitten dangles from a tree branch, looking as if its life is in peril.

  “Hi, dear,” Mom says. “Time for your interview?”

  “Yeah.” I peer around the corner at the closed doors. “Are you really doing this for twelve hundred students?”

  “With the eight of us, it goes faster than you’d think.” My mom hands me a slip of paper with my name at the top. “Give this to Ms. Conrad when she calls you in, would you?”

  I perch on a padded bench between two other kids, trying not to fidget, counting squares of carpet to relax myself. Maybe I should talk. Juniper will take the fall for her poor decision-making, and the sense of irresolution will clear from my head. My part will be done.

  “Valentine Simmons,” calls a voice from the depths of the guidance center. I head for the last door on the left, passing the most recent interviewee, a small, nervous-looking girl. I close the door gently and sit across from Ms. Conrad, a tubby woman with dreadlocks thicker than my fingers.

  She smiles as I hand her the slip. “Thanks, Valentine. You’re Sarah’s son, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good genes,” she says, smoothing out the slip. She clicks a pink pen. “So, I’m going to ask you a few questions, and if you’ll answer them to the best of your ability, that’d be great. First: have you heard any theories who the participants in the rumored illicit teacher-student relationship might be?”

  I frown. “You’re asking me to tell you rumors? You realize how unreliable the high school rumor mill is, right?”

  Ms. Conrad sighs. “Work with me here, kid.”

  “Well,” I say, “I heard something about Dr. Meyers, but I don’t at all believe it.”

  “Hmm.” She scribbles Dr. Meyers’s last name. “And how about the student?”

  Juniper’s name trembles at the tip of my tongue. I swallow, look down at my lap, and keep it back. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  I look up at Ms. Conrad. Her brown eyes dig into mine, and I force myself to hold them. “Nothing at all,” I repeat, not even blinking.

  BURKE AND I PULL UP AT MY HOUSE ON MONDAY afternoon as my mom heads out the door for a dental appointment. She flaps a hand at me and says, “Don’t let Russell eat any snacks, or he won’t eat dinner. Y cierra la puerta—it was cracked open yesterday and so cold when I got home.” She gives Burke the usual pained smile she saves for him, because, like everyone at school, she thinks his clothes are ridiculous, and today he’s wearing leather pants that show every contour of his leg muscles, as well as something hairy and alpaca-looking draped over his shoulders.

  “Have a good appointment, Ms. Flores,” Burke says, polite as always, as we walk inside. I jam my shoulder into the door to make sure it stays closed, and Russ, who sits on the couch, sticks out his lip at me, looking up from a board book about airplanes.

  “Hey, Russ,” I say, “remember Burke?” and Russ looks up at Burke, says, “Yes,” and waves furiously. Burke grins, sitting down in the armchair near the couch, and props his combat boots up on the coffee table. “Your brother’s the only one who doesn’t stare at my clothes,” he says to me, and I’m like, “Hey, I don’t stare,” and he says, “You stare the most, dude,” and I sigh, dumping my backpack onto the floor.

  “Matt?” Russ says.

  I sit by him on the couch. “Yeah?”

  “Where is Olivia?” he asks, and I say, “I don’t know,” and he says, “Will she come again?”

  “Yo, wait,” Burke says. “Like, Olivia Olivia? When was she here?” and I’m like, “Saturday—we have this project thing on Inferno for English,” and Burke says, “Well?” and I’m like, “Well, what?” and he says, “I don’t know—how’d it go?” and I shrug, slouching down in the sofa, feeling self-conscious. “I don’t know, man,” I say. “I can’t stop thinking about her.” I feel stupid saying it, but it’s a serious probl
em. I keep remembering her hunched over my kitchen table, her teeth buried in her bottom lip in concentration. I keep seeing the way she twitched her head to get her long hair out of her eyes, and hearing her gut-laughter, which came out at things I said without even thinking they were funny. I keep imagining her fast, clear voice and the wide points of her smile, and I keep wanting to see it all again.

  I look down at Russell, who’s still staring up at me, wide-eyed, waiting for a verdict. “I don’t know, Russ,” I say. “I hope she’ll be back,” and he nods so hard, his whole body bounces before going back to his board book.

  Burke lowers his voice. I sit forward to hear him, leaning my elbows on my knees. “So,” he says, “did anything happen?” and I’m like, “We talked on the phone last week, and it got kind of serious, so on Saturday it was, like, tense, you know?” I fist one hand in my hair. “Man, I’m so into her, but the project’s done Thursday, and . . . I don’t know.”

  “So talk to her,” Burke says, as if it’s that simple.

  I give him a skeptical look. “Right,” I say. “Like she doesn’t have a hundred other guys chasing after her already.”

  “Never know until you ask.” Burke flicks his nose ring idly. “Come on.” He heads into the hall to the kitchen, and I follow, glancing at Russ to make sure he’s still engrossed in finding which plane fits which silhouette.

  Burke sits at the kitchen table, and I drop into the seat across from him. “How would I talk to her?” I say, and he’s like, “You have her number,” and I’m like, “Well, yeah, but—”

  “So text her,” he says, and I’m like, “What? No, that’s an awful idea,” and he says, “Why?” and his eyes challenge me to come up with something that doesn’t sound like me being a wimp. Though I guess I am a wimp when it comes to this. “I’m fucking terrified, dude,” I say. “I’ve had, like, three conversations with her, so how the hell am I this . . . like this, you know?”

  “Like what? Interested?” Burke unzips his backpack, pulling out a stack of books so thick, it’s a miracle he fit them inside. “Look,” he says, cracking open his econ textbook, “you’ve got this English thing, so text her a joke or something about it. Act natural.”

  “You want me to text Olivia a joke about Dante,” I say, thinking about the infinite ways this could go wrong. Burke says, “Well, you gotta read the book first.”

  I straighten up, indignant. “Hey. I did read it.”

  Burke’s head pops up from his textbook. “You read Inferno?” he says, and I’m like, “Don’t sound so surprised,” and he’s like, “But I am surprised. Like, fucking floored, dude.”

  I sigh. “I finished it yesterday. I don’t know what I thought—it’d maybe give us something to talk about?”

  “Wow,” he says. “So, wait, hold on, you don’t just want to get in her pants,” and I’m like, “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Burke. Jesus!”

  “Hey, chill.” Burke messes up his hair, which is dark purple this week. “So text her and say you finished reading it.”

  “But I—”

  “No, don’t argue. Just do it. Man, do I have to force you into everything? I swear, when you get married, I’m gonna be standing at the altar pinching you between every vow.”

  I frown but take out my phone. My fingers move with agonizing slowness, trying to keep the words tied up in my hands, but I make my way through, tap by tap. Hey so I finished reading inferno, I type, thinking about all the movies I’ve seen where guys write girls letters, long, dramatic, eloquent letters confessing their feelings, and as I stare down at this stupid six-word text, I somehow feel that it’s totally equivalent, that this is my own end-all-be-all confession that will betray once and for all the fact that I care.

  I send the text.

  “Congrats,” Burke says.

  I toss my phone onto the table, scowling. “You’re not allowed to leave until she says something,” I mumble, and his pierced eyebrows rise, like he’s trying to look innocent, as if that wasn’t the biggest lost cause of all lost causes.

  A minute passes. Then my phone buzzes, skittering over to me like a hopeful pet. I snatch it up, sliding open her response. You beat me!! I’m on Canto 27. No spoilers, thanks.

  Burke grabs my phone. I flail across the table, trying to snatch it back, but he holds it out of reach, crowing, “Two exclamation points! Not one, but two! Be still, your beating little heart!” and I say, “Shutupshutupshutup,” and wrench the phone out of his beefy fingers. “Shit, you are so embarrassing.”

  As I settle back into my chair, I type, Spoiler, everybody’s already dead, and hit send.

  Burke peers at the screen, squinting as he reads upside down. He doesn’t say anything, but when he flips his econ book open again, he’s wearing a private little smile, and I say, “The fuck are you smiling at?” and he says, “Just nice to see signs of life,” and I’m like, “The fuck is that supposed to mean?” and he says, “Hey, cool it with the f-bombs—your little brother’s, like, twenty feet away,” and I sigh, ’cause he’s right, as always. I lower my head to the table, one finger resting against my phone, waiting to feel it the split second she answers.

  IT’S A NEW FEELING, AVOIDING THE CAFETERIA DURING lunch on Tuesday. The rigid social structure of the caf makes it easy to navigate: the tables along the front wall are for football, lax, field hockey, and swimmers. The tables on the side wall belong to what douchebags refer to as the Lesser Sports: tennis, track, soccer, and cross-country. The tables in the middle have their own system, an unofficial order I still haven’t deciphered. Although I do know that Matt Jackson and Burke Fischer sit closest to the lunch line. It’s impossible to miss Burke, with the clothes he wears. Sometimes I get jealous of the guy—he seems so at home with his weirdness. I can’t help thinking that if I had his confidence, maybe I’d be out already.

  Today, though, I don’t get the chance to see Burke sporting fluorescent pants or a suede cowboy jacket. I jog downstairs, head out the front door, and stride across the green.

  Kansas can be beautiful. High’s a solid sixty degrees today, the sky cloudless. Whistling, I head down the gym pathway, which twines past the auditorium hill. I skip over the roots of the Climbing Tree—a huge oak the swim team climbs after every meet we win—and turn past the trailers. The tiny white huts are clustered at the bottom of the hill, set apart for specialized classes like AP Latin and Creative Writing. Valentine Simmons sits behind them on the hill, alone, his white-blond hair winking like a comet in the sun.

  Nobody’s ever talked to me the way he did. I don’t care—a blunt interruption in the middle of my sentence. I don’t know what his deal is, but I’m curious to find out.

  “Hey,” I call, jogging toward him with a lifted hand. As I approach, he gives me the appalled expression of someone who’s been interrupted mid-prayer. With a satisfied sigh, I plop down on the grass beside him, shrug off my backpack, and pull out my lunch. He doesn’t stop staring at me until I look back at him.

  He’s dressed the same way as yesterday: brown corduroys, a knit sweater, a leather belt, and an accusatory expression. He looks normal, until you notice the Velcro sneakers and orange socks. It’s as if J. Crew handled everything above his ankles, and then a five-year-old took over.

  “What are you doing?” Valentine asks.

  “Sitting,” I say.

  “Hilarious. Why are you here?”

  “’Cause you said you ate here, and I thought it sounded nice, so I was like, hey, maybe he wouldn’t mind if I joined.”

  “I mind,” he says.

  “You do?” I unclip my water bottle from my backpack and take a few huge gulps, not breaking eye contact.

  He looks away, letting out a sigh that’s way too dramatic to be real. “Fine.”

  Smiling, I fish my journal out of my backpack, open it out of Valentine’s sight line, and cross off a few items from today’s to-do list.

  • English quiz

  • Hand in math homework

  • Su
rprise lunch with Simmons

  I shove my journal back in my bag. Valentine, eyes trained on the trailers, drinks his juice box mutinously. I didn’t even know it was possible to drink a juice box mutinously.

  I let him have his little moment, and then I dive back in. “Your mom works in the guidance center, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she the one with the huge earrings? Earrings lady is super nice. It’s got to be—”

  “What were you writing?” he asks, destroying the only line of conversation I prepped.

  “Hmm?”

  “In that book.”

  “Oh,” I say. “It’s got my to-do list.”

  He tilts his face up, an angular receiver for the sunlight. He looses a soulful sigh.

  “Why, what’d you expect?” I ask.

  “It looked like an important book.”

  “It is an important book. Lots of lists in there.” I pull out the book, flipping to a page filled through the margins with increasingly tiny words. “This one’s fun. It’s my favorite words that I’m probably never going to use but that I want to hang on to anyway.”

  He peeks over at the page.

  My Favorite Words I’m Probably Never Going to Use but That I Want to Hang on to Anyway

  • Hwyl—a sudden, ecstatic inspiration!

  • Balter—to dance without grace, but with joy!

  • Swallet—a sinkhole!

  • Clamjamfry—rabble; rubbish!

  • Olisbos—a dildo!

  I can tell when he reads olisbos, because his face goes red all the way up his forehead, right to the roots of his white-blond hair.

  “The Greeks, am I right?” I say.

  He clears his throat. “Illuminating.”

  I grin, shutting my journal. The trees around the trailers are bathed in gentle wind, their fingers twitching at me. “So,” I say, “what do you usually do out here, huh?”

  “Homework. Or read.”

  “What are you reading?”

  He brandishes a thick book at me before dropping it back to the ground. I catch a picture of an astronaut and something about Mars in the title. “Space,” I say.