The Secret to Lying

by Todd Mitchell

  People often ask how I got these scars. There are several slashes along my right arm; faint scratches on my back; a few large scars, thick as leeches, on my shoulders; and a few more on my legs. It looks like I’ve been wrestling tigers or battling samurai. I’m a street fighter. A rebel. A real badass.

  At least that’s the story I sometimes try to suggest.

  Sometimes I answer their questions with a different story. I tell people the folktale I once heard about the old witch who eats all your scars when you die, and if you don’t have enough scars to feed her, she eats out your eyes, leaving you blind in the next world. I tell them I want to be sure that won’t happen to me.

  But if I’m going to be honest, then I can’t do it in a half-assed way. I have to admit the embarrassing stuff, and the bad stuff, and the stuff I wish I hadn’t done.

  The truth is, I got these scars fighting demons.

  That’s the short version.

  Here’s the long.

  We are such stuff

  As dreams are made on, and our little life

  Is rounded with a sleep.

  —THE TEMPEST, ACT 4, SCENE 1

  I WAS THE GUY no one noticed.

  Case in point: during my freshman year, I went out for football. It wasn’t difficult to make the team — my hometown high school was so small that they barely cut anyone. I didn’t suck at football, but I wasn’t great at it, either. The only reason I kept playing was because Kinsey Jackson, the girl I’d had a crush on since kindergarten, cheered on the pep squad. Then, as if fate conspired to bring us together, Kinsey drew my locker number for Spirit Week.

  It was supposed to be a secret, which pep squad girl had drawn our locker number, but Ginny Goodman told me because she knew I had a thing for Kinsey. For days I imagined what Kinsey might do to my locker to psych me up for the Homecoming Game. I even wrote her a thank-you letter that I planned on slipping into her locker afterward. The letter was three pages long and ended by asking her to the Homecoming Dance. I pictured her running up to me with pages in hand and whispering Yes.

  When I got to school the next day, the lockers of all the football players were decorated with glittery red H’s for Huskies, our mascot. Some players, like Dave McEwan, got four or five H’s on their lockers, along with bags of homemade cookies. Guys clamored in the halls, bragging about their decorations while stealing treats from each other.

  I hurried to my locker, eager to see what Kinsey had done for me, but there was nothing.

  No H.

  No streamers.

  No cookies.

  I looked on the floor in case my H had fallen off. Then I looked around in case someone had taken my cookies as a joke. That’s when I noticed Kinsey flirting with Dave McEwan at the end of the hall.

  It’s no big deal, I told myself. There are kids who are orphaned, or shipwrecked, or fighting in wars — every story we read in English class focused on someone coping with something big. Compared to their problems, not getting an H was definitely not worth talking about. But that was the problem. Nothing in my life was worth talking about. I was so unremarkable that no one even noticed I’d been forgotten.

  The rest of my freshman year drifted by in pretty much the same way. I didn’t try out for any other sports or write any more letters to girls I liked. I just coasted through my classes, dreaming of a different life. And maybe I would have gone on like that forever if Principal Kay hadn’t called me into her office a few weeks before the school year ended.

  She told me to sit and flipped through my file, which didn’t take long. There couldn’t have been much in it to read, other than some test scores, records of my crappy attendance, and an uninspired grade point average.

  “I don’t get it,” she said.

  “Am I in trouble?” I asked.

  “That depends, James. What are you doing here?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “I see that.” She shook her head and frowned. “Your test scores aren’t bad.”

  “Tests are easy.”

  “Really?” Principal Kay gave me a long look.

  I fidgeted, not knowing what she wanted me to say. Did she think I’d cheated or something?

  She sifted through a pile of papers on her desk, pulled out a glossy brochure, and handed it to me. “Any chance you might be interested in this?”

  I studied the cover. Discover your potential. . . . was written above a picture of a kid pouring liquid into a beaker. Along the bottom, in large block letters, it said THE AMERICAN SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS ACADEMY. According to the brochure, ASMA was “the state’s premier high school for academically gifted students.” In other words, a refuge for geeks.

  I looked at Principal Kay, confused about why she’d given the brochure to me. Science and math weren’t my favorite subjects, and I definitely wasn’t “gifted.” I didn’t consider myself very geeky, either. Sure, I’d scored well on standardized tests and I got decent grades, but classes at my small-town high school were a joke.

  “You never know what you’re capable of until you try, James,” Principal Kay said.

  I shrugged.

  “No one from this school has applied before,” she added.

  That caught my attention. “Why not?”

  “I suppose other qualified students didn’t want to live away from home.”

  I flipped through the brochure again, noticing the dorms in the background of one of the pictures. The campus was more than two hours away. “I’d have to live there?”

  “It’s one of the only public residential high schools in the country,” she said. “Quite a unique opportunity.”

  On my way back to class, I walked past the pictures of all the varsity football teams for the past fifty years or so. I stopped at my dad’s picture. He was in the third row, second from the end, not smiling. He might have been trying to look tough, but instead he seemed nervous.

  I followed the pictures to the end of the hall, where my team picture would eventually hang. The years blurred together into diluted red and tan squares. Uniforms and hairstyles changed, but the players looked the same. At the beginning of the year, Coach Wayne had told us that we should be proud to be part of such a great tradition. The funny thing was, our football team had never been that great. We were barely even average.

  And then there was me — among the average, I was no one.

  Everyone in my town had known me for so long, there was no way to get them to see that they didn’t really know me at all. To them, I was just the quiet guy who sat behind them in math class. The one who didn’t get an H and never said anything about it. The sort of guy no one told stories about.

  At least that’s who I used to be.

  I took home the application and filled it out.

  MOMS TRIED TO HELP ME decorate my room.

  “Honey, you don’t want to put this up,” she said, holding a ripped and faded Sid Vicious poster. “Let’s get you something to brighten the place — flowers, or a landscape, or something in a frame.” She looked at the poster and wrinkled her nose. “I’m going to throw this away.”

  I rolled my eyes, refusing to lose it in front of Richard, call-me-Dickie, the roommate I’d met only five minutes before. We’d talked once on the phone over the summer, after the administration had sent me a sheet with his phone number on it and the suggestion that we coordinate furnishings. All I knew about Dickie was that he’d bring the minifridge.

  Dickie stuffed socks into the dresser on his side of the room, pretending not to notice the growing tension.

  “It’s his room,” my dad said. “Let him decorate how he likes.”

  Moms turned to Dickie. “What do you think, Richard?” she asked, waving the poster around. “Do you want this hanging in your roo
m?”

  Dickie looked from Moms to me. “Don’t encourage her,” I said.

  “Sure, Mrs. Turner,” Dickie replied. “I think it adds a certain reckless, down-and-out pastiche.”

  Pastiche?

  Moms smiled at Dickie. “So grunge is in?”

  “Sid isn’t grunge,” I interrupted, embarrassed by her desperate attempt to sound cool. “He’s punk.”

  “Whatever. He’s grungy-looking, isn’t he?” she asked, addressing Dickie again.

  “Definitely grungy,” Dickie agreed. “But what can you do? Girls go crazy for that sort of thing.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah, Mrs. Turner. It’s all part of the bad-boy mystique.”

  Moms smiled, charmed by my blond, blue-eyed roommate. “I see. Then I guess we’ll have to put it up.”

  She tacked the poster to the wall and, with Dickie’s encouragement, arranged some of our other furnishings — stringing up the Christmas lights I’d brought and designing a study corner with a lava lamp. My roommate complimented her on her sophisticated sense of taste and style.

  “You’re too sweet,” Moms said, basking in the praise.

  Dickie winked at me. Even though his schmoozing annoyed me, I was still relieved to be rooming with him. Most of the other students I’d seen moving in had stunned me with their nerdliness — skinny arms, big glasses, buck teeth, stringy hair . . . the works.

  My dad fiddled with the shades on the windows while Moms surveyed the room. “What else should we do?” she asked. “Curtains? Do you need curtains? I think there are some stores down the road.”

  “I don’t need curtains,” I replied.

  “What about making your bed?”

  “I’m almost sixteen. I think I can handle it.”

  “Hey, James,” Dad called. He snapped a picture as I turned. The flash stung my eyes. “Got you.” He slid the camera back into his shirt pocket and checked his watch. “Well, it’s getting late.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” I offered.

  Moms sighed, acting dramatic. “Fine. If you don’t want us here.”

  “It was wonderful meeting you, Mr. and Mrs. Turner,” Dickie said.

  She squeezed his hand and gave him one of her radiant fake smiles. “You take care of my boy, now,” she said to Dickie, as if she were giving me up for adoption.

  I hurried them through the hall to keep Moms from talking with anyone else. Dad thumped the walls and remarked about the quality of the construction. “You’re lucky to have a bathroom in every room,” he said. “Most college dorms aren’t this nice.”

  I nodded and kept walking. It was always the same with them — Moms needing to be the center of attention while Dad slouched around in his wrinkled work shirts, muttering about particleboard and car engines.

  Outside, the parking lot swarmed with parents carrying grocery bags full of ramen and soda and other last-minute “necessities” snagged from the store. A few kids, standing with their parents beside a minivan or an SUV, seemed to be crying. Moms dabbed her eyes like she might cry, too, although I doubted she would. She just loved scenes.

  “We could get you some snacks,” she said. “Don’t you need snacks?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Maybe more granola bars?”

  “I have plenty.”

  Moms pouted. “I bet other kids would be happy to have their mom get them snacks.”

  I stayed silent, trying not to argue with her.

  Dad jingled the car keys. “Let’s go, Hannah.”

  She sighed and hugged me good-bye. Then she got in the car and flipped down the mirror to fix her mascara.

  Dad paused before opening the driver’s door. “James,” he called.

  I met his tired, sagging eyes. We were exactly the same height, but with his round shoulders and slight belly, he looked shorter. He rubbed the stubble on his cheek. “James,” he repeated. “Listen. Always keep a spare roll of toilet paper in your closet. If the one in the bathroom runs out, it’s good to know where an extra can be found.”

  “Sure,” I said, not certain how to respond to this gem of fatherly wisdom.

  He nodded and shook my hand, then we hugged, awkwardly slapping each other’s backs.

  I watched the car pull away. Moms waved, wiggling her fingers. Dad drove slowly out of the parking lot, signaled, and turned onto the main road. The drab gray back of the car receded, disappearing behind rows of corn.

  And that was it — I was free. I imagined jumping into the air and shouting like at the end of some cheesy high-school flick where a graduate in a robe tosses his cap and the camera freezes on it and no one knows what happens afterward. Except I wasn’t graduating. Here I was, only a high-school sophomore, already on my own.

  The possibilities seemed endless. I could go back to my room and unpack, or dump my clothes onto the floor and kick them under the bed. Swig a two-liter of Coke. Wrap myself in toilet paper. Get a tattoo. Change my name. . . . All the strings were cut. No one here knew me, so no one could hold me back.

  My life had finally started.

  IT STARTED WITH A LIE.

  During the first four days, sophomores were required to do a variety of orientation activities. There were six dorms at ASMA — three girls’ dorms and three boys’. Each dorm had four wings, laid out in an X with a kitchen and computer lab in each wing and a commons in the center. All the dorms together looked like a line of chromosomes about to divide.

  I lived in D wing, otherwise known as Dingo wing. This was written in Magic Marker above the door to our wing. Mike, our Resident Counselor — a thirtysomething bald guy with so much hair on his chest it puffed out his shirt — made us all attend a wing party after the parents left on Thursday so Dingo-wingers could “bond.” He gave us chips and soda, and interview forms we were supposed to fill out by questioning our roommates.

  Dickie encouraged me to introduce him as the illegitimate child of Lord Scrotium, a famous British politician. Mike frowned while I elaborated on Dickie’s lifelong ambition to be recognized by his father and reclaim the Scrotium lands, tower, and title.

  “Well done, old chap!” Dickie said in a fake British accent. Then he introduced me as a Sid Vicious fan with pyromaniac tendencies. Apparently, I’d accidentally burned down my previous school and the principal had fudged my entrance exams so I could be foisted off on ASMA. I nodded, coolly going along with the joke.

  If Dickie had given a purely factual introduction, it would have gone something like this: James Turner grew up in a cornfield, but his parents weren’t farmers. His dad is a tractor parts salesman who fixes TVs in his spare time and pretty much lives in the basement. His mom, an ex–Homecoming Queen, calls herself an independent businesswoman, which means she sells lipstick for Avon.

  James is an only child, or rather, an accidental child, since his parents married out of circumstance (to put it politely). He’s never traveled anyplace except Indiana and Wisconsin, both of which are more interesting than Illinois, but not by much. He once lit a whole matchbook on fire and singed his fingers. Other than that, he hasn’t won any contests, burned down any buildings, or done anything remotely noteworthy.

  Dickie’s introduction was far more interesting. A few Dingo-wingers chuckled while stealing glances at me, as if they thought some of it might be real. I did my best to encourage this impression. Anything was better than the truth.

  Following introductions, Chuck, the school counselor, dropped by our wing to talk with us. He was built like a linebacker, with wide, meaty shoulders and a scarred-up face — not the sort of guy you’d normally expect to lead a hug-in. Also, he was missing one eye and he didn’t wear a patch or anything. He let the lid hang limp. I wondered what I’d see if he suddenly opened it. A pink, empty socket? A flat, milky eyeball? A hole to his brain? The thought of it grossed me out, but I couldn’t stop staring.

  Chuck gave this lecture about the pressures we’d encounter at ASMA, and the homesickness people might experience, and how we wer
e each other’s family now, so we had to look out for each other. “No one has to go through anything alone,” he said. To illustrate this point, he had everyone do a trust-fall off a chair into the waiting arms of fellow Dingo-wingers. One kid was so floppy it was like catching a Muppet.

  When it was my turn, I acted like the whole thing was too dumb to bother me. I fell back without flinching. It wasn’t that I trusted everyone so much. It was that I’d already begun to see myself as a different person.

  I closed my eyes and fell away from the dull nobody I used to be.

  Orientation activities continued for most of Friday and Saturday, ranging from tours of the campus to lectures on maintaining proper hygiene while living away from home. The upperclassmen called it “scorientation” and boasted about how easy sophomore girls were to hook up with. Since the school was only a three-year program, sophomores were the youngest. Essentially, we were the freshmen of the place. During breaks between sessions, I watched some of the junior and senior guys circling groups of sophs like hawks, trying to pick out the hotties.

  Saturday night, we were required to attend a sophomore-only lock-in so our class could meet apart from the desperate upperclassmen. I walked with Dickie and his friend Heinous to the main complex. After signing in and stashing our pillows and toothbrushes in the auditorium, Dickie, Heinous, and I wandered the building looking for something to do. A few guys from our dorm were shooting hoops in the gym while some girls sat on the bleachers, talking. The guys tried to slam-dunk and do half-court shots, showing off, except none of them were very good.

  “Here we have the rare, speckled pumpkin pusher,” Heinous whispered, imitating the narrator on a wildlife show. “This particular subspecies is of the geekish-jock grouping, commonly known as jeeks. Notice how cunningly they fondle the ball.”

  Steve Lacone, a tall, well-built jeek who lived in Boomer wing, glared at us.

  “Shh . . . we’ve been spotted,” Heinous said. He ducked behind an imaginary shrub. “They’re dangerous when females are present.”

  “I say,” Dickie quipped in an exaggerated British accent, “no heckling the athletes.”