The Secret to Lying

by Todd Mitchell

  I told him good-bye and hurried into my dorm, eager to see friends, and hang out, and be someone again, but when I entered my room, things looked different.

  It took me a moment to realize that my bed was missing. Everything — the mattress, sheets, pillow, comforter — had disappeared. Dickie’s bed was gone, too, and I couldn’t find any of the clothes I’d left in my closet. I was about to check the number on the door to make sure I had the right room, but duh — my posters still covered the walls.

  Maybe I’d been kicked out after all, I thought. The RCs might have put my stuff in boxes, and Dickie might have moved to a different room. Everyone probably knew I wasn’t supposed to be here anymore.

  I searched my room again. Then I opened the bathroom door. All the missing things, including my mattress, had been jammed into the shower.

  I had to admit the prank was pretty impressive, but my relief at realizing that I hadn’t been expelled quickly changed to cursing when I opened the glass door and water poured out. The Steves had turned the shower on.

  I surveyed the mess. If I left it for later, I wouldn’t have anything to sleep on, so I pulled off all the wet bedding and headed for the laundry room.

  Sunny was standing outside my door when I returned. “I don’t think he’s back yet,” I said, figuring that she was there to see Dickie.

  “Okay if I hang out with you while I wait?”

  “Sure. If you don’t mind the flood.”

  She raised her eyebrows. I propped open the door and showed her the pile of mattresses and clothes in the shower.

  “So that’s how you do laundry.”

  “Very funny.” I wrung out a pair of boxers. “I think the Steves did it.”

  “Look, James, if you’ve got a bed-wetting problem, that’s okay. You don’t have to blame it on someone else.” She giggled and patted my back.

  I didn’t mind the teasing from Sunny. She never got mean about it, and she had a beautiful laugh. Being around her brightened my mood.

  I draped my boxers over the shower rod to dry. Then I got some hangers out of my closet for the other clothes. The mattresses I propped against our bed frames to air out. Sunny gave me a hand, hanging my jeans and shirts.

  “You don’t have to help,” I said.

  She kept hanging things. “I don’t mind. Anyway, I feel a little guilty about all this.”

  “Why?”

  “I think I might have started this whole prank war thingy.”

  “How?”

  “I dated Steve Lacone at the beginning of the year.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Nope,” she said. “We only went out for a few days. Then I started hanging with you guys, which pissed Steve off.”

  “Hold on. Is that why they pelted us with water balloons?”

  “Probably.” Sunny draped a few wet socks over the shower bar.

  I thought of the water balloon and shaving cream fight we’d had at the beginning of the year, right after I’d dyed my hair with Sunny. Anything had seemed possible then. “Okay,” I said, accepting that Sunny and Steve had dated. “So why’d you split up?”

  “Don’t tell anyone this, but no matter what we did or where we went, Steve Dennon came with us.”

  “That’s not a surprise. Steve Dennon worships Steve Lacone.”

  “Yeah. But the weird thing is, one night Steve and I were by the pond, messing around . . .”

  “Steve Lacone, right?”

  Sunny slapped my shoulder. “Of course!”

  “Just checking.”

  “So we were making out,” she continued, “and Steve groaned, Oh, Steve!”

  “Whoa!”

  “No kidding. I didn’t know if he was saying, Oh, Steve! meaning himself, like he thought he was so great. Or if he was saying, Oh, Steve! like he was fantasizing about kissing Steve Dennon.”

  “So what’d you do?”

  “Nothing. But that was the last time I walked the pond with him. When a guy calls out someone else’s name in the heat of passion, even if it’s his own name, it’s not a good sign.”

  I tried to imagine a situation where, in the heat of passion, I might gasp, Oh, James!

  “What about you?” Sunny asked. “What happened between you and Jess?”

  “I think we broke up.”

  “Uh . . . yeah. She said you turned into a suicidal maniac and crashed her dad’s car.”

  “She told you that?”

  “I heard her and Rachel talking in our commons earlier. She seemed kind of pissed.”

  “Did she say anything else?” I asked, hoping that Jess hadn’t told anyone about my parents, or what a phony I was.

  Sunny shook her head. “Not that I heard. You want to tell me about it?”

  I wrung out a shirt and draped it over a hanger. In a way, it was a relief not to have to worry about impressing Jess anymore. “Guess I wanted to break up with her,” I said.

  “So you crashed her car?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Sunny stopped hanging clothes and leaned against the door frame. “If I dared you to do something, would you do it?”

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s not a bad thing,” she said. “But you have to promise me you’ll do it before I tell you what it is.”

  “Why?”

  “Promise me first.”

  “Okay,” I said. “What do you dare me to do?”

  “Go see Chuck.”

  I drew back, confused. “The shrink?”

  Sunny nodded. “I’m worried about you.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “I’m not the only one who’s worried. Dickie is, too.”

  I scowled, annoyed that they’d been talking about me. “I’m the sanest person I know.”

  Sunny put her hand on my arm. “You just crashed your girlfriend’s car to break up with her.”

  “That was an accident.”

  “What about these?” She turned my arm, exposing the cuts on the other side. “Are these accidents?”

  I pulled away. “They’re nothing.”

  “If they’re nothing, then why are you afraid to talk to Chuck?”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “Please,” Sunny urged. “I’ll go with you.”

  “Fine,” I said. “If it means that much to you, I’ll go. Once.”

  She gave me a huge, Sunny smile. “Thanks!” she said, and kissed my cheek.

  THE FAINT SCENT OF COFFEE drifted on the air. At first, that didn’t seem significant until I realized where I was — stuck in the dream again. I followed the scent to the diner where I’d first met the guides.

  The place looked abandoned. All the windows had been broken, and the lights were out. Cobwebs tickled my face and glass shards crunched beneath my feet as I walked through the door. No waitress greeted me. I was about to leave when I saw something move.

  It was a man with bushy white hair hunched at the counter. He turned over a mug beside him and filled it with steaming coffee from a thermos. “Might as well sit,” he said. “Drink it while it’s hot.”

  I cupped the mug in my hands. Coffee grounds swirled around the top, but the smell was irresistible. “Got any sugar?” I asked.

  “Nope,” the man said. “It’s coffee. It’s supposed to taste bitter.”

  I took a sip, cringing.

  “Thought you might come back here,” the man said. His face was tan, and wrinkles radiated around the corners of his eyes. I vaguely remembered him from my waking life.

  “Liam?” I asked.

  The man shrugged.

  “You’re Liam,” I said. “Sage’s father. I met you at that picnic.”

  “Call me what you like. It’s your show.” He sipped his coffee and nodded to himself. “You sure have made a mess of things, haven’t you?”

  “I didn’t do this,” I said, glancing around the diner.

  “That’s right. You’re not responsible for anything that’s happened, are you?” Liam turned to face me. “I saw you come here
the first time, you know. You could have sat with anyone in the room. You had a choice then.” He rubbed the white stubble on his cheek. “Bet you didn’t even notice me.”

  I shook my head.

  “I was sitting right here when you came in.” He tapped the counter. “I’d even kept that stool empty for you.”

  I thought back to the last time I’d been in the diner. Several figures had been at the counter, but I hadn’t given them much consideration.

  “Yup. You chose them,” Liam continued. “You walked over to their booth and plopped down with them of your own free will. Why? Because she was pretty? Because he looked cool? Because you wanted to be like them?”

  “I don’t know. They called me over.”

  “Baloney.” Liam took a sip of his coffee and clanked the empty cup onto the saucer. “They didn’t call you over. You weren’t tricked into helping the Nomanchulators. You chose to do it.”

  “I didn’t know who they were.”

  “You didn’t want to know,” he said.

  I lifted my coffee, then thought better of it and set the cup back down. The little I’d drunk burned like battery acid in my belly. “I’m so tired of this,” I muttered. “I hate being stuck here.”

  “Then why don’t you leave?”

  “I can’t leave. This city doesn’t end.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Hold on. Do you know a way out?”

  “Naw. I’ve been here my whole life. But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “You haven’t.” He squinted at me. “Wherever you go, there you are, right, James?”

  “So there’s a way out?”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree.” He unscrewed the thermos and refilled his cup. “The question you should be asking is how you got yourself into this mess. Figure that out, and you might be able to leave.”

  I pushed away from the counter and stood.

  “Good luck finding a way out of your own head,” Liam muttered. “’Cause that’s the pickle, isn’t it?”

  IN PHYSICS, DR. CHOI ASSIGNED US new lab groups for the spring semester. It was just my luck that I got put with Cheese, Muppet, and the Ice Queen.

  We were supposed to pull our desks together and work on a problem set with our new groups. Cheese slumped in his seat as if it pained him to move, while Muppet scuttled about trying to get our desks to form a perfect square. Ellie seemed tired. There were faint shadows under her eyes that gave her a bruised look, but that didn’t stop her from being completely gorgeous. And stuck-up. As soon as I came over, she set her back to me, her perfect posture impenetrable as a wall.

  Great, I thought. One more girl who hates me.

  I didn’t know why she was pissed. If anyone should have been angry, it was me. After all, the last time I’d seen her, she was walking away, leaving me to freeze by the pond. At the very least, I thought she’d apologize for calling security and getting me suspended, instead of acting like my mere existence offended her.

  Ellie asked Muppet how his break had been.

  The poor kid got so nervous talking to her that he rambled on and on about the “blaring inconsistencies” in some alien invasion movie he’d seen. “And then,” he sputtered, “when the spaceships went by, there was this whooshing sound. Like there could be sound in space, when everyone knows waves don’t travel through a vacuum.” He laughed, as if he’d made a very funny joke.

  “Exactly,” I said. “I was totally buying the fact that aliens were popping out of people’s bellies until the sound of the spaceships ruined it all.”

  Ellie ignored my sarcasm. “You’re right. I hate it when movies do that,” she said to Muppet. Then she smiled at Cheese. “What about you, Cheese?” she asked, completely dissing me. “How was your break?”

  I talked with Cheese about it on the way back to our dorm. “Ice Queen didn’t even say hello to me,” I said. “I mean, how stuck-up can you get?”

  Cheese shrugged.

  “I’m serious. Tell me you saw what I’m talking about. She totally hates me.”

  “She’s just shy, man,” Cheese said. “That’s her thing.”

  “She’s not shy about talking with you. Or Muppet.”

  “We were in her chemistry group last semester. She knows us. Anyhow, what’s the big deal? Are you into her?”

  “The Ice Queen?” I smirked. “No way. I just want our physics group to go well.”

  “Of course. Physics.” Cheese swiped his ID across the dorm sensor so we could enter. “Like the study of parabolic curves. Or the heat produced from the friction between two bodies. I’m all about physics.”

  “The fact that you’re trying to eroticize parabolic equations — that’s messed up.”

  “Physics, biology, chemistry,” Cheese said, “it’s all sex.”

  “You’re sick.”

  “That’s my secret to success — relate everything to sex and suddenly it’s interesting. How else do you stay awake when Ms. Krup drones on about covalent bonds?” He unlocked the door to his room and yawned. The shades were drawn, and the stuffy air smelled vaguely of rotting food and sweaty sneakers. “I’m gonna take a nap,” Cheese said, pushing a pile of dirty clothes off his mattress.

  “Dude, you’re always sleeping.”

  “It’s my hobby.”

  Cheese dropped his backpack onto a pizza box and flopped into bed. I lingered by the door. “Do you remember your dreams?” I asked.

  “Sometimes,” he said.

  “What are they like?”

  “Strange . . . good . . . dirty . . . They’re dreams, man.”

  “You ever get stuck in them?”

  He leaned on his elbow and looked at me. “How so?”

  “I don’t know.” I paused, not sure how to explain it. Cheese kept looking at me, waiting for me to say more. “It’s like I’m living this other life in my head, and I can’t get out of it,” I said. “Sometimes I think my dreams are taking over. Does that sound crazy?”

  “Naw,” Cheese replied. “Everyone’s stuck in their heads.”

  “They are?”

  “Definitely. Only not everyone’s aware of it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You can’t know,” Cheese said. “That’s the whole point. It’s impossible to know what’s going on in someone else’s head, because everything we know is in our own head.”

  I pictured a bunch of goldfish in bags, floating around in one big tank, their self-contained worlds bumping into each other’s. It reminded me of what ghost44 had said — that no one ever really knows anyone else. “Doesn’t that bother you?” I asked.

  “No way, man.” Cheese grinned. “Would you want to see the sick stuff that goes on in my head?”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “I mean, where do you think you go when you die, right?”

  “Huh?”

  “When you die,” he repeated, as though the connection between dreams and death should be totally obvious.

  I stood there, dumbfounded.

  “Take this lamp,” Cheese said, turning on the reading light next to his bed. “Say the light is consciousness, okay?” He flicked the light off and on. “You can turn the light off, but the lamp’s only aware when it’s on, so it thinks it’s on all the time. You get it?”

  “I guess.”

  “In order to know that you’re dead, you have to be conscious,” he explained. “But if you’re conscious, then you’re not dead. The only thing you can know is being alive, so that’s eternity.” He flicked the light off and on again. “Think about it. We might be dead right now, but we don’t know it. We keep dreaming ourselves alive.”

  “So I’m dreaming you up right now, talking to me?” I asked.

  “Maybe. Maybe I’m not talking at all,” Cheese said. “Maybe you only think I am, but you don’t hear me. Not really. Your whole experience of hearing me is just neurons flashing in your brain. It’s all in your head. It’s all dreams, man. Day. Night. Eternity. Dreams within dreams
. Life is but a dream.”

  “So we’re stuck in our heads forever?”

  Cheese shrugged.

  I imagined being trapped in my dreams with the Nomanchulators for eternity. “That’s depressing.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” he said. “You could believe in nice things, like heaven. And I’m not talking about the boring, religious one with the harps and angels and crap, but some cushy afterlife with lots of ladies, because if you believe in it, then you make space for it to happen. Get it?”

  “Kind of,” I said, although I still didn’t like the idea of always being stuck in my head. “It seems lonely. What if, when we die, part of us lives on and that’s how we know that we’re dead?”

  “If part of you lives on, then you’re not really dead,” Cheese countered.

  “Well, what if the part that lives on is us but not us. Like maybe we’re part of something bigger than ourselves.”

  “Could be.”

  “Then we’re not stuck in our heads forever?”

  “If that’s what you want to believe. Yeah.”

  My brow knitted.

  “You imprison yourself, or you free yourself,” Cheese said. “It’s all a matter of perspective.”

  “So what do you believe?” I asked. “Are we all imprisoned in our own little worlds or are we all connected somehow?”

  Cheese turned off the lamp and plopped onto his pillow. “Both,” he said, closing his eyes. “I believe in sleep. And sex.”

  I kept standing there, but he didn’t say anything more. After a minute, I turned and started to leave.

  “She’s funny, you know,” he said. “Got a nice sense of humor. You wouldn’t think that, but she does.”

  “Who?”

  “The . . . Ice . . . Queen . . .” Cheese mumbled in a slurred, sleepy voice. “Chemistry,” he groaned, like he was describing some perverted fantasy. “Covalent bondage . . . electron pair theory . . . carbon-on-carbon bonds . . . exothermic reactions . . . oh, yeah.”

  johnnyrotten: You there?

  ghost44: Maybe.

  johnnyrotten: A response! I tried messaging you like twenty times before, but I got nada.