She's the Liar

by Alison Cherry

  It’ll be exciting to dig up dirt on some new people.

  Gianna pulls her usual Ziploc bag of Cinnamon Toast Crunch out of her backpack and starts snacking. She tells everyone she gets it from the dispensers in the dining hall, but I know she steals full industrial-sized boxes from the kitchen and hides them in her closet. I look pointedly at the bag and smile to remind her that her secret is safe with me as long as she votes like I tell her.

  “You guys ready to start?” Maya asks. I nod, and she gets up to let the first petitioner in.

  Today kicks off with a bunch of easy problems we can solve right away. We grant a maintenance request to fix a broken desk, okay a laptop loan, and give an off-campus pass to a seventh grader I don’t know. It’s nice when people ask for easy things and I get to feel generous. Two girls present their sides of a dispute involving a group history project, and I tell them we’ll talk it over at tomorrow morning’s meeting and issue a ruling. Cameron Schwimmer has the stronger case, but I’ll make sure we rule in favor of Vivian Hsu. Cameron’s one of those totally mediocre girls who gets away with making fun of kids she considers “nerdy” because she’s pretty. People like that need to be reminded that they don’t have power in any way that matters, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s what the Committee is for.

  Like I said, I’d rather things be right than fair.

  The next petitioner comes in, and I sit up straighter when I see that it’s Jenna Aristide. We were partnered up in science class on the first day of seventh grade—my very first day at Brookside—and she treated me like I was any other normal new girl, not one whose parents transferred her to another school because she couldn’t manage to keep a single friend at the old one. Of course, I didn’t manage to make friends with Jenna either—I acted way too awkward, like always. It didn’t take long for her to stop trying, but she still says hi and smiles at me in the halls.

  I’m pretty satisfied with who I’ve become at Brookside, but whenever I see her, I wonder if things could’ve turned out differently.

  “Hi, what can we help you with today?” I ask. It’s what I say to every petitioner, but with her, I really want to know.

  “Hi.” Jenna smiles at me as she slides her petition form across the table. It’s yellow, which means she wants money for her club. Her long braids are tied back in a ponytail today, and she pulls them over her shoulder and toys with the ends like she’s nervous. “I know this is kind of a long shot, especially when you guys just approved our new telescope—thank you so much for that, by the way, it’s awesome—but I guess you can’t win if you don’t try, right?”

  I take the paper. “Jenna Aristide,” I read out loud. “Requesting funds to send Astronomy Club to Cape Canaveral, Florida, to see the launch of the SpaceX Dragon in two months when it departs to deliver a shipment of supplies to the International Space Station. The club has already contacted the Kennedy Space Center, which has agreed to give them a tour and find them a place to watch the launch. Necessary budget for flights, hotels, food, and admission for six students and two chaperones totals seven thousand dollars.”

  Maya and Gianna exchange a wide-eyed look when I say the number, and Lily almost chokes on her water. People petition for ridiculous things all the time; last week, one girl asked for a flat-screen TV in her dorm room, and another girl asked for a personal shopping budget for the winter dance. But this is probably the most money a six-person club has ever requested. It’s an absurd amount, really, especially after the new telescope.

  But I picture how happy Jenna would be, watching that rocket blast off in person.

  For one second, I allow myself to imagine standing with her and the rest of Astronomy Club, all of us wearing matching NASA shirts as we follow a bright speck rising into the sky.

  I know that’s unrealistic. They probably wouldn’t want me as part of their group, much less as a friend. And I can’t risk asking and being turned down—it might get back to the Committee, and revealing weakness in front of them would destroy everything I’ve been working toward for a whole year. But Jenna would be so grateful if I could make this trip happen for them. Maybe her gratitude would be enough for me.

  “We’ll have to talk it over at our meeting tomorrow, but this seems like a great educational opportunity,” I say, my face carefully neutral. “Hopefully we can make it work. We’ll email you when we decide.”

  Jenna’s eyes light up. “Wow. You’ll actually consider it?”

  The other three girls stare at me. “We haven’t said yes,” Lily reminds her.

  “But you said maybe, and that’s way better than no. Thank you so much.” Jenna gives me a blinding smile as she turns to go.

  We are definitely saying yes.

  “We’re definitely saying no, right?” says Maya as soon as the door shuts.

  “I think we should consider it,” I say. I stare her down, giving her plenty of time to remember that I know she once turned in her sister’s old English Lit essay instead of writing her own. She knows her perfect GPA can stay intact as long as she cooperates.

  She finally looks away and sighs, and I know I’ve won.

  I’m feeling pretty great about myself until Abby walks in.

  She looks less like my sister every time I see her. I’m still not used to those squared shoulders, the straight spine, the direct gaze. She walks right up to the table and plunks a pile of papers down in front of me before I can even ask how we can help her today.

  “I’m here to submit my paperwork to run for sixth-grade representative,” she says, and her voice doesn’t shake even a little.

  My stomach lurches so hard it’s like someone has snagged it with a fishhook and is trying to reel it in. “What?” I say, even though I heard her fine the first time.

  “All the signatures are here,” she says. She needs fifty to run, and when I flip the pages over, I see that she has collected almost two hundred. That’s more than half the school. I have no idea how she managed to get so many signatures in just three days.

  I want to tell her she can’t run. I’m so used to sitting in this chair and telling people what they’re allowed to do. But the Committee can’t control who runs for the Committee. All we can do is reject people who don’t have their paperwork in order.

  “You don’t want to do this,” I say instead. I force my voice to come out strong, but it takes some serious effort to keep it from trembling.

  Abby looks me right in the eyes. “I do, though.”

  “You know there’s a debate, right? You’ll have to get up onstage and argue with the other candidates about your platform. The whole school will be watching.”

  Abby grows the tiniest bit paler, but she nods. “I can do it.”

  There’s no way she can do it. She used to cry all through dinner every time she was assigned an oral report, and she’d always back out of giving them at the last minute and accept zeroes. It’s obvious she’s gotten bolder or she never would’ve gone through with the play audition, but even that was just for a few people. The debate happens in front of everyone, and if she freaks out, the whole school will laugh at her and remember it forever, like what happened after the third-grade talent show. Abby missed so many class trips and birthday parties and stuff because she wasn’t comfortable around the other kids at our old school, but she’s been doing so much better here, finally making friends and coming out of her shell. I can’t bear to watch her retreat into herself again. I thought I had saved her from that when I canceled the play.

  The last time this happened, I stood by and did nothing. Maybe there wasn’t much I could have done—it’s not like I had any power back then. But this time I definitely do, and I’m not going to stand by and watch her derail her new life.

  I pick up the stack of papers and look carefully at the list of signatures. Grace O’Connor, the girl who was supposed to be the assistant director of the play, is listed as Abby’s campaign manager, and the first fifteen signatures belong to kids from the cast. “Is this about saving the pla
y?” I ask.

  “It’s not just about that,” she says. “But sort of.”

  “I told you, we don’t have the budget this year to—”

  “I know you have the budget,” Abby says. “I tried to reason with you, but you wouldn’t listen. This obviously isn’t going to get done unless I do it myself.”

  My sister meets my eyes, a defiant tilt to her chin that I’ve never seen before, and for a second, all I feel is pride. She’s doing exactly what I would do.

  And then I’m crushed by the impossibility of the situation. I can’t back down and reinstate the play for no apparent reason—if I caved like that, the Committee might get the idea that none of my decisions are truly final. Plus, it wouldn’t even guarantee that Abby would withdraw from the race. Even if I could convince her to drop out in exchange for saving the show, the best-case scenario would still involve her performing. Nobody can possibly come out ahead here.

  Well, except Ms. Gutierrez, I guess. I doubt she would’ve seen those casting calls for The Cannibal’s Daughter on Broadway if I hadn’t printed them out and put them in her faculty mailbox.

  “Sydney?” says Lily, and I realize I’ve been silent way too long. “Do you want to approve her paperwork, or … ?”

  I guess I don’t have a choice.

  I roll the APPROVED stamp across my ink pad and press it down in the corner of her paperwork, and my stomach twists in protest.

  I’m the big sister. It’s my responsibility to protect Abby, to make sure she doesn’t get hurt, and she’s making it absolutely impossible for me to do that.

  This is going to end so, so badly.

  Abby’s announcement rattles me, and the last thing in the world I want to do is sit in the loud, crowded dining hall. I’d much rather eat in the library with my math homework for company; Ms. Stamos knows I’m careful, so she lets me eat around the books, even sticky stuff like cream cheese and peanut butter. I long for the quiet of my favorite desk by the window, where I can look out over the main quad and keep an eye on what’s happening without anyone looking back up at me.

  But it’s important for me to make an appearance at dinner sometimes. It reminds my classmates that I’m always watching, always listening. So I go.

  My first week as president, it was actually exciting to come to the dining hall for every meal. I ate with all the most popular people on a rotating basis, and for a little while, it was exhilarating to know I could plunk my tray down at absolutely any table and no one would turn me away. It’s not like the cafeteria at my old school was a minefield or anything, but nobody really talked to me, even if they let me sit where I wanted. But a week ago I spilled a glass of lemonade down my front, and not a single person even laughed. All the girls rushed to hand me napkins, helped wipe off my backpack, and offered me spare shirts as if I didn’t have more in my room.

  After that I realized I could probably do anything I wanted: eat yogurt with my fingers, wear a giant purple hat, get up on the table and do a tap routine between the plates of half-finished chicken pot pie. It turns out that when you hold everyone’s fate in your hands, nobody dares to tease you. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out that I could run my real life like I ran Capriana’s pretend one.

  Jenna and the Astronomy Club girls are sitting at a table near the windows, and I briefly consider going over and sitting with them. Jenna probably feels pretty friendly toward me now that I’ve said we’d consider her petition; it seems like she might not mind if I ate some spaghetti next to her for twenty minutes. But I don’t want to lead her and the other girls on, and sitting with them might imply that I’m definitely going to send them to Florida when I haven’t actually crunched the numbers yet to make sure it’s possible. Even if I move all the money from the play over to Astronomy Club, I’ll probably still have to siphon some funds away from a few other clubs, and I’m not positive I can make it work.

  Plus, even if I were sure about the budget, I don’t want friendliness from Jenna that’s purely part of an exchange. I want her to smile at me because she likes me, not just because she thinks I might send her to Cape Canaveral. And since there’s no way to tell for sure why someone’s being nice to you, it’s always better not to get your hopes up. It’s impossible to be disappointed that way.

  There’s an empty spot next to Bree, who runs Environmental Club, so I sit down next to her. She looks startled for a second, but she recovers quickly and scoots over to make room for me. The other girls at the table are deep in conversation, but they break off the moment they see me. At first this kind of thing made me feel powerful; if people weren’t legitimately afraid of what I’d do with the facts I gathered, I wouldn’t be able to manipulate them. But sometimes it’s exhausting to walk through a room and hear girl after girl go quiet like I’ve muted them with a remote. I’m not always looking for information. Sometimes all I want to do is eat my dinner.

  All the girls are looking at me nervously, like I’m going to issue some sort of royal proclamation. I wave my hand like I’m trying to swat away a fly, a Don’t pay attention to me gesture. “Just do what you were doing,” I say. “I’m not going to report you.”

  It’s not even remotely funny, but all five of them laugh—since I became president, everyone laughs at my jokes, funny or not. It’s like they think I’m keeping a tally of who finds me most amusing. It was nice at first—my actual jokes have always been too weird for most people—but now it just feels kind of sad.

  There’s a burst of genuine laughter from across the dining hall, and when I turn to look, my eyes land on my sister. She’s wearing tight jeans and a bright blue shirt speckled with metallic silver stars—way more eye-catching than anything she ever wore at home—and she’s at the very center of a knot of girls, the sun in their solar system. Before we got to Brookside, I don’t think I’d ever seen my sister edge past the borders of a group; she didn’t even like when we sang to her on her birthday. But now she doesn’t look nervous at all.

  As I watch, a few people split off from the group, and I see that they’re carrying stacks of paper. A tiny girl with white-blond hair stops at the table next to ours and chirps, “Are any of you sixth graders?” When two people say they are, she slides flyers across the table to them. “Hi, my name is Kendall, and I’m campaigning for Abbi Carrington,” she says. “I hope you’ll consider voting for her for sixth-grade representative. In the few weeks since school started, she’s already uncovered all kinds of unfair practices and favoritism inside the Committee that keep students like you from getting the things you want and need. Abbi will do everything she can to restore balance and make sure your voices are heard.”

  The girls pull the flyers toward them. “Cool,” says one of them. It’s clear none of them has noticed me, but the girls at my own table are exchanging glances and shifting restlessly. They can’t believe this is happening right in front of me, and they’re half-terrified, half-gleeful, waiting to see what I’ll do.

  “That’s Abbi over there, in the blue shirt,” Kendall continues, pointing. “If you have any questions or concerns, she’d be happy to talk to you any time. Or you can just come to next week’s debate and listen to her discuss the issues with her opponents.”

  The reminder makes my stomach ache like there’s a tiny monster inside, clawing at the lining, and I suddenly can’t sit here silently anymore. I stand, pushing my chair back so hard that it screeches across the wood floor, and stalk over to the next table. I tower over Kendall by a good six inches, and she shrinks down even smaller the moment she registers who I am, her eyes so gigantic they basically take up half her face. I want to snap, God, I’m not going to hurt you! but that’ll probably scare her more. I smooth over all my frustrations like I’m spreading frosting across the surface of a cake, and when I speak, my voice comes out even. “Can I have one of those?”

  Her eyes widen even more. “What?”

  I gesture to her chest; she’s gripping the flyers close. “One of those.”

  “Oh.
” Kendall glances over her shoulder at my sister like she’s unsure whether she should give me one, but Abby’s not looking, so she’s forced to make the decision on her own. Finally she peels one off and hands it over, looking at my boots instead of my face.

  In bold, black letters, the flyer proclaims, VOTE FOR ABBI CARRINGTON, THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE! It’s still super weird to see my sister’s name spelled with an i. At the bottom of the page are a few sentences about how much experience she already has petitioning the Committee and how she wants to make sure every student gets the same opportunities. And in the middle is a color photo of her wearing her Brookside uniform and grinning as she leaps into the air, both hands thrown above her head. Her hair is woven into a side-braid, bouncing up from her shoulder. Even though she always wore it down at home, I realize I’m starting to think of this as her signature style.

  If I had come across this photo without knowing it was my sister, I’m not totally sure I would’ve recognized her right away.

  I don’t know why I’m surprised that a person can reinvent herself at Brookside. It only took me a few weeks here before people realized I paid attention to everything, that I knew secrets they’d been able to hide from everyone else, and started treating me with respect. When one of the girls who’d been elected seventh-grade representative the previous fall moved to Nashville, I beat out Kennedy Howell to replace her with no problem. All I had to do was pay close attention to Kennedy’s biggest supporters, learn what they were self-conscious about, and then spread rumors that Kennedy had been making fun of those things behind their backs—nobody trusted her after that. When both seats opened up for eighth-grade representative in the spring, I quietly reported dirt on each of my two opponents to supporters of the other; everyone thought I was on their side, so the other two girls split the vote, but everyone voted for me. It was almost too easy. Nobody even caught on, so I was able to use the exact same trick to secure the presidency at the end of the year. It was almost too easy.