She's the Liar
Page 15
“That’s actually what I came to talk to you about,” I say. “Committee stuff, I mean.”
“Sure,” Jenna says. She plops down on her bed and stares up at me, ready to listen.
I take a deep breath, like I taught Abby. “Vice Principal Rosenberg came to our meeting yesterday, and she looked at our budget, and … well, she saw the money I gave you guys for your trip to Cape Canaveral, and she said it was way too much and unfair to the other clubs, and … she’s taking most of it away. There’s not going to be enough left for even one person to go. I’m so, so sorry, and I feel completely awful about this, and—”
Jenna cuts me off before I can say I understand if you hate me. “That’s okay,” she says. “We knew it was a long shot. Honestly we were shocked when you said yes. None of us thought we’d actually get to go. It was just, like, a fun idea.”
My whole body is braced for her anger, so it takes me a minute to comprehend what she just said. “Wait, what?”
“See? I told you she wouldn’t be mad,” says Abby.
“Of course I’m not mad,” Jenna says. “I know it’s not your fault.”
“Oh.” My muscles relax all at once, and I sit down hard on the other bed without even meaning to. “That’s … Thank you.”
“It would’ve been cool to have the tour, but we can watch the rocket launch online,” Jenna says. “The NASA site streams all that stuff, and you can hear what mission control is saying and everything.”
“I know,” I say. “The NASA site is my homepage, and I’ve watched tons of rocket launches. That moment when the scaffolding falls away and those massive machines rise into the air like they’ve been waiting to break free—it gives me chills every time.”
“Maybe we could set up a projector and watch it on a big screen somewhere,” Jenna says. “That would be awesome. You should come watch with us.”
She says it so casually, like it’s a normal, everyday thing to say and not the sentence I’ve been hoping to hear for an entire year.
My instinct is to say Really? but I don’t want to give her the opportunity to take it back. So I just say, “I would love that.”
“Amazing,” Jenna says. “I’ll make sure you’re on the emails when it happens.”
If I were alone, this is the point at which I’d thank Jenna, stand up, and flee, happy to have secured the tiniest win. But Abby looks at me expectantly, and I know I have to be brave. If my sister could get over her stage fright and debate in front of the entire school, surely I can ask one question to one girl.
“Um,” I say. “I was actually wondering—would you maybe have room in Astronomy Club for one more person? If I wanted to join and come to all the meetings? It’s okay if you—”
“Of course!” Jenna says before I’m even done. I search her posture and her voice for signs that she’s just agreeing because she’s afraid of me or feels like she has to. But she’s right on the edge of the bed, eyes bright, leaning slightly toward me. “There are only six of us—we’d love to have a new member. I have no idea why more people aren’t obsessed with space. We meet every Thursday after class and sometimes at night if there’s something cool to see. Ms. Wallander took us out last week and let us set up our telescope on the edge of the soccer field where there aren’t so many lights. It was the best.”
She keeps talking, her hands flying around in excited swoops, but I’m not listening anymore. My mind is full of images: Jenna and me side-by-side on the dark soccer field, taking turns with the telescope; Jenna and me at dinner, debating which planets in nearby galaxies are most likely to support intelligent life; Jenna and me sitting next to each other, staring open-mouthed with wonder as the SpaceX Dragon begins to fly.
We’ll start with talking about space. I’ll work hard and impress her with how much I know. And someday, if I do everything right, maybe we can talk about other stuff too. Maybe we can be real friends.
I’ve completely lost the thread of the conversation by the time Jenna stops talking, so I just say, “That sounds amazing,” and she nods hard and says, “It was. Wait till you see.”
“What’s this?” Abby’s over by Jenna’s desk now, and she’s holding up a black hardcover book with swirly silver designs in the corners. I recognize it without even reading the title.
“It’s a Dungeon Master’s Guide,” I say, totally shocked. Josh has the same one, or at least he used to, when he and Dev and Antonia and I played. I haven’t talked to any of them since I left for Brookside, so I don’t know if they still meet up. Seeing the book conjures up the smell of Josh’s basement—dust and laundry detergent and Cheetos—and the slightly sticky feel of the red Formica table where we used to do our campaigns.
I wait for Jenna to laugh at me for knowing something so nerdy, then say the book belongs to her roommate. But instead she breaks into a huge smile. “Oh my god, do you play?”
“Play what?” Abby asks.
“Dungeons and Dragons,” I say. “Yeah. I mean, I used to.”
“Do you want to join our group?” Jenna asks. “It’s me and Annabelle and Kailani and Stella. I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t like it anymore. But we’ve been really wanting another person.”
A wave of warmth sweeps through me, and I’m afraid my cheeks might be turning pink. This is different from Jenna letting me into her club when I asked. Now she’s the one reaching out. Even if it’s only because they want a fifth person, she doesn’t mind the idea of the fifth person being me.
“No, I didn’t stop because I didn’t like it,” I say. “I mean, I do like it. Yeah. I’d definitely play with you guys if you wanted.” I don’t want to come on too strong and scare her, so I keep my voice as level as I can. But saying the words makes me so giddy it’s like I’m levitating slightly above the bed. “Are you the DM?”
“Yeah! Oh my god, this is the best. The other girls are going to be so excited. Abbi, do you play? You could both come.”
“I don’t even really understand what it is,” my sister says, which is kind of weird, since I played for years. But I guess I never really explained it to her. I never explained much of anything to her.
“It’s a role-playing game,” Jenna says. “It takes place in this fantasy world. You each make up a character, and you go on quests together. Like fighting monsters or rescuing people or looking for treasure or whatever.”
Abby wrinkles her nose. “Like improv?”
This is my chance to get her to say no, if I want; I know how Abby feels about improv. A few weeks ago—or even a few days, probably—I would’ve done anything to keep her from playing with us. But now I say, “It’s not that much like improv. You make up your character’s backstory and stuff, but the DM—that’s the Dungeon Master, that’s Jenna—she tells you most of the things that happen as you go through the quest, and you decide how you want your character to react. And some things are just chance—sometimes you roll dice to see what happens. You all figure out the story together.”
Abby nods. “Yeah, okay. That sounds cool. I’ll come.”
“Amazing,” Jenna says. She turns to me. “Who’s your character?”
I think about my last D&D campaign: the way I suddenly changed my alignment to evil even though it benefitted nobody but me, the way I traded friendship and camaraderie for the ability to control everyone. Ruling through fear was effective, and it bought my character power and loyalty from everyone around her … until it didn’t. When Josh and Dev and Antonia finally realized their characters were strong enough to overpower mine and banish her from the group, Capriana and I both ended up alone.
At the time, I refused to back down or say I was sorry, certain I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was just playing the game, and there was no reason everything had to be fair. The rest of life certainly wasn’t. But now, sitting in this room full of spinning silver stars and possibility, it seems like maybe there are other ways things could’ve gone.
“Syd?” says Jenna. My nickname rolls off her tongue easily, like she’
s known me forever.
I look up and meet her eyes, and when I smile, she beams right back at me, totally unguarded. “I used to play a rogue named Capriana,” I tell her. “But I think I want to be somebody else this time.”
Alison Cherry is the author of the young adult novels Red, For Real, and Look Both Ways and the middle-grade novels The Classy Crooks Club, Willows vs. Wolverines, and Ella Unleashed. She is also the coauthor of Best. Night. Ever. and The Pros of Cons. She lives in Brooklyn with her cats.
Copyright © 2019 by Alison Cherry
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cherry, Alison, author.
Title: She’s the liar / Alison Cherry.
Other titles: She is the liar
Description: First edition. | New York: Scholastic Press, 2019. | Summary: Entering Brookside Academy in the sixth grade, Abby is determined to reinvent herself as a confident and popular “Abbi,” but she is shocked to find out that her older sister, Sydney (eighth grade), has already crafted a new identity as the president of the “Committee,” the all-powerful student organization that controls extracurricular life and rules the student body through intimidation—and inevitably the two clash, because they both know what the other is hiding, and soon they are hopelessly tangled up in the lies they have created for themselves.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018046401 (print) | LCCN 2018049075 (ebook) | ISBN 9781338497144 (ebook) | ISBN 9781338306149 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Boarding schools—Juvenile fiction. | Sisters—Juvenile fiction. | Identity (Psychology) —Juvenile fiction. | Conduct of life—Juvenile fiction. | Student government—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Boarding schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Sisters—Fiction. | Identity—Fiction. | Conduct of life—Fiction. Classification: LCC PZ7.C41987 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.C41987 Sh 2019 (print) | DDC 813.6 [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018046401
First edition, June 2019
Cover design by Maeve Norton
Cover photography © 2019 by Michael Frost
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