Lies I Live By

by Lauren Sabel

  “You know how she feels about this whole thing.” I sigh.

  Indigo’s still under the illusion that my mom signed the legal form for me to work at Branch 13 as a minor. Even though the form said my position was a “governmental internship,” if Mom found out even one hint of what I was doing, she would dig until she found the truth. And as Indigo warned me in the beginning—if people know what I do, they could end up being targets of the criminals we are searching for—I knew I couldn’t take the chance. So I threw the legal form in front of Mom as she ran out of the house, late for a lecture on astrophysics. She didn’t even ask what she was signing, and “field trip” more than sufficed. To this day, I just maintain that Mom’s uncomfortable with the whole thing, and Indigo never brings it up or asks to meet her.

  “She’ll come around eventually,” Indigo says.

  I stand up and shrug into my faded hoodie. “Tomorrow, then?”

  Indigo salutes me. “Mañana, chica. The good fight continues.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I’m not surprised that my house is empty when I get home. It’s more like a show home, a modern series of glass boxes placed together, never intended for “family use.” Of course, my mom didn’t ever expect to have a child. Because of something to do with Mom’s uterus, she lived childless until she was forty. And then—surprise! I was born with a full head of jet black hair and eyes gray as steel, and “small as a baby kitten,” she always says. I’m still on the short side, but that’s the only thing small about me, at least according to Mom. She always describes the day of my birth as both “amazing” and “quite painful,” like she accidentally shoved a metal spear into her foot, and had to leave work early to get it out. But Mom’s like that; she doesn’t sugarcoat things. That’s why she refuses to have a television in our house. “It’s the opiate of the masses,” she told me when I was little. “Invented to keep us dumb.”

  I take off my shoes by the door and cross the stark white living room into our gleaming black marble kitchen. Like every Tuesday night during the school year, there’s a note on the counter.

  I’ll be home after class. Make yourself some dinner, xo Mom, it says.

  The XO makes me laugh. Mom is kind and loving, but she’s not a hugger, not by a long shot. I wrench open the fridge, reach past a bottle of white wine and a carton of skim milk, and grab the box of leftover pizza.

  “Pineapples and ham,” I mutter. “What a combo. Who would’ve thunk it?” I pick off the juiciest piece of pineapple and pop it into my mouth, and then grab a National Geographic out of the pile of magazines on the kitchen counter. It flops open it to a picture of white shuttered houses climbing a hillside. Now that’s the life. Peaceful. Innocent. Most likely radioactive-metal free.

  I finish my pizza, and then I take a spoon out of the silverware drawer and try to bend it with my mind. It doesn’t work. Indigo says that many psychics can bend spoons occasionally—it’s a recognized sign that you might have extrasensory powers—but it doesn’t mean you can bend metal with your mind on a regular basis. It’s more like a one-time entrance fee to a very exclusive club—a club I will never fit in to, because after that night, to my endless frustration, I’ve never been able to bend metal again.

  I hear a knock on the front door. I drop the spoon and flip around to see Charlie leaning slightly into the doorway, his black hair falling into his copper eyes. “Sand piles,” he says, and grins. His easy smile wraps around me, makes me feel warm inside.

  “Hoover Tower,” I respond, coming into the living room to meet him. Charlie and I have this secret game: we say what reminded us of each other during the day. We’ve been playing it for almost six months, and we’ve never missed a day. Sometimes it’s a bird fleeting across the sky, or a poster of a cat hanging from a tree. But today, it’s absurdly phallic.

  “I thought you might be home,” he says, coming in and closing the door lightly behind him. “And alone.” As soon as the door is closed, he cups his hands around my face and kisses me. His lips are soft, and he smells like salty earth. “Oh, and as rockin’ hot as ever.”

  Charlie can always make me blush. He’s the only one who can, though. No matter how many guys compliment my gray eyes (read: boobs) or shiny black hair (read: butt), he’s the only guy whose words really mean something to me.

  “Hmmm . . .” I fade into his arms, grateful that out of all the people at Bleeding Heart Catholic School—or as we called it, Bloody Hell—we found each other. And when I graduated high school last December—a semester earlier than Charlie and everyone else in my grade, thanks to Indigo’s need for me to start viewing immediately, and full time—he was the one person I missed seeing in the halls every day.

  Charlie bites my lip, and I shove him playfully, and we get into an all-out wrestling match, right there in the living room. When we’re finished, and I’m pinned beneath him on the couch, sweating, he asks, “Hoover Tower?”

  “Unusual choice,” I admit. Two hundred eighty-five feet tall, topped with forty-eight bells that President Hoover declared should only be rung for peace, it is not exactly sexy. But sturdy, and strong, and always there. “Sand piles?”

  “Ah, not so much the object, but the shape,” he says, eyeing my chest.

  I slap his fingers away from my boobs, and he grins and kisses me again, his strong fingers wrapping in my hair. “I missed you,” he says. “Miss me?”

  “Occasionally,” I say, although my heart is pounding, yes, always.

  “Work okay?” he asks, and I nod. “And baby Emma?”

  “She’s fine,” I say, kissing him again to stop him from talking. Emma is the imaginary child at my imaginary nanny job. She has a bedwetting problem, and will only eat macaroni and cheese, and her stuffed turtle is named Turtle, mostly because the people at the CIA have absolutely no imagination.

  His lips brush my cheeks, my ears, my neck, and I feel my body unconsciously lift up to meet him. “Bronze ring,” he says. “In a store window.”

  “What?” I mumble against his shirt.

  “It reminded me of you,” he says, “of us.”

  Us. I still find it amazing that two letters can spell out a whole life.

  Still hovering over me, he whispers, “Come with me.”

  I sit up, biting my lip, and he slides off me onto the couch. I am sure he’s going to ask me about it again, and I’ll have to say no again. I hate saying no to Charlie. “Where?” I sigh. Don’t say New York.

  “Upstairs?” He whispers, picking up on my hesitation to get into the New York argument. I’m relieved that I won’t have to lie again, although one is already forming on my lips. But right now, I just want to forget that I ever got accepted into NYU, forget that, as much as I would love to go to college in New York with Charlie, my job here, as secret as it is, is the most meaningful, most important thing in my life. I mean, if you could save people’s lives from radioactive weapons and actively chose not to, would you feel good about that?

  I run my hands down Charlie’s chest until I can feel the sharp curve of his waist. “Why not right here?” I respond. “We’re alone.”

  “Sure,” he breathes against my cheek, then finds my lips.

  “Callie?” A voice calls through the living room window, and Charlie nips at my lip hard enough to make me squeal, half in pleasure, half in pain. “Calliope?” Mom calls again. Calliope—the muse of eloquence, daughter of the god Zeus.

  I push Charlie off me and jump to a standing position beside the couch. “In the living room.”

  “Home already?” Mom asks through the window.

  I get up and unlock the front door. “It’s seven o’clock,” I remind her. “Most normal people have eaten by now.”

  “Oh, Cal, you and this normal thing.” Mom steps into the living room, stopping short when she sees that I’m not alone. “Charlie, what a pleasure to see you.”

  “The pleasure’s mine, ma’am,” Charlie says, getting to his feet.

  She waves her hand for him to sit dow
n, and he settles back on the couch. “How’s your mom?” Mom asks, as if she and Grace have anything in common. Mom’s an academic; at fifty-seven, she runs the science department at Stanford, does occasional work for NASA, and uses words like existential disorientation in a regular sentence. Charlie’s mom is a masseuse, is obsessed with healthy things like brown rice and seaweed, and doesn’t call parties “necessary social intervention.” I love Grace.

  “Mom’s fine, thanks for asking,” Charlie says.

  “Glad to hear it,” Mom says, and then she blushes, so I know she’s lost something even more important than her house keys this time. “Has either of you seen my phone?”

  Mom says she doesn’t save room in her brain for the small things, and with her genius intellect, I believe it. But sometimes I feel like the parent, following her around and picking up her misplaced books and wire-rimmed glasses.

  I scan my memory. “Um . . . kitchen. Third drawer on the left, second row, two items back,” I say.

  Mom pops into the kitchen and I hear her banging drawers open. “Found it!” She steps back into the living room, her house keys jingling from one hand and cell phone from the other. “They were both in there,” she says. “But I’ve definitely lost my knitting needles.”

  “And your yarn,” I remind her.

  She smiles. “I’ll order Chinese. What do you want? Tofu with vegetables for you and ginger shrimp for Charlie?”

  “Actually—”

  “That sounds good,” she continues, dialing the number to the Happy Fun Restaurant and switching to Mandarin. “Nin hao.” Mom speaks three different languages fluently, and talks about string theory like it’s an item on her grocery store list. She’s a lifelong MENSA member and always invites me to the meetings. She says that with my IQ, I can get in, but what would we talk about? Math equations? No, thank you. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone,” Mom says, getting off the phone. She presses a fifty-dollar bill into my hand, but I shake my head and hand it back.

  “I’ve got it,” I say, pulling my wallet out of my back pocket. Ever since I started working for Branch 13, I’ve noticed how Mom looks at me like I’m an adult whenever I offer to pay for things. Mom even brags that she’s never seen anyone more dedicated to a nannying job than I am, and raves to her boyfriend, Richard, about how I contribute to the household expenses. I take a couple of twenties out of my wallet, not missing the look of respect I see on Mom’s face for paying my own way.

  Of course, I’d work at Branch 13 even if I didn’t make any money.

  The disappearance of my almost daily migraines would be reason enough on its own. Indigo says that psychic viewing helps because the part of my mind that I view with gets tired by the end of each session, and so a headache doesn’t build in the unused tension in my brain. When it comes down to it, I’ll take mental pain over physical pain any day.

  “The food will be here in forty-five minutes,” Mom says. “Call me when dinner arrives.” She bounds up the stairs, checking her phone as she goes, and I sink back down on the couch and cross my legs. Charlie does the same, and I am relieved to feel his knees pressing against mine.

  “What do you want to do?” he asks. “We’ve got half an hour.”

  “Let’s go to the Panhandle,” I say. “I don’t want to miss the sunset.”

  Charlie and I have a tradition: we watch the sunset together several times a week. Even if we can only meet for fifteen minutes, we watch it lower its big blinking eye over the ocean. We watch night come rolling in, making us invisible to everyone but each other.

  The Panhandle is that narrow stretch of grass leading up to Golden Gate Park, and eventually, Ocean Beach and the cold, growling Pacific. It isn’t wide enough for anyone to do anything with it, which is why we like it. Its uselessness, mixed with its stubborn insistence to exist, is heartwarming. And it’s just at the end of the block.

  When we get there, the sun is fainting on the horizon, painting the park and the houses that line it a creamy orange. As the sunlight rolls in over the hills, consuming houses in its steady push inland, it reminds me of the red smoke from my session with Indigo, and I shiver at the thought of the Russian laser somewhere out at sea, maybe headed for our shores.

  “So, when do you wanna meet up next Saturday?” Charlie asks, breaking into my thoughts.

  I stare at him blankly. “Next Saturday?”

  “My show?” Charlie looks at me with a mix of confusion and hurt.

  Of course—Charlie’s photography show! It’s only the biggest thing that’s ever happened to him. Charlie takes these amazing photographs of the insides of vacant buildings. He’s already gotten into one of the best art schools in the country, starting this fall. In New York.

  I turn to him, suddenly noticing how the air is packed tight with the smell of eucalyptus. “Starts at six?” I ask quickly, hoping he didn’t notice that I’d forgotten.

  Charlie nods. He’s chewing on his bottom lip, something he does only when he’s extremely nervous, and I know that he needs me there. “Can you meet me at two at our favorite noodle place?” he asks. “And then we can hang the photos for the show.”

  “Two o’clock sharp,” I promise.

  A look of relief spreads over his face. “Thanks, Cal. Because the other photographer backed out at the last minute, so it’s just me. My first solo show.”

  “Congratulations,” I exclaim, tears popping into my eyes. I blink them back and look up at the trees raising their thick trunks into the sky, their waxy leaves tinted buttery yellow by the sunset. Be happy for Charlie, I tell myself, but he’s moving on is what I hear instead.

  “There are sunsets in New York,” Charlie reminds me. “You could get a nannying job there. Or take some college classes.”

  “I’m going to San Francisco State, remember?”

  “But you could—”

  “No. It would break Mom’s heart,” I respond.

  “But your mom’s got Richard now. It’s not like she’s dating some jerk academic, or wasting away at home, waiting for the man who will never return,” Charlie says.

  I’m stunned that he brought it up. I don’t think we’ve talked about my father since the day Charlie’s dad passed away last year. At the time, I’d never talked about my father before, not to anyone; but I’d never seen anyone so sad, like all of the life had been sucked out of him, so I told Charlie everything I knew. It wasn’t much, just some snippets I’ve picked up from my mom over the years, and the entire knowledge of my father took less than half a minute.

  “As far as I know, the story was completely made up,” I admitted to Charlie at the time, and then told him the story about Mom getting her PhD at Stanford, and her affair with her professor. Supposedly, while Mom was getting her degree in some obscure branch of nuclear physics, they fell in love, made me, and spent two years shacking up in faculty housing. Then one day, when I was about two years old, he resigned his position at Stanford and disappeared. She could never find him again.

  Like I said, probably bullshit. My father was probably a truck driver.

  “My so-called dad has nothing to do with it,” I say, and I wonder if that’s true.

  “But . . . do you ever . . .” Charlie pauses, “wonder about him?”

  “All the time.” I kick the leaves with my combat boots. “Like why he left us. And why he didn’t care enough to stick around and watch me grow up. And if I’m like him at all.” I watch the leaves floating through the air. “But maybe it’s better not to know.”

  Charlie shrugs. “You’re probably right,” he says. “Maybe it’s better that way.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I just mean that he could be anybody, you know? Maybe he’s a billionaire sailing the Caribbean on his yacht,” Charlie says. “Or maybe he’s a bum smoking pot in Haight-Ashbury.”

  “Sometimes I think that Mom lost him under all her paperwork.”

  “That’s entirely possible,” Charlie responds.

  “But wha
t would I say even if I did find him? I’m the daughter you abandoned fifteen years ago?” I shake my head in disgust. I’m expecting Charlie to agree with me, but instead, he turns his head away, and I see that he’s barely managing to hold back tears. “Why do you ask?” I continue, more gently now.

  “I just thought about how much I miss my dad, and how I’d trade anything . . .” Charlie trails off. He spreads his fingers in the sky so they cover all six of the visible stars, and then moves each finger like he’s pushing the buttons of stars one by one. “My dad will never see my show,” he says, choking up.

  Charlie’s photography show next week. That is what this is about.

  “He’ll never know that what he taught me paid off, all those hours we spent,” he continues. “I wish he could be there.”

  “He will be,” I say quietly, which I know is cheesy, but it’s the only thing I can think of, especially since my mind is screaming at me, At least you got to know him. I blink the tears back from my own eyes. “And I’ll be there, and your mom, and Colin. We’ll all be there to support you.”

  Charlie mumbles a response, but I’m not listening. I’m thinking about how much I wish I could go with him to New York next fall, and how as much as I’d have trouble leaving Mom, I can’t tell him the real reason I can’t go: the government is depending on me. If I’m not around to find deadly radioactive weapons, no one will be.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I linger in front of the door to my building the next morning, enjoying the appearance of being a normal college freshman. Since my office looks like any other redbrick building on the Berkeley campus, sometimes I pretend I’m a student here. For a moment, I imagine that my worst fear is failing my English exam instead of being unable to stop a dirty bomb from hitting US soil.

  But as soon as I pull the building’s front door open, I sink back into this reality, the one that stars me as the youngest psychic viewer ever to work at Branch 13, a private agency that contracts exclusively with the CIA. When Indigo found me over a year ago, he explained to me why it was essential that no one knew about my job as a psychic viewer.