Lies I Live By

by Lauren Sabel

  “That’s where we need to go,” I say, pointing past the kids and a mean-looking security guard to the small sign above the entrance that says Staff Offices, Second Floor. I take out my wallet and start to walk toward the ticket booth, but Jasper flashes a membership card at the guard.

  Now that’s interesting. “Nerdy much?” I say.

  “It’s my favorite place in the city,” Jasper admits, and I can tell he’s embarrassed. Truthfully, I’m surprised. I would have thought Jasper’s favorite place would be a hipster café in the Tenderloin, not a telescope in a science museum. “It’s the first place I visited when I moved here.” He blushes. “It’s definitely kind of nerdy.”

  “I like nerds,” I say, stepping onto the escalator. He gets on at the same time, and we stand awkwardly on the same step until we reach the second floor.

  When we get off the escalator, we are smack in the middle of the satellite exhibit. It’s apparently brought in hundreds of schoolchildren for its last week, and they are all either waiting in line to see the satellites or daring each other to touch something with the sign Do Not Touch.

  “Over there,” Jasper says, pointing at the small sign for Staff Offices on the other side of the second floor. We’re crossing the exhibit as quickly as possible when, inches from my ear, a teacher blows a whistle. My eardrum rings as hundreds of kids jump out of line to gather around a museum staff member wearing a T-shirt with the words Science Is Cool. Unfortunately, she is standing right beside the teacher, and we are quickly hemmed in by the approaching children.

  “Nice shirt,” one of the kids snickers from beside Jasper. “Science is not cool.”

  “Gather round,” the staff member says in a squeaky voice. She points across the room at a satellite that looks like a shiny silver dragonfly. “That is a satellite,” she adds. “There are over thirty-five thousand up in the sky right now.” She points to a map of the earth, and above it, in the atmosphere, there are thousands of tiny red dots. “Most are between one hundred and four hundred miles above Earth.”

  “Are they dangerous?” a little girl asks.

  She shakes her head. “Not at all. But they are crucial for all of our communication needs, including most of our cell phone and internet connections,” she says. “They even connect us to the Facebook,” she adds in a serious tone, and the kids snicker. “You can go closer,” she says, “it doesn’t bite.”

  As the kids move in closer to see the satellite, we manage to duck out of the crowd without stepping on anyone’s tiny little feet.

  “Those kids’ll eat you alive,” Jasper says.

  “They couldn’t take me down,” I say, stopping in front of an open doorway labeled Funding Office. At the desk, a woman sits in front of a sign that says, Ask Me About Our Donation Program.

  “Hi,” I say. “Actually, I am here to ask you about your donation program.”

  The woman looks up at me with a blank stare, so I point to the sign. She just keeps staring at me vacantly, as if she’s never read the sign herself.

  “Okay, well,” I continue, and Jasper snorts out a laugh behind me. “I’m doing a school report on donors to museums, and I’m trying to find out about one specific donor.”

  “For which exhibit?” the woman asks.

  “Satellites.” I take the flyer out of my backpack and place it on her desk. “This logo.” I point to the infinity symbol. “What’s that company?”

  She studies the flyer. “I don’t know offhand,” she says. “Let me check.” She turns to her computer and types rapidly on the keyboard. “Coca-Cola, NASA, Google . . . Here it is. EarthScape Incorporated.”

  “EarthScape,” I repeat. An environmental company? Landscapers? Neither sounds like a company that would have a warehouse in a seedy part of town, but at least I have a name now. “Thanks for the info.”

  “Glad I could help,” she says. She turns back to her paperwork, and we walk out of the office into the room of shouting kids.

  “Pizza time?” Jasper asks.

  “Uh-huh,” I respond, as I pull out my phone and type EarthScape into the search browser. The bar scrolls for several seconds, and then tells me that I’m not connected to the internet.

  “There’s no reception in here,” Jasper says.

  “Thanks, genius,” I say. “Then let’s go.” I pocket my phone and head toward the escalator. “And we’ll get that pizza of yours, too.”

  We grab two slices of pizza—one cheese, one pepperoni—and sit on a bench beside a small lake to eat, amusing ourselves by watching a bunch of miniature boats buzz their way through the water. To my surprise, it turns out that the best pizza in the city is a deliciously greasy slice off a ratty food truck in Golden Gate Park.

  “Are you sure you’ve never heard of EarthScape?” I ask Jasper again, and he nods. I’ve googled it a bunch of times in the last ten minutes, but I keep being directed to a US government website. “The only thing I can find out for sure is that it works for the government.”

  Jasper puts his index finger in the air, gesturing for me to wait until he finishes eating. I scarf down the rest of my slice and wipe off the grease running down my chin. “Sounds like a mapping company or something,” Jasper mumbles through his last bite. He balls up his paper plate and tosses it in the nearest wire trash can, the one that says Landfill on it.

  “Like Google Earth?” I ask, throwing my plate in the other trash can, labeled Reincarnation. Sometimes San Francisco amazes me.

  “Maybe,” Jasper says thoughtfully.

  I shove my phone in my pocket. “Well, there’s nothing on here. We’ll have to find out about it another way.”

  “Maybe it’s just a satellite company,” Jasper suggests. “Did you consider that? That maybe it has nothing to do with any of the things you saw in your sessions?”

  I sigh. “I considered that.”

  A man holding a box full of remote control toy sailboats, submarines, and battleships stops in front of us. On the front of the box he’s written BOAT RENTAL: $10.

  “Two for one,” the man says.

  “No thanks,” I say immediately, but Jasper’s already dug ten dollars out of his pocket.

  “Sure,” Jasper says, handing the guy the money. I frown at Jasper, and he says, “We can search for it more later. You’ve gotta learn to relax.”

  “Fair enough.” I put out my hand. “Give me the damn boat.”

  We get up and join the small crowd of miniature boat owners gathered on the bank, each one focused intensely on his tiny ship cruising through the water. “Just watch me,” I say, “I’ll relax better than you ever could.”

  “Not as good as him,” Jasper says, tilting his head toward a stout man with large glasses, driving his remote control like a steering wheel. The man presses a red button on the remote, and there’s a soft pop. Smoke rises from a pirate ship and another boat, a few feet across the water, sinks.

  “This stuff is serious.” I put the sail up on my green sailboat and place it in the water beside Jasper’s black battleship.

  “Uh-oh,” Jasper whispers, glancing sideways at a man launching a mini submarine into the lake. We watch it slide into the water and disappear below the surface, only its tiny periscope showing.

  “He’s after us,” I whisper.

  “Good thing there’s two of us,” he says.

  Jasper and I are soon zooming our boats around each other’s, laughing half in embarrassment and half in joy. In less than five minutes, my boat crashes into his, and they teeter together for a second before falling over onto their sides.

  “Abandon ship!” I say. “Abandon ship!”

  “Never,” Jasper says. “A captain goes down with his ship. I took an oath and shall not break it.” He mock salutes.

  “You and your oaths,” I say.

  Jasper just gives me a look that says, Yeah . . . and?

  I reach down into the water to grab our boats, but my sneaker catches on the concrete lip of the lake and suddenly I’m flailing my arms to gain m
y balance. I manage to spin so that my back is to the water just as Jasper grabs me and pulls. I stumble off the concrete lip and pitch forward.

  My lips almost land on his.

  Energy shoots through my body, making me shiver from my toes to the tip of my skull, and my lips, an inch from his, ache to kiss him. For one brief second we’re completely alone; it’s just Jasper and me in the park, our bodies humming together.

  I pull away first, and then instantly wonder if he would’ve pulled away if I hadn’t. “I should get home,” I mumble.

  Jasper glances down at our little boats lying on their sides in the water. “We’re officially shipwrecked,” he says, pulling them out of the lake.

  “Totally Titanic,” I agree.

  He hands our boats back to the rental man, and then turns back to me. He tries to grab my hand, but I pull away.

  “We suck at this anyway,” he says.

  I pretend he’s talking about the boats. With Jasper, I’m getting good at pretending.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The front door swings open just as I put my key in the lock, and I nearly jump out of my skin. Standing in the doorway is Richard, as dressed up as he ever gets, in khakis and a button-down shirt. Beside him, Mom is actually wearing high heels and her contacts instead of glasses, or at least I hope she’s wearing her contacts. She’ll be tripping over her own feet all night if not.

  “Hey Cal, wanna come to dinner with us?” Mom asks, grabbing her red leather purse from a hook by the front door.

  I shake my head. “Have fun, you crazy kids.”

  Richard opens the door for Mom, and she waves at me as she steps out into the street. I watch them walk up the hill until they are out of sight, and then I run upstairs to my room and turn my computer on.

  I yank off my jeans and pull on my coziest sweats, watching my computer screen change from a black square to a picture of Charlie and me. Mom took this picture on our one-year anniversary, months before I ever had to lie to Charlie about anything. I can hardly remember those times, when honesty seemed as normal as breathing, and telling Charlie everything I was feeling and thinking was a natural end to my day.

  I miss it.

  I sit down at my computer and click on the internet tab. As soon as the browser pops up, I type EarthScape Inc. into the search bar.

  Wikipedia facts about the art of landscaping come up first, and then a term called “Earth scraping,” which seems to be some sort of mining. I scroll down the list, much farther down than I did on my phone in the park, and I click on what seems like a hundred different hyperlinks before I get to a page with any information on EarthScape.

  According to this website, which only contains a homepage, EarthScape Inc. is a company that specializes in rare earth metals. There’s no info on the corporate offices, just a front page with pictures of brightly colored stones and a description of rare earth metals.

  Rare earth metals are a series of chemical elements found in the Earth’s crust that are vital to many modern technologies, including consumer electronics, computers and networks, communications, health care, national defense, and many others. However, it is the very scarcity of the rare earth metals that led to the term “rare earth,” and it is their scarcity that makes them valuable.

  I click on the word valuable, and it says that some rare earth metals are worth billions of dollars because of their use in electronics and military weapons.

  I scan the top of the page for an About Us or a Contact link, but there’s not even a menu. I pull up a new search browser and type in EarthScape, owner, but nothing useful comes up. I’m just routed back to the US government website. At least now I know it’s the same company. I try searching for EarthScape CEO, EarthScape founder, and EarthScape headquarters, but still, no luck. I scour the internet for another hour, using every search term I can think of, but it’s useless. Whoever owns EarthScape doesn’t want to be found.

  “Callie.”

  A whisper breaks me out of my heavy slumber. I drag my face off the pillow and see Mom through my black curtain of hair. She’s sitting on the end of my bed, shaking me lightly.

  “I’m awake, I’m awake,” I mumble, sitting up.

  “He did it,” Mom whispers, and holds out her hand so I can see her ring finger. There’s a gold band embedded with a small, glittering diamond.

  “Wow,” I breathe, pulling my knees up to give her more room on my bed. “How’d he do it?”

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Mom says. She’s practically glowing; I could find my way in a dark room using only her grin. “He took me to the fire station to meet his buddies first—”

  “Are the hot firemen rumors true?”

  “Totally,” she says. “And then he brought me up to the roof of the station, and there was a heart made out of lit candles, and he got down on one knee . . .” She tears up.

  “And?”

  “And I blurted out, ‘Do you think this is a fire hazard?’”

  “No!”

  She nods, embarrassed. “He blew out all the candles just to make me feel better. And then he popped the question.”

  “No way.” I suddenly wish she wasn’t sitting all the way at the end of my bed. This feels like a hug moment.

  “Seriously, Callie, he is the most romantic man I’ve ever met,” Mom says.

  My stomach does a little flip-flop like it does at the end of romantic comedies, and I smile at Mom. She deserves this happiness. “So when’s the wedding?”

  “We’re thinking of eloping. No big fancy wedding at our age,” she says. “Maybe in Hawaii. You’d come too, of course.”

  “You do need a witness.”

  “So, brunch?” she asks, scooting a bit closer to me. “Do you wanna go celebrate?”

  “Of course.” I can think of nothing better than celebrating my mom’s engagement to Richard. “I’ll just throw on some clothes,” I say, but then there’s a ding from my bedside table. Indigo’s text is short and to the point: Look 4 car.

  “I have to babysit,” I say sadly, placing my phone back on the nightstand, face down. “The Bernsteins say it’s an emergency.”

  Mom looks disappointed. “Well, okay, maybe another time then.” She stands up. “But I’ll see you tonight, at Charlie’s show?” I nod. Mom kisses me on the top of my head and then walks out of the room, her hand held up in the air so she can admire her ring. The whole thing feels surreal, in a good way. It’s going to take a while to get used to this new Mom.

  I climb out of bed and glance out my window, already wondering what could be important enough for Indigo to bring me in on a Saturday. Since he’s picking me up, we must be going to the secret bunker or he would tell me to meet him at the office. We only go to the bunker when there is a real emergency, and since every session feels like an emergency, this has to be big. I mean, earth is going to go up in flames sort of big.

  Out my window, I watch an unmarked black car pulling slowly up the hill. The windows are darkened, so I can’t see who’s driving. I’m not even positive that it’s the right car: I’ve only been picked up a couple of times before, and it’s always by a different car, but the darkened windows are always the same.

  I dig some jeans out of the bottom of my closet, then throw on a tank top and sweater. I grab my backpack and run down the stairs, passing Mom in the kitchen. She’s admiring her ring under the kitchen’s bright lights.

  “We’ll celebrate soon,” I say, already crossing the living room and pulling open the front door. “Bye!” I glance up and down the street, making sure no one’s watching, hitch my backpack over my shoulder, and hurry down to the car.

  “Welcome, Jedi,” Indigo says when I climb into the backseat. I’ve never seen Indigo behind the wheel, and I thought somehow his unearthly aura would shine too brightly for him to see or something, but it doesn’t. He looks like a normal guy. It hits me, for the first time, that maybe he has a secret identity too. That even though I feel so close to Indigo in the office, he may be a totally
different person outside of it. It’s a weird, unreal moment for me, like realizing that your elementary school teacher has a first name, that she doesn’t always go by Miss Stanley.

  “Jedess,” I correct.

  “How’s that sexy mom of yours?” Indigo asks. I always forget that they’re the same age, and of course he has a crush on her, even though he’s only seen her in person once, at the Stanford spoon-bending party. Mom doesn’t remember him, of course. Now, when Mom talks about the most important night of my life, the night I really discovered who I am, the only thing she remembers is how Richard showed up in a fireman’s coat. I lucked out, though—she was so obsessed by her first date with Richard that she didn’t notice my abrupt interest in a nannying job, or that graduating from high school early was suddenly an offer on the table.

  “That sexy, almost married mother of mine,” I counter, and he grins.

  “Henceforth known as ‘the one that got away,’” Indigo says.

  “Or as ‘Mom’ to her genetic spawn.”

  “Lean in,” Indigo says, bending over the front seat to reach me. I lean forward, and he wraps a familiar blindfold around my eyes. Everything goes black. I feel the rough material itch against my skin, and wonder again why they can’t use silk or satin.

  “It itches,” I groan.

  “This is for your protection,” Indigo reminds me.

  Everything is for my protection. I’m so tired of hearing about my safety.

  The radio is playing from the front of the car. Indigo keeps changing the channels, which is irritating, not only because he only listens to talk radio, but because I get involved in one news report and then it gets cut off, and I get involved in the next, and so on.

  “Another shooting at a church today. The shooter says he got his gun from the Lord, and warned us—”

  “—Cooper will in question, says the attorney for—”

  “—nothing to be alarmed about, scientists say, except for—”

  “—toxic spills, making it the most polluted water in the—”

  Indigo turns the radio off with a heavy sigh. “All bad news. Like always.”