The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett

by Chelsea Sedoti

  “What happened that night?”

  “What happened? Nothing. We had fun. Then I went to sleep and woke up in a parallel universe.”

  “You didn’t hear anything weird during the night?”

  Enzo sighed. “No, officer. I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t see anything. Lizzie’s mood was fine. We hadn’t fought. Everything was normal. Wherever Lizzie went, I slept through it.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I guess you’ve been getting a lot of questions.”

  “It’s a wonder I’m not in jail.”

  “In the paper, the police chief said you aren’t a suspect.”

  “Sure, that’s what he said.” He tossed his cigarette on the ground and crushed it out.

  The silence was uncomfortable. I searched for something to fill it.

  “I went to high school with Lizzie,” I said. “Well, sort of. I was a freshman when she was a senior. She was friends with my brother.”

  “Really?” Enzo looked surprised. I didn’t know if that was good or bad.

  “She was the homecoming queen that year. There’s still a picture in the trophy case of her riding around on the float.”

  “Homecoming queen? Huh. She never told me that.”

  I decided it was probably in my best interest to keep quiet about the rest of it. How I’d hated Lizzie and spent half my freshman year having horrible thoughts about her.

  I sat down on a flat rock near the middle of the clearing. A minute later, Enzo sat down next to me.

  “We never talked about high school. It wasn’t a time I like to think about much,” Enzo said.

  “I don’t like to think about it, and I’m still there.”

  Enzo started rolling another cigarette. “What’s your deal, kid?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why are you out in the woods with me?”

  I shrugged. “You asked me to hang out.”

  “You aren’t afraid? I could be a killer.”

  “But you aren’t.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  There hadn’t been many moments in my life where there were two clear paths to take. This was one of them. I could tell Enzo he seemed like a nice guy who missed his girlfriend and go home and forget about the night altogether. Or I could tell him the truth.

  My mom always says when we’re honest with others, we’re honest with ourselves, and that leads to a purer state of being. My dad puts it simpler. He just says honesty is the best policy.

  “What if Lizzie turned into a werewolf?”

  Enzo laughed. Then he saw my face. “You’re not joking, are you?”

  So I went ahead and told him everything.

  • • •

  Enzo didn’t talk for most of the ride to his apartment. When he did, he said, “You’re a weird kid, Hawthorn.”

  “I’m not a kid.”

  “It wasn’t an insult.”

  Then we were silent again, except for when Enzo gave me directions.

  I tried not to be disappointed but couldn’t help it. I had sort of thought Enzo was going to be an ally. Instead, after I’d spilled my whole werewolf theory, he sat quietly for a long time, then said it was an interesting explanation, then said he should probably get home.

  I considered apologizing. Or trying to convince him I was right. Or telling him that we could hang out again, and I would keep my mouth shut about the supernatural. But I didn’t say any of that.

  I pulled up in front of Enzo’s apartment complex. There were bars on the windows, and the other cars in the parking lot were worse off than mine. It made me feel even more depressed.

  Enzo looked at me for a moment before he got out of the car. I didn’t look away, even though I wanted to.

  “I wish I lived in your world, Hawthorn.”

  I wish you did too, I thought.

  I watched him walk into the building, watched until a light came on in one of the second floor apartments. It felt like something very important had slipped out of my grasp.

  I got the urge to call Emily, to pour out details of my and Enzo’s conversation. But she’d just lecture me for hanging out with him in the first place. So instead, I sat in the parking lot with my car running until I realized how awkward it would be if Enzo looked outside and saw me still parked there.

  Not that it mattered what he thought of me now. I doubted I’d ever see him again.

  Chapter 12

  Sundog and the Caravan

  The thing about high school is that you have to pretend you don’t care what people think even though that’s all you care about. I was pretty sure that whether you’re a cheerleader or on the chess team, you spend a crazy amount of time wondering what people are saying about you or if they’re saying anything at all. It used to be that I thought it was worse to be forgotten, that even being made fun of was better than being invisible. Then there was my essay, and the rumors about me thinking Lizzie was a werewolf, and then the caravan arrived.

  My dad and I peered through the living room window as it drove up the street. Some of our neighbors were on their porches, alerted by all the honking. They were acting like it was a parade. Being blatantly curious is OK when it’s not your life that’s about to be ruined.

  “I’ll never be able to show my face at school again.”

  Instead of comforting me, my dad grimly stared out the window. Which confirmed that our house was the caravan’s destination. Not that I’d had much doubt.

  “Sparrow!” my dad shouted. “Come in here, please.”

  “What is it?” my mom asked, coming down the stairs.

  I gestured to the window.

  My mom peered outside and instantly looked flustered. My dad’s mouth had turned into a very straight line. That’s when I figured it would be in my best interest to pack my bags and flee the county.

  Rush came in the room and asked what was going on.

  “Our lives are being ruined,” I said.

  Then he joined us, and the whole Creely family watched the hippie caravan make its way up our quiet, suburban street.

  The lead car wasn’t a car at all. It was an old school bus that was painted purple and had curtains hanging in the windows. It was also the vehicle playing the music, some jangly sounding rhythm, with lots of bells and maybe a fiddle. Emily would have known. Three cars followed the bus, two no-name sedans and a beat-up VW Bug that made me ashamed to be a Volkswagen owner. One of the sedans was painted like a psychedelic hippie car from the sixties, complete with peace signs and flowers and swirly lines. The other sedan would have passed for normal if it hadn’t been in the middle of such craziness.

  I could have crawled faster than the procession was moving. They were taking their time, making sure every single person in the neighborhood had a chance to get outside to witness the Creely family’s shame.

  “Sparrow,” my dad said. “What is this?”

  I could tell from my dad’s voice that he was not even a little bit entertained, and I could tell from my mom’s face that she knew it too.

  “I…well, it’s the group I used to go with.”

  “What the hell are they doing here? Did you know about this?”

  My mom shook her head, and I believed her, but I didn’t blame her any less. I wished she’d discover she was allergic to soy. I wished all her crystals would spontaneously shatter. I wished her yoga DVDs would get replaced with war movies.

  By that time, the caravan had reached our house. The bus pulled in front of the driveway, completely blocking it. While the other cars found parking spaces along the street, the door to the bus opened, and the driver stepped out. He was old. In his sixties at least, but maybe, probably, even older. He had long, gray hair and wore a paisley shirt and Birkenstocks. He was pretty much a walking stereotype.

  I glanced at my mom, who looked even more sur
prised than before, except in a good way. Two seconds later, she was out the door and in the old hippie’s arms.

  “Dad, this is really weird,” I said.

  “Yes, Hawthorn, it is.”

  “Who’s the old dude?” Rush asked.

  My dad sighed deeply and ignored my brother. “Come on. Let’s see what he’s doing here.”

  • • •

  There were twelve of them in all. The old guy was clearly their leader, and he’d apparently once been my mom’s.

  “You remember James,” my mom said to the old guy, “and these are our children, Rushford and Hawthorn. Kids, this is Sundog.”

  Rush snorted, which I thought was a little unfair, considering his own name.

  Sundog bowed to us. I wondered if I was supposed to bow back, but I couldn’t without feeling like an idiot, so I smiled at him instead.

  “Well met, Rushford and Hawthorn. May the blessings of light be upon you.”

  Then my mom and Sundog started talking, and half their words were nonsense. Apparently, a message he’d received during cosmic meditation told him to seek out our house. I zoned out and looked at the rest of the group. Some of them were standing behind Sundog, waiting to be introduced, and the rest were doing something that filled me with dread: unpacking.

  None of the other hippies were as old as Sundog, but there were a couple around my mom’s age. One girl with long dreadlocks looked like she was only a few years older than me. Another woman, whose age I couldn’t tell, had her head shaved bald. Half the caravan had bare feet, and all of them wore clothes that looked like they hadn’t been washed in way too long. I felt queasy from the competing smells of pot and patchouli.

  Sundog named the other hippies, and they were all Dakota and Journey and Marigold. I made a point of not putting names to faces. I refused to accept that they’d be around long enough for me to know who they were.

  As Sundog told my mom about his recent travels through space and beingness, a small dog ran off the bus. It looked like a miniature coyote, one that had been in the wild for a long time without knowing how to care for itself. Its black-and-brown coat was mangy and standing on end. The dog ran up to us, yipping, and Sundog scooped it off the ground.

  “This here is Timothy Leary,” he said. “We found her on the side of the road near Phoenix.”

  “You named a girl dog Timothy Leary?” Rush asked, as if that was the most troubling thing about the whole situation.

  “We try not to place gender limitations on ourselves,” Sundog said.

  The dreadlocked girl spoke up. “Yeah, man. That kind of thinking holds you back from true cognitive enlightenment.”

  Rush just stared.

  I wasn’t on board with the girl’s philosophy, but I knew how it felt to get those kind of looks. I tried to keep my own face neutral.

  After that, I stood by numbly and listened to details. Yes, they needed a place to stay. No, they didn’t expect to be put up in the house. They had tents. They preferred to be outside anyway. Yes, they knew it was fall and would be cold soon, but they’d be gone before the first snow.

  I looked up at my dad and saw the resignation on his face. He was going to let this happen. He had the power to turn the hippies away, to keep our house free of incense and bongo drums and spiritual enlightenment, and he was choosing not to.

  I was angry at all of them: my mom, my dad, Sundog. I was even angry at Timothy Leary—the dog, not the man—who was probably the most blameless in the entire situation.

  “Kids,” my mom said, “why don’t you help unload the bus?”

  “Are you serious?” I asked.

  Her frown told me that she was indeed.

  “It’s like being forced to dig our own graves,” I said to Rush as we trudged over to the bus.

  My brother laughed. We’d finally found something we could agree on.

  Chapter 13

  Anima and Animus

  At school on Monday, most people were talking about homecoming, which annoyed me, because I was already worried about the caravan and how many people in school already knew about it. Probably everyone, because news travels fast in small towns.

  “Why are we even having a homecoming dance?” I asked Emily at lunch. “We just had the Welcome Back dance, like, a month ago. It’s the exact same thing.”

  “Homecoming is formal. The Welcome Back dance is more of a social.”

  “It’s the same thing, Emily. It literally means the same thing.”

  “One has a football game and a queen and king. That’s different.”

  “People just make up excuses to have dances and parties. Like the President’s Day dance last year. Totally weird and pointless.”

  “That was sort of bizarre,” Emily admitted.

  “These dances exist just to torture me.”

  Emily looked down at her salad as if it was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen. “People go to dances to have fun, Hawthorn. Not to torture people.”

  “Obviously you haven’t read Carrie.”

  “You think someone’s going to invite you to the dance to play a prank on you?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think I’m going to get invited at all. I’ll be the only loser in the school sitting at home alone that night.”

  I waited for Emily to chime in and say she wouldn’t be at the dance. Instead, she speared a piece of lettuce with her fork but didn’t eat it. “I went out with Logan on Saturday.”

  “What?” I didn’t bother hiding my surprise. “Metal-bluegrass fusion?”

  Emily nodded, looking guilty.

  “Like, on a date?”

  “I guess so,” Emily said, still looking at her salad instead of at me.

  Since when did we go on dates without telling each other first?

  “What did you do?” I asked, trying to sound casual, since that was apparently how Emily wanted to play it. I refrained from asking her if she was going to start wearing fishnet tights and get her face pierced and ditch me for people who knew what metal-bluegrass fusion was.

  “We saw this concert in Pittsburgh. Jazz. It was really good.”

  “Oh. Do you like him?” I braced myself for the answer, even though I already knew what it would be.

  Emily thought for a second. “Yeah, I think so.”

  “I’m pretty sure he wears eyeliner.”

  “Hawthorn.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  I tried to imagine them together at a jazz concert. Emily wearing pastels and Logan with his dyed-black fauxhawk. I knew the saying about opposites attracting, but really?

  I was deeply bothered, and I wasn’t sure why, but I suspected it had something to do with jealousy. Not jealousy because I wanted Logan for myself. That would be absurd. And not jealousy because Emily having a boyfriend would mean she spent less time with me like when she was dating Marc, otherwise known as the most boring person on the planet. But because I had been alive for seventeen years and no one had ever liked me enough to go on more than a few awkward dates and share more-awkward first kisses. I was pretty sure there was a sign on me that said I was one hundred percent undateable.

  “Did you kiss him?” I asked.

  Emily’s face turned bright red, and it was charming enough to make me feel less jealous. Slightly.

  “Did that stupid lip ring feel weird?” I asked.

  “It was…interesting. His tongue is pierced too.”

  “Your mom is going to have a fit.”

  “I know. I wish she was more like your mom.”

  I laughed. “Emily, right now, Sparrow has a band of hippies set up in a shantytown in our backyard. Believe me, your conservative mother isn’t so bad.”

  Emily laughed too, and for a second, we were having fun together, and everything felt like it used to.

  • • •


  It was dark when my shift at the Sunshine Café ended, which is why I was uncomfortable that someone was hovering around my car. Maybe I was wrong, and Lizzie Lovett really had been taken into the woods and killed, and I was going to be next.

  Then the potential serial killer spoke. “Hey.”

  It was Enzo. My fear turned to surprise, then excitement, then nervousness.

  “Hi. What’s going on?”

  He leaned against the passenger-side door, smoking a cigarette. He hesitated before answering me. “I keep thinking about what you said. The werewolf thing.”

  “What about it?” I asked cautiously.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we’re both crazy.”

  Sometimes, people say I have a tendency to jump to conclusions, so I paused, even though I was pretty sure I knew what Enzo was getting at. “Do you believe it then?”

  “How can I say I believe something like that?”

  “You’re here.”

  Enzo took a long drag on his cigarette. “Yeah. I’m here.”

  “And you’ve been thinking about it.”

  “Yeah.”

  I waited.

  “And I guess your theory is better than any of the alternatives,” Enzo finally said.

  It wasn’t the perfect response, but it was enough to make me want to jump up and down and do cartwheels and shout to the entire world that someone was finally on my side. But I was afraid of scaring Enzo, so I bit my lip and tried to restrain myself.

  “The thing is,” Enzo continues, “even if Lizzie did turn into a werewolf, what are we supposed to do about it?”

  That was the easy part. “We find her.”

  • • •

  Enzo took me to a pizza place in the basement of an old office building. There was no sign out front, just steps leading down from the street. The redbrick walls were covered in graffiti, and it was dark and cramped and my feet stuck to the floor when I walked.

  We sat at a table in the corner, away from the college kids who were drinking pitchers of beer and arguing about religion and philosophy and everything else they could think to argue about. I asked Enzo about the raised platform on the far side of the room.