The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett

by Chelsea Sedoti

  “Well, these hikers didn’t get back from a camping trip when they were supposed to, and people went looking for them. Their tent was found, ripped open from the inside, like there had been a struggle to get out. They’d even left their shoes behind. But there was no other sign of them. It took weeks to find their bodies. None of them survived.”

  “Pretty creepy,” I said. And by creepy, I meant fascinating.

  “It gets better,” Enzo said, talking faster and gesturing. For the first time since I’d met him, he didn’t seem weighed down by grief. “The hikers were found scattered all over the area, and most of them were naked. One of them was missing a tongue. A couple had fractured bones, like you’d get after a major car accident, but there was no evidence of external damage. Well, other than their hair had turned white and their skin was some weird shade of orange. And all of the hikers tested positive for radiation.”

  I stopped walking and looked at Enzo. “Then what?”

  “Nothing. No one has ever figured out what happened.”

  I scowled at him. “That’s the end?”

  “Sometimes, you never get answers, kid,” Enzo said with a grin.

  “Doesn’t not knowing make you crazy?”

  “Not at all. The truth would only be disappointing.”

  He was right, of course. I couldn’t even count how many times I’d been disappointed by the truth. Enzo got it.

  My fluttery feeling grew stronger. I turned away from Enzo and started walking again so he wouldn’t see me smile.

  We hiked for nearly an hour and never saw a sign of Lizzie, in either werewolf or human form. The terrain got steeper the farther we went, and after a while, we were both too winded to talk. When we reached a section of flat ground, Enzo stopped walking and leaned against a tree, breathing heavily.

  “I’m not in good enough shape for this.”

  “I’m sure that doesn’t help,” I said when he started to roll a cigarette.

  I expected a laugh or maybe a sarcastic retort, but Enzo only shrugged. His good mood had vanished.

  “We should call it a day,” he said.

  He was right. I was worn out. Neither of us were really dressed for hiking. And we hadn’t seen anything to indicate we were on Lizzie’s trail. I tried to swallow my disappointment. I knew it was unlikely we’d find her on the first day anyway. It never happened that way in books or movies. It would have been anticlimactic.

  “You know she’s been gone almost a month now?” Enzo stared into the woods, like he wasn’t really talking to me.

  “Yeah,” I said softly.

  “It seems impossible. Like time should have stopped when she disappeared. I guess in a way, for me, it did.”

  His shoulders were hunched, and his hair fell into his eyes. He looked so broken, and I wished I knew how to make him whole.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

  “About what?” He finally looked at me.

  “Anything. Everything. What the past month has been like. Have you had anyone to talk to?”

  “Oh, I’ve talked to the police and reporters and Lizzie’s mom.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Someone to talk to, you know, the way you would talk to Lizzie.”

  The way he’d talked to me earlier, telling me the story about the hikers. Like I was a real person who he wanted to share something with. A friend.

  Enzo shrugged. “Lizzie and I wouldn’t talk about this kind of stuff. She’s not really big on analyzing her feelings. Or listening to other people’s for that matter.”

  It took me back to my conversation with Lizzie in the locker room, how good it made me feel that she acted like she cared. And how devastated I was when I realized she didn’t. Maybe she wasn’t concerned about feelings, but other people were. What happened when one of her cronies got dumped or didn’t get nominated for prom court and needed someone to pour out her heart to? Did Lizzie just shrug and tell her friend to deal with it?

  “That’s really sad,” I said.

  “Actually, it’s awesome. She doesn’t overthink anything or let anything bother her. She just lives.”

  “It doesn’t sound awesome,” I blurted out. “It sounds like being in a relationship with a robot. How can you date someone you can’t talk to?”

  “There’s more to relationships than talking,” Enzo said.

  I assumed he meant sex, which made my face heat up, because clearly, he thought I was too much of a kid to know anything about that. Enzo must have read my mind, because he winced, which only made the whole thing a million times more awkward.

  “No, I mean…we go out and do things, OK? Go to concerts, poetry readings, whatever. We have experiences. We just don’t have to analyze every single one or talk about what it means to us.”

  But weren’t those experiences meant to be analyzed? Weren’t you supposed to share how they made you feel?

  “And you like that?” I asked.

  Enzo didn’t answer right away. I wasn’t sure if he was figuring out what to say or deciding if I was worth saying it to. Or maybe he was following the Lizzie Lovett school of thought and wasn’t thinking anything at all.

  “Sometimes, I feel like I’ll go crazy if I don’t find a way to turn off my thoughts,” Enzo said. “When I’m with Lizzie, I can do that.”

  In my head, I said, “What thoughts? Tell me, no matter how weird or depressing they are or how much you want to forget them. Maybe they’re my thoughts too.”

  Out loud, I casually said, “I guess I can understand that.”

  Considering everything Enzo said about Lizzie, I was hesitant to ask more questions. Hesitant to make him think too much. But there was one more thing I had to know.

  “Is she happy?” I asked. “Or was she, before she disappeared?”

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding surprised, as if Lizzie’s happiness was a given. “She’s always smiling. Always makes the best of a situation. Like, her car could break down, and she’d just say she finally had a reason to buy a bike.”

  “What about you? Are you happy?”

  Enzo took a long drag of his cigarette. He watched the smoke drift up to the sky. “I’m a different kind of person.”

  I figured I was too.

  Maybe that was OK.

  As we hiked back to my car, I tried to reconcile the Lizzie I knew with Saint Lizzie, who Enzo had apparently been dating. I couldn’t do it. Was it really possible for someone to change so much in just a few years? Or maybe she hadn’t changed. Maybe I’d read Lizzie wrong from the start.

  There was so much to puzzle over, I didn’t even mind that our first werewolf investigation had been unsuccessful.

  Chapter 15

  Special

  I knew what would happen if I ventured into my backyard. But I went out anyway, which made me think maybe, probably, part of me wanted it to happen, which was totally weird.

  I hadn’t even been on the back patio for a full minute when Sundog saw me and broke into a grin. There was something childlike about his smile, which was startling to see on such an old face. Getting a genuine smile from an adult was about as rare as seeing multiple suns in the sky.

  “Hawthorn,” he said, crossing the yard to meet me. “Join us.”

  He put his arm around my shoulders and guided me into his little backyard tent city. He smelled like sweat and campfire and incense. It wasn’t exactly a good smell but not as bad as his unwashed hair and clothes suggested.

  “I’ve been hoping you’d spend some time out here.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d like to know you. Your mom was about your age when we first met. Seeing you is like going back in time.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not, so I didn’t say anything.

  Sundog led me to the middle of the yard, which the hippies had turned into their gat
hering place. They’d set up a fire pit and ringed it with blankets and beat-up lawn chairs. It was where they had their prayer circles every day at dawn and dusk.

  One of the men, Journey, I think, was meditating near the smoldering remains of the fire. He was in the lotus position, eyes shut, face turned up to the sky. I briefly wondered if my and Sundog’s intrusion would disturb him but decided probably not. He was only a few feet from us in body, but his mind was on another planet.

  Otherwise, the camp was empty. Sundog and I sat down on a tattered Indian blanket.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “In town looking for work.”

  “What work?” I asked warily. I imagined one of the caravan members getting a job at the stupid shoe boutique and deciding to stay forever.

  “Odd jobs mostly, yard work and that sort of thing. Or they sell our goods.”

  He meant hemp necklaces and organic shampoo and who knew what else. They’d conned Rush into making purchases on at least three separate occasions.

  “Do you work?”

  “Not anymore,” Sundog said. “I’m too old for that now.”

  “Do you ever feel like Charles Manson?” I asked.

  Sundog laughed. I hadn’t meant to make a joke.

  “Why would you say that?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.

  “I mean, you’re the leader of this…I don’t know, commune.”

  Sundog took both of my hands in his and looked me straight in the eye, which was sort of uncomfortable. Most people don’t really look at you for more than a second. It also made me want to listen to what he had to say. Maybe that’s the trick to getting whatever you want from life—making people feel like you see them.

  “Hawthorn, Charles Manson took something beautiful—the idea of community, of oneness—and turned it into evil. We embrace the light.”

  “But this is a commune, right? A traveling one?”

  “Commune is just a label. What does it even mean?”

  “Um, the dictionary would have me believe it’s a group of people living together and sharing everything.”

  “We love and respect each other, Hawthorn. That’s what matters.”

  I pulled my hands away, because it was getting a little weird. Journey was still meditating, deep in some other cognitive state. Which was good, because I had another question for Sundog, and I didn’t want anyone eavesdropping.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Sundog laughed again. “You should never ask to ask a question.”

  It wasn’t that I thought Sundog had all the answers. He was my mom’s mentor, not mine. But I suspected he’d at least take me seriously, and that was better than what I usually got.

  “OK, well, do you believe in werewolves?”

  I was right—Sundog didn’t flinch. He didn’t look surprised. He quietly considered the question, and that made me love him a little bit.

  “I believe there are two sides to every individual. I believe we all have a beast.”

  “But what about a human turning into a wolf?”

  “The most beautiful thing about the world is how much is unknown to us. There are so many secrets, Hawthorn. So much awaiting discovery. We are merely dust motes in the vastness of the universe.”

  Something wet touched my arm, and I jumped. Timothy Leary was rubbing her cold nose against me. I reached out to pet her and wondered if she understood what we were talking about. Maybe some canine connection had prompted the dog to come over and vouch for the existence of werewolves.

  “Did you hear about the girl who disappeared a while ago?” I asked.

  Sundog nodded. “It’s a bad time to be an outsider in Griffin Mills.”

  I didn’t break it to him that the caravan members would be treated with suspicion in Griffin Mills whether there was a missing person or not.

  “I thought maybe she turned into a wolf,” I said, keeping my eyes on Timothy Leary. She craned her neck so I could scratch under her tie-dyed bandana. “Yesterday, I went looking for her. Her boyfriend went with me.”

  “And did you find a wolf?”

  “No. But we only searched a small area.”

  Sundog reached out and touched my hands again. Timothy Leary tried to wriggle between us.

  “Absence of proof is not proof of absence.”

  “So you think it could be true?”

  “We all have cosmic awareness inside of us. We’re born knowing everything about the world, and then society makes us forget it. But there’s still a part of us that remembers. What do you see when you look inside yourself?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then you need to look deeper.”

  “And what if I see Lizzie as a werewolf?”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  I stood up and brushed the dog fur off my clothes.

  “I have to get ready for work,” I told Sundog. “But thanks.”

  I expected him to say, “For what?” and I would tell him, “For believing that anything is possible.”

  Instead, he smiled and said, “Namaste, Hawthorn.”

  Whatever that meant.

  • • •

  My car keys had gone MIA, and I was losing hope that I’d make it to the Sunshine Café on time. This was apparently very amusing to Connor. He’d come over to hang out with Rush but had settled for watching me tear the living room apart.

  “How would your keys have ended up there?” Connor laughed as I peered behind the entertainment center.

  I took a moment to scowl at him before moving to the couch and lifting the cushions. There were no keys, but I did find part of a candy bar wrapper. I wondered whether it had been my dad or brother who snuck the contraband food into the house.

  “I heard you had an adventure yesterday,” Connor said casually.

  I replaced the couch cushions. “Do you and Rush sit around and talk about me all the time or what?”

  Connor shrugged. “It just came up.”

  It was stupid of me to tell Rush about looking for Lizzie in the first place. But I’d been too excited to keep it to myself, and my brother was the first person I saw. Not a mistake I’d make again.

  I got on my hands and knees and looked under the coffee table. Nothing.

  “Find anything?” Connor asked.

  “No. My keys aren’t here.”

  “I mean in the woods.”

  “Oh.” I sat back on my heels, scanned the room for anywhere I hadn’t checked. “No, nothing there either.”

  “So what’s Lorenzo Calvetti like?”

  “It’s Enzo. He’s pretty cool,” I said.

  “He seems weird.”

  I looked at Connor and frowned. “What? No, he doesn’t.”

  “You don’t think it’s weird for some dude in his midtwenties to go hunting for his were-girlfriend with some random teenager?” Connor asked.

  “No. What I think is weird is that sometime in the last twenty-four hours, my car keys ceased to exist. And the term wouldn’t be were-girlfriend. That doesn’t make sense.”

  Connor laughed. “But werewolves are totally sensible, right?”

  “Why are you even here right now? Where’s my brother?”

  As if I summoned him, Rush bounded down the stairs. “Ready to go?”

  “Yep.” Connor stood up.

  “Isn’t anyone concerned that my keys are missing?”

  Rush rolled his eyes. “They’re on the kitchen counter.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s where you put them down.”

  Connor laughed. “Good job, Thorny.”

  I went into the kitchen, and sure enough, there they were. I grabbed them, then went back into the living room to tell Connor that no, I didn’t think Enzo was weird for thinking his girlfriend could be a werewolf, b
ut he and Rush were already gone.

  • • •

  The truth about working at the Sunshine Café was that they didn’t need a waitress to fill Lizzie’s spot, because mostly no one ate there. I never said that to Mr. Walczak, since I didn’t want to look for a new job, and it meant I could do whatever I wanted during my shifts. Besides, it was way better than the mini golf place.

  That night, I was reading The Werewolf Book, which was basically an encyclopedia of everything that had to do with werewolves, and taking notes. I sat at the lunch counter a few stools down from Vernon, who also never seemed to mind how boring the café was.

  “You know what’s interesting about werewolves?” I asked.

  Vernon made a sound that could have been “Huh?” but didn’t look up from his crossword puzzle.

  “It wasn’t until pretty recently that people started questioning their existence. Before that, werewolves were just accepted as part of life.”

  Vernon didn’t respond.

  “Almost every culture has some kind of shape-shifter myth,” I went on. “Take Native Americans, for example. They didn’t have werewolves exactly, but they believed in skinwalkers, which is pretty close.”

  I assumed Vernon’s continued silence meant he was fascinated by my wealth of werewolf information and that I should keep talking.

  “There’s actually a psychological disorder called clinical lycanthropy. Have you heard of it? It’s when people believe they’re werewolves and do crazy stuff on the full moon.”

  For a second, I considered that maybe Lizzie wasn’t a werewolf but had gone into the woods because she believed she was one. Believed it so much that being a werewolf became real to her in her heart and in her head. Rather than a werewolf roaming the Ohio River Valley, it was just crazy Lizzie.

  I dismissed the idea as interesting, but it didn’t really fit.

  “There are all these methods for killing a werewolf,” I told Vernon. “But no one seems to care much about saving them. Occasionally, people in medieval Europe attempted to keep werewolves alive but only to perform these weird surgeries and exorcisms, so the end result was usually death anyway.”