The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett

by Chelsea Sedoti

  “She was standoffish,” Christa said finally.

  “That’s all?”

  “She hated being here. Hated everyone who worked here. Like she thought we were all beneath her, you know?”

  I raised my eyebrows. Maybe Lizzie hadn’t changed after high school. Of course, that didn’t fit with Enzo’s version of her.

  “Enzo told me Lizzie always saw the best in everyone.”

  Christa snorted. “Yeah. When she wanted tips. She sure knew how to turn on the charm for customers, but the second her back was turned, it was a different story. I always figured she must be like that with Enzo too.”

  “He never said anything like that about Lizzie.”

  “Well, of course not,” Christa said. She fiddled with the sugar packets. She sighed. “Maybe I’m totally off base. I didn’t know her well, but I got a bad vibe.”

  Every new piece of information I learned about Lizzie muddled my idea of her more. It was as if she was a different person every day. Like she woke up in the morning and decided which mask to put on. It sounded exhausting.

  “Enough about that,” Christa said. “Tell me about this ridiculous dress of yours.”

  So Christa and I talked about girlie homecoming things, and she squealed a lot. It was probably a conversation I should have been having with girls my own age, who were getting ready to attend the same dance, but I guess life would never work like that for me.

  Christa launched into a story about when she went to homecoming in high school, but my mind drifted to what she’d said about Lizzie being hateful and if there was any truth in it. And I thought about the other thing she said, about there being chemistry between me and Enzo. Maybe she was right. On the other hand, maybe I was just doing that thing my mom and Emily said I did, where I made everything into a bigger deal than it actually is.

  It was all too confusing to think about right then, so instead, I asked Christa if I should wear my hair up or down. But as hard as I tried to stop them, thoughts of Enzo kept creeping into my mind.

  Christa said she knew Enzo liked me because of the way he looked at me. What way was that? Could it possibly be the same way he used to look at Lizzie?

  Chapter 24

  The Almost Moment

  I’d gone an entire week without anyone in school making werewolf jokes. Mostly because there was a sophomore who was pregnant, and no one knew who the father was, and all the gossips at Griffin Mills High School were focused on her. So on the Thursday before homecoming, I was in the bathroom because I was actually using it, not because I was hiding from anyone.

  I was washing my hands when there was a flush from one of the stalls, and Emily emerged.

  Our eyes met in the mirror, and it was silent except for the running water. Then the automatic sink turned off, and I turned my attention to it, waving my hands under the sensor. The thing about automatic sinks is that most people seem totally fine with them, but for some reason, I can hardly get them to work, and a lot of the time, I end up just trying to wipe soap residue off my hands with a paper towel.

  Emily came up next to me and flicked her hand in front of the sensor. The water turned on.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “No problem.”

  She started washing her own hands, and there was that strange silence again. We weren’t angry or anything like that—we just didn’t know what to say to each other, and in some ways, that was even worse.

  “How have you been?” I asked finally.

  “Pretty good. You?”

  “The same.”

  For a second, I thought Emily would leave the bathroom, and that would be the extent of our conversation. But then she said, “I got into that summer program. The letter came yesterday.”

  “The composition program? That’s great, Em.”

  She nodded, and I could see how proud she was. Emily was probably going to be a famous pianist one day, and it wouldn’t matter how unpopular she’d been in high school, because she would have finally found a place where she was appreciated. I was envious, but not in a bitter way. I wished I had something equally awesome to tell her.

  “I’m going to homecoming,” I blurted out.

  Emily looked surprised. “Really?”

  I nodded. “Are you and Logan going?”

  “For a little bit, but his band is playing one of the after-parties, so we’ll have to leave early to set up.” Emily dug through her messenger bag and pulled out a flier. “Here. The address is on there. If you want to stop by.”

  The enormity of her peace offering made me dizzy with happiness and relief and a million other emotions that I couldn’t even name.

  “Cool, thanks,” I told her.

  Then the bell rang, and we went to class. I kept the flier folded in my pocket, and for the rest of the day, I occasionally took it out and looked at it, just to make sure the bathroom encounter and Emily’s forgiveness hadn’t been in my head.

  • • •

  “I guess I don’t get it,” Enzo said later that night.

  He stood at his easel, which was facing the wall so I couldn’t see the canvas he was working on. I was lounging on his bed.

  “Which part?”

  Enzo shrugged his bony shoulders and kept painting. “You’ve spent, like, two weeks talking about how much Emily has changed. Now you’re psyched because she gave you a flier to some shitty party. For all you know, she was only trying to promote her boyfriend’s band.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” I said, but I didn’t know how to explain exactly what it was like, so I let the subject drop. “When are you going to tell me what you’re painting?”

  “When it’s finished.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Have your secrets.”

  I wanted to ask Enzo a million questions about the dance, because it was only a couple days away, but there was this part of me that thought it would remind him of all the reasons he hated high school events and scare him off.

  I also wanted him to stop painting and look at me, but I didn’t dare tell him that either. Instead, I studied the portrait of Lizzie, her beautiful face turned up to the sun.

  “Did Lizzie pose for this painting?” I asked Enzo. I liked to think of him painting it. Them out in that field together, him looking at her face, tracing the outline of her jaw, the curl of her lips, onto his canvas. I imagined that she could feel it, feel how all of his concentration was on her and nothing else. Feel which part of her body he was painting as it was happening.

  But Enzo said she hadn’t. He left his current work-in-progress for the first time that night and crossed to his desk. He sifted through one of the drawers for a moment before handing me a stack of photographs.

  The top photo was similar to the painting on Enzo’s wall, taken in the same field. Except in it, Lizzie had her pretty, blue eyes open and was looking straight at the camera. The next picture looked to be the one the painting was based on. I quickly flipped through the rest of the photos, Lizzie in different outfits and different poses, sometimes serious, sometimes grinning, always gorgeous.

  “I wanted to turn them all into portraits eventually,” Enzo said. “You know. Before.”

  Before what? Before she disappeared? Before he thought she was a werewolf? Before he met me? There were so many befores.

  “I had this idea for a series that would compare paintings to the photos they were based on. Like, which one seems more real?”

  “Isn’t a photo always more real?” I asked.

  “That’s the question. How much truth does an artist bring to a painting? Beyond what a photograph can capture?”

  “I guess that is a good question.”

  Enzo went back to his canvas, and I looked through the photos a second time, starting at the beginning and studying each one. Lizzie on a tire swing. Lizzie at the lake. Lizzie leaning up against a rusted old
car. Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie. Everywhere. Commanding attention, no matter what the location. No matter how beautiful or ugly the setting, Lizzie was always shining.

  Then there was Lizzie sitting in a ratty armchair, her feet tucked under her, her shirt unbuttoned to reveal the curves of her perfect breasts, an eyebrow arched suggestively at the person taking the picture—at Enzo. He was the one she was looking at.

  Suddenly, my chest felt tight. Looking at the next picture didn’t help either. Lizzie was fully clothed, but she was sprawled out on a bed, laughing like someone had just told the best joke ever. Not on a bed. On the bed. Enzo’s bed. Right where I was sitting.

  It was sort of a jolt, a revelation, even though I’d known they’d been together from the start. I set the two pictures on the bed, the bed where Lizzie once threw back her head in laughter, and looked from one to the other. Lizzie on the bed. The bedspread was the same; the room was the same; the boy who lived there was the same. Then there was the photo of Lizzie with her shirt open. The look on her face said she knew she looked good; she knew how much the boy behind the camera wanted her. What had happened after he took the photo? Did she grab his shirt and pull him toward her? Did he kiss her deeply, pick her up, and carry her to bed?

  How many times had Lizzie sat in the exact same spot I was in? How many times did they have sex right there, right where Enzo and I lounged around, watching stupid horror movies?

  Lizzie and Enzo. Enzo and Lizzie. They were together. Like, really together.

  It probably seems stupid that I’d never all-the-way thought about it. I’d thought about it before I met Enzo. But then we talked, and I got to know him, and he became real to me. He wasn’t the same Enzo I’d read about in the paper. Sure, we were searching for his missing girlfriend, but Lizzie was more of an idea than a reality. I never thought of them together in that way, in a suggestive-look-leading-to-removed-clothing-leading-to-him-on-the-bed-on-top-of-her-right-in-the-spot-where-I-was-sitting kind of way. Not even a him-reaching-out-to-hold-her-hand way. I felt like someone was squeezing my insides, turning my organs to mush.

  “Did you have sex a lot?” I asked.

  “What?” Enzo looked up from his painting.

  “You and Lizzie. Did you have sex a lot?” I repeated.

  “I guess. I don’t know. What’s a lot?”

  Anything was a lot to me. I looked down at the pictures again. Lizzie was perfect. She was beautiful. I had envied her and hated her for so many years. And Enzo was the person she ended up with. He was across the room, covered in paint, looking at me quizzically. He knew me. In the recent weeks, he’d gotten to know me better than anyone else, and I knew him too, but once upon a time, not that long ago, he had belonged to Lizzie Lovett.

  “What was it like?”

  “What was what like?” Enzo asked.

  “Being with her. Being intimate, I mean.”

  “Jesus, Hawthorn.”

  He sounded annoyed, but he put down his paints. He wiped his hands on his jeans and crossed the room and sat on the bed next to me. My heart started pounding like it did when he held my hand in the abandoned house.

  Enzo looked down at the two pictures. For a moment, I thought he would get weird or annoyed or something. But he didn’t. He looked back and forth between the photos like I had.

  “Well?”

  “Well. It was good. Great. Lizzie liked sex.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “Not everyone. Do you?”

  What I wanted to do was smirk the way Lizzie would have. Tilt my head back a little, arch an eyebrow. I wanted to say something like Do you want to find out? And I wanted to say it in a way that left him wondering if I was joking or not.

  Instead, I said pretty much the worst possible thing, which was, “Uh, I don’t know. I guess. I mean, I don’t really have that much experience. Not that I have no experience. Just not the same as Lizzie or whatever. Not that I’m saying she was a slut or anything. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  As soon it was out of my mouth, I regretted it and wanted to disappear, which was something else that Lizzie had perfected.

  But Enzo smiled. “Hey, no one’s judging you. You’re seventeen. You have plenty of time for sex.”

  While he was talking, something really weird happened. He put his hand on my knee. I looked at his hand, then looked up and met his gaze. He seemed to be asking me if that was OK, and I hoped my smile let him know that it was. I could feel the warmth of his palm, our electricity, running through my entire body.

  I thought he was going to kiss me. He looked like he wanted to. I think I probably wanted the same thing.

  Then I ruined it.

  “Did you and Lizzie have sex the night she disappeared?”

  Enzo jerked his hand back and sort of leaned away from me, and I knew that what had maybe almost happened between us was probably, for sure, over. When he spoke, his voice was clipped.

  “We didn’t.”

  I couldn’t stop myself. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t want to. Maybe neither of us wanted to.”

  Enzo walked back to his canvas, and I knew he’d be there for the rest of the night. Our moment had definitely passed. If there had even been a moment. Suddenly, I doubted myself, thinking maybe looking at those pictures of Lizzie had distorted my perception of what had just happened. Maybe I had turned a friendly pat on the leg into something much, much more.

  “Why didn’t you want to?” I prodded.

  “You have too many questions, kid.”

  “You never have enough answers,” I replied.

  Then the conversation dried up, and for a while, I watched Enzo paint while mulling over all sorts of thoughts, like maybe he and Lizzie were losing interest in each other even before she disappeared, and maybe they weren’t really meant to be together, and if Enzo had actually been thinking about kissing me and if that was something I wanted.

  After an hour of sitting alone with my thoughts, I decided to go home. I gathered up my things and told Enzo good-bye. He was so focused on his painting that he didn’t notice me slip the stack of Lizzie photos into my bag.

  • • •

  I couldn’t get that moment with Enzo out of my head. The almost-moment. It played out in my mind over and over again while I was lying in bed, and the next morning while I was eating breakfast, and later still while I was trying not to doze off during a lecture in history class.

  Then it was evening again, and I was still thinking about the almost-moment, which had happened—or almost happened—twenty-four hours earlier. I thought about it during dinner with my family and was so distracted I agreed to do the dishes for Rush. I hung out at Sundog’s campfire for a little bit, and I thought about it there. Then I moved to the swing on the front porch, then later to my bed, and the whole time, I thought about Enzo sitting next to me on his bed and if there had been a moment or an almost-moment or a non-moment and what it all meant.

  Of course, I also thought about how it could have played out differently if I’d kept my mouth shut. I imagined Enzo’s hand continuing to move up my leg, both of our hearts pounding. I imagined him leaning over, slowly and cautiously, the whole time keeping his gaze on me, silently asking, Is this OK? Do you want this? And in return, my eyes would say, Yes, yes, yes. Then his lips would be on mine, soft at first, but then pressing harder, more aggressively, and his arms would wrap around me, and he’d push me back on the bed, and there I would be, in the same spot where Lizzie Lovett had once been, kissing the same mouth she had kissed.

  I wasn’t sure when our friendship had changed, but I wanted that kiss. I wanted the scenario that real-life me had totally screwed up. I liked Enzo. He wasn’t just a friend or a partner in crime. I liked him a lot. I liked him the way Lizzie had once liked him. And I wanted him to like me too.

  Which pretty much seemed impossible, since,
you know, he had dated Lizzie Lovett. Lizzie had blond hair and a perfect body and always knew the right thing to say and the right way to act. I was just me. Hawthorn Creely. I didn’t turn heads. I was awkward and weird and could barely communicate with the few friends I had, let alone make everyone I talked to fall in love with me. I was nothing special, which made it hard to believe that Enzo would like me after being with a girl who was the most special.

  But there was still a part of me that hoped.

  Sometimes, I’m really good at ignoring the things I don’t want to think about, so I kept pushing all the bad stuff out of my mind and focused on what could have happened at Enzo’s and what could still happen there in the future.

  And I thought about the homecoming dance, which was only one night away. I thought about that a lot.

  Chapter 25

  Homecoming Dance

  I possibly spent more time getting ready for the dance than I’d spent getting ready for anything else, ever. That was probably still less time than Lizzie spent on her appearance every single day in high school.

  I painted my nails, and while I was doing it, I thought about what a waste of time it was. Enzo wouldn’t even notice something like that, and I didn’t care to be with a guy who noticed that sort of stuff. And anyway, as far as Enzo was concerned, it wasn’t a date. Going to the dance with me was more like a favor. So the sparkly silver nail polish didn’t matter. The whole thing was actually super dumb. But I painted my nails anyway.

  I had similar thoughts while I was using the exfoliating body scrub that promised silky, super-touchable skin. Wasn’t it sort of presumptuous of me, thinking that my skin was going to be touched?

  I curled my hair and had my mom help me pull some of it back off my face. When it was done, I felt like I was wearing a crown of bobby pins and hairspray, but it looked nice; it looked like the hair of a girl who was about to go to a dance. And I wondered if Enzo would notice how much effort I put into my appearance, how much I wanted to be a different girl, one like Lizzie had been in high school, just for one night.