Liar

by Justine Larbalestier

  “I thought,” says Detective Stein, looking down at me, “that this school wasn’t like that. Isn’t this one of those alternative schools where everyone’s happy and no one gets beat up at recess?”

  “Does that question have anything to do with your investigation?” Yayeko asks.

  “I was just wondering, Ms. Shoji,” Stein says. “I didn’t think a hippie school would have popular kids.”

  “Wherever there are people,” Yayeko observes, “there are hierarchies.”

  “True enough,” Stein says. “And Zachary Rubin was high in this school’s hierarchy? Is that right, Micah?”

  “Very,” I say. “With students. With teachers. He was good at everything. Especially hoops.”

  “Hoops?” Stein says with a smirk to his voice. “I thought schools like this didn’t have much of an athletics program.”

  “We don’t,” Yayeko says. “Not compared to more traditional schools. But some of our students are very athletically gifted.”

  “Like Zachary?” Stein asks.

  “Like Zach,” Yayeko confirms.

  “Was he ever mean to you, Micah? Popular kids often are.”

  “No.”

  “Where are you in the school hierarchy?”

  “Not very high.” I prefer being invisible. Not that I am anymore. Thanks to Brandon.

  “Micah is one of my star students. She’s popular with me,” Yayeko says, and I wish she hadn’t. Detective Stein smirks some more.

  “Do you think other students resented Zachary’s popularity?” Detective Rodriguez asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Probably.” Brandon Duncan certainly does. Did.

  “You say Zachary was popular,” Rodriguez says. “Did you like him?”

  “Sure,” I say. “I certainly didn’t not like him, you know? He seemed like a nice guy. He never did anything mean to me. Or anyone else that I saw.”

  “But some other students have?” Stein asks.

  “Have what?” I ask.

  “Been mean to you.”

  “I can take care of myself,” I say, crossing my arms. I bet Detective Stein was as unpopular as me. More even. I bet being back in high school makes him tense. Even a “hippie” one like this.

  “I’m sure you can,” Stein says. “And which students have forced you to take care of yourself?”

  “No one in particular. I mostly get left alone.”

  Stein stares at me. I can tell he doesn’t believe it.

  “Well, if you think of anything that might help our investigation,” Rodriguez says, glancing up at Stein and then back to me, “you let us know.”

  I nod. “I will.”

  “You can go back to class now.”

  I don’t. I go into the bathroom and hide in one of the stalls until the bell for next period. I don’t want to hear any whispering for a while.

  BEFORE

  It’s true that Zach never spoke to me in school. He didn’t look at me either. Not before, anyway. After, he would sometimes catch my eye when he was sure no one else was looking at him or at me. Easy to find a moment when there were no eyes on me, difficult to find one for himself.

  We met for the first time in Central Park. Under a bridge hung with icicles. Winter of our junior year. Middle of the day. A weekday. A school day.

  I say “we met” even though we’d been in school together since we were freshmen. We exchanged a few words during the one game of hoops. But we’d been in classes ever since without so much as saying hi, how you doin’. He spoke to the cool kids. I spoke to no one, not even my teachers—except Yayeko—if I could avoid it.

  Under the bridge he spoke to me.

  “Micah, isn’t it?”

  I was staring up at the icicles. It was warmer that day and they were dripping. I wondered how long before they fell, which one would be first.

  “You like icicles, huh?”

  I turned to look at him. I knew who he was from his voice. I am better at voices than faces. His was deep. The kind you want to hear sing or read a sermon. So that you can float away on the words blurred together. It was too deep a voice for a sixteen-year-old boy. It was deeper than my dad’s.

  This time, I really looked at him. I never had before. I have learned to let my gaze slide over the surface of people without retaining anything or resting anywhere. That way no one calls me “freak.”

  I saw that he was beautiful. Not weedy like he’d been in our freshman year, though still lean. Taller, too. Much taller. I guess we both were.

  “I’m Zach,” he said, even though he knew I knew that. “I like them, too. Icicles, I mean. Only good thing about winter.”

  We stared at each other. I saw how smooth his skin was, how fine the pores. Then we looked up at the icicles. Fifteen of them. Each one dripping.

  “You think they’re going to last the day?”

  “No,” I said. Surprised that I could find my tongue. “It’s too warm.” Why was he talking to me?

  He took a step closer. “We’re in biology together, aren’t we?”

  I nodded.

  “That Yayeko is weird, don’t you think? Smart though. She’s probably the smartest teacher we got.”

  I nodded again. No boy had ever stood this close to me before.

  “I like those classes,” he said, moving even closer. He didn’t mention that if we were in school where we were supposed to be, Yayeko Shoji’s class would be starting soon. “Cells and glycolysis and fast-twitch muscles. I play ball better from learning all that stuff, you know?”

  I nodded. I wasn’t sure I could speak with his breath misting so near my own. But it was true. Yayeko taught us about life, broke it into its components, so that our movements through space made sense. When I ran I thought about the movements of my muscles and joints, the glucose and oxygen making energy together.

  He brushed his lips gently along my cheek.

  I didn’t move. The shock of it froze me. Why had he done that? He’d never looked at me that way. He’d never really looked at me any kind of way.

  His lips were dry and warm. No other part of us touched. Blood moved faster through my veins and capillaries. Without willing them to, my lips parted slightly. An “oh” escaped from me.

  “Biology is probably my favorite class,” he said, letting his lips slide toward my ear, gently pressing his teeth into my lobe.

  “Mine too,” I said, glad to be able to speak again. Because it was true: biology is the only class I like.

  The smell of him was curling into my nose and mouth. Sweat, meat, soap, and something else I didn’t have a word for. My pulse beat faster. I felt it in my throat. The skin all over my body tightened.

  Why was he kissing me? How many other girls had he kissed like this?

  “No one else notices. But I seen how pretty you are,” he said. “You got the biggest eyes.”

  He kissed the corner of each and the tip of my nose with his dry, soft lips.

  Something crashed beside us.

  We turned.

  The largest of the icicles lay shattered into hundreds of slivers of ice. I bent and picked up one of the largest pieces. Cold, and the broken edge sharp like a knife.

  FAMILY HISTORY

  Dad grew up with two crazy white ladies who worried about the family illness, how to increase apple and hay yields, how to keep the farm animals living longer, and whether their children were running too wild or just wild enough.

  Grandmother had the one child. Great-Aunt Dorothy and Great-Uncle Hilliard had six. If he hadn’t died it would probably have been more. Four of them with the family illness. Because of that they homeschooled all of them. Not Dad, who didn’t have the illness. He went to a boarding school in Connecticut on a scholarship, where he was one of only five black students. None of whom he liked. He kept to himself, proving himself to be more of a Wilkins than he cared to admit. He studied French and everything he could about France, especially Marseille. Because all he knew about his father was that he was a French sailor from
Marseille.

  Dad went to France when he was eighteen. Worked his way over as a merchant marine, which he hated. He didn’t find his father. But he did find lots of pretty French girls. Including my mom. He brought her home, though not all the way upstate. He stopped in the city and stayed there.

  Mom’s never gone back to France. When I ask her if she misses it, she laughs.

  Here, she is a schoolteacher. Teaching French, while Dad writes. He’s a professional liar, Mom says. Even his journalism is lies. Travel writing. Appraisals of hotels, spas, and resorts. If they pay him enough he’ll say whatever anyone wants him to say.

  He’s away a lot. When he’s away they don’t fight so much.

  I never tell anyone about my family. Especially not counselors like Jill Wang.

  I never talk about the family illness and how Dad passed it on to me.

  AFTER

  Sarah is following me home from school. She thinks she’s being stealthy.

  She’s managed to stay a block behind me since we left school. But the blocks between school and my home aren’t that crowded even after school on a weekday. So at every corner, as I turn, I glance back and see her. Finally I’m around a corner waiting.

  Sarah turns and there I am staring at her.

  “Oh,” she says, taking several steps back, looking away. “Oh.”

  “Hmmm,” I say.

  “I,” she begins, looking at me briefly, slipping her hands under the straps of her backpack, resting her left foot on the curb.

  “You,” I say, mocking her. She blushes and looks down.

  “I was . . .”

  To increase Sarah’s discomfort I continue to stare at her.

  “I was going to . . . ,” Sarah says. “I was just . . .”

  Sarah hasn’t found the rest of her sentence yet, so I give it to her: “You were just following me?”

  “Yes,” she says, incurably honest. “I wanted to see where you live.”

  “Why?” I ask. She’s still not looking at me.

  “I heard that he’d come visit you.” She slides her right hand out from under the backpack strap, wipes it on her skirt, and then slips it under again. “I wanted to see.”

  “To see what? Him with me? He’s dead, remember?

  Sarah shakes her head, her heavy loose curls swaying.

  She’s still looking down.

  “What did you want to see, Sarah? The outside of my apartment building? The inside? My bedroom?”

  She looks up. Her eyes are wide and wet. “Yes,” she says. “No. Maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t think it all the way through.”

  “Come on,” I say, turning on my heel. I am tempted to run flat out and leave her in my wake. Instead I march fast up Second Avenue. She has to scurry to keep pace.

  AFTER

  “Your desk is so big,” Sarah Washington says, looking around. “It’s bigger than your bed.”

  It’s not that the desk is big, more that the room is small. In any other city in America it would be a closet, not a bedroom. The desk, the chair, the bed, the crate beside it are the only furniture. I sit down on the bed, cross my legs underneath me. I prefer to sit on the floor, but Sarah is standing on the only floor space.

  She picks up the silver packet of tiny pills by my bed, holds them in her hand and stares at them, then holds the packet out to me. Her eyes are too wet. A tear leaks out and then another. I wonder what it’s like crying so easily.

  “You were sleeping with him, weren’t you?”

  “They’re for my skin,” I tell her.

  “Your skin?” She drops them back on the crate as if they might contaminate her. “You take birth control pills for your skin?”

  I nod. It’s odd how often telling the truth feels like lying and lying like the truth. “I have acne. When I take those pills I don’t have acne. You can look it up.”

  “So you never slept with him?” she asks, emphasizing each word.

  I hadn’t said that. “No,” I answer.

  “Then why do you have his sweater?” she asks, much louder this time. She squeezes past my bed to where it hangs on the back of my desk chair. She holds it to her nose. She can smell him, too. Her eyes leak more water. She better not cry on the sweater.

  “I was cold.” I am never cold.

  I only let Sarah into my room to stop her from bothering me. She’s one of those people who cannot let things be. I thought about hiding the sweater. I thought, too, about wearing the sweater. But I don’t want to lose his smell.

  “Put it down,” I tell her.

  She does. I can smell salty fear on her. She is afraid of me. She is afraid of everything.

  “I don’t have anything of his,” she says. “Not one thing.”

  “What about the chain around your neck?” It’s thin and gold. It would be easy to break. “Or that ring on your finger. He gave you those.”

  “He bought them. They don’t . . .” Sarah trails off, glances at the sweater again. “They weren’t ever his.”

  She means that they don’t smell like Zach. Sweat doesn’t soak into metal. Jewelry doesn’t have the fragrance of where it’s been; only of what it is. Besides, he never wore them. He bought them for her to wear. He never bought anything for me. I think about telling Sarah this, but it will only confirm that me and Zach were together.

  “When was the last time you saw him?” she asks, sliding away from the sweater, her back against my desk.

  “Why is everyone asking me about that?” I know why. Ever since Brandon told about Zach and me, everyone has been staring, whispering. But I want to hear her say it, to admit that she suspects me of killing him, too.

  I miss Zach so much. The thought of him makes my breath hurt. I’m afraid I’ll choke. His death, his absence makes everything tighten, thicken, break.

  “We’re all trying to figure out what happened. Who did this to him. Why.” She doesn’t look at me directly. Her hand reaches toward his sweater again. She stops herself before she touches it.

  “Who killed him, you mean?” It’s what everyone’s saying: Zach was murdered. But no one knows who or how or why. The why is huge. Zach is a good guy. Was. I cannot imagine a reason to kill him.

  “Last time I saw him was Saturday night,” Sarah says. Her voice wilts on “Saturday.”

  “Me, too,” I say, though I didn’t. I don’t know why I say it. Those two words mean I’m admitting to seeing Zach. To being his—his whatever I was.

  “You’re lying. I was with him Saturday. We were at Chantal’s party. You weren’t invited.”

  As if I would want to go. So much noise. Not just the music, but their voices all loud and raucous from drinking. I never drink. None of the Wilkins do.

  “The party didn’t go all night,” I say. “He saw me after.” I cross my legs the other way, stretch out my spine.

  “At 5:00 a.m.?” she asks. “When he was so drunk Chantal’s older brother ended up helping him get a taxi home?”

  “He wasn’t that drunk. I climbed in through his window.”

  “Through the window? Of a seventh-floor apartment?”

  I nod. I’ve climbed into higher windows. “I went up the fire escape. His bedroom’s right next to it.” Not true.

  The kitchen is. I have to climb across ledges to get to Zach’s room. Sarah’s not the kind of person who’d notice where the fire escape is. “He always leaves the window open a crack. He used to anyway. He was snoring. I crawled in next to him. He woke up.” I can see it clearly though I know it didn’t happen. Not that night.

  “I thought you said you never slept with him?” She’s crying again. It amazes me she can do that even through her questions and her anger.

  “I didn’t. There are other things you can do.” Sleep for instance. He had been drunk. He’d woken up, grunted “Micah,” then rolled over, and gone back to snoring. Or at least that’s what would have happened if I’d been there that night. It had gone that way before.

  Sarah takes a long look at me, without any fe
ar for a moment. “You,” she says, at last, “are nasty. I don’t believe a word you’ve said. Can you even describe his bedroom?”

  “Lots of trophies.”

  “What jock boy’s bedroom doesn’t have lots of trophies?” She shifts against my desk. It’s hard and metal, even with the cloth draped over it. She can’t be comfortable. “What color are the walls?”

  “At night? Dark.”

  “Very funny. What’s the rest of the house look like?” She’s sneering.

  “I told you. I get in through his window.”

  “What’s—?”

  “Why am I answering your questions?” I want her to go. I want her to stop interrogating me. I want her to leave me alone.

  “Why won’t you tell the truth?” she asks, glaring at me.

  “Why won’t you?” I ask, even though she is an incorrigible truth teller. I glare right back.

  “You’re not even pretty!” Sarah shouts, pushing off from the desk, past the bed, opening the door. “You look like a boy. An ugly boy! What did he even see in you?”

  She slams the door behind her.

  So she doesn’t hear me say that I have no idea.

  HISTORY OF ME

  “Did you take your pill?” is the first thing my parents ask me each morning. Well, mostly my dad.

  It annoys me. It annoys me a lot.

  Especially when Jordan echoes their question. It’s too icky to have your ten-year-old brother ask you that. It doesn’t matter that I don’t take the pill for that reason. It’s still not something he should be thinking about.

  It’s not something I want to think about.

  I hate the whole thing: menstruation, pills, blood.

  So. Much. Blood.

  I don’t take the pill just for my skin, it’s to fix my periods, too.

  They used to be awful. Lie-in-bed-sobbing-with-pain awful and an ocean of blood: instant anemia once a month. The first time I got my period I thought I was going to die. The pain was so bad. The bleeding wouldn’t stop.

  My doctor cured it by making me take a birth control pill every single day. No fake sugar pills—I take the real ones every single day of my life. Now I never get my period. I never have that awful pain. My blood stays in my body, keeping me upright.