Liar

by Justine Larbalestier

  AFTER

  At the second group counseling session Jill Wang asks us to tell her what we think about Zach.

  “Are we going to talk about Erin, too?” Kayla asks.

  Everyone starts talking at once. I close my eyes and wish I could shut my ears.

  “Why would we talk about Erin?” Brandon shouts over the top of everyone else. “She’s a freshman. Do you even know who she is?” I dislike agreeing with Brandon, but he’s right. Looking around the room, I can see others agree.

  “As a matter of fact, yes, I do,” Kayla yells back. “Her sister and me have been friends for years. I’ve known Erin since she was a baby.”

  “Well, I haven’t,” Brandon says.

  “Just because you—”

  “Erin’s disappearance,” Jill Wang interrupts, raising her voice, letting us know that she’s the boss, “is disturbing. We most definitely can talk about it—”

  “Yeah, like, who’s next?”

  “You really think that?” Tayshawn says. “She could have run away. I heard she was fighting with her mom and dad a lot. Maybe it’s got nothing to do with Zach.”

  “Erin’s a good girl,” Kayla says.

  “Sure,” Tayshawn says. “I’m just saying it doesn’t seem like the two things are connected. He’s Hispanic, she’s white. He’s a senior, she’s a freshman. He was on a scholarship, she’s from money. They don’t even live in the same part of the city.” Tayshawn talks as if he didn’t know Zach, as if they weren’t best friends.

  “He was Hispanic,” Brandon says. “He was a senior.”

  “We know he’s dead,” Sarah says. “You don’t have to go on about it.”

  “Isn’t that what we’re here for?” Brandon asks, sneering. “To go on about it?”

  Jill Wang holds her hands up, palms out, reassuring us, but all I can see are the calluses where her fingers join her palm. I wonder how she got them. “We are here,” she says loudly and clearly, “to try to cope with what happened. A senior, Zachary Rubin, who you all knew and many of you cared about, is dead. We all have a lot to say and a lot we don’t know how to say. That’s why I’d like us to do this exercise. What did you think of Zach? What did he mean to you? Sarah?” she asks, lowering her voice. “Do you want to go first?”

  “No,” Sarah says. “Yes.” She pauses to look anywhere but at our faces. “He was gentle,” she says, and Brandon snickers so loud it ricochets around the room.

  “That’s enough, Brandon,” Jill Wang says. She’s giving Brandon her evil eye.

  “I meant,” Sarah says, “that he’s—he was—a gentle person. Kind. He never said anything mean about anyone.”

  That’s true, too. He was both kinds of gentle.

  “Thank you, Sarah. Brandon, since you’re so eager to speak, what did you think of Zachary Rubin?”

  Brandon shrugged. “He was alright. I didn’t have nothing against him.”

  “Anything against him,” she corrects. I don’t think counselors are supposed to do that. Her dislike of Brandon is leaking out. Happens to all of us.

  “Not that neither,” he says, grinning at his own wit.

  “Do we have to say different things?” Lucy asks. “Because I was going to say he was kind but Sarah already said that.”

  “You can say whatever you want.”

  I want to say that this is bullshit and everyone should shut the fuck up, but I suspect that’s not what the counselor had in mind.

  “He was kind, then,” Lucy says. “And funny. He made me laugh. I liked him.”

  He wasn’t kind. Gentle, but not kind. They are confusing his easiness with kindness. A kind person goes out of their way to do right by people. Zach wasn’t like that. He wanted smoothness. A life without agitation.

  “All the girls liked him,” Brandon says, then he lowers his voice to a whisper. “But you were no chance, Luce. He liked dark girls. Really dark girls.” He smirks at Sarah. “Micah was barely dark enough.”

  “It’s no longer your turn, Brandon,” Jill Wang says.

  I wonder if she heard all that he said. Sarah did. She’s glaring at Brandon like she wants to smack him. I’d like to kill him.

  I’m next. The counselor looks at me and nods.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I pass.”

  “You can’t think of anything you’d like to say?” Jill asks. “Even something small? The exercise works much better if we all contribute.”

  I can think of many things I want to say: the taste of his mouth. The smell of him after he ran. How it felt to run my fingers along his flank. Sarah is staring at me.

  “Micah?” Jill Wang prompts.

  “Like Lucy said. He was funny.”

  “Andrew?”

  He shrugs. “I didn’t know the guy. I don’t even know why I have to come here.”

  “You were all in the same year as Zachary. Such a violent, unexpected death is shocking whether you knew him well or not.”

  “I guess,” Andrew says, sounding bored, not shocked. “I try not to think about it, you know? Zach was okay, I guess.”

  “I can tell you one thing,” Alejandro says. “No one but teachers called him Zachary. To everyone else he was Zach or the Z-Man.”

  “Z-Man?” Brandon laughs. “How lame is that? Who called him that?”

  “Me,” Tayshawn says. “The other guys on the team. It was respect. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I thought he was cute,” Chantal says, smiling at Sarah. “I was kind of jealous of Sarah. You know, ’cause she was dating the cutest guy in school. Sorry, Sarah.”

  Sarah gives a tight smile in return. Everyone else is looking at me.

  Lucy nods. “Lots of us thought he was cute. We’re all sorry.”

  Sorry about what? That Zach’s dead or that they didn’t get to date him before he died? I never heard Lucy say anything about Zach before he died. She’d always been pining after Tayshawn. Did being dead make Zach cuter?

  They continue to go around the circle. Each person says something meaningless. By the end of the session none of us knows a single thing about Zach that we didn’t already know.

  He’s still dead, and we don’t know how, or who made him that way.

  FAMILY HISTORY

  One time, I almost killed Jordan. I can’t remember what he’d done. It could have been the time he told about my sneaking out at night down the fire escape. Or the time he drew all over my favorite running shoes. Telling, stealing, destroying—that’s Jordan’s standard m.o.

  But one day the heinous thing he’d done pushed me over the edge. I stood looking at the broken fragments, or the ashes, or whatever it was, and glowered over him, clenching my fists, ready to throw him against the wall, smash his skull in. Have the shards of it pierce his brain. Watch the blood sprout from his nose. His eyes flutter, all whites, jaw loose, tongue lolls. Him falling, shuddering, stilling.

  I could see from his eyes that he knew I was ready to do it. He was frozen and trembling. He didn’t scream or cry. Or he knew it wouldn’t make any difference. Even if Mom and Dad were home, which they weren’t, they wouldn’t get to us in time. They wouldn’t stop it. Who knew if they could? I’d been stronger than them for years.

  I drew back my right arm, ready to smash his nose across his face, drive him into the brick wall.

  But I didn’t.

  I drew back from my rage. I didn’t tear him apart limb from limb.

  I wouldn’t get away with it. Even with Mom and Dad away—the walls between apartments are not thick: if he’d screamed someone would have heard him.

  I went into my room, shut the door, sat on the floor with my back against my metal desk, and decided to poison him instead.

  I didn’t want Mom or Dad to suspect.

  He was still little back then. Four or five. Stupid enough to drink Drāno. I decided to put it in his path. Tell him not to drink it. Then walk away.

  I didn’t do that either.

  Not for Jordan’s sake, but for my mom’s. Killing h
im would hurt her.

  And me, too. If I was busted. Sitting down, thinking it through meant that I would never do it.

  I had to hope for an accident.

  BEFORE

  Me and Zach, we were put on library duty together.

  That’s another thing about our school: you have to contribute, give back to your community. Community starts with the school, which is very clever ’cause that means we students save the school money by doing their work for them. Mostly you volunteer for tasks. I always volunteer to pick up the trash in the park and on the sidewalk outside the school. Anything that gets me outdoors.

  But they also like to stretch you. Get you to do stuff you would never do otherwise. Like for me and Zach—neither of us readers—they make us work in the library. Shelving and all that.

  That first time it was me, Zach, Chantal, and Brandon. A quartet of nonreaders stuck together. At any other school that would be no big deal, but our school is full of readers. Didn’t surprise me that Brandon doesn’t read, he can barely talk—but Chantal wanted to be an actor. I always thought actors read a lot. It’s their job, isn’t it? Reading words, memorizing them, saying them out loud.

  Not Chantal.

  I don’t read, but I do like libraries. I like order, and libraries are all about order. Every book has a place. It’s quiet, too: no music.

  I watched Zach at the other end, framed between shelves, gathering up books left on desks, on couches, on the floor. Brandon helping. Though not really. He kept trying to talk. Zach would say “yes” or “no” or grunt. He likes quiet. He likes that I talk as little as he does.

  My job was to scan the shelves for books in the wrong place. Of which there were many. I was doing fiction. Chantal, nonfiction. I looked for numbers where there should be letters; she looked for letters where there should be numbers.

  “My cart’s full,” she called out to me. “Time for you to shelve them.”

  Mine wasn’t, but it wasn’t far off. I wheeled it over to her. Hers was less full than mine. This meant she wanted to talk. Chantal is so afraid of silence she will even talk to pariahs like me.

  We swapped carts. I pushed hers in the direction of fiction.

  “Did you hear that Zach and Sarah split up?” Chantal asked, to stop me from going back to fiction.

  I hadn’t. I hoped it wasn’t true. I looked over at him. He didn’t look any different. Maybe it wasn’t true. I looked at Chantal. She nodded. “Happened yesterday.”

  We were both staring at Zach. I was willing it not to be true. Him and Sarah being together was what made me and Zach possible.

  “They’ll be back together in seconds,” Chantal said.

  I hoped she was right.

  “Pity. He’s gorgeous. But those two can’t live without each other.”

  Zach was on the ground reaching for a book under the couch. Tables and chairs obstructed my view, but I could see his legs, calf muscles clenching and unclenching, and the top of his head. Brandon was telling him something. I heard the words “class” and “shit” and “no.” Brandon liked to talk, I decided, as bad as Chantal.

  “He’s cute, isn’t he?” Chantal said.

  “Brandon?” I asked.

  She laughed. “No! Zach. I’d date him in a heartbeat. Wouldn’t you?”

  I wouldn’t. I liked our secret. If he and Sarah really were broken up that meant our secret would be broken, too. I couldn’t think of anything worse than Chantal and Brandon and the whole school knowing about us.

  AFTER

  Halfway to school I turn around and head home. I was planning to go, but as I’m crossing Broadway I lose heart. The strength that’s been holding me together slides away. I can’t take another day of being stared at. Of listening to rumors and innuendo. Of Sarah interrogating me. Of classes that I cannot follow. Of Zach everywhere and yet nowhere.

  Of stupid talk about Erin.

  I’m not sure I can ever go back to school.

  Dad is flying out this morning on assignment to Jamaica to stay in Ian Fleming’s house. It’s 8:15. His flight is at 9:00. Even with his love of close calls he should be gone by now.

  I don’t remember the last time I was alone in the apartment.

  Every step I take toward home is lighter than the one before it.

  I turn the corner and there’s Dad getting into a cab.

  I step back.

  Just like Dad to be crazy late. How’s he going to make it? Well, if—really, when—he misses the plane, surely they’ll put him on a later one. It should still be ages before he turns up. But I want to throttle him. It feels like he did it on purpose to thwart me.

  Once I’m sure the cab is gone, I climb the stairs to our apartment. The only time I like it is when it’s empty. Especially after Dad has gone on one of his trips. He says he can’t pack unless the apartment is neat, so he cleans and polishes and tidies. That’s how he likes things: clean, shining, orderly. As unlike the farm as possible.

  It is the only thing we have in common.

  I walk in and shut the door behind me. Lock it. The stupid girl next door has her music up loud.

  I go directly to the brat’s room. It’s not clean or orderly. There are dolls and trucks everywhere. Though the brat calls them action figures. It drives him crazy when I call them dolls. So I do. It’s what they are. Fake people that you can dress and play with and accessorize. What else would you call them?

  I start with the toy boxes, going through each one. Then his chest of drawers.

  And there it is, in the second drawer, underneath his pajamas.

  Zach’s sweater. I hug it. Press it to my nose.

  It doesn’t smell like Zach anymore. It smells like the brat.

  Doesn’t matter that I also have Zach’s jersey, which reeks of him; I stole that. The sweater, Zach gave me. It’s a direct connection between us.

  I’m going to kill the idiot boy.

  I take the sweater into my room and put it in the one place I know the brat will never go, even if he’s stupid enough to brave my room again. I push back the cloth over my metal desk, lift up the lid, and put it inside.

  AFTER

  When Brandon follows me after school he is much more stealthy than Sarah. Which isn’t hard. For a while I don’t notice him because I am lost in playing dodge the crowd, floating in the movement of air currents. Me and my backpack in space, weaving around everyone, listening to the rhythms of feet on sidewalk. Forgetting anything that isn’t weaving and dodging. For whole seconds at a time I am not thinking about Zach.

  Part of me must sense Brandon following because I am jangled. I am off my game. I keep misjudging the distances—narrowly, the merest touch—the corner of someone’s coat grazing my backpack, the clip of the back of a heel. Stupid. Annoying. Back I go to the start of the block.

  It isn’t till we’re in Central Park that I spot him. If you can call it that. He wants me to see him.

  I’m going through one of the stretch routines Zach taught me. My heel resting on a low fence, I lean forward till I feel it along my hamstrings. My skin prickles, not from the stretch, from something else. I look up.

  A couple are making out on a blanket under an elm tree. There’s a family with four kids and one mother picnicking on a much larger blanket. The kids are laughing. The oldest, with braids, is tickling the youngest; the mother is moving the cake out of the way of the toddler’s flailing feet.

  Then there’s Brandon sitting on the grass, staring at me, smirking. He stands up, walks toward me, sits on the fence.

  “Stretching, huh,” he says, as if there’s something sinister about it.

  “What do you want?” I say, and immediately wish I hadn’t. I should ignore him. He wants to get me riled. But I want to know why he’s here. He doesn’t like me. I don’t like him. We have nothing to say to each other.

  Half a dozen runners stride past. I watch them go. They’re wearing the same shorts and T-shirts. Yellow and green. I wonder what kind of team they are because they’re
not runners. Their technique is all wrong. Barely lifted knees, arms swinging all over the place, heels pounding flat-footed.

  Zach taught me to run more on my toes. To strike only lightly on my heel and have full flexion through the foot. It made me even faster.

  I resume my stretch. Brandon pulls out a pack of cigarettes, lights one, inhales, blows smoke at me.

  I lean deeper into my hamstring stretch. I’m thinking about how much stronger I am than Brandon. I doubt he realizes that. Boys never do. He should be scared of me. Because I really don’t like him and I’ll hurt him if I have to.

  A single runner pads past. A real one this time. I don’t have to turn; I can tell from their stride: no drag, no pounding of heels.

  “You do this a lot, don’t you?” he says. “Especially here.”

  I switch legs, ignoring the foul smoke, ignoring Brandon.

  “ ’Cause I heard they found the body in Central Park. Not far from here actually—and I thought, shit, Micah’s always here. What are the odds? Specially with her and Zach being so . . .” He pauses, takes a long drag on his cigarette, blows the smoke in my direction.

  I have to stop myself from looking up. From telling him that Central Park is not exactly unpopulated. Hundreds, no, thousands of people are here all the time. Night and day. Is he blind? Does he not notice the kids on blades who just floated by? All the runners? What about the family on the blanket and the couple making out not six feet from where he was sitting on the grass? There’s hardly an empty patch in Central Park this time of year. Even in winter there are people out in it, tromping through snow, past leafless trees, seeking a respite from concrete and steel.

  I want to ask Brandon how he knows where Zach was found. Was it really here? Where exactly? What else does Brandon know? But if he knows, then someone else at school does, too. Maybe I can find out without asking Brandon a thing.

  I take off at top speed, knowing he couldn’t keep pace even if I went at a slow trot.

  FAMILY HISTORY

  I wouldn’t mind going upstate so much if my family went with me. Well, okay, they take me up—Mom and Dad and idiot brother—but they don’t stay. Just me. Sometimes I’m afraid they won’t return. I’ll be stuck there forever.