Tell Me No Lies

by Adele Griffin

  She laughed and snapped in a 10,000 Maniacs tape. Soon we were rattling down the drive, into the night and all of its promise.

  thirteen

  A haphazard line of cars and jeeps popped up as soon as we turned onto Ravenscliff, the development where the DeBatistas lived in one of a circle of stucco homes overlooking a golf course.

  “She’s four-three-six.” I read the address that Claire had scribbled out of the student directory.

  “I’m pulling into a driveway a little farther down,” said Claire. “Remember this house with the window boxes. If the cops come, meet me back here.”

  My heart went higgledy-piggledy, as my grandmother would say—I’d never made an “if the cops come” plan before.

  We shortcut backyards. The lights were bright through the DeBatistas’ downstairs windows. Liz had been varsity in three sports all the way back to freshman year, and her postgame parties were well known. This was my first one. At the door, I quaked while Claire pressed the bell as bold as FedEx.

  It yanked open into Bob Marley music and Liz, fiercely smiling.

  “Middie!” She whooped as she slapped Claire with a high five. “Nice surprise. I don’t mean to suck, but it’s five bucks a head for the keg, even girls. Oh, hey, Lizzy.”

  Did I imagine she looked surprised to see me, a shy shadow behind Claire?

  Earlier, I’d stuck a ten-dollar bill in my sock, and when I took it out, Claire gave me a nod, so I was paying her way, too. But she had bought the gas and was my ride.

  “There’s a card game in the kitchen, but everything’s happening in the basement.” Liz thumbed the right direction.

  As I followed Claire downstairs, her teammates cheered her on sight. Even Gage had a measure of power hinged to her excellence in varsity sports. I was probably the only modern-dance-squad girl in the room, a fact I would not be broadcasting.

  And then, there he was.

  Matt Ashley, his wheat-blond hair casually mussed, in a rugby shirt and jeans and an Aha! smile that made me know he’d been looking for me, hoping for me. He began moving in so quickly that I wanted to run upstairs and take a breath and come down again.

  It was happening too fast! I wasn’t ready!

  “Stripes,” he said loud over the music as soon as I reached the bottom of the stairs. “You showed up. I didn’t know if you’d be at some downtown rave with your buddy.”

  “We’re both here, actually.”

  As he guided me off, Matt glanced over at Claire, who was talking with some teammates. “Oh, her. She’s the boarding school transfer, right?”

  “Yeah, from Strickland.”

  “I’ve heard some crazy stories about her.”

  I tried not to look startled. “Seriously? From who? About what?”

  “Just, from other guys. I mean, she’s cute and plays hockey—so she’s on the radar.”

  “What have you heard?”

  He lowered his voice. “Troublemaker, kicked out, bad news.”

  “I don’t know who your sources are, but no way.” My mother saw all of the Argyll transcripts, and while Mom would never break a privacy clause outright, she wouldn’t have been able to resist warning me about the dangers of hanging around with “a bad influence.”

  “It’s just when a girl’s good-looking and new on the scene, guys want to discuss. But that’s your friend, so I don’t mean to talk shit.” He thought I was covering for Claire—which I didn’t mind.

  “Didn’t you have soccer today?” I knew Lincoln had played Fieldstone, and soon Matt was talking all about it, his face bright as we slowly inched our way to a private section of the room behind the Ping-Pong table, away from the Jell-O shots and drinking games.

  Matt had grown since freshman year. Even in my borrowed boots, he had six inches on me. Tiptoe perfect.

  “Want a beer?” he asked.

  “I’m good.” I did want a beer, but what if Matt left me, became distracted by other party people, and never returned?

  He’d abandoned me once before, after all.

  “You know,” he said, his deep blue eyes suddenly serious, “in the library the other day, you didn’t see me, but I was watching you for so long. I didn’t believe it was you, the same Lizzy Swift. I haven’t seen you in years. Not since the freshman mixer. Or maybe I have seen you, and I didn’t realize it? Where’ve you been hiding?”

  “I don’t know. Let me know when you find me.” My smile froze on my face as it hit me that I’d just quoted an extremely stupid joke from one of Owen’s Mad magazines that had been lying around the bathroom for weeks.

  Matt didn’t seem to know or care. “What are you up to these days? Are you always in the city, like a secret club rat?”

  Is that what I looked like? What exactly was a club rat? The whole night felt like playacting, with my makeup and costume compliments of Claire. “I do like to go out, to dance and, yeah, I love going into the city.” All technically true.

  Matt was nodding. “There’s a place I went in New York this summer called Palladium—we’ve got nothing like it in Philly. It’s a huge dance space and the whole back wall is graffiti. It’s pretty radical.”

  “So you’re a club rat.”

  “When I’m not at the library.”

  “Liar. I never see you there.”

  “Ludington’s too social. I like Greenfield Public. I think I might have read every single thing by Madeleine L’Engle and Ray Bradbury in the stacks of that library.” Matt grinned. “But now obviously I’m switching my library alliance.”

  In the other corner of the room, some of the jocks were hoisting beefy linebacker Stephen Clancy into a keg stand while others cheered. Matt shook his head. “My friends are idiots.” He looked at me thoughtfully. “So are you still into fantasy and science-fiction stuff?”

  I flushed. I could remember tons about what Matt said to me at that long-ago mixer, but hardly anything about what I’d said to him. Had I really exposed myself as such a die-hard sci-fi fan?

  “Cops in a paddy wagon, front door! Time to bolt!” Jonesy Sweet sprang into the room with news that instantly saved me from having to admit that Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot was on my nightstand, three-quarters of the way finished.

  “Aw, come on.” Matt rolled his eyes as everyone else began barreling up the stairs in a rush hour stampede. “What’s the plan, Sweet?”

  “Follow me is the plan. I know this house like the back of my hand.”

  Jonesy used to date Liz, and now he signaled Kreo, who was with Claire, and we all gathered close behind him. He split us from the crowd, pushing toward the kitchen’s back-door exit, and veered us down a short hall into the DeBatistas’ powder room. Jonesy went first, a flash of coppery flattop and black overcoat, his yellow Timberland boot leaving a mark on the wallpaper as he hoisted up and wriggled through the tiny high window.

  His hand stretched to help Kreo, Claire, me. Matt would be last to escape.

  I fell with a soft scream into a hedge. I could hear kids scuffling and scampering in all directions. In the next instant, Matt toppled over me. The sudden crush of his weight was a head-and-body rush—Matt Ashley is on top of me and it feels so good.

  “Sorry,” he whispered, rolling off to a stand but then gripping my hand to help me up.

  “My car’s that way!” Claire pointed as we all sidled from around the hedge.

  When I looked over my shoulder, flashing blue and red lights in front of Liz’s lawn sent a hiccup of terror through me. What would my parents say if they had to pick me up at a police station?

  Head down, I ran.

  It wasn’t until the Beetle came into sight that I slowed to a jog. Nobody was following us. Matt suddenly tugged my jacket. “We parked on another street and my boys are waiting for me. I’ll call you, okay?” And then in the next second’s surprise, Matt Ashley’s mouth found mine. I he
ld my breath and closed my eyes. Could everything be felt and known and said in a kiss? So much seemed to be happening for me in this one. The pressure of his lips was so sudden, his tongue a warm brush gone too quick. But it was all the contact I needed to lose my mind, an instant injection that put me in a stupor as my eyes opened to stare at him.

  “Bye,” I whispered.

  Matt was already turned away, his back to me, running to catch up with his boys.

  fourteen

  “Waxing. Gibbous,” I murmured. “Why does the moon have such weird words?”

  We were lying together tops-to-tails in Claire’s window-seat bed, propped up by pillows. The cloud-shredded moon stippled soft light over our quilt. The window seat was long enough to fit us, but we were both on our sides to adjust for the width.

  Gage probably would have gone into a whole thing about the moon or word origins, but Claire didn’t answer.

  Now I felt stupid, talking about the moon like a nerd, and I rushed to change the subject.

  “Why were you a month late starting Argyll anyway?”

  Claire sighed and took a minute to answer. “I wasn’t ready.”

  Jay! Heartbreak! Eating disorder! Flunked out! Attempted suicide—Jay! Attempted suicide—Claire! Stories of tragedy and drama crashed around in my brain as I nodded. “Tell me more about Jay. You miss him, don’t you? At a party like tonight, when he’s not around, I figured you were thinking about him.”

  She tapped her fingers to her lips. Maybe she was remembering Jay’s lips? Or maybe she was guarding herself against confessing all that she wanted to say about him? “I don’t miss him,” she said. “But I do think about him. I do.”

  “Where is he at college?”

  “He’s not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s away, he’s abroad . . . Paris. Far away.”

  “Is that why you listen to all those French songs? Does he ever write you?”

  She bristled. “I liked French music before Jay. And no, he doesn’t write. Not anymore.”

  “Do you wish he would?”

  “Yeah, maybe. Sometimes.” I knew she wanted to answer me for real. “Just because, it was the letters that started it. He’d slip them into my mailbox. They’d be about nothing—what he’d had for lunch, or a bird on a branch outside his window. Jay could make music out of anything around him. His letters . . . they were why . . .” She inhaled deeply, unresolved. “That was his talent.”

  She turned her head, her eyes holding a middle distance. “It’s stupid to keep his letters, but they remind me of all the best parts of him. And then maybe the worst parts, too. But I guess everything’s the worst parts now.”

  “Why?”

  “I really don’t want to get into a whole soap opera right now, okay?” Her voice clipped me, even if it made me more curious.

  “It’s strange how in the beginning, a guy doesn’t seem to have any worst parts,” I said. The truth was I could talk only about beginnings. I’d never been to the end of anything with a guy.

  Claire refocused me. “You’re thinking about Matt.” By the light of the moon, the drift of her freckles stood out against her parchment skin, and she looked so luminous that I felt like I could see backward through time into her seventh grader’s face. “He’s a pretty good beginning, right? Cute, funny, soccer stud.”

  “I’m amazed that I like a jock. It seems like such a cliché, a guy who needs his teammates around him at all times. Like a pack.”

  “Sometimes a pack is a nice place to disappear. That’s why I like hockey.”

  “Matt seems like he wouldn’t want a pack.”

  “It’s obviously where he feels comfortable.”

  “Do you think we make a strange couple?”

  “Kind of, maybe. I mean, you’re not a glamorous Wendy Palmer type, right? I’m not saying that to be a bitch. Just as an observation. But if you both like each other . . . that’s cool.” She yawned and stretched long, then settled into sleep, leaving me more awake than ever. Was Claire possibly jealous because Matt preferred me to her? Maybe this was her way of flexing her power, by unsettling me? Then again, Claire didn’t sugarcoat her opinions.

  When I woke up into the sunshine of next morning, alone in the window bed and cramped from my unnatural position—funny how the only creatures that usually slept on windowsills were cats, which is exactly what we were hiding from—I felt tired. It was like my brain had been working subconsciously on overtime to untangle Claire’s mysteries.

  I dressed and left the room quickly. A couple of cats met me on the other side of the door and followed me down the hall like slinky security guards. I heard voices in the opposite direction of the kitchen. I trailed the sound through a high-ceilinged living room where white bedsheets had been thrown over the furniture, and I stepped through a side door onto a covered porch.

  Claire and an older woman sat opposite each other at a small table, drinking take-out coffee, a box of Dunkin’ Donuts open between them.

  “Good morning! I made a breakfast run.” Claire handed me a coffee to-go cup. “There’s also packets of cream and sugar. Lizzy, this is my mom, Suze.”

  “Nice to meet you, Lizzy.”

  “Same, thanks.”

  Suze was built shorter and a couple of sizes wider than her daughter, and she looked all ready for work in a brass-buttoned red suit and matching brass earrings. She seemed tense and watchful as her gaze darted around the fields.

  “Tosca!” The voice was shrill, lost somewhere out in the woods.

  “She’s been looking for that cat all morning,” Suze murmured. Her slick red nails drummed the table.

  Aunt Jane, Claire mouthed at me, then made a face.

  “Tosca!” Down where the lawn met the fields of long grasses, a woman emerged, striding toward us. How long had she been out there? As she approached, she reminded me of a ghost, maybe because of her wild gray hair, or maybe because she was wearing a filmy white nightgown that was so sheer I could see through to her high-waisted underpants and her bony chicken legs. “Is he up there? Did I chase him out?”

  “No!” called Suze. “I’ve been watching.”

  Aunt Jane stopped at the bottom porch step. Up close, she looked less ghostly and more flat-out pissed off. “Maybe after you finish breakfast, you can all help me look for him,” she said. Her tone implied that it would be the right thing to do.

  “Aunt Jane, this is my friend Lizzy,” said Claire.

  “Have you seen my cat?” Aunt Jane’s gaze pounced to me. “Black-and-silver coat, twenty-one pounds, highly intelligent.”

  And I knew, even before Claire shot a warning look my direction, that Tosca was the dead cat at the bottom of the pool.

  “No,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “Did any of you let any of my cats out? It would be a great help to me if you just admitted it, and I could adjust my search.”

  “We know better than that, Jane! Goodness me!” Suze blinked nervously as she reached forward and swiped for another doughnut. I resisted my urge to smooth things over by helping Aunt Jane go hunt for a dead cat.

  “Claire?” prompted Aunt Jane. “When was the last time you saw him?”

  Claire shrugged. “The cats don’t check in with me. But you need a bathrobe, Aunt Jane. We’re getting a free show here.” Her voice neutral, but now her aunt looked as if she’d been slapped.

  “You’re a fine one to talk.” Aunt Jane bit back so sharply that it raised all the hairs on the back of my neck.

  But Claire barely reacted. She sprang up from her seat, as if she’d expected the challenge, and she flexed a finger for me to stand, too. I did. “Okay, well, good luck. Lizzy needs a lift to work. Lizzy, will you grab my bag and keys along with your stuff?”

  Not a suggestion, a command.

  I raced back to the library, where I collecte
d my bag. I took a minute to calm down. Usually I didn’t start my mornings with doughnuts, and I knew the sugar injection was partly responsible for the wild patter of my heart. Both Claire’s bag and her keys were on her desk, and scooping them up, I noticed a couple of framed pictures I hadn’t seen before. One of Claire and her dad, who was obviously the genes behind her self-possessed good looks. Another of an older couple, possibly grandparents. There was a pretty carved wooden box, too, which I opened absently—it didn’t have a lock.

  Letters. It was full of letters, high as a stack of pancakes, some in envelopes, others loose on lined white notebook paper or folded yellow legal paper, and all with the same distinct slant of penmanship. Later, when I agonized about the stupidity of my decision, I couldn’t recall any more initial thought in my head than curiosity. Jay’s letters! Was that what I’d found?!

  “Lizzy? Are you coming?” Claire was somewhere in the front hall.

  “Yes!” Don’t. But I’d already crushed the envelope I was holding to the bottom of my bag—“Yes, coming!”—and now I was darting out of the room.

  Put it back put it back this instant this is not what friends do.

  Out in the hall, I was already a sweat of guilt as I smiled at Claire and thrust her bag and keys at her, terrified that something in my face or action would give me away. What am I doing? But it was too late to undo it.

  Claire was quiet for most of the trip. Joy Division blew out of the speakers. The stolen envelope felt like a tiny bonfire in my bag.

  “Aunt Jane’s such a crazy old bitch,” she said eventually. “Do you have any relatives you’re scared you might become? Do you ever worry about how you’ll end up?”

  My condition was the thing in me I worried about most. Once, I’d seen a documentary about epileptics who lived in the back bedrooms and front porches of their parents’ homes. I could be one or two grand mals away from that nonfuture. There were no rules to seizures. At any moment, they could snatch you up and carry you off into a prison of confusion and darkness. You couldn’t predict them. You couldn’t prevent them. And a really bad one could change your life in an instant. “No,” I said, pushing out my voice for strength. “Never.”