Tell Me No Lies

by Adele Griffin

  twenty-six

  “Are you sure I’m allowed over?”

  “Well, you’re not not allowed over.”

  “Knew it!” Matt just laughed since it was too late to worry now.

  “Thanksgiving week—it’s different rules.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I say so.” I tried to sound confident. We were at my house, upstairs in the den. Mom and my brothers wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours. I’d been impulsive, not wanting to say good-bye to Matt when he’d dropped me off from school, even though I hadn’t cleared his invite with my parents.

  So in he’d come, and I’d opened a bag of chips and popped open two cans of ginger ale, and now we were both cozied into the armchair recliner with Dance Party USA on low in case anyone came home early. “I like your house. It feels like people actually live in it.”

  “When you get back from your sister’s after Thanksgiving, could I come over and meet your family?”

  He kissed me.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “It’s just my parents are super stiff. Not fun to be around.”

  “Let me be the one to decide that.” I tweaked his chin. “It makes me feel like you’re hiding me. And your mom’s so sweet on the phone.” Sweet wasn’t the word, but the couple of times I’d phoned Matt and gotten his mother, she was very polite.

  Matt gathered my fingers in one hand and kissed their tips. “Next week then, but you were warned.” With another softer, longer kiss on the lips, he then paused, distracted by a thought. “Hey, about this whole Leslie and Stephen thing. What’s she saying happened?”

  “I haven’t talked to her.” Not that I would have, Leslie wasn’t a close friend of mine. “But she was absent yesterday and today. Sometimes girls cut Thanksgiving week, but Leslie’s usually serious about school.”

  “I heard Stephen was in really bad form last weekend. Leslie’s brother Dan’s a Lincoln grad. I heard he’s gonna kick Stephen’s ass over Thanksgiving. But then some of the guys were saying, since Leslie’s eighteen and they’ve been pretty serious, it’s not such a big deal.” Matt shook his head. “My gut says if Dan knows the story, and Leslie’s staying home, then it’s bad, you know?”

  “Yeah, that’s what most of us think. Even Claire was upset, and she doesn’t get involved in school gossip.”

  I decided to just go ahead and blurt it out. “Do you ever think I’m young for you, Matt? Since I won’t be eighteen till this summer? Does that, I don’t know, affect how you see us?”

  Matt looked at me like I’d made a strange joke that he wasn’t sure he should laugh at. “Does it feel like I’m not into you?”

  “I didn’t mean to say it like that.”

  But really I’d meant that I didn’t mean for him to react like that, like I’d unnerved him. All at once, he scooped his hands under my sweater, squeezing my waist, and pulled himself over me, his breath warming my neck. “Does this feel like I think you’re young for me? Hmm? Or this?”

  And then conversation was pretty much over until a quarter to five, when I started to get paranoid that my family might come home. Luckily, Matt didn’t make me have to hint too broadly before he left, assuring me he’d call every night of break.

  Thanksgiving week had been crammed with school quizzes and makeup tests, but everyone was in vacation mode by half-day dismissal the next day. Claire went to see her dad in Florida, the Ashleys had gone to Matt’s sister’s home in Boston, and Gage’s family took off to visit friends in Delaware—but she’d be back for the Kims’ annual Leftovers Friday night, of course. None of us had ever missed that one.

  It was a Swift family Thanksgiving tradition to go to Gran’s house in Lancaster, where we celebrated the day with Aunt Carlene and Uncle Ron, plus my cousins Billy, who’d just started at Cabrini College and who everyone had referred to as “the Big College Man” at least a dozen times since we’d arrived, and Pamela, a high school senior, same as me.

  “Help yourself, there’s plenty of everything!” Gran announced after grace as we all filed to the sideboard buffet.

  “And as usual, you don’t even need teeth,” muttered Billy as we stared down celery soup, creamed turnips, mashed sweet potatoes, turkey drowned in gravy, custard-soft asparagus, and pumpkin pie.

  “Got any tapes?” asked Pamela afterward as we were drying dishes. Pamela and I never followed the family custom of NFL in the den after the meal.

  “Yep.”

  We sat in Gran’s breakfast nook and unloaded our cassettes for the trade-off.

  Pamela was always meticulously dressed for Thanksgiving. This year, she wore royal-blue pegged pants with a matching velvet mock turtleneck, and her perfect French manicure was as high gloss as her silver LA Gear dress sneakers.

  “I’m thinking of going to cosmetology school after I graduate,” she said as we set out our tapes in a line. “Mom and Dad aren’t totally for it. But it’s kind of my thing, right, makeup and fashion?” She stared at me in her usual wide-eyed way that needed me to agree with everything she said.

  “Yeah, I think you’d be good at it.”

  “It’s like every time I see someone I think about their makeovers. Like you would look great as a blonde, I’m thinking?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Like Madonna in Who’s That Girl?”

  “Madonna’s a brunette now. And everyone hated Who’s That Girl.”

  “Not true.” Pamela never liked when I critiqued her idol. “If you wanted to start small, you could do something like this.” She clawed into her tapestry satchel-bag for a magazine and then flipped it open to a model whose hair was cropped like mine, but with chunky, buttery-blond streaks.

  “I’d been wondering if I should get highlights,” I confessed.

  “You’d look perfect.”

  “Maybe. I’m still thinking about it. Okay, trade.” I pushed forward Serge Gainsbourg.

  Pamela didn’t bite. She picked up Faith.

  “How about Faith for Upstairs at Eric’s,” I offered.

  “Deal. I can’t believe you’d trade anything George Michael.” Pamela sighed. “He’s the hottest.”

  “If you say so. I think he looks like a scruffy Ken doll.”

  “Insanity.” Pamela shook her head. “Maybe nobody’s hot because all you love is your boyfriend now.”

  “Matt’s cuter than George Michael.”

  “Is he a rebel in black like you?”

  Her word choice startled me, but in a good way. Did I look like a rebel, just because of my black tube skirt, black long-sleeved T-shirt, and my Docs? “I don’t think either of us is so rebel,” I said, sampling the word in my mouth, “but we like to go to clubs in Philly.”

  Pamela wasn’t as impressed with that information as I’d hoped. “Nightclubs are dangerous,” she said. “They’re full of random gay guys and AIDS junkies shooting up in the bathrooms. Aren’t you scared to be in there with them?”

  “AIDS is horrible enough without all your bad information.” I clicked in Upstairs at Eric’s and rewound my Walkman exactly to “Only You.” “You might want to grab hold of some real facts, before you talk like that.” I could hear Claire’s voice in my own, and I liked the way Pamela looked embarrassed.

  “Hey, did you know Gran self-bleaches her hair?” she asked.

  “Really?”

  “She has industrial hair bleach, developer, and toner bottles all under her bathroom sink. Josefina sneaks it in from Nicaragua. It’s more powerful than any over-the-counters. Totally strips the pigment.” Her voice dropped. “I have three jam jars with me, and I’m going to loot some of her stash so I can do salon experiments on my friends.”

  “Try something on me,” I said, half joking. Or maybe not even joking at all.

  Desire brightened Pamela’s face. “For real? I’ve got my stuff!”
/>
  “Are you sure you know how?”

  “I’m practically a professional.”

  “As long as you don’t make it look frost-and-tip, like mom hair.”

  “I know what to do.”

  Our eyes locked. Deal. We left our Walkmans on the table and clattered up the musty back stairs to the L-shaped corner of the house that was Gran’s small bedroom suite, where we locked ourselves into her bathroom.

  Stealthy as a burglar, Pamela went to work. Her satchel was a portable salon for the tricks of her trade. After pulling on a pair of rubber gloves, she heaved the haul of Gran’s contraband from under the sink. I looked on as she shook bleach from a large white container into one of her jars, siphoned developer from a jug into another, and poured violet liquid from a narrow bottle into the third.

  Then she placed the three sealed jars in a giant Ziploc.

  “Wow, that was some forensics.”

  Pamela giggled. “Just don’t rat me out! Are you ready?” She indicated for me to sit on the toilet. I sat.

  “Do only the front,” I told her. “And try to make it decent enough so my parents don’t get completely feeble about it.”

  Solemnly Pamela next extracted a thin bottle of olive oil, a fine-tooth comb, and a couple of mini banana clips from the satchel. She used the pointy end of the comb to section off my hair. “We won’t layer it in too crazy,” she assured me as she worked the oil through the front pieces and used a washcloth to rub it in. “This protects the follicles.”

  Pamela used Gran’s soap dish to mix the bleach and developer. With a toothbrush she’d brought, she stirred the powder and liquid, and then deployed the toothbrush to coat yarn-thick sections of my bangs.

  Hydrogen peroxide fumes smarted my eyes.

  “How long does it take to lift the color?”

  “You’re a medium-tone brown, so you need—well, this stuff is strong, so let’s check on it in ten minutes.” Out of the bag came an egg timer. “I wish we had a glaze, in case it gets brassy—but this developer has more kick than you’d get in a box of Clairol. Results will be dramatic and spectacular!”

  Her extreme confidence made the results all the more horrifying, ten minutes later.

  “Orange alert! Pamela, it looks like a crop of baby carrots sprouted along my hairline!”

  “Don’t panic!” Except Pamela’s screeching voice and fluttering sorceress nails fit this word exactly. “Orange just means it’s breaking through.”

  “Does. Not. Look. Good.”

  “Ten more minutes! Trust me! It’s the halfway point!”

  I was too deep in to quit. I closed my eyes, and when Pamela’s timer buzzed again, and she gave the okay, I bent down and leaned my head in the sink, listening to the scritch-scritch of her acrylics scrubbing out the bleach, then applying two minutes’ worth of toner, followed by a vigorous shampoo.

  “Don’t look till I dry it,” she instructed, seating me on the toilet so that I was facing the shower and couldn’t peek in the mirror. I tried not to think about the worst outcomes, the ratted-out bleach-job of a Bon Jovi groupie.

  Pamela was short of breath when she finished, and her face was as ruddy as if she’d been handling a barbell instead of a blow dryer.

  “Okay, look.”

  I stared at myself.

  “Do you like it? Be honest. What do you think?”

  Moon-pale hair lay in ribbons against my darker hair, a dramatic, not exactly natural contrast. Rebel. I thought of Claire, and the first time I’d run into her in the bathroom, when she told me to face the strange.

  “I like it,” I said honestly. “I really do. But I’m putting on a hat. I don’t want to hear it from my parents and Gran tonight. So don’t tell.”

  “I won’t,” promised Pamela solemnly, “as long as you don’t tell anybody that one of my press-ons dropped into the gravy boat.”

  twenty-seven

  I kept my hat packed snugly on my head all the way home and safely upstairs, where I peeked in at my new hair only once I was in my pajamas.

  It looked so cool and edgy. It even smelled different—like Gran’s Herbal Essence shampoo cut with disinfectant. But the more I looked, the more I loved it.

  The next morning, I came down in my hat, pretending I was cold, and when Mimi picked me up that evening for Leftovers Friday at the Kims’, I didn’t take it off until we were safely out of Wayne.

  “No way.” Mimi’s stare was pure alarm, like a car horn. “No way.”

  “Don’t say it like that.”

  “Your parents couldn’t possibly know.”

  “They don’t, but that’s a temporary condition.”

  “Do you have a place to sleep, when they kick you out?”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “No! It’s kind of awesome. It’s just so different from your old . . .” I didn’t know if she wanted to say hair or self. Maybe she didn’t know, either.

  “The thing is, I want to keep it for a while.”

  “Yeah, I think you should. Be prepared for Gage, she’ll make too much fun. She’s mostly crabby at you for always blowing us off.”

  “Are you mad about that?” I asked after a bit. “Blowing you off?”

  Mimi shook her head. “You haven’t been around, which obviously sucks. But who am I to judge? I hung out with Noah a ton last year, right? We broke up, by the way.” She put on her turn signal and burst into tears.

  “Oh, no, Mimi. I’m so sorry! When? What happened?”

  For a moment, the silence was alive with what she was deciding to tell me about Noah and her pain and their breakup. “I’ll be fine. He did it on the phone last weekend.” She sniffled shakily. “It was a total surprise. He’s at his new college girlfriend’s house for Thanksgiving.” She dipped her head against her sleeve to give her eyes a vigorous rub. “And that’s that.”

  “That sucks. I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.” She turned up the music, exhaled a baleful breath, and looked intent on the road ahead, her sign that she was backing off further talk for now. As sorry as I felt for her pain, it also hit me sharply how close I felt to her—I’d been with Mimi the first afternoon she met Noah at Wayne Sporting Goods, where he used to work. I’d witnessed their first shy and curious conversation. But next year, Mimi and I would be at different colleges, where I wouldn’t be part of any of her big moments. We might never be as close again as we’d once been.

  Mimi’s parents had made Leftovers Friday into a tradition that I’d been showing up for since I was in lower school, when the Kims’ house became my second home. Their main dish was always turkey hash with rice, along with homemade shrimp dumplings and ribs and kimchi.

  Gage’s jeep was already in the driveway when we pulled up, and inside, the Kims’ kitchen was spiced with a peppery current of barbecue. Theo was playing Nerfoop basketball with one of the many rotating young neighbor kids who always hung around at the Kims’, worshipping Theo. It might have been annoying if Theo himself had been invested in any of the worship, but it was actually sweet how he just let kids hang out and play Nerf as if they were his real buddies.

  “’Sup, Blizzard.” As I walked in, he popped the basketball off my head.

  “Ouch!” I said, even though it hadn’t hurt at all.

  “Sorry.” He smirked. “I hope you have good medical coverage for that injury.”

  “Joke all you want.” I rubbed at the not-hurt spot.

  “Hey, Lizzy, are you aware that your hair recently turned punk white?” asked Gage, looking up from where she was rolling out dough for the next batch of dumplings.

  “I like it,” said Mr. Kim, which was so out of character—Mr. Kim was the kind of professor who might not notice if the sun turned green—that Gage was silenced into shock, along with all the rest of us.

  And then it was just Leftovers Friday as usual. Mr.
and Mrs. Kim floated around us, checking on the oven or the pots, setting out more tableware for what always ended up being a long, casual dinner where nothing was timed, and the whole fun was waiting for this or that dish to be ready.

  And this year, I had a trick up my sleeve. Theo noticed it immediately.

  “Look at Bliz work those chopsticks,” he teased.

  I smiled. I’d been practicing—at Ludington, I’d pulled a copy of Mind Your Manners: A Guide to International Travel, and I kept a pair of take-out chopsticks on the circulation desk. I’d spent hours trying out their tips, picking up pennies and paper clips, honing my skills.

  Mimi watched me. “Okay, something fishy’s going on. Does the great Matt Ashley like to take you out for Chinese or something?”

  “You’re dating Matt Ashley?” Theo made a face.

  “Why do you say it that way?” I asked.

  As Theo leaned back in a standing stretch and then scratched long under his T-shirt, Mimi made monkey noises to show how his scratching bugged her. But I liked the way Theo moved in slow, deliberate motion, sleepy and defiant. “I dunno, Blizzard. He’s like a blond Clark Kent.”

  “He’s not—he’s just good at everything.”

  “But you can see he’s had it so easy his whole life,” said Gage.

  “He hasn’t!” I protested.

  “But maybe he’s a little bit fake?” Mimi added helpfully.

  “He’s not at all fake! You’d never say that if you knew him!”

  “That’s not our fault,” said Mimi. “You don’t let us get to know him. He’s your secret.”

  “I’m not hiding him, and he’s not fake!”

  “Speaking of fake, Theo’s new girlfriend’s name is Violetta,” said Mimi. “How fake is that, right?”

  “She probably made it up when she got to college,” said Gage. “Actually, Lizzy, I’m surprised you haven’t changed your name to something edgier, in preparation for college. Like Ingot or Manchester.”

  Mimi laughed, but Theo, checking in on my mortified face, reached across the island to tousle my hair. He’d ruffled my hair a thousand times—Mimi’s and Gage’s, too, it was just a Theo thing—so it was silly to feel such sparks from his touch. “Blizzard is cute, no matter what you call her,” he said.