Little Black Lies

by Tish Cohen

  Carling, Sloane, and Isabella look disappointed. One by one, they spin around in their seats and face forward.

  There’s nothing to see back here.

  “Figures, the daughter of Jesus is an Ant,” mutters the dark-haired girl beside me. As Mr. Curtis scrawls a complicated formula on the blackboard, I look up to see she’s filming me with a large camera.

  I hold a hand up to shield my face. “What?”

  “Most insane school in the country. Figures you’d go here.” Pulling back from the camera, she squints at it, presses a few buttons, and resumes shooting me, this time leaning closer. The blue circles beneath her eyes, set against her ultra-white skin, combined with the wild black layered hair, make her look like she’s been exhumed from a grave.

  I’m the daughter of somebody all right, but after spending ten minutes in this class, I’m not sure I should say whom. “What’s with the little boy?”

  She whispers, “That’s Griff Hogan—an eleven-year-old perv-sicle genius who scored higher on the Ant admission test than anyone in history and will probably rule the world one day and force all women to walk around in rubber chaps and pasties. He’s in the news all the time and they make him out to be this model student. What never makes it into the papers is that he’s more interested in bra sizes than algorithms. Total deviant and not once in the two years has his sniffer been mucous-free.”

  She’s funny, this girl. I wonder if she has any openings in the friend department. “But how does he not get trampled in the halls? He’s, like, three feet tall.”

  She shrugs. “Brains are revered around here. And no one is brainier than Griff Hogan. His family lives in a shack in the South End that should be condemned, but his dad’s some famous researcher who won the Nobel Prize in physics about a million years ago. There’s some serious cerebral wattage in that family. Any one of us could be begging him for a job one day and we know it. Like I said, Hogan’s going to rule the world.”

  The parents who voted for uniforms were wrong. White shirts and ties might be able to camouflage Griff Hogan’s crumbling house, but the real inequality between these students and me can’t be erased. The cerebral wattage of my genetic background is comparatively low in volts and all the entrance exams and wool skirts in the world won’t change that. Even the poor kids, the ones too gifted to need cram schools and tutors, come from brilliance. I don’t belong.

  I nod toward Carling. “And her?”

  “Carling Burnack is kind of like the school mascot, our crazy-faced lunatic. The daughter of this major award-winning Broadway composer whose career is now seriously wounded. The chicks making googly eyes at her are her minions. The blonde, Isabella, is a prickly little know-it-all, totally devoted to Carling. The brunette who can’t keep her eyes open is Sloane Montauk, about the laziest human you’ll ever meet. If the boys offered to carry her from class to class on their shoulders, she’d be up for it. These girls all hang out at the Petting Pool at lunch.”

  “Petting Pool?”

  She writes something on a scrap of paper, folds it a few times, and slaps it down on my desk. “Here’s my number. Stick with me and you’ll be okay. I’m Poppy, by the way. We should totally hang out.”

  “That would be cool,” I say, trying not to sound too eager. When she moves in close with her camera, I laugh. “What’s with the short-lens-stalker thing?”

  A boy with acne-scarred cheeks and greasy hair grunts from behind her. “Poppy’s mom is Kiki Chan.”

  “The director? Seriously?”

  “Don’t get all excited about the DNA,” the boy says, giving the back of her chair a few playful flicks. “There won’t be any Oscars for Poppy. She’ll be more into shooting cheating husbands through restaurant windows … maybe a few porn flicks to keep her creative edge.”

  Poppy frowns, lowering her camera for a moment. “I can’t even believe you said that, Landau.”

  Landau squints. “I was joking. Chill.”

  “Yeah, right!”

  “I actually think he was,” I say, baffled by her overreaction.

  “Oh. So you’re taking his side?” Her voice rises into a pathetic squeak.

  “No. I …”

  “You know what, Sara? I’ve changed my mind. Don’t call me.”

  Mr. Curtis’s voice booms from the front of the classroom. “Can we have a little less chatter back there?”

  I flip open my binder, mortified. And once I’m certain Poppy isn’t looking, I slip her phone number into my pencil case. An overly sensitive friend is better than no friend at all.

  chapter 4

  molly maid

  After class, I follow Poppy into the hall hoping she’ll laugh, tell me she was totally joking. But she just vanishes into the crowd of uniforms without so much as a backward glance. Sad part is, I scanned the class while Mr. Curtis was talking and realized there weren’t many options in terms of potential friends. A trio of girls in one corner was busy arguing about when the first programmable humanoid robots were built. There was a huge girl hidden behind masses of frizzy hair who refused to acknowledge me when I asked to borrow her eraser, just zipped up her pencil case and looked the other way. Another girl was scribbling what looked like poetry in her journal when the bell rang. When I passed by, she covered it with her hand as if I might steal her haiku and submit it to the New Yorker as my own.

  I miss Mandy more than ever.

  At the escalator I pause to allow Carling, Sloane, and Isabella to step on before me. Sloane immediately drops her books onto the escalator steps and sits down as if hoping to be served fresh-squeezed orange juice before we reach the ground floor.

  Carling hoists herself up onto the moving rubber handrail, completely oblivious to the forty-foot drop onto cold, hard tile behind her. The open foyer echoes with teenage voices, slamming doors, and the splashing of the water fountain, but I’m inches from these girls and can hear them speaking about some kid rumored to have walked into the office this morning and scrawled on the counter, I QUIT.

  It was his first day of twelfth grade. He’d just turned seventeen. Word is, his act this morning was a final salute to the extreme pressure he faced from his parents. Nothing less than 100 percent was acceptable to them. Apparently, after this kid received a 96 in biology, his father called the teacher to ask why his son was doing so badly.

  “I heard his parents pushed him like mad,” says Sloane. “They made him go to Saturday school, which meant even more work. He never got any sleep.”

  “Who sleeps? I haven’t slept a full night since middle school,” Isabella says with a sneer. “You don’t see me quitting. Anton High has never been known as a warm, fuzzy, make-up-test kind of place. It’s Ant eat Ant.”

  “You’re just hip-deep in your Ayn Rand phase right now,” Sloane says. “Only the selfish survive and all that tiger-eating shit. You exhaust me, Izz.”

  “I’m only saying what’s true,” says Isabella. “Tommie’s parents did nothing wrong. They didn’t want their son to face a future like theirs—so what? Would you want your child to run a twenty-four-hour grocery store in a seedy part of town?”

  Carling bounces her heels against the glass of the escalator. “As long as my brats don’t grow up to be moody composers or horny eleven-year-old juniors in high school, I’m good with it.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s enough pressure around here without having your parents on your back at home,” Sloane says. “He’d have been better off if they’d left him alone.”

  Isabella blinks down at her. “That’s a bit naïve.”

  “Why?” asks Carling.

  She lowers her voice. “Tommie probably didn’t have what it takes. He was born to a couple of uneducated grocers. Just because Tommie got in, doesn’t mean he was going to stay in. That’s all I’m saying. It’s a matter of genetics.”

  “You, Latini, are a snob,” says Sloane.

  Carling tilts her head back and lets the breeze from the massive foyer finger her wild hair as if she’s posing for the cove
r of Maxim magazine. She’s gorgeous and it’s pretty clear she knows it. Then, watching her friends’ reactions, she slowly allows herself to fall back farther and farther until the black handrail lifts up on one side, straining against her body weight. “I feel so free,” she says.

  “Stop it, Car,” says Isabella. “You’re scaring me.”

  Carling lets her bottom sink lower until only her hands and the undersides of her knees have contact with the side of the escalator. Her skirt has risen up to her waist. Grinning, she pokes Isabella with her feet. “Promise to help me get through math this year?”

  “You know I will,” says Isabella shrilly, trying to stop Carling’s shoes from touching her uniform. “Just climb back up before you kill yourself.”

  Sloane says, “She’s just messing with you. She won’t let herself fall.”

  “You didn’t help me with the final last year,” Carling sings. “Maybe I should punish you.” She lets one hand drop behind her. “Look, Isabella! I’m falling.”

  The escalator jerks to a stop and an alarm sounds in short, staccato, buzzing beats. Kids start pushing past as if they’re well used to Carling’s antics.

  Isabella grabs uselessly at Carling’s calves. “Hurry! Before Mrs. Pelletier comes and suspends you.”

  I don’t mean to edge closer. I don’t mean to reach past Isabella and wrap my fingers around Carling’s wrist. I don’t mean to snap at Sloane, “Don’t just sit there, help me pull her up!”

  “Get your hands off me, London,” says Carling.

  “No,” I say, pulling harder. Furious at Sloane and Isabella’s lack of help, I look back at them. “What’s wrong with you people? Help me!”

  They don’t move. Carling struggles against my grip and loses the hold she had with her other hand. Just before the rubber rail threatens to pop right off its track and send Carling plummeting to the floor below, I’m pushed aside by an old man in a suit covered in chalky handprints. His splatter of white hair disappears over the edge as he takes her by the upper arm and muscles her up and over the railing. Red-faced, he sputters, “Hardly the behavior of a junior at Anton High School, Miss Burnack.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Snyder.” Carling coyly adjusts her skirt and pouts. “I slipped.”

  “You are just like your mother,” he says over the echoing alarm. “If we’d had the escalator in place during her days here, she’d have done the same bloody thing. Goes right back to the Genius Theory, which you’d have learned if you’d signed up for my class last year. See me in my office right away.”

  The escalator starts moving again and, thankfully, the alarm stops droning. Carling and Sloane gather their books and handbags. As Mr. Snyder steps onto the tile floor and begins to burrow through the clusters of kids milling around in the foyer, Carling calls out to him. “Mr. Snyder?” She tilts her head to one side and starts blinking. “Can you explain the Genius Theory? I’ve always regretted not taking Intelligence Studies.”

  She’s the most seductive girl I’ve ever seen, twirling her hair and twisting her body side to side as she flirts with this dusty octogenarian. No surprise, he’s falling for it. His pinched face loosens and he reaches up to straighten his tie as students jostle and bump him from behind. “Francis Galton came up with a hypothesis called the ‘Genius Theory.’ He suspected human intelligence was hereditary and studied the similarities between twins who were raised apart from one another.”

  “Wild,” she says. “What did he find?”

  “That their intelligence wound up being very much the same in the end, and his conclusion was this, and I quote, ‘Education and the environment produce only a small effect on the mind of anyone, and most of our qualities are innate.’ The Genius Theory states that you’re born into your future.”

  “Wow,” says Carling, grinning at her friends. “You have a wicked memory, Mr. Snyder. Not every teacher around here is so sharp.”

  One rheumy eye pinches into an aged and sardonic wink. “I am sharp enough to know when I’m being snookered.”

  Carling feigns shock. “I would never—”

  He starts to walk off. “Not to worry, Miss Burnack. I’ll let your behavior go this once if you agree to keep yourself intact for another academic year.”

  As he toddles away, Carling mutters under her breath, “Asshole.”

  Isabella says, “See? It’s exactly what I said about Tommie.”

  “What?” says Sloane with a snort. “That he was destined to flunk because his parents aren’t rich? Neither are yours and you still won the Hawthorne-Tate Math Prize last year.”

  This was clearly a prickly spot for Isabella. “My mother’s books have received international recognition, in case you’ve forgotten. Great literary novelists don’t always get rich. It’s not what they’re after. They want to achieve excellence.”

  “Okay, so your mother serves you literary excellence for dinner. Remind me to eat first next time I come over.”

  “This conversation’s boring me,” Carling says, joining arms with the girls. She looks up to see me passing them by and calls out, “Hey, London?”

  I can’t believe she’s talking to me. “Yeah?”

  “Question. How is it you got into Ant as a junior and the rest of us had to start when we were fourteen? And don’t say you hooked up Mrs. Pelletier with one of the Royals because Izzy tried that and failed.”

  “Did not!”

  I try to come up with a good reply. A reply that is witty enough to impress the most charismatic girl in math class, if not the entire school. Sadly, I’ve got very little. I shrug. “Witness Protection Program.”

  They glance at each other, disappointed, and walk away.

  As I follow them around a corner, I smell the chemical tang of cleaning product and my pulse races. With all the strangeness of the morning I completely forgot my dad is in the school. Sure enough, there he is, pushing a big sloppy mop. If we were back at Finmory I’d have waved to him. But here that feels wrong. This place seems to be splitting me in two. Part of me wants to call out, make a joke about not missing a spot or something equally lame, if only to see him look up and grin. But a bigger part of me freezes.

  A tall girl with curly auburn hair trots across the foyer with a round-shouldered guy and drops her breakfast-bar wrapper on the floor right in front of him. Charlie stops, glares at her, incredulous, then picks up the wrapper and tosses it into the trash.

  Isabella whispers, “You know what Francis Galton would say about the DNA of this guy’s offspring….”

  Carling mouths the words Molly Maid.

  chapter 5

  lucky girls

  The next night, Dad falls asleep on the couch in front of the news. Since dinner, I’ve been trying to come up with the nerve to talk to him about Anton. To point out this school is very different from Finmory and that maybe it might be best for everyone involved—namely, me—if we keep our relationship private at school.

  Perching myself on the arm of his chair, I shake his shoulder and he opens his eyes, yawns. “Did I drift off?”

  “It’s okay.”

  He starts to get up. “The dishes, I forgot—”

  “I did them, it’s okay.”

  “What about the spaghetti pot? Sometimes the linguine sticks. You have to let the pot soak in a little olive oil—”

  “Got it covered, Dad. It’s clean and dry and put away in the cupboard. We need to talk about school.”

  “Nice staff over there. You getting along okay with your teachers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. What about the kids? Are they as smart as you imagined?”

  I think back to pre-law this morning and how Carling, when the teacher asked us what we knew about the Sixth Amendment, cited from memory the 1973 case of Strunk v. United States, where if a defendant’s right to a swift trial was deemed to have been breached, his or her case is thrown out of court or his punishment removed. All I really know about 1973 is that my dad wants a VW camper bus from that year. “Yeah. The kids are
pretty smart. And different too. Not like the kids back home.”

  “Well. You can’t top the Finmory kids.”

  “Yes. They were especially great to you,” I say, nudging his arm. “They loved their Charlie.”

  He smiles, nods, remembers.

  “At this place, students might not be as cool. They probably don’t bring in their mother’s oatmeal raisin cookies for the custodians, you know? I’m just thinking we should be prepared.”

  “Prepared for what?”

  “For things to be weird here. For them to be dorky about you and me, you know, being at the same school and all that. Mrs. Pelletier said if I don’t want to tell anyone, I don’t have to.”

  Dad pulls my head closer with his paw and kisses my nose before standing up and turning off the TV. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about kids over the years, it’s that they live up to our expectations of them. And I expect these kids to be just as terrific as the kids in Lundon. And I expect you to give them the very same opportunity. Deal?”

  I try not to look nauseated as I nod. “Deal.”

  Half an hour later, I lie on my bed, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the sound of relaxed snoring coming from Dad’s room. Things are so simple for adults. They go to work, do their jobs, and come home. No social minefields to tiptoe across, no independent study assignments or exams, no hiding at lunchtime so people won’t see how alone they are.

  I notice there’s something nightmarish about my new room. The walls are lined in fake wood paneling that some child has crayoned all over and, in spite of Dad’s scrubbing, the room still smells like a hamster cage. The dirty ceiling slants down like a barn roof, and the wooden floor isn’t quite level, so it’s hard to find a right angle to stabilize my soul. It’s like a giant grabbed hold of my room, rolled it around in his hand, and pushed it back into place, all twisted and wonky. Not a healthy habitat for a linear math brain like mine.

  My cell phone vibrates from where it sits on my night table. I snatch it up quickly and almost cry when I see it’s Mandy. “It’s you,” I say with a sigh.