Little Black Lies
Page 25
“Well …”
“Sara, we both admitted to a few white lies.”
“Yeah, but mine were more black.”
“Will it make you feel better to hear mine?”
“You totally don’t have to …”
“You know those scars on my chest?”
“Yes.”
“It was unbelievably stupid. It was a hot summer day. I found a bottle of my mom’s nail polish and bet my neighbor I could make it explode.”
“Nail polish is so flammable. It can totally explode.”
“Yeah, so I learned. This kid, Oliver, he was two years younger than me. We’d been in his pool earlier and were both in our bathing suits. I should have known better than to involve anyone else, but I found a sunny spot on the driveway and pulled out a magnifying glass. Anyway, it took a long time, but eventually the bottle exploded.”
I cringe in horror. “You got burned?”
“What happened to me was nothing. Oliver lost sight in one eye. It’s the biggest regret of my life. So stupid.”
“God.”
“Yeah. He jokes about it now, but only because he’s a good guy.”
Instinctively, my hand goes up to his chest and rests on his wet jacket for just a moment, as if my touch might penetrate through the fabric, might smooth away the scars.
“Will you ever hang out with me again?”
I look around at the stacks of boxes. “I’m moving.”
“I know. I live with the president, remember? You better tell Charlie my dad is one tough boss. After graduation this June, he’s sending me to work in the Manhattan office.”
“You’ll be living in New York?”
“If you can call sleeping on an air mattress at my brother’s apartment living, then, yeah,” he says with a grunt. “So? What do you say?”
The rain slows down and the hammering on the roof grows softer. Outside, a tiny sliver of blue sky peers through the clouds. Water dribbles down his face, drips from his chin. I want to wipe it away but I don’t. Instead, I squint in the brightening light, halfway between my old life and my new, and smile. “I’d love to hang out with you again.”
Tish Cohen is the author of several books for adults and young readers. Her adult novel Town House was a 2008 finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best First Book Award (Canada and Caribbean Region) and is in development as a feature film. She is also the author of the middle-grade novels The Invisible Rule of the Zoë Lama and The One and Only Zoë Lama. Having grown up in Los Angeles and Orange County in California, and Montreal, Cohen now calls Toronto home. You can visit her online at www.tishcohen.com.