Friends and Other Liars

by Kaela Coble

  “You should have gone to the police,” Emmett says. Ally whips her head around, her mouth hanging open.

  “Emmett. Come on,” Ruby says.

  “What? He was a minor! A little boy, for Christ’s sake! They wouldn’t have thrown him in jail. But at least the truth would have been out, and Danny wouldn’t have to live with this giant secret his whole life! He could have gotten help. We could have helped him through it.”

  We hear the basement door open, and Charlene descends the stairs, her eyes red but dry. She reclaims the seat next to Murphy, her posture stiff. She looks strange, calm, as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn’t just run out of the room in tears. She says, “I’m sorry about that. It’s been a really hard day,” and her voice sounds different too. Resolved.

  But who am I to judge what looks and sounds normal for a mother on the day she buries her son? Charlene’s reentrance changes the atmosphere in the room, everyone calming slightly so as not to say something else to upset her. The silence provides the moment I needed to figure out how to handle this whole secret business.

  “Emmett,” I say. “I don’t think you should be so hard on Ruby and Murphy. After all, you’re not exactly the poster boy for being honest.” Emmett spins around and looks at me, a look of betrayal on his face. I widen my eyes, trying to beam a telepathic message that it’s okay, that I have a plan.

  “Steph, you keep your mouth shut,” he says.

  Clearly, he didn’t get the message.

  Whatever, him being a jerk just makes it that much more believable, and it makes it easier for me to throw him under the bus. “Emmett,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm even though I want to shout and swear like Ally does so effortlessly. “I’ve kept this secret for you because I love you and it’s what you wanted. But they should know.” This part is true, at least for what I’m about to tell them.

  Talk about secrets turning you into something dark… Emmett’s temper has been out of control these last few months, and I’ve had about enough. I snatch the envelope from his hand and stand up, holding it over my head. This next move is risky, but I need to do it in order for them to believe me. I pull out the piece of paper, nod like it’s only confirming what I’m about to say, and slip it back in the envelope before I speak.

  “Emmett has a heart condition.”

  “Steph—” Emmett starts, and then stops, realizing that’s all I said. He’s not happy this is getting out, but this is not what he was expecting me to say. It’s certainly not what I just read on that slip of paper.

  I notice Charlene twitches ever so slightly, her head tilting to the side. I hope I haven’t upset her. Today should be about her son, and we’ve already heard quite enough without adding Emmett’s health problems to the mix. But after all, this was her son’s intention, even if I’m not telling the whole truth.

  “What does that mean?” Ally asks. She stares at me accusingly. I know what the look means. How dare you keep me out of the loop? You’re just the girlfriend, but I’ve been here since the beginning.

  “He’s got a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.”

  “Hyper what?” Ally asks.

  “It’s HCM for short. It means the walls of his heart are thicker than they should be, which causes problems in the heart’s electrical functions.”

  “That sounds… Is it serious?” Murphy asks.

  “No, it’s really not that big—” Emmett starts.

  “It is serious,” I interrupt. “In most cases, people don’t know they have HCM until their heart stops. Especially in young athletes… Often it’s not discovered until after they’ve dropped dead in the middle of a game or something.”

  “Oh my God!” Ally gasps. “Now I remember! Wasn’t that what Lucas had on One Tree Hill?”

  Everyone looks at Ally in disbelief.

  “What?” she asks. “It was really serious…”

  “So how did you find out?” Ruby asks, ignoring Ally. She directs her question at Emmett, probably hoping he will look up from the spot on the floor he’s currently drilling a hole into with his eyes. He is red to the tips of his hair follicles.

  “He was lucky,” I continue. “For him, it started with what’s called A-fib, which is like a rapid fluttering in your chest. About nine months ago, he was playing basketball with his work buddies at lunch and had to stop because he couldn’t catch his breath. He started to say something about his heart before he passed out for a minute. They thought he had a heart attack, but at the hospital they ran all kinds of tests and diagnosed him with HCM.” A chill runs through the group. There are a lot of heart problems in the air. First Roger’s, now Emmett’s.

  “How do they treat it?” Ruby asks.

  “Well, the danger of HCM is that your heart will stop, so if no one is around to start it again… Well, you can imagine.” I can’t say the words. “So they…installed…a defibrillator. You’ve see doctors on TV rubbing those big paddles together and yelling ‘Clear!’ until all the nurses get out of the way? It’s a miniature version of that. It will start his heart again if it ever stops beating.”

  “So then, you’re fine!” Ally says, brightening. “As long as you have that, you’re fine, right?”

  Emmett nods slowly, not removing his eyes from the spot on the ground.

  “Not really,” I interject. Might as well give them the whole ball of facts, as Ally would say. At least about this part of it. “He has to be on medication that makes him dizzy and sometimes nauseous and drowsy, and he has to be a lot more careful about his heart rate. Which means no strenuous exercise.”

  The crew is silent at this, and I know what they’re thinking. Emmett, the Chatwick High basketball star, who used to be as active as they come—even when he wasn’t playing basketball or hockey, he was running or swimming, always in motion. It’s not that he can’t do any of those things anymore, it’s just that he has physical limits he can no longer push, and pushing limits is what Emmett has always prided himself on.

  We thought getting the defibrillator put in and the recovery would be the worst part, but it wasn’t. The hard part has been the aftermath. The changes in his lifestyle. The struggle to regain a sense of normalcy, the loss of the confidence that made me fall in love with him in the first place. His temper has never been so short, and it’s so important that he stay calm and not put more stress on his already overburdened heart.

  “Steph,” Murphy pipes up. “When you say installed, do you mean…”

  I nod. “Surgically.”

  He rounds on Emmett now. “You had your chest cracked open, and you didn’t tell anyone about it?” Murphy asks. I breathe a silent sigh of relief. Just as I had hoped, this part of Emmett’s secret is big enough for them to believe.

  I interject, “He didn’t exactly have his chest cracked open. They did an incision here.” I point to the spot on Emmett’s chest, just under his collarbone on the left side. Emmett jerks away from me, but I continue anyway. “And they ran the leads—the wires—down into his heart laparoscopically.”

  “Still,” Murphy says, “how is it even possible to pull something like that off without any of us knowing? In this town?”

  “I don’t know, Murphy. How is it possible to cover up a murder?” Emmett shoots back. They glare at each other.

  “We went down to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston,” I explain before this all turns nasty again. I catch Emmett’s eye and look pointedly at Charlene, who’s shut her eyes against us. Emmett softens and mumbles a “sorry” in her direction. “They have one of the world’s leading experts on HCM, and it worked out for Emmett that she’s in Boston because he didn’t want anyone to know. He didn’t even let me call his parents until after he was out of the hospital.” I had strongly objected to this, but I was so concentrated on him staying alive that I would have done anything he asked me to.

  “But why?” Ally asks, he
r voice more full of hurt now than anger. And I understand it. Why wouldn’t he want his friends to be there for him?

  “I didn’t want people treating me differently,” Emmett says. “Ally, you would have made a big fuss and started bossing me around. Don’t”—he holds up one hand as Ally opens her mouth to protest—“act like you wouldn’t. We all know you can’t help yourself.”

  The crew smiles at this. Well, all except Ally, who goes into a reflexive pout before she shrugs and nods in agreement.

  “And you guys”—he looks at Aaron and Murphy—“you’d start taking it easy on me on the court, looking at me funny. I just couldn’t take it. I still can’t. That’s why I’m always ‘too busy’ to play.”

  Everyone nods in agreement. They are promising to themselves, to each other, that they won’t treat him any differently. That they won’t pity him. But they will. I know, because I made those promises too.

  “We thought you were just whipped,” Aaron says, lightening the mood. One sweet moment of relief after all the awful news.

  Ally looks at me, a twinkle of honest-to-God understanding in her eye. “Is that why you were so upset at the funeral? Were you thinking about what it would have been like to…”

  I look at Charlene, hoping Ally will understand that I don’t want to insult her son’s memory by affirming that my tears had nothing to do with him. Ally is mostly right, but I just shrug. It’s more complicated than that. Danny said it himself: None of you bothered to try to help me when I was alive, when it counted. Just like everyone else here, Emmett and I could have helped Danny, but we didn’t.

  After a moment, Ruby asks, “The thing I don’t understand is, if you kept this under such tight wraps, how did Danny know? I mean, you guys were never exactly close.”

  Emmett turns to me, trying to hide the panic in his eyes.

  “He didn’t exactly choose Danny,” I pipe in, looking straight at Emmett. “After the diagnosis, Em didn’t have much of an appetite, and I had trouble sleeping. We needed something to…ease the anxiety.”

  I watch as they struggle to connect the dots. Then Ruby claps her hand to her mouth, stifling a bark of a laugh. “You went to Dan to get pot?”

  Emmett’s face flushes, and he shoots me a glare that says I’m in for it when we get home. But who cares? His reaction still perfectly confirms Ruby’s theory. It’s close enough to the truth that no one will question it and far enough away to keep us safe.

  The crew howls with laughter, but Charlene’s expression remains grim. I’m guessing she doesn’t find drug use particularly funny these days, even the herbal kind.

  “What is so fucking funny about that?” Emmett demands, losing his already miniscule amount of patience.

  “I’m sorry,” Ruby chokes out between giggles. “It’s just…the guy who gave us a Nancy Reagan lecture every time we lit up a joint becomes a pothead at twenty-eight years old!” Fresh waves of laughter ripple through us.

  “Just say no,” Murphy says, wagging his finger and deepening his voice to imitate Emmett’s serious voice. More laughter.

  “Ruby, you’re destroying your brain cells,” Ruby says, doing the same.

  “Well, you were,” Emmett says. Even I have to giggle at the way he stands with his arms crossed, in perfect Stern Dad posture.

  “And now you are!” Ruby says through her giggles. It’s not really all that funny, but the laughter is needed after the day we’ve had. After the year Emmett and I have had.

  “Anyway,” Emmett says over the din. “Dan, of course, had to give me the same hard time you’re giving me—”

  “Or he was concerned about you because twenty-eight is a little old to start experimenting with drugs,” Ruby interrupts.

  “—and I lost my temper—”

  “Shocker.”

  “—and I ended up telling him. Honestly, I didn’t think he would remember. Toward the end he was, you know, pretty out of it.”

  That sucks the mirth right out of the room.

  “All right. Your turn,” Emmett says, his arms still crossed. He looks straight at Murphy.

  “My turn for what?”

  “Your secret. I went. Your turn.”

  Murphy breathes a laugh out of his nose. “You didn’t exactly go. Your girlfriend went for you.”

  Again, three years with these people, and I’m still just the girlfriend.

  “Whatever. I don’t care. Out with it.”

  “We just talked about it, dude. Ruby and I knew about Danny and…the thing…with Roger.” He shoots a look to Charlene, who looks surprised. I doubt Danny shared with her the fact that he confessed to Ruby and Murphy that night.

  Ruby, meanwhile, says nothing.

  Emmett narrows his eyes at them, but he must decide it’s better not to press, considering he’s lying too. He turns on Ally. “And you?”

  Ally hesitates, looking at Murphy and Ruby as if she’s hoping they will take their turn again. “Mine is…” She looks at Aaron, who looks just as interested as Emmett. She’s on her own. Her face suddenly brightens, her posture straightening. “It’s nothing bad. It’s good actually, and I’ll tell you guys… I just don’t want to tell it today. Not after the day we’ve had. Okay?”

  Charlene crosses her arms, seemingly dissatisfied. I’m sure she doesn’t want to be left out after being involved up until this point. I mean, wouldn’t you rather be distracted by our drama than mourn your only child? Ally looks at the rest of us, waiting for us all to nod, which we do.

  When it comes to things that really matter, you guys barely even know each other.

  Ally’s, Murphy’s, and Ruby’s envelopes all remain unopened, their hands clutched around them like their lives depend on keeping them closed.

  4

  RUBY

  NOW

  “Remember when Emmett mixed up mayo and ketchup and hot sauce and Kool-Aid and dirt and all that shit and then paid Danny a dollar to eat it, and when he didn’t pay up, Dan threw up on his shoes?”

  “Remember when Ruby drove us home from the homecoming party during that freak snowstorm, and when she started to skid, Murphy panicked and pulled the e-brake, and we ended up in that ditch facing the other way? And the cops brought us home?”

  “Remember when Ally’s bikini top popped off when she jumped into the quarry, and she was so shocked by the cold water she didn’t realize it for, like, five minutes?”

  The stories from fifteen years of friendship flow like a faucet that won’t turn off. Despite Aaron’s signature method of peer pressure (one hand clasped on my shoulder in what the crew lovingly calls “the claw,” the other hand holding a shot of well liquor under my nose), I have stood strong, shaking my head at each one-ounce parcel of liquid courage. The crew, who do not have my self-imposed three-drink limit, have partaken enough to get us to this point: the proverbial walk down memory lane.

  Adhering to our old customs, I have already gotten complete histories on two high school classmates I only vaguely remember; I’ve debated the upcoming election with Emmett while the crew rolled their eyes in the background; and when he realized he was losing, he resorted to picking apart my outfit. (Ally’s black top and dark-wash jeans passed inspection, but since I couldn’t squeeze my big feet into Ally’s dainty shoes, we searched through my high school wardrobe and fished out my old cowboy boots from my high school closet, which Ally had declared “classic.”)

  But not everything is the same. A welcome addition to the night’s proceedings has been getting to know Steph. In addition to siding with me while Emmett and I debated equal pay (Emmett refuses to acknowledge it’s a problem), Steph works at the Chatwick Community Library, which explains the instantaneous ease I felt with her earlier. She carries the scent of old books. It makes me think of the days when I used to sneak the ancient editions of classic novels from my father’s bookshelf and read them by flashlight in my
closet. He didn’t want me reading them until I was older and more “responsible with the bindings.”

  Sometimes I would fall asleep reading them, and Nancy would find me in the closet the next morning, nestled among a heap of pillows I’d assembled for comfort. She never told my dad, just smuggled the book back into its place before he could notice. Reading—and everything about it—provided the escape I needed from whatever turmoil was going on in the house, and I think she knew that.

  An unwelcome change I can’t shake is the way Murphy and I sit on opposite ends of the row of stools the crew occupies, although the scent he carries isn’t having any trouble infiltrating my nose from there.

  I try to remain present, but every few minutes I find my eyes wandering to the Exit sign. It hurts to be here. In Chatwick, for one, but especially in Margie’s Pub, otherwise known as the congregation of Chatwick’s finest. The town is made up of rednecks, who farm on the outskirts of “the City” (which is really a bunch of neighborhoods, a few blocks of shops, and the high school); white trash, who live below the tracks and off the government; and richies, a relative term the other two camps invented to make people like me and my friends feel like snobs for living in the hill section of the city and having parents who own local businesses or commute to more affluent communities, like Burlington, to work. All three groups are fairly represented tonight, and they’ve all spent the evening staring at me, trying to decide exactly how to describe me to the Chat tomorrow.

  But the biggest reason I am so uncomfortable at Margie’s is the memories. Memories I shouldn’t have, considering I left Chatwick when I was eighteen years old, well before I was legally allowed to gain entrance. The last time, I was responding to a courtesy call from Monty, the four-hundred-pound bouncer, to warn me Nancy was approaching her cutoff point and I’d best get down here before she pitched a fit and then hopped in the driver’s seat. This was a fairly regular occurrence my freshman and sophomore year of high school, to the point that Monty knew he could reach me at Danny’s if I wasn’t at home, and any one of my friends would call out “It’s Nancy time” when they answered the phone.