I turned back to you, ready to laugh, but you were staring at your feet.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s wrong? He scare you?”
Your eyes rose to mine. “What? No,” you said. And then, “Let’s get out of here.”
But I pulled you into a corner, anyway, sensing something was off. Worried you regretted kissing me. “Did you know that guy?”
You shook your head.
“Was it what he said?”
You paused, and I thought maybe you’d confess a secret, but then you smiled in the dark and tilted your head and said, “I’m just messing with you. I wanted to see if you’d care if I was upset.”
“Course I’d care.” I returned your smile, but I saw through your act. That guy had bothered you, and for a moment there—just for a moment—I’d seen Molly uncut. I sometimes glimpsed a layer beyond what you showed the rest of the world, but now I’d seen your core.
And I wanted more.
“You like protecting people, don’t you?” You laid your hand on my chest. “It makes you feel connected to the person you’re defending.”
I didn’t respond.
“That’s so messed up, Cobain.” You moved your hand to my cheek. “What happened to you?”
I’m glad you moved your hand away from my chest, because if you hadn’t, my heart would have clawed its way out just to be held by you before it stopped beating.
You looked into my eyes and narrowed your own.
Your playfulness fell away, your false confidence crumpled at our feet, and you leaned in close. I wrapped my arms around your waist, my fingers interlocking so you couldn’t escape me. So you wouldn’t change your mind.
But you weren’t going anywhere.
Only closer.
And closer.
Until a man beat something against the walls and yelled, “If there’s anyone back here, you better get out before I call security.”
As we ran, Molly’s laughter ringing above the screams, I thought—
Goddamn it.
And, What security?
And, I’ll kiss that girl again if it kills me.
If it kills us both.
When we left the carnival, you gave our bracelets to two kids sticking their noses between the chain-link fence, their wide, eager eyes watching the rides rotate. They looked at you with such adoration, but you walked away before they could even thank you. You wouldn’t even look at me. Most likely, I thought as we walked up the hill, you were afraid I’d discover you had a heart.
NOW
I take my dad’s car and drive straight to Leesport.
It isn’t difficult to find the strip mall where her car had been discovered. When I see the cops, my entire body feels ready to detonate.
There—parked in front of an abandoned fabric store—is Molly’s Toyota Camry. Four police officers stand around it, and as I watch, a German Shepherd leaps into the vehicle. My stomach drops as the cadaver dog searches for the smell of a corpse.
I glance around, searching for Detectives Hernandez and Tehrani. I don’t see them, which makes me wonder where they did go. Did they rush off to question a new suspect?
Worried the other cops will see me, I pull away, my stomach threatening to empty itself as I drive. I feel helpless. Small. I have to do something. I have to go through my head and figure out who, if someone did take Molly or hurt her in some way, it could have been.
As I drive, I make a list of names.
And when I get home, I put those names on paper.
THEN
This was your kingdom, not mine.
A fire lit the forest clearing, and people from our school swayed to music that blasted from truck speakers. Joints passed hand to hand, and warm beer poured down eager throats.
I held a drained beer in my own hand. Wanted to get another to obliterate the sensation that I didn’t belong here. But you’d invited me. Said you wanted to see me there, so damn it all, I had come.
Why couldn’t we have come together, I wanted to know. But you’d touched my nose, like there was a hidden button there, and said to find you.
You were talking to a dude I didn’t know.
I wanted to dismember him.
Another guy walked by then. He had a girl on his arm, and his hood was pulled up over his head, though it was unseasonably warm for late fall.
“Hey, man,” he said. “You good?”
He nodded toward my beer can, his shaggy, reddish-blond hair flopping over his freckled forehead, and I shook it to show it was empty. I was grateful someone was speaking to me. The tension in my chest incinerated, and I felt myself smiling at this guy even though I had rules against smiling.
“You want another?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, too quickly. “Do you know—?”
“Better go get one, then,” he said, and laughed.
The girl laughed, too, and the twosome sauntered off toward the fire. He was just messing around. He might have said the same thing to his friends, but it felt personal. I made things personal. If I could acquire one secret power, it wouldn’t be to fly or turn invisible or tell the future. It would be an impenetrable shield that protected me from anything feeling personal.
You need thicker skin, dude, someone had said to me once. Don’t be so damn sensitive.
But my skin was made of paper. Maybe that’s why I had to compensate with muscle.
I’m too quiet?
Get bigger.
I’m too weird?
Get bigger.
I’m fucking Frankenstein?
Get bigger.
I thought about turning to go. Maybe I already was heading toward my dad’s car. I can’t remember. What I do remember is my name on your tongue.
You walked toward me with a smile.
You were drunk, a little. I liked it, a lot, but it also made me want to catch up, like your mind was in an alternate state and I didn’t want your head and mine to be in different places.
“You made it.” You grabbed my hand, squeezed, and then released. “Come on. Let’s get another drink.”
I started to walk after you and then froze when I saw the dude who’d laughed at me standing at the cooler. You noticed I’d stopped, but I wished you hadn’t. It made me feel weak that you noticed.
“What’s wrong?” you asked.
It felt odd that you had to ask that as music swept between the dancing bodies and people laughed and kissed and slipped their hands beneath skirts and under shirts. Everyone was happy, and yet you had to ask me, What’s wrong?
“Nothing,” I said. “Thought I forgot something in the car.”
Your eyes darted toward the dude. And the guy lifted his beer and shook it at me. Why couldn’t I just laugh? Get in on the joke?
Because I was the joke, that’s why. People knew when they were in on the joke and when they weren’t.
Your face changed then—a flash of something undeniably dark.
Your mind spun in that brain of yours. I could see it happening, and it was as beautiful as it was terrifying.
“Listen to me,” you said. “You want friends?”
I bit down. Shook my head. “I just want people to leave me the hell alone, Molly.” Pause, pause. “I don’t want to fucking be here.”
“Well, too late,” you said. Your eyes ran over my shoulders, my chest, my abdomen. “You want to be seen. Just look at you. You’re literally growing so that you can’t be ignored. So put an end to the invisibility. Right now.”
I licked my lips, felt my stomach clench with excitement and dread. “How?”
“You want to know the fastest way to make a friend?” you asked.
I searched your face for the answer.
“Make an enemy.”
My brow furrowed in confusion.
You leaned in
closer, your breasts brushing my chest. “No one feels more vulnerable, or more upset, than when they’re a target. So target someone.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “How will targeting someone make them a friend?”
You dropped your head to one side, smiling. Your lips were so close, more intoxicating than the beer charting a course to my brain. “You don’t target the person you want to befriend, my wolf. You target the enemy of the person you want to befriend.”
I found myself smiling, too. “There is something really wrong in your head.”
But I was already searching the crowd, looking for an opportunity. Wondering if it could be so easy.
“You like my head,” you said, but I noted the uncertainty beneath the confidence. So I grabbed your face like you did mine that first day, and I brought my lips down, down, and for a moment your head fell back and your mouth parted and pleasure relaxed every last muscle in your face. Our lips touched, and in an instant, I remembered why I came here. But then you stepped back, abandoning our kiss, remembering yourself. Remembering something you kept hidden, even from me.
“I’ll say when.” You strode toward the party, leaving ripples in your wake so that I had to fight to keep my feet steady on the ground.
I crushed the beer can in my fist and tossed it away, said, “Screw it,” beneath my breath, and walked after you. But it was clear you didn’t want to be followed, and so I found a place beside the fire and sat in a lawn chair. I didn’t care whose it was. I kind of hoped it was the guy’s who laughed at me.
I kind of hoped he said something else to me now.
I picked up an upright half-empty beer from the grass and raised it to my lips. I didn’t know what was gonna go down, but something told me I needed to be drunk for this.
I waited for twenty minutes or so—enough time for the music to change from alternative to rap. Enough time to watch you across the fire, swaying your body to the beat, Rhana’s hands on your hips. I wondered then if Rhana was jealous of you. She was prettier, you know? In the traditional sense. Her short blue-black hair cut to her chin, her skin several shades darker than your own. She was seventeen, maybe eighteen, but she could have walked into any convenience store, plopped a six-pack onto the counter, and her figure would say I look old enough, don’t I?
And whoever was standing on the other side of the counter would want her to be old enough. So that maybe he, or she, could smile and ask where she was going with that beer.
But still, I saw the way Rhana looked at you. The way everyone looked at you. Your knobby knees, your elfin ears, your freckles splayed across your cheeks. I didn’t want anyone else to see you besides me. But then, I’m not sure anyone did see the real you.
I heard a booming laugh from across the fire and spotted a guy I didn’t know doubled over, laughing. Another dude, the bigger one who’d been talking to Molly earlier, laughed too, but it didn’t reach his eyes. The first guy popped upright and slammed his beer bottle against the second guy’s. Almost immediately, the beer shot up and over the top, and the poor dude had to rush to drink it to keep it from spilling.
First Guy laughed.
Wasn’t he funny?
Wasn’t he so damn funny?
I glanced at you then, and you raised one slender finger from your drink and pointed at what I’d already noticed.
I stood up, dropped my own drink, and walked toward the two guys. The second guy was still pounding his beer when I said to the asshole, “Nice move. You learn that in fifth grade?”
My muscles clenched, waiting for both of them to tell me to go fuck myself. And what was I doing there anyway?
But that’s not what happened. The second guy stopped drinking and laughed, said to Asshole Guy, “Seriously, cum wipe. Who does that anymore?”
“He does,” I say. “In between wet dreams and spontaneous hard-ons.”
Second Guy laughed too loudly, and Asshole Guy said, “Whatever. Who the hell are you?”
I froze.
“Cobain,” Molly sang from a few feet away, “I’ve been looking for you. What, too good to come say hello?”
I shrugged, but my insides sang. “Just grabbing a drink.”
“I’ll get you one,” Rhana said.
“Nah, he’s coming with me,” Second Guy said and pulled out a joint. “I’ll bring him back.”
I looked at Asshole Guy and said, “You coming?” Because it didn’t feel great to rag on him, even if he had been dishing it out himself.
“Go fuck yourself,” he said.
“I’d rather fuck your mother,” I replied.
And thank the gods, Asshole Guy laughed and choked on his drink. “Uncool, man. Funny, but uncool.”
“Come on,” I said, because Second Guy was saying, Let’s go already.
Asshole Guy tossed his drink and said, “Whatever, man,” and followed after us.
“Cobain?” Second Guy said, raising a lighter to the joint.
I nodded and took the weed when he passed it to me.
“I’m Nixon,” he said, and then nodded toward Asshole Guy. “That’s Brian.”
I could tell Nixon didn’t like Brian.
I could tell Nixon liked me because I called Brian on his bullshit.
I could also tell Nixon was a dude who girls liked. They clung to his dark eyes and dark skin and biceps meant for the weight-lifting bench.
I sucked on the joint and glanced at you from across the flames. You looked like a demon standing behind that wall of fire.
I cocked my chin at you—what’s up?—and that smile of yours stretched until it touched your hairline. Then you caught yourself and replaced that smile with the carefully manicured one you served the world.
Did the pretending ever exhaust you, Molly?
NOW
After a sleepless night, I turn down my dad’s offer to drop me off at school, opting instead to walk the two miles alone and avoid being pressured to talk. I know I’ll have the school weight room to myself for an hour before students start arriving.
I load a barbell with weights and then lie on my back, wanting to get straight to the point. Wanting to feel my muscles strain. I unrack the bar and bring it down, breathe out as I push it back up. I keep my feet flat on the floor, keep my back pressed against the bench, keep Molly squarely in my mind as I do two reps. Four. Eight.
Already, I’m starting to sweat.
How much muscle have I lost since Molly vanished?
I’d been doing so well since she came into my life. It was all I’d been able to think about—her, and getting even bigger. Making her smile. Making her happy.
I’ve moved on to squats when I spot Nixon through the glass doors. I’m happy to see him, which shocks me because I’m happy to see no one. Because when you’re made fun of every single fucking day for not opening your damn mouth, then your I-don’t-give-a-damn armor is the only thing that stands between showing up, day after day, and having a world-class breakdown.
He opens the door and says, “Hey. Jet’s right behind me with some of the other guys, so…”
This isn’t going to end well.
When Jet walks in and sees me, he pauses in the doorway as if he’s thinking about doing an about-face and leaving. His hesitancy gives me strength. But as three of his friends file in behind him, he remembers he has a reputation to uphold and that the last time news of the two of us circulated, he came out looking like a chump.
Jet walks to the other side of the gym, and I track every step he takes. It’s not that I’m afraid he’ll say something.
I’m afraid I’ll kill him if he does.
“So, uh, how you doing, man?” Nixon asks, pulling his ankle behind himself to stretch. He’s wearing his weight-lifting jersey, and I’m kicking myself for not remembering that it’s Thursday. On Thursday mornings, the team can choose to come before school or a
fter.
I shrug and pick up a dumbbell that’s heavier than I should be using.
“I heard the police talked to you,” he adds.
Again, I don’t respond because, quite frankly, he’s more Molly’s friend than mine. He’s got an easiness to the way he stands, talks, acts, and it’s so utterly different than the tenseness that infects every proton in my body that I can’t help but envy him. He’s cool to me, even now, even after the tidal wave of friends that followed Molly saw that she was gone and, as a collective unit, turned and walked, zombie-like, away from me.
“I think she probably just took off, man,” Nixon says nonchalantly, stretching his arm across his chest. “I mean, she seemed the type to just, ya know, decide she was tired of this place. There’s no point in looking for her, right?”
I don’t like the way he’s eyeing me. It makes me itch to get out of here. But there’s only one thing I was afraid of, and that shit done happened. So what do I have to fear now?
“Anyway,” Nixon says, fumbling for something to say to someone who isn’t participating in the conversation. “I’m sure you miss her and shit. Molly was a cool girl.”
I flinch because it’s the second time he’s done that—talked about her in the past tense—but this time, it feels like an admission.
Nixon doesn’t think she ran away.
I look at him with fresh eyes.
“When’s the last time you saw her?”
Nixon releases the weight he was about to lift from the rack and says, stupidly, “What?”
“When did you last see her?”
“Oh, umm…” He glances at the ceiling. But I don’t want him looking there. He needs to look at me. “In class, I think. English?”
“Are you asking or telling?”
“Dude, come on.” Nixon pauses like he’s deciding whether to add something. Finally, he says, “They questioned me, too, you know. The police.”
Alarm bells go off in my head, and now I’m definitely looking at Nixon as someone other than Molly’s friend. “Why? Do you know something?”
We Told Six Lies Page 4
