The Thing About the Truth

by Lauren Barnholdt

  “Fine,” Chloe says, getting up from the table and slinging her bag over her shoulder. “You don’t have to tell me. You don’t even know me. I get it.” She’s acting like she’s fine with it, but her tone says she thinks I’m being a big baby. And I kind of agree with her. I mean, the stuff with Rex happened. Maybe the first step to getting over it is really owning it.

  “Fine,” I say. “I used to go to Concordia Prep.”

  “I hate that school,” she says.

  “You do?”

  “Yes. Bunch of stuck-up preps.” She reaches into her bag and pulls out a cigarette, then plops back down in the seat across from me.

  “Are you allowed to smoke that in here?” I ask. It’s rhetorical, of course. Obviously, you’re not allowed to smoke in a library.

  “It’s an electric,” she says. “You know, it just blows water vapor? They can’t ban you from using them anywhere. It’s, like, the law.”

  “Oh.” I’m not sure if this is true, but whatever.

  “Anyway,” she says, “so you used to go to that superpreppy school. Is that why you’re starting Face It Down? You want us all to realize that those jerks aren’t as jerky as we think they are?”

  “Sort of. I mean, I am starting Face It Down because I used to go there. But also because I need to figure something out that’s going to look really good on my applications.” I take a deep breath. And then I say it out loud. “I got kicked out of Concordia Prep.”

  She nods. “Makes sense.”

  “It does?”

  “Yeah,” she says. She takes a drag of her cigarette and then blows water vapor into the air. At least, I hope it’s water vapor. The last thing I need is to go home with my clothes smelling like smoke. My dad would definitely not be thrilled.

  “You could tell I got kicked out?”

  “Well, obviously something scandalous happened. You came in to school all, like, I don’t know . . . determined to make your mark. And I could tell you weren’t interested in making friends.”

  I’m not sure if it’s an insult or not, and so I can’t figure out if I should be offended. “Anyway,” I say, “don’t you want to know why I got kicked out?”

  “Duh.” She rolls her eyes and blows more water vapor toward the ceiling.

  “I smashed my ex-boyfriend’s car.”

  She sits up straight, her eyes getting wide. “No fucking way,” she says. “Like, with a bat?”

  “A crowbar,” I say. “And don’t get all excited, it wasn’t his real car.” She looks disappointed, and for some reason, I don’t want her to be disappointed. I want her to be impressed with my scandalousness. So I rush on. “It was a car that he’d been working on, this electric hybrid car he was building.”

  “You got kicked out of school for smashing his model car?” She shakes her head. “That’s kind of lame. I mean, couldn’t he just buy another one?”

  “It wasn’t a model car,” I say. “It was full-sized, and it was going to be entered into this national science competition. And there were a bunch of other people working on it too. They’d been written up in the Boston Globe for it and everything. If they finished, and it was successful, they were going to be the first group of high school students to do anything like it.”

  “So why’d you smash it?”

  I shrug. “I got mad. We’d been going out for about five months, and I loved him. I found out he was cheating on me with this totally skanky girl named Gwyneth. And I just . . . I don’t know. I guess I just snapped.”

  I remember now, how I felt in that moment. How dark the school was. How empty the halls were. How I’d looked at that car, the car that Rex was so proud of. He was always bringing it up in conversation, the same way he’d bring up his football stats or how many points he’d scored in a basketball game. Everyone at Concordia Prep was athletic, and all the guys were expected to play sports, so triumphs on the athletic field weren’t all that special or impressive—everyone had them.

  But when it came to academics, everyone tried to outdo each other. And this car thing was a major score. Rex got a ton of attention for being the head of the team that was putting it together. Not like he needed any more attention. Rex was one of the most popular guys at Concordia Prep. And I was one of the most popular girls.

  The day I found out Rex was cheating on me, I’d gone into his locker to grab his cell phone. I needed to call home to let my mom know I was staying after for a math review, and since Rex and I had been texting each other all day, my phone was dead. Concordia Prep had a very lax policy when it came to things like cell phones. They figured that treating us like adults would make us act like adults (haha).

  Anyway, since I knew Rex left his phone in his locker while he was at football practice, I figured I’d use his. When I pulled the phone out, it was beeping with a text.

  “I had an amazing time last night, xx, G.”

  I knew who it was from immediately. Gwyneth Adelman. I’d suspected that they’d been messing around, since Gwyneth was constantly shooting daggers at me with her eyes, and I’d caught Rex not-so-discreetly ogling her ass on game days, when she wore her cheerleading uniform to school.

  I stood there for a full minute or two, just staring down at the text. Rex had tried to be smart about it, and he’d saved Gwyneth’s number under the name Adam. He didn’t have any friends named Adam. But I guess he figured if I ever saw it, he could just make something up.

  I felt like I was in a dream. Everything felt blurry around the edges, including my emotions. I could tell I was upset, but I couldn’t quite access it. I put the phone back into Rex’s locker and shut the door. I stood there for another moment. And then I walked down to the technology lab.

  When I got there, like I said, it was dark, and it felt wrong to be in there, in the dark, with no one around. But then I flipped the light switch, and the lab flooded with brightness, and there it was. The car. Rex and I used to joke that he loved that car more than anything, except for me. But now, since it had become apparent that he was cheating on me, it seemed like the car was the thing he loved the most. And it was the only way I knew how to hurt him.

  There was a wooden dowel sitting against the wall, and I picked it up and gave the car a few whacks. At first nothing happened. Yeah, maybe there was a little bit of a dent, or a few scratches in the paint, but really, it was just bodywork. If I had left then, if I’d stopped, it could have been fixed easily enough.

  And for a second I did think about stopping. But then I spotted something else. A crowbar. Hanging from a hook on the wall over a workbench. And I know it sounds stupid, but suddenly I remembered that Carrie Underwood song “Before He Cheats,” and I remembered watching the video for that song and watching Carrie wreck her cheating boyfriend’s car, and thinking I’d never do something like that, no matter how much I’d gotten hurt.

  I remembered thinking about how you could get in a lot of trouble for doing shit like that. I’d spent my whole life staying out of trouble, not doing anything that would cause me to shatter the perfect image I’d worked so hard to create. But in that moment, standing there in the lab by myself, wrecking Rex’s car seemed like a really good idea. The kind of thing that just had to be done.

  The crowbar felt light in my hand. At first I thought maybe it wasn’t a real crowbar, that it was some kind of special crowbar they used for high school students because they couldn’t trust us with the real thing. But now I think I was in such a daze of anger that I just didn’t realize how heavy it was.

  When I brought the crowbar down on the car the first time, it shattered one of the windows right away. There was no warning, no time to wrap my head around what I was doing. No crack in the window. No shaking of glass. Just complete shattering. It was scary. But it was also freeing. I could feel my anger pouring out of my body as I destroyed that car. The smashing, the grinding, the breaking. Every sound, every pound, every hit made me feel better. While I was doing it, I wasn’t thinking about anything. It was purely physical.

&n
bsp; When I was finished, and the car was in pieces, I dropped the crowbar and looked at the mess I’d made. Then I went home.

  When I got there, I plugged my phone in and then calmly texted Rex and told him what I’d done. I didn’t want to get away with it. I wanted him to know that I’d caught him, and that I’d made sure there would be some kind of punishment for what he’d done.

  I knew there would be repercussions for wrecking the car, although I definitely didn’t think that I would get kicked out of school. I thought maybe I’d get suspended and have to pay for the car or help put it back together. But the principal was pissed. And they didn’t even give me a chance to plead my case. The next day I was gone. I could have fought it, I guess, but what would have been the point? I’d told Rex what I’d done; he had the text and the proof.

  “Wow,” Chloe says. She’s looking at me with a mixture of awe and admiration. “That takes balls. I wish I had the balls to do something like that.”

  “Trust me,” I say, “having balls is overrated.”

  She shrugs. “Yeah, well, it’s better than what I’ve been doing.”

  “So, what’s your story?” I ask. “Who broke your heart?” I take a sip of coffee from the thermos.

  “This guy,” she says, “Dave Cash?”

  She says his name like I should have heard of him, but I haven’t, and so I shrug.

  “He graduated last year,” she says. “He was really popular, all the girls wanted him, blah, blah, blah. But he’s really nice, you know? The kind of kid who’s nice to everyone, no matter who they are.”

  “And you’re in love with him?”

  She nods miserably. “He’s my best friend. He has been since, like, the eighth grade. Which is how long I’ve been in love with him.”

  “Does he know?”

  She shakes her head emphatically, her blond curls bouncing from side to side. “No! I would never tell him. Which is why this always happens.” She looks around the library, then leans back in her chair with a sigh.

  “Why what always happens?”

  “Why I always end up here.”

  “You always end up in the university library because you won’t tell Dave Cash you’re in love with him?” I knew this girl had a screw loose.

  “Yes,” she says. “See, this is how it works: Dave invites me to come and hang out with him at school. We go out to a frat party or something, and while we’re there, he picks up some girl”—she wrinkles her nose up in distaste—“to bring home with him. So then I wait at the library for him to finish with her. And then he calls me and we go out to breakfast.”

  My mouth drops. “You just wait for him at the library? All night? While he’s off hooking up with another girl?”

  She nods.

  “And he just lets you?” I ask. Seriously, what is wrong with boys these days? I thought the human race was supposed to be evolving.

  “No,” she says, looking horrified. “Dave would never agree to that. I just make him think I’m going home with some guy.”

  I stop with my thermos halfway to my lips. “Wait,” I say. “You tell him that you’re going home with a guy?”

  “Of course,” she says, sounding like she can’t believe how clueless I am. “It’s all part of the facade. It would be super-awkward if he knew it bothered me that he was bringing girls home.”

  “So it’s better that he thinks you pick up random guys at parties?”

  She nods. “Yeah,” she says, “otherwise I’m the lame girl who’s secretly pining away for him, all the while pretending to be okay with just a friendship.”

  “Ooo-kay.” I know I should probably say something to deter her from doing this, but she seems like the kind of girl who has her mind made up. Plus who am I to say that her plan is bad? My plan got me kicked out of school.

  “Guys are such dicks,” she says. “Complete assholes.”

  She’s talking kind of loud, and so I glance around to make sure no one’s heard. I kind of like the fact that she’s swearing and putting it all out there. Not to mention that it felt good to finally tell someone what happened with me and Rex, someone who seems like they understand.

  Rielle tried, but she never really got it. She couldn’t understand why I’d be so angry that I would do something like wreck a car. She didn’t think Rex was worth it. She didn’t think anyone was worth it. Rielle’s always been the type to go through guys like they’re tissues, throwing them away like she can just pick up another one whenever she wants.

  “Total fuckups,” I say, agreeing with Chloe.

  “It’s like, why can’t they just be normal?” she says. “And why do they only like the skanky girls? Like Marina Ruiz. She’s not even that pretty.”

  Of course, this is a lie and we both know it. Marina’s gorgeous. She looks like J. Lo. But saying she’s not that pretty is one of those things girls tell each other to make themselves feel better.

  “Definitely not that pretty,” I say, taking another sip of coffee. I try to think of something specific I can say about Marina’s looks. But I can’t come up with one bad thing. Her boobs are too big, maybe?

  “It’s like, last night,” Chloe says, “she was totally making out with that new kid. You know, the senator’s son? Isaac?”

  I spit my coffee all over the table. A couple of kids in the study carrels turn around and give us dirty looks.

  “Isaac was making out with Marina?” I whisper. I pull a napkin out of my bag and start wiping up the coffee.

  “Yeah,” she says, “at the beach.”

  I feel my heart squeeze. “I thought you were here last night,” I say, hoping that maybe she’s made a mistake.

  “I was at the beach first. College parties don’t start until, like, after eleven, so I stopped at the bonfire for a little while.” She sighs. “Total waste of time, though. I’m so over everyone at our school.” She sighs again and then looks at her watch. “I guess I’ll start heading back to Dave’s dorm. He should be finished by now.” She peers closely at my face. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say, “I’m fine.”

  She looks at me skeptically, and then I see a wave of understanding come over her. She opens her mouth, like maybe she’s going to ask me if I like Isaac. But she must realize that I don’t want to talk about it, because instead she grabs a pen and jots her phone number down on my folder. “Call me later,” she says. “You know, if you want to hang out or something.”

  She squeezes my shoulder as she goes by, and I just sit there, looking out the window for a few minutes after she’s gone. And then I shake my head and tell myself to forget about him. I have a very bad track record when it comes to love. There’s no reason to think that’s going to stop now.

  Before

  Isaac

  Head. Hurts. There’s light coming in through my bedroom windows, and it’s making it feel like a jackhammer is pounding against the inside of my forehead. Fuck, fuck, fuck. That’s the way it works with me, though—I can get completely drunk and be fine the next day, and then other times I’ll have a few drinks and wake up feeling like someone’s taking a sledgehammer to my skull.

  I sit up in bed and take a sip of water from the bottle on my nightstand. I can hear the sounds of pots and pans in the kitchen. My dad. Probably making eggs or some shit. On weekends my dad likes to have the house to himself, meaning no housekeepers or cooks, even if that means he has to make his own breakfast.

  He’s the last person I want to see, so even though I feel groggy and my head’s still pounding, I pull on a pair of track pants and a sweatshirt and head out to my car. I have nowhere to go, so I just pull out of the driveway and start to drive.

  I turn on the radio and start to think about last night. Making out with Marina. That was a huge, huge mistake. One, because she’s kind of crazy. (I’m not sure, because it’s a little fuzzy, but I could have sworn that at around midnight she started naming our children. Like, the children we would have someday. From what I remember, she was saying that she wanted
to name the girl Harmony and the boy G-Money. That can’t be right, can it? Maybe it was Giovanni? Either way, those names are not going to cut it. Not that we’re really going to have kids. But come on. Who the fuck does that? Starts naming your children after one kiss? Okay, so it was more than one kiss. It was a few kisses. But still.)

  Anyway, obvious mental issues aside, the other reason it was a mistake to make out with Marina is because I like Kelsey. A lot. I know it sounds weird, but kissing Marina just cemented it further in my mind. Kelsey is the one I want to hang out with, to be with. I can’t stop thinking about her. And I know that I have to tell her that I kissed Marina. And I know she’s going to be pissed.

  I think about calling her, but she didn’t seem too excited to talk to me on the phone last night. Plus she’ll probably just hang up once she hears what I have to say. So before I know it, I’m driving over to her house. Which is crazy. That’s, like, movie shit or something, driving over to a girl’s house to confess your love. Not that I’m going to be confessing my love. Maybe just my like.

  When I pull into her driveway, there are two cars parked there already, a gray sedan and a minivan. I’m assuming they belong to her mom and dad, since Kelsey doesn’t drive. There’s no way to tell if she’s home, so I get out of the car and head up to the porch.

  I ring the doorbell.

  After a few seconds a man opens the door. He’s tall and kind of grumpy-looking, and when he sees me, he frowns.

  “Hello, sir,” I say, deciding to play the politeness card because parents love that shit. “I’m Isaac Brandano.” I emphasize the Brandano part because parents love that shit too. “Is Kelsey home?”

  Usually, when parents meet me, they love me right off the bat. Partly because I can be very charming when I want to be, and partly because they know my dad. They get totally caught up in thinking that their daughter might marry a politician’s son, and that maybe I’ll become a politician and that maybe I’ll run for president or something, and that maybe their daughter will be first lady. Sometimes I want to let them know that the reality of the whole thing is very different from whatever crazy fantasy they’ve come up with, and that they should ask my grandparents on my mom’s side what they think about marrying a politician. But I don’t. Because then they wouldn’t be too happy to see me.