The Thing About the Truth

by Lauren Barnholdt

  Anyway, I don’t have to worry about that with this dude. He’s looking at me like I’m a maggot or bug that needs to be squashed.

  “Yeah?” he asks, like he didn’t hear what I just said.

  I decide to start over. “Hello, sir,” I say, pasting on my best smile. “Is Kelsey home?” This time I decide to leave out my name since maybe he’s on the other side of the political divide.

  “No,” he says, “she’s not. Why?”

  “I’m her friend,” I say. “I was just coming over to, ah”—probably shouldn’t say I’m here to confess that I kissed someone else after I kissed his daughter—“talk about the school group we’re starting, Face It Down.” He’s still giving me that look, so I quickly add, “It promotes cultural and community solidarity.” And then, for good measure, “And abstinence.” Just in case he thinks I want to get into Kelsey’s pants.

  “Kelsey’s not here,” he says again.

  “Oh. Okay.” Why doesn’t he tell me where she is? And where could she be on a Saturday morning, anyway? He’s probably lying. This dude is very shady. I glance behind him, half expecting to see Kelsey standing there. But she’s not. Just some pictures of her on the wall. One of her at a picnic or something, with her mom and dad, which is actually very cute.

  “Anything else?” The guy’s looking at me now, his arms crossed over his chest like he’s daring me to ask him another question.

  “No, sir,” I say. “Um, it was nice meeting you.”

  He shuts the door without saying goodbye. Wow. I get back in my car, then drive around the corner and pull out my phone. I dial Kelsey’s number. She sends the call to voicemail. I can tell because it only rings, like, half a ring. I try again. Same thing. One more time, I think, because third time’s the charm.

  She picks up.

  “Yes?” Wow. She sounds very . . . cold. It kind of makes me nervous.

  “Hi,” I say brightly. “What’s up? What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Home.”

  “Liar.”

  She snorts. “You should talk.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “How do you know I’m not home?”

  “Because I went to your house.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “I did.”

  “What did you do there?”

  I roll my eyes. Through the windshield, I see a guy wearing pink slippers and what appears to be a blond wig crossing the street to get his mail. “Did you know that one of your neighbors is a cross-dresser?”

  “What?” she screeches.

  “No, I mean, I’m not judging or anything, it’s just funny.”

  She pauses. “Is she wearing pink slippers?”

  “Yes, and she has a gray beard.”

  “That’s not a cross-dresser. That’s our neighbor Mrs. Sullivan.”

  I squint at her. I guess she does have kind of a feminine walk. “Huh,” I say, “she really should get that mustache taken care of.”

  “Goodbye,” Kelsey says.

  “How come every single time I talk to you, you’re trying to hang up on me?”

  “Because I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  “That’s not what it seemed like yesterday afternoon,” I say, grinning. “Not that you had a lot to say, but you weren’t complaining about kissing me.”

  “Yeah,” she says, “well, it seems like you have a thing for kissing unsuspecting girls.”

  “You weren’t unsuspecting,” I say. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  She doesn’t say anything. And I know she knows. About last night. About Marina. Fuck. I’ve blown my chance with her before it’s even started.

  “Listen,” I say, “I need to talk to you.”

  “No.”

  “Then hang up,” I say, calling her bluff. But she doesn’t. “Can you meet me?” I ask. “At the mall or something?”

  “The mall?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want to have a big talk at the mall?”

  “Why not? I’ll even buy you something.”

  “Like what?”

  “A coffee? Some fries? That chicken teriyaki they have at the Japanese place?”

  “That stuff is food poisoning waiting to happen,” she says.

  “Please?” I ask. She doesn’t say anything. “Just for ten minutes,” I say. “And then if you want to leave, you can leave.”

  She sighs. “Be there in fifteen.” And then the line goes dead.

  Before

  Kelsey

  This is a really stupid idea. Meeting Isaac at the mall? Why, why, why am I doing it? What’s that definition of insanity that people always say? “Doing the same thing over and over again, hoping to get different results?”

  The mall’s about a fifteen-minute walk from the library, but there was no way I was going to ask Isaac to pick me up. I don’t need any favors from him, thank you very much. I call Rielle on the walk over, hoping maybe she’ll somehow talk me out of going to meet him.

  “Rielle,” I say, “I am about to do something really stupid.”

  “Really?” She sounds interested. “Like what?”

  “I’m going to meet Isaac at the mall.”

  “You’re not!”

  “I am,” I say.

  “Why?”

  “Well,” I say, “last night he—”

  “Hold on.” She covers the phone and I hear her talking to someone in the background. “Listen,” she says when she comes back, “I can’t talk right now. I’m at my grandma’s, and my parents are bothering me about being on my phone.”

  “Okay,” I say, “but are you going to be around later? Maybe we could go to dinner or something. I could tell you all about my drama.”

  “I wish I could,” she says, “but we’re going to be here all weekend.”

  Rielle’s grandma lives in New Hampshire, and she’s the one who controls the purse strings in Rielle’s family. Every so often Rielle and her parents have to troop up there and stay for a weekend to keep her happy.

  “Call me later, though, okay?” She lowers her voice. “I gotta go, Gran needs me to help her open her arthritis medicine.”

  I laugh. “Okay,” I say, “I’ll talk to you later.”

  I hang up. I think about maybe calling Chloe, but we’re not the kind of friends who can just call each other up out of the blue, especially not right after we just left each other. I look down at my phone, wondering if there’s anyone else I can call who might talk me out of this. But there isn’t. And besides, I’m not sure if I want to be talked out of it. So I just keep walking.

  • • •

  Isaac’s sitting at a table in the food court, and in front of him are five or six different drinks.

  “I didn’t know what you like,” he says, “so I got you milk shakes, chocolate and vanilla—because, really, who likes strawberry?—an orange juice, a soda, an iced tea, and a lemonade.”

  “Hmm,” I say, sitting down across from him. “Trying to be cute, huh?”

  “Cute?” he says, putting an innocent look on his face. “Who’s trying to be cute?”

  The thing is, trying or not, it is cute. Very cute. I mean, who does that? Orders six different drinks because he doesn’t know what I’d like? Adorable. I pick up the lemonade and take a sip.

  He looks hot, too. Not the way he does at school, in his khaki pants and button-down shirts and expensive-looking sweaters. Now he’s wearing a rumpled-looking sweatshirt, and his hair is all messy, and he has on dirty, comfortable-looking sneakers and a pair of navy track pants.

  Then I remind myself that I should not be swayed by his rumpled cuteness, because his rumpledness is most likely caused by the fact that he’s been out all night hooking up with Marina and getting into various other kinds of debauchery.

  I put the lemonade back down on the table. “I’m not thirsty,” I say.

  He shrugs and reaches for one of the milk s
hakes.

  “You wanted to talk,” I say. “So talk.”

  “What’d you do last night?” he asks conversationally.

  “The better question,” I say, “is what did you do last night?” Suddenly I’m superaware of the fact that I’m looking just as rumpled as he is. At first I wish I’d gone home to change. At least then I’d have the upper hand in the appearance department. But then I realize that the fact that I look so rumpled could mean that maybe I’ve been out partying too. He doesn’t know.

  But before I can come up with some great story about how I was at a fabulous college party with tons of hot, eligible college men, he decides to get serious and answer my question. He leans back in his chair, puts the milk shake down, and says, “I was at the beach, like I told you.”

  “And?”

  “And I called you because I really wanted to see you. But then . . . well, you seemed like you wanted nothing to do with me. And I’d had a really bad night, something to do with my dad, and I just . . . I started drinking. And I ended up kissing Marina.” I start to open my mouth to yell at him, but he goes on. “And it’s not an excuse, I know that. But I want you to know that it won’t happen again. I don’t want to kiss anyone else but you.”

  He’s looking at me really intensely then, and I feel my heart melt just a tiny little bit. Because at least he’s being honest.

  But I still want to yell at him. I mean, just because he’s telling me the truth doesn’t mean he’s not a shit. The only reason he’s probably even telling me what happened is because he knows that I already know.

  So I open my mouth to give him a little bit of shit. But before I can, I hear something coming from the other side of the food court. A laugh. A laugh that I know really, really well.

  A laugh that belongs to Rielle.

  Before

  Isaac

  I really thought that Kelsey was going to go batshit crazy on me. I realized after I’d bought all those fucking drinks that it was going to make it really easy for her to throw a bunch of liquid at me. For a second I thought about maybe getting rid of at least a few of them since I wasn’t in the mood to get wet. But it was too late; she was there. And besides, if she had thrown a drink at me, I would have deserved it.

  But then, right before she’s about to freak out on me, her whole face changes. She’s staring at something over my shoulder, and I turn around to see what she’s looking at. It’s a bunch of girls. A bunch of stuck-up girls. I know it sounds fucked up, but I can tell just by looking at them.

  “You know those girls?” I ask. I’m trying to sound nonchalant and uninterested, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about girls, it’s that you need to stay out of their drama. If you don’t, you’ll end up regretting it. No one can understand teen girl drama. One minute they love each other, the next minute they hate each other. You just need to not get involved, and agree with whatever they’re saying. (But not too much, just in case they’re saying something horrible and then they end up making up with whoever it is they’re saying horrible things about.)

  “Yes,” she says. Then she stands up and starts to walk out of the food court and toward the mall’s main entrance.

  I chase after her, taking the lemonade with me. “Where are you going?” I ask.

  “Home,” she says. She’s almost running now, and the mall is kind of crowded, so I’m pushing through people in an effort to keep up with her.

  “Home?” I say. “But we haven’t talked.”

  She’s still walking. I follow her all the way out to the parking lot. I don’t say anything. She keeps walking and walking, weaving through the rows of cars.

  “How did you get here, anyway?” I ask. “Since you don’t drive?”

  She doesn’t say anything. There’s an island in the middle of the parking lot with a tree on it. She kicks the curb.

  “Wow,” I say, “anger issues?”

  She whirls around and looks at me. “Isaac,” she says, “you have no idea.”

  I nod. “I can respect that.” She starts pacing up and down the parking lot, through a bunch of empty spaces, making sure her feet stay between the yellow lines. I sit down on the curb and watch her, waiting.

  “That,” she says, “was my best friend in there. Or, at least, she was my best friend. And she lied to me about where she was.” She raises her eyebrows and looks right at me. “I hate being lied to,” she says. “I hate, hate, hate it.”

  I nod. “That makes sense.”

  “I lied to you,” she says, “when I told you I stopped going to private school because my parents couldn’t afford it. The truth is, I got kicked out. Just like you.”

  “Wow.” I’m kind of shocked. I never would have guessed. She seems so in control and, like . . . I don’t know, into rules.

  “Are you mad?” she wants to know. “Because I lied?”

  I think about it. “No,” I say honestly, “I’m not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m sure you had your reasons,” I say.

  She nods. “I did,” she says. “I was embarrassed.” She’s still pacing. “But I’m sick of all the lying. No more lying. I’m not doing it anymore.”

  “Good idea,” I say.

  “So why did she do it?” she asks. “Why did Rielle lie to me?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “What kind of person is she?”

  “She’s . . .” She sighs. “I’m not sure. I mean, I thought I did, but . . .” She sits down next to me, and I hand her the lemonade that I’m holding. She takes a sip.

  “I didn’t lie to you,” I point out, just in case she’s forgotten and is getting any ideas about throwing her drink at me.

  “Not technically,” she says, “but you sort of did.”

  “How?”

  “You kissed me. And then you kissed someone else.”

  “So?”

  “So a kiss is like a promise.”

  “It is?” I move a little closer to her now. “What kind of promise?”

  “A promise that you won’t kiss anyone else.” She looks away then, thinking about it. “At least for that same day.”

  “What about if the person you really wanted to kiss wouldn’t come and meet you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says, shaking her head. “You still shouldn’t kiss someone else on the same day you kissed the first person.”

  “What if I didn’t know it was a promise?” I say. I inch even closer to her, so that our legs are touching. “And what if I promise that this time, I won’t kiss anyone else?”

  “For how long?” she asks.

  I tilt my head and look at her. I remember what she said about how she really hates when people lie to her. But what I’m about to say won’t be a lie. I really, really mean it. So I say, “As long as you want me to.”

  And then I kiss her again.

  The Aftermath

  Isaac

  “Kissing Marina Ruiz has nothing to do with it,” I say, because this is such bullshit. Kelsey’s the one who lied to me, she’s the one who fucked everything up, and for her to bring up Marina Ruiz is insane. It’s old news. And if Kelsey didn’t think—no, if she didn’t know—that this whole thing was her fault, she wouldn’t have even brought it up.

  Dr. Ostrander is looking down at the paper in front of him. I wonder if it’s the police report. “It says here that Marina fainted and was also taken away. It says that some girls from Concordia Prep assaulted her.”

  “Those girls were Kelsey’s friends,” I say, giving her a look. “You should ask her why they went ballistic on Marina.”

  “They’re not my friends,” Kelsey says. “Things between me and Rielle are weird. You know that, Isaac.”

  I don’t like the way she says it. Like I’m supposed to know things about her life. I don’t want to know things about her life. At least, not the same way I did before.

  “All I know is that they got into a fight because of you.” I shrug and look at the superintendent, like, “What
can you do? This whack job obviously set up some kind of community-building day and then invited all her enemies.”

  “Who assaulted her?” Dr. Ostrander asks. “Because Marina claims that you hit her, Ms. Romano.”

  “You hit her?” I gasp.

  “No,” she says, “I didn’t hit her. I was trying to get those girls to stop, and she freaked out and started screaming, yelling at me to get off of her.”

  “I don’t know,” I say, giving Dr. Ostrander a pointed look. “Kelsey does have a history of violence, so maybe we should look into this more.”

  “You’re an asshole,” Kelsey says.

  “Ms. Romano!” Dr. Ostrander says. “I thought I told you that kind of language would not be tolerated.”

  “Sorry,” she says. Her cheeks turn pink, and my heart starts to ache. I want to pull her close, to hold her against me and tell her it’s going to be okay. I know how anxious she must be about this whole thing, how badly she wanted to make sure she did well at this school. I know she must be stressed out about what’s happening, that it’s probably been keeping her up at night.

  “Look—” I start to say to Dr. Ostrander, because this whole thing’s gotten out of control, and I’m sick of being here. What good is rehashing all this stuff going to do? I want to know my punishment, and then I’m out of here.

  But before I can voice any of this, there’s a knock on the door. “Dr. Ostrander?” the secretary asks, poking her head in. “There’s someone here to see you.”

  “I’m in the middle of an important meeting,” Dr. Ostrander says. He sounds really exasperated, and then he looks at me and Kelsey and kind of rolls his eyes like, “Can you believe how stupid this woman is?”