The Thing About the Truth

by Lauren Barnholdt

  “Making out?” Marshall asks hopefully.

  “No,” I say, “we were just . . .” I try to think of a plausible excuse for why we would be hanging out in a closet. I don’t want to tell them Chloe’s secret. It’s not my place.

  “I was telling Kelsey about how I hooked up with my friend Dave,” Chloe reports like it’s nothing, and then jumps down from the mats.

  “What?” I screech. “How come you can tell them?” Did she not just remember that she was supposed to be keeping this a secret?

  “They’re not going to tell anyone,” she says. “They don’t even know Dave.”

  “Who’s Dave?” Isaac asks.

  “Dave Cash?” Marshall asks. “Who graduated last year? That dude’s a tool.” He’s bouncing a basketball on the ground, weaving it between his legs. He actually has really good ball control, which you’d never be able to guess just by looking at him.

  “I need a male perspective,” Chloe says, turning to Isaac and ignoring Marshall’s comment. “What do I do now?”

  “You want to hook up with him again?” Isaac asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Oooh, you should go over to his dorm with lingerie on,” Marshall says. “And high heels.” He leans back on the stack of tumbling mats and looks her up and down. “Maybe under one of those trench coats. You know, like a flasher. Hot.”

  “Way too obvious,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t want him to know how much I like him.”

  “So you want to keep it casual,” Isaac says, nodding. “Invite him out somewhere. But not on a date. To a party or something. A small one, though, so you don’t end up getting all drunk and separated from each other.”

  “A small party! That sounds perfect.” Chloe looks over at me. “Can you have one?”

  “A party?” Is she crazy? Then I realize she doesn’t understand or know anything about my family situation. “No,” I say, “I definitely cannot have a party.”

  “Please?” she says, walking over to me and holding out another Jolly Rancher as a bribe. “Just a few people. Not that many.”

  “I can have a party,” Isaac says.

  “You can?” Chloe asks, whirling around and looking at Isaac like he’s her savior.

  “Sure.” He shrugs. “Why not? We can pretend we’re working on our project or something, and let my dad take a picture for his website. He’ll love it.”

  “But we won’t really be working on the project, will we?” Chloe asks, sounding kind of panicked.

  “No,” Isaac says. “We’ll really be providing a place for you and Dave to get it on.”

  I push him on the shoulder.

  “What about me?” Marshall asks. “Am I invited?”

  “Yes, you have to come,” Chloe says. “Otherwise, it will be like a double date. And I don’t want Dave to think I set it up that way.”

  “Okay, so it’s all settled,” Isaac says. “We’ll do it this weekend?”

  Chloe nods. “But in the afternoon,” she says, “so that it doesn’t look too obvious.” We all go traipsing out of the closet, with Marshall muttering something sarcastic about how fun it is to be the fifth wheel.

  • • •

  Later that afternoon I get called down to the main office. There’s a letter waiting for me there from Concordia Prep saying that they accept our invitation for Face It Down Day and will be sending a select group of students over. Kristin, the president of the student council, writes that she can’t wait, and asks me to let her know if there’s anything else she can do. Which there isn’t, partly because I’m on top of it, and partly because I don’t want her getting too involved because then she’ll be able to take some of the credit.

  When I read the part about her selecting a small group of students, I have a moment of panic. That small group of students better not include anyone I don’t like and/or want to avoid, like Rex or Michelle or Anna. But how can I make sure of that?

  I text Rielle, inviting her to meet me after school at our fave bakery, Pria’s.

  “You want something,” she says as soon as I walk in.

  “No, I don’t,” I say, putting a fake shocked look on my face. “I’m totally just here out of the goodness of my heart.”

  “How good is your heart?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean is it good enough that you’ll buy me a cupcake?”

  “Of course.” I stand next to her in the line in front of the counter. Rielle came right from school, and so she’s still wearing her uniform. It’s kind of hot out, though, and so she’s rolled down the top of her skirt to make it shorter. She’s also unbuttoned the bottom of her shirt and tied it in the front, revealing the tiniest bit of stomach. Most of the guys in here can’t keep their eyes off her. She’s like a schoolgirl fantasy come to life.

  We order our cupcakes (cherry jubilee and vanilla for her, chocolate buttercream for me), and head over to the side of the café and sit down at one of the few empty tables.

  “So,” Rielle says, “how are things?” She gathers her hair up into a ponytail and then takes a bite of her cupcake.

  A guy in a suit next to us is practically drooling as he tries to pretend he’s not looking at her. Rielle, of course, is oblivious. Not for the first time, I wonder what it would feel like to be like that, to be so beautiful that you don’t even realize people are watching you, to be so confident that you don’t ever have to worry about being nervous or feeling self-conscious. I’ve spent what seems like my whole life trying to pretend I’m that way. What would it be like to have it just come naturally?

  “I’m good,” I say. “You?”

  “Excellent.” She takes another bite of cupcake.

  I decide to cut right to the chase. “So listen,” I say, “have you heard about this Face It Down Day thing that we’re doing?”

  “Sort of,” she says. “You’re inviting a bunch of us to your school, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Are you going to come?”

  “Of course,” she says. “It gets us out of classes for the whole afternoon.”

  “Awesome,” I say. “Any idea who else is coming?”

  “Dunno.” She shrugs and licks a bite of frosting off her lips. “Probably the usual suspects. Whoever’s on Kristin’s good side.”

  “You’re on Kristin’s good side?”

  “For now,” she says. “She beat me on a math text last week.” Kristin’s always been supercompetitive when it comes to grades, and she sees Rielle as her biggest competition. So if she’s beating Rielle, she’s nice to her. When Rielle beats Kristin, Kristin hates her.

  “Perfect,” I say. “So can you make sure that Rex doesn’t get invited?”

  Rielle sets her cupcake down. “Gasp!” she says. “Kelsey! Is it true that you’ve invited me here to ply me with processed sugar in an effort to get me to agree to some plan you’ve concocted to make sure certain people you don’t want to see don’t end up at your event?” She pretends to be outraged.

  “Yes,” I say. She gives me a look. “Come on,” I say, “you knew I was up to something.”

  She thinks about it. “And how am I supposed to accomplish this crazy task you’ve laid out?”

  “Go to the student council meetings? And make sure you bring up objections to the final list?”

  “Ooooh, Kelseyyyyy,” she says. “Those meetings are so long and boring.”

  “Please, Rielle,” I say. I think about bringing up the fact that she lied to me a couple weeks ago, but I don’t really want to go there if I don’t have to.

  “Fine,” she says finally, “I’ll do it. But you are so buying me another cupcake.”

  The Aftermath

  Kelsey

  “So you were sent a list of people who would be coming to Face It Down Day?” Dr. Ostrander asks. “From Concordia Prep?”

  “Yes.” I nod. “It was a list of about fifty students, all different grades, all different types.” My heart is beating a million miles a minute, I guess because now w
e’re getting down to it. Now we’re going to really talk about what happened that day. And I don’t know how it’s all going to turn out.

  “And you and Isaac went over that list?” Dr. Ostrander asks. He pulls a copy of it out of the file folder in front of him and runs his eyes down the students’ names.

  “Yes.” I nod again. “And then we put an open call out to our school asking for volunteers from Concordia Public. We got a huge response, so we made them all fill out a questionnaire asking them about themselves and why they were so interested in Face It Down Day.”

  “And you picked fifty students from our school as well?”

  “Yes. Isaac and I went through the applications, along with Chloe and Marshall.”

  “Kelsey had the final say,” Isaac reports.

  “No, I didn’t.” It’s true, too. I didn’t. We all went through the applications together, and we all picked the students together.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Isaac says, giving a sarcastic laugh. “That’s right, I got confused. She didn’t have the final decision about the students from our school. But she did try to keep certain people off the list from Concordia Prep.”

  “Is that true?” Dr. Ostrander asks.

  I want to know how Isaac knows this.

  “I told my friend Rielle that we didn’t want any drama, and that she should keep that in mind when deciding which Concordia Prep students got invited to Face It Down Day,” I say. Semantics, but whatever.

  “So you tried to fix it,” Isaac says.

  “And that’s why this Rex person snuck into the school?” Dr. Ostrander asks.

  “No, he wasn’t . . .” I shake my head because now I’m starting to get confused. And then I feel myself start to tear up. I clear my throat and blink hard because I really, really do not want to start crying now, not when we’re so close to finishing up this meeting.

  “He didn’t sneak into the school,” Isaac says. “He was invited.” He points at me. “She invited him.”

  “I didn’t invite him,” I say. “In fact, I didn’t want him there at all.” It’s true. I specifically told Rielle not to bring him.

  Isaac snorts. “You see?” he says to Dr. Ostrander. “She’s lying.”

  “About what?” I ask, frustrated.

  “Well,” Isaac says, talking to Dr. Ostrander, even though I’m the one who asked the question. “You just heard her say that she didn’t try to keep certain people out. But now she’s trying to say that she didn’t want Rex there at all.”

  I shake my head. “That’s not . . . that’s not what I said. I told Rielle that I didn’t want anyone there who was going to cause drama. But I didn’t try to control the list of people who were coming.”

  “You’re lying,” Isaac says. “And honestly, I’m sick of going over this again and again and again.”

  “I’m sorry if we’re wasting your precious time, Mr. Brandano,” Dr. Ostrander says. “But we’re trying to get to the bottom of this whole situation, of why things happened the way they did.”

  “All right,” Isaac says, shaking his head. “I wasn’t going to do this. But I can save us all a lot of time and tell you exactly why all of it happened.”

  My heart stops.

  Dr. Ostrander frowns. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Isaac says, his voice raised, “that we don’t have to have this big conversation about everything. I’m over it.” He sighs. “If you want to know what happened, I’ll tell you.”

  He looks at me out of the corner of his eye, and for a second, I pray that he’s not going to tell Dr. Ostrander what actually did happen, the real reason shit just completely and totally blew up yesterday, the real lie I told that had nothing to do with people being on the list or not.

  “If you want to know the truth,” he says, leaning forward like he’s getting ready to tell a really good story, “it has to do with Kelsey. And the biggest lie of all.”

  And that’s when I realize the thing about the truth. It always comes out, no matter what you do.

  Before

  Isaac

  If I want to have Kelsey, Chloe, and Marshall over, I’m going to have to smooth things over with my dad. He’s still pissed at me for taking my car out the other night.

  The one good thing about my dad is that he’ll forgive pretty easily. (Notice I didn’t say “forget.” He never forgets. The dude has an opinion of me that goes back years. I’m actually not even sure if he just decided when I was born that I was a complete fuckup, or if I just did a bunch of stuff when I was younger that he can’t get over.)

  The hard part is what you have to go through to get that forgiveness. You have to listen to him lecture you. You have to listen to him saying shit that’s really not that nice. You have to let him feel like he’s imparted some big lesson to you. It makes him feel good about himself, and my dad loves to feel good about himself. He kind of gets off on it.

  Which is why I usually never ask him for forgiveness. I don’t want to have to go and listen to all that. I would rather have him mad at me. I just don’t give a shit.

  But I told Chloe I could have people over here, and then I said that maybe we could even get a picture with my dad, and I saw Kelsey’s face light up when I said that, and I want Kelsey to be happy, and part of that involves dealing with my dad.

  I knock on his office door, and when he calls me in, I stand in front of his desk.

  “Hey,” I say, “I want to have some people over here on Friday to work on Face It Down Day. Is that okay?”

  My dad leans back in his big mahogany chair, relishing this. He loves when I have to come and ask him for something. It’s another thing he gets off on.

  “Well, I don’t know, Isaac,” he says. “You haven’t really been acting like someone who deserves to have people over.”

  “I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.” I look down at the floor like I can’t even believe how horrible my behavior has been.

  “Yes, well, I don’t know if sorry is going to cut it this time. You’re sorry a lot. And sometimes that’s not good enough. Sometimes we need consequences for our actions.”

  “So you’re not going to let me have them over?”

  His phone starts to ring, saving me from some big lecture. “Mow the lawn,” he says, “and then I’ll consider it.”

  “Okay,” I say, even though we have landscapers who do all that stuff. “Also, if you could stop by, maybe take a picture with us, that would be great.”

  “Oh?” He looks up, his hand on his phone. God, he loves this shit so much. It’s making me really kind of hate him. “Well, I suppose I could do that.” He’s pretending like it’s some kind of big imposition.

  “Great.” I start to walk toward the door.

  “Isaac?” he calls after me.

  “Yeah?” I turn around.

  He looks at me like he’s about to say something, but then he shakes his head. “Nothing.” He turns away from me and answers his phone.

  Yeah. That’s what I thought.

  • • •

  On Friday, Kelsey gets to my house before anyone else.

  “So, we need to come up with the questions we’re going to be asking and the things we want to talk about on Face It Down Day,” she says.

  “We have to do that now?” We’re on the couch in my family room, and no one’s home. My dad assured me he would be here at four for the photo op, but that’s not for another hour, and everyone else isn’t going to be here until around then too. “I can think of other, better things we can do.” I wrap my arms around her and pull her down on top of me, kissing her neck. God, she smells good.

  “No.” She giggles, and disentangles herself from me. “We need to go over this stuff so that we have something to show your dad when he gets here.”

  I look at her blankly. “If you think my dad is going to give a shit about the questions we come up with, you’re wrong. He’s going to take some pictures, hope they get picked up on some news outlet or website, and then he’s going to le
ave.”

  “I know,” she says. “But we have to at least pretend, don’t we?”

  “No,” I say. “Pretending is stupid.” I try to kiss her again, but she pushes me away.

  “Okay, okay,” I grumble, and sit up. I reach over and pick up a chip from the bowl on the coffee table. When my mom found out I was having friends over, she made the housekeeper put together a tray of snacks for us, which she left in the refrigerator. Technically, no one’s here yet, but I’m hungry. So I pulled out the thing of snacks. Of course, the chips are cold, which is kind of weird. But my mom must have figured I was too lazy to open up a bag of chips and put them in a bowl.

  “So what should we ask about?” Kelsey asks, her pen poised over her notebook.

  “Sex.”

  “Sex?”

  “Yeah.” I shrug. “Sex is universal. Everyone is worried about it.”

  “I don’t know.” She reaches over and grabs a cracker. “I mean, isn’t that a little racy for something like this?”

  “You don’t want to push the envelope?”

  “No.” She shakes her head. “I want to play it safe.”

  “Well, then maybe we should talk about—”

  The doorbell rings.

  “Ohmigod,” she says, standing up and smoothing down her skirt. “That’s not your dad, is it?”

  “Why would my dad be ringing the doorbell at his own house?” I ask. She relaxes. “It’s probably one of our friends getting here early.”

  I cross the room and peer out the front windows. Marshall’s standing on the porch holding a big package wrapped in foil. Hmmm.

  “What do you know about Marshall?” I ask.

  “What do you mean?” Kelsey comes over to the window, and we watch as Marshall picks up one side of the foil-wrapped package and peeks under it, then pats the foil back down. He rings the doorbell again.

  “I mean, do we know anything about his political beliefs?” I ask, giving her a mock serious look. “He’s standing out there holding some kind of mysterious package, so I just want to make sure that—”