Every Single Lie

by Rachel Vincent

  “I’m sure you’ve all heard about Lullaby Doe, the baby found in the girls’ locker room last Friday. It has come to my attention”—her focus finds me briefly in acknowledgment—“that if no one comes forward to claim her, she will be cremated and buried in an unmarked plot in the Daley County paupers’ lot. Did you guys know we have a paupers’ lot?”

  “What’s a pauper?” Alex Thompson asks.

  “Your mom,” Cameron fires back.

  Cabrini Ellis clears her throat. “You guys shut up and let her finish. This is serious.”

  I’m starting to think I brought this to the wrong organization. I would have just started a crowdsourced fundraiser myself if I thought anyone would donate to something started by the #BabyKiller.

  “Anyway . . . ,” Sophia continues. “Since Key Club is a service and leadership organization, I think this is the perfect opportunity for us to get out into the community and do some good. And, for those of you who’re in National Honor Society, any hours you spend on our project will also go toward your community service requirement for NHS, so keep good records of your time.”

  “What exactly are we talking about?” Payton asks.

  “A fundraiser. We want to raise enough money to give Lullaby Doe a proper burial. A tombstone, a service, and a real plot, in Holly Grove Cemetery.”

  “So, what?” Cameron says, and when he stares across the circle at me, I know where this is going. “We have to step in because Beckett Bergen can’t afford to bury her own kid?”

  “Don’t be an asshole,” Cabrini snaps.

  Amira huffs. “He only has one setting.”

  “It isn’t my baby.” My voice comes out so soft that I’m not sure I really said the words aloud. So I clear my throat and try again. “It isn’t my baby. I just found it.”

  Cameron snorts. “That’s not what I heard.”

  My head snaps up, and my focus narrows on him. “So, should we believe everything we hear about you?”

  “Hell yeah, you should!” He spreads both arms in an arrogant challenge. “It’s all true!”

  “I saw a cop escort you to the library,” Payton says, and all eyes turn my way again. “Why’d you get a police escort if you didn’t do anything wrong?”

  “Because I’m a witness.” I sit straighter in my chair, glaring across the room at him. “I found a dead baby in a duffel bag, and the only thing more messed up than that would be letting that poor baby be buried in an unmarked grave. Forgotten and unacknowledged.”

  “I agree,” Sophia says. “Which is why we’re doing this. And I expect every one of you to spend at least an hour in town over the next week asking for donations.”

  I can’t tell that she believes me, but she jumped at the chance to get the Key Club involved in something beyond the annual Angel Tree and the canned food drive. Charity work that will no doubt look great on her college applications.

  Matt Umbridge sits straight in his chair. “Why can’t we just launch a GoFundMe?”

  Sophia turns in the middle of the circle to face him. “We already have. Amira, Beckett, and I set up the fundraiser during English class, when we were supposed to be peer grading essays on The Scarlet Letter. It goes live this afternoon. But Key Club is a community organization, and most of the businesses in our local community, unfortunately, have a very minimal online presence. Which means they will never see our GoFundMe if we don’t show it to them. Which is why we’ve printed up these flyers for you to distribute downtown.”

  Sophia gestures to Abby Winegarden, the Key Club secretary, who holds up a stack of half-page printouts. “These have simple instructions for how businesses can donate. I suggest you work in pairs.”

  “Wait a minute.” Alex frowns at the flyers, then turns back to Sophia. “You want us to physically carry pieces of paper around town, telling people how to go online and donate? What kind of sense does that make?”

  She lifts both brows in his direction. “If you were to ask your grandparents to donate to a GoFundMe, would they have any idea what you were talking about?”

  Cameron snorts.

  “Less than none,” Alex admits.

  “Well, half the business owners in Clifford are your grandparents’ age. If we want their money, we’re going to have to show them how to give it to us. They can give cash on the spot or donate online. Now, the minimum bid is five dollars, but we really just threw that one in there for individual contributions. We’re hoping businesses will be closer to the one-hundred-dollar range.”

  “What’s the goal?” Page Denver asks.

  Sophia turns to Cabrini, the Key Club treasurer. Cabrini stands, tossing straight blond hair over her shoulder. “So, I spoke with someone at Rayburn Funeral Home during second period, and he told me that the average cost of a funeral is upward of six thousand dollars. That’s not including the coffin and the plot itself, which both cost less for infants than for adults. That’s also not including the headstone. So, we’re aiming for eight thousand dollars, over all. Just to be safe. Anything we raise above what’s needed will go to a charity to be voted on later.”

  Cameron snorts. “I say we donate it to Planned Parenthood, in Beckett Bergen’s name. So she can afford birth control.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” I snap as Cabrini smacks him in the shoulder.

  The bell rings, and Sophia grabs the flyers and lurches toward the door. “Wait! Take a stack of flyers as you leave!”

  I grab my bag and follow Amira around the circle of desks. Cameron brushes past us and pulls Cabrini into an embrace, his hands wandering over her hips.

  “All this just because some bitch couldn’t remember to take one pill a day?” he mutters, looking at me over his girlfriend’s shoulder.

  “It takes two, you know,” Amira snaps at him.

  “In the beginning, maybe. But what good is it going to do a guy to take the day-after pill? Ultimately, this is on the girl.”

  Cabrini pulls out of his grip and glares up at him. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Hey, I’m just shining a little daylight on this thing. A little reality. The truth is that no matter what precautions the guy takes, if a girl gets pregnant, the decisions from then on are hers. That’s what you all wanted, right? A guy has no say in whether or not she keeps the baby, but if she does, he has to pay for it for the next eighteen years. That’s taxation without representation. Wars get started over that shit.”

  “Is that what you’re trying to do?” Cabrini grabs her bag and slings it over her shoulder. “Start a war?”

  “No, baby, come on. I’m just sayin’ . . . ​why should the guy have to pay for the girl’s decisions?”

  “That’s a real winner you got there,” I tell Cabrini as Amira tugs me toward the door.

  “Mind your own business, baby killer,” Cameron snaps, and the room goes silent. Everyone still in line for a stack of flyers turns to stare at me, waiting for my response, and I feel their focus like a load of stones on my chest. Pressing the air from my body.

  Seeing it online is bad enough. Hearing it whispered behind my back is even worse. But no one’s had the balls to say it to my face so far, and now that Cameron has, it’s obvious that the rest of them have just been waiting for that inevitability. Waiting for my reaction.

  “It isn’t my baby,” I tell him again, and I can feel disappointment all around me. They want a more dramatic denial. Something explosive.

  They want a confession.

  How am I supposed to make people believe the truth, when the rumors are so much more interesting?

  “You always wear baggy sweaters,” Cameron says with a glance at the gray one I’m wearing right now.

  Amira rolls her eyes. “It’s December.”

  “You were absent all day, then you show up just in time to find a dead baby,” Page says. “Why were you even in the locker room?” She sounds more curious than accusatory, but her question rubs me the wrong way. Why should I have to defend myself to these assholes?

/>   “Because I have the worst luck in the world, evidently.” I tug my backpack higher on my shoulder. “I came to school for a last-period French test, and I found a dead baby. I can’t get her out of my head, and I think it’s horrible that if we don’t do something to help, the county will have no choice but to dump her in an unmarked grave. So, think whatever you want about me. What’s important is that we do what we can for her.”

  Cameron snorts. “Whatever. Give me a damn flyer.” He snatches a single sheet of paper from Abby on his way into the hall.

  Amira gives me a hug.

  “They’re going to believe whatever they want,” I mumble into her shoulder.

  She doesn’t bother to argue.

  “Don’t forget your flyers.” Sophia shoves a stack at Page as she heads into the hall. “Sorry about that,” she says as I take a stack for myself. I can’t tell whether she believes that I only found Lullaby Doe or she just feels sorry for me.

  I unzip my bag and slide the flyers inside.

  “Hey, sorry I missed the meeting.” My brother appears in the doorway. “I had to see the counselor about my transcript. What’d I miss?”

  “Fundraiser.” Sophia shoves the last of the flyers at him. “They can explain. I’m going to be late for class.”

  Penn frowns at the papers in his hand. “We’re raising money for a funeral?”

  “For the baby.” Amira stares at the flyer on top of her stack, but she doesn’t seem to be reading. “West Point will love it.” She turns to me as she backs toward the hallway. “Beck, you wanna pair up and go downtown this afternoon? We could hit that stretch of Main Street down from the police station. You know, where that antique store is on the corner?”

  “Sure. Penn, you wanna come?”

  “Can’t.” He glances at Amira, then his gaze slides back to me. “My CFA’s this afternoon with Coach Williams. I’ll go this weekend with Daniela, if she’s over the flu by then.”

  I hadn’t even noticed that Penn’s girlfriend missed the emergency Key Club meeting.

  “Just you and me, then?” Amira looks a little relieved.

  “Yeah.”

  Jake isn’t in Key Club. Not that his parents would let him work with me even if he were. But I’m not thinking about the fundraiser as I head to my next class. I’m thinking about how Penn’s girlfriend has missed the past three days of school. About how my brother was on that senior trip.

  And how Penn has a navy blue Titans T-shirt.

  CRIMSON CRYER

  @crimsoncryer · 3h

  Everyone, let’s back off @BeckettBergen. No matter who her mother is, #LullabyDoe was obviously loved.

  #RIP

  147 76 234

  EIGHT

  “Thanks again, ma’am!” I call over my shoulder to the elderly clerk as we step out of YesterYear onto the sidewalk. She smiles and nods, short silver curls bobbing.

  “Clifford’s not big enough for a Walmart, but we have three antique shops,” Amira says. “How is that possible?”

  “No idea. I’m just glad she didn’t recognize me.”

  That was not the case at the only real estate office in town, or at the office of the lawyer who handles probate . . . ​stuff. And my semi-infamous face has not been our only problem this afternoon.

  So far, not one single business owner or employee has been willing to go online and donate. The frozen yogurt shop on the corner came the closest, when the twenty-year-old behind the counter agreed to give the flyer to his boss.

  Amira slides the twenty-dollar bill from the owner of Yester-Year into the thin white envelope with the three other cash donations we’ve managed to obtain. “I think this gives us enough to have, like, one letter carved on her tombstone, so far.”

  Her voice fades into silence as she follows my focus to the police department, across the street and down one block, where my mother stands in front of the steps, giving a statement to another reporter and her cameraman. Which she would not be doing unless Chief Stoddard made her.

  “Does she tell you much about the investigation?” Amira asks.

  “Does your mom tell you much about physics and chemistry?”

  Amira rolls her eyes. “Yes. And about what a pain in the butt all her Chem I students are. But I bet your mother’s shoptalk is much more interesting.”

  “That’s one way to put it.” I pull my phone from my pocket and text Landry, to make sure she was able to get a ride home with Norah Weston and her sister.

  A minute later, the reply comes. Landry and Norah are making copycat Moose Munch to snack on when Fletcher Anderson shows up to work on their science project.

  “Okay. Cross the street and hit the flower shop, or stay on this side and brave the salon?” Amira turns to look through the glass front window of To Dye For.

  Nothing on earth could make me go into the flower shop after the owner and her daughter called me out on the national news. “Definitely the salon.”

  Amira looks doubtful, so I tug her toward the door. The second I pull it open, a wave of familiar sounds and scents washes over me, immersing me in the upbeat chaos of the salon where my mother started bringing Landry and me for haircuts the year we moved to Clifford. Because when she’d tried to give my sister a trim on her own, three-year-old Landry had tilted her head at the last second, giving herself a lopsided bob that made my mother’s eyes widen in guilt and horror.

  To Dye For has six salon chairs—three on each side of a single aisle running down the middle of the room. At the back are the shampoo basins and the staff room. Today, only four of those six chairs are occupied: the last two on the left and the first two on the right.

  Heads turn as we walk in, flat irons and round brushes going temporarily still. But then everyone goes back to what they were doing, and the uncomfortable weight of attention—a burden I’ve grown to dread over the past few days—fades.

  “Hey, girls! Just have a seat, and someone will be with you in a minute,” Renee, the owner, calls from the last salon station on the left, where she’s darkening the roots of a stern-looking woman in her fifties.

  She doesn’t seem to recognize me, and I’m grateful for the anonymity.

  I look at Amira, and when she shrugs, we find seats on the worn faux-leather couch. She sets her backpack on the floor at her feet and reaches for one of the outdated hairstyle magazines on a coffee table made of two repurposed chicken crates, painted black and topped with a rectangle of glass.

  Around here, “vintage” and “reclaimed” are just fancy words for “affordable.”

  I lean back and watch as a hair dryer, two pairs of scissors, and a dye brush dance in complicated patterns.

  The whine of the hair dryer finally dies, shocking us all with an abrupt moment of quiet. Which the woman in Renee’s chair promptly shatters, obviously unaware, at first, that she’s shouting.

  “—believe something like that could happen in a town like Clifford!”

  I know exactly what she’s talking about, of course. The glance Amira shoots me says that she knows too. We should leave. We should just get up and sneak out, so we can solicit donations from a business that isn’t a hotbed of small-town gossip.

  I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea.

  But I’m glued to my seat, both in fear of drawing attention to myself and because I want to hear what people are saying when they don’t know I’m listening.

  I shake my head at Amira and pick up a magazine, watching the salon over the top edge while I pretend to read. Steeling myself for the inevitable.

  “It’s a tragedy, to be sure,” the woman in the chair next to Renee’s client says, her focus glued to the mirror as her stylist trims her short gray curls.

  Renee’s fifty-something client nods dramatically, earning a scowl from poor Renee, who’s holding a brush full of dark hair dye at the ready. “Karen, unless you want me to color your nose hairs by mistake, you’re gonna have to hold still.”

  “Sorry, hon.” Then Karen shifts her focus, wit
hout moving her head, to the silver-haired woman getting a trim in the next chair. “It’s worse than a tragedy, Dana. It’s a crime. Even if that baby died from natural causes, it probably wouldn’t have if it had been born in a hospital. If the mother had gotten proper prenatal care.”

  “How do you know she didn’t?” another woman asks from across the aisle, spinning her chair around. The timer on her station counts down the minutes until someone will have to check her color to see if it’s ready to rinse.

  Karen shrugs into her mirror. “If the mother had been in the care of an obstetrician, the police would know who she was by now. I’m sure they’ve asked every doctor in town about any pregnant teenage patients.”

  “Pshht.” The woman across the aisle rolls her eyes. “They know who the mother is. It’s the girl who ‘found’ the baby.”

  She uses honest-to-god air quotes, and even though I haven’t done anything wrong, I find myself trying to melt into the couch cushions.

  Amira gives me a pleading look, which I ignore.

  “You know what they say,” the woman waiting out her dye timer says. “The guilty dog barks first. Or loudest. Or whatever.”

  “Well, if they know who she is, why haven’t they arrested her?” another of the stylists asks, and Amira nudges me with her foot. She nods toward the door, silently begging me to leave with her, but I shake my head. I need to hear this.

  This isn’t a bunch of anonymous assholes online. This isn’t a few idiot boys at school. These are adults. Tax-paying, mortgage-holding, grocery-buying adults who’re supposed to believe in concepts like “innocent until proven guilty.”

  “They’re not going to arrest her,” the woman with the timer says. “Her mother is that lady cop who got her husband off on all those drug charges last year.”

  Blood drains from my face, leaving me cold. My hands clench around the magazine I’m holding, and it trembles in my grip. I can feel Amira watching me, and suddenly it feels like a miracle that none of the other women have recognized me yet.

  “We don’t know that that’s true,” Renee pipes up, using the end of her long dye brush to separate another part of Karen’s hair to be colored. “Julie Bergen is one of my clients, and I can’t imagine her—”