“You’re such a sweet, trusting soul.” Karen smiles at her in the mirror. “But the truth is that we never know who anyone is until they show us their true colors. I remember that mess last year. It was right before he killed himself, wasn’t it?”
My dad didn’t kill himself.
“What a waste,” the woman with the timer says.
“Why? What happened?” the stylist closest to me asks. She must be new in town. “I don’t know this story.”
The woman with the timer leans back in her chair and crosses her legs. “Kyle Bergen was a couple of years ahead of me in school. Everyone knew his family. Lived in a single-wide, out on the edge of town. Uncle in prison. Mother cleaning houses, off the books. Dad drawing disability. Kyle got in trouble his senior year—no surprise—and the judge gave him two options. Jail, or the army. Kyle chose the army.”
She shrugs, as if these words spilling from her mouth don’t carry any more weight than the breath used to speak them. As if they aren’t bullets fired straight into my soul.
“Kyle showed up again ten years later with a bunch of medals, a pretty wife, and three little kids. Army suited him, I guess. He looked good. Used his VA loan to buy a house in town and went to work for the fire department. For a while, it looked like he really had his shit together. Like he might pull the Bergen name out of the mud.” Another casual shrug. “But blood will out.”
I squint at her over the edge of a magazine at the mercy of my rage-filled grip. Trying to decide if I know her. If she’s telling the truth. The parts of her story that I recognize are true. Ten years in the army. Pretty wife. Three kids. A chest full of medals. And yes, my grandmother lives in a trailer on the edge of town, which, these days, is falling apart around her. My grandfather died of liver failure when I was a kid, though, and that great-uncle died in prison.
But I’ve never heard about any trouble my father had in high school. I never heard that he was basically forced into the army. The father I remember loved the army. The CE battalion. And every single star and bar on the American flag.
“Blood will out,” Karen echoes solemnly. “Which explains the pregnant teenage daughter, even if she didn’t kill that poor baby.”
My skin prickles, the hairs on my arms standing up like soldiers ready to march.
“The one I feel sorry for is the mother,” the stylist waiting on the timer says as she sinks into one of the empty client chairs. “The wife, I mean. The cop. She’s not from around here, and she probably didn’t know what she’d married into until Kyle dragged her back to Clifford. Unless she really is a crooked cop.”
Renee sighs, her dye brush hovering over the part in Karen’s hair. “Ladies, I know Julie Bergen, and—”
The back door opens, letting in a gust of frigid air, and the woman who steps inside carrying a cardboard drink carrier full of Styrofoam Sonic cups beams at me across the entire length of the salon. Which is when I realize, too late, that the magazine I’ve been holding up as part shield, part disguise has slowly lowered until my face is visible.
I can feel disaster coming. I can see it, in the form of Mindy Carter, weaving toward me from the rear of the long, narrow salon, dodging purses like land mines on the floor, twisting her generous hips this way and that to avoid footrests and elbows jutting into the aisle.
“Beckett Bergen!” Mindy calls as she sets the drink carrier on the front counter, blessing me with a friendly, red-lipped smile.
The salon stills into a riotous silence. Heads turn my way. A couple of the women look away immediately, obviously embarrassed. Like Renee. Others stare at me boldly, and the weight of their judgment pins me to the couch cushion.
I don’t know what to do. But Mindy, bless her heart, is oblivious to the new tension.
“Tell me you’re here for a trim. I have someone scheduled for twenty minutes from now, but I could push that back a little and work you in.”
She leans on the leather-bound appointment book with her dimpled elbows. Mindy’s thick, shoulder-length ringlets are dark green today, which sets off the green flecks in her blue eyes. Those ringlets bounce with every move of her head. I’ve always been jealous of her curls, and their tendency to change color.
The employees at To Dye For are supposed to wear all black, so that hair color accidents don’t ruin their work wardrobe. But Mindy’s smock-like black top is dotted with bright red pairs of stemmed cherries, and that colorful rebellion is what I love most about her.
That, and her hair.
“I wish I could.” I haven’t had a haircut in ages, and my ends are definitely split. But even if I had the time and money for a haircut, at the moment, I wouldn’t spend it here. Not ever again.
“Oh come on, darlin’! I haven’t seen you since . . .”
Her smile dies when she remembers the last time we saw each other. At my father’s funeral.
“How’s your mom?”
“She’s fine,” I say into the tense silence.
Fact-Check Rating: Unclear.
My mother wouldn’t complain about being warm if she were drenched in gasoline and set on fire.
“We’re actually here for the Key Club today.” I set my magazine on the coffee table and stand, aware that every gaze in this place is trained on me as Amira and I approach the counter. “This is Amira Bhatt.”
“Hi!” Mindy reaches across the counter to touch a strand of Amira’s glossy black hair, letting the silken strands trail through her fingers. “I’d love to get ahold of your hair, hon.”
“Definitely,” Amira tells her. “Next time. Today we’re soliciting donations from local businesses for a fund to provide a proper burial for Lullaby Doe. The baby—”
“Oh, I know!” Mindy temples her hands over her mouth, her eyes suddenly wide and sad. “It’s all over the news. Hell, it’s all anyone’s talked about in here for days now.”
As if her own words have finally clued her in, Mindy turns to find the other women staring at us, curling irons and dye brushes frozen in action, as if someone’s pressed the pause button on the entire salon.
Mindy spins back to me, sympathy swimming in her gaze. “A week ago, I was the only one here on Twitter, but now all the stylists have accounts, so they can follow the Crimson Cryer,” Mindy whispers as she leans toward me over the counter. “But I know it’s bullshit, what they’re saying about you.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot of bullshit being shoveled around town lately.” I speak at full volume.
“It’s true that you found her, though? In the locker room?” Mindy arches her dark, dramatically plucked brows at me, and I can practically feel ears perking up all over the room.
“Yes. But I’m not supposed to talk about it, because the police are still investigating.”
Someone heaves a skeptical huff from down the single aisle of salon chairs, but I can’t tell who it was.
Mindy shakes her head, green ringlets bobbing. “So sad, about that poor baby. And its mother,” she adds. “Whoever she is, I don’t believe she would have left the poor thing there all alone if she had any other choice. My thoughts are with her.”
They’re kind words, but they sting upon impact, for the simple fact that they were aimed at me. Turns out that as supportive as she is, Mindy does believe some of the bullshit she’s been reading about me.
“Yes. It’s sad,” Amira agrees, when I can’t seem to find words. “And if we can’t raise eight thousand dollars, the county is going to cremate Lullaby Doe and bury her in an unmarked grave in the paupers’ lot.”
“Well, that’s just wrong.” Mindy frowns. “Poor baby ought to at least have a headstone.”
“Exactly. We’re really trying to rally the community. So, do you think the salon would be willing to donate?” Amira pulls another flyer from her backpack and sets it on the counter in front of Mindy.
“Well, that’s up to Renee.” Mindy turns to the bleached-blond owner of the salon, who’s staring hard at Karen’s freshly dyed roots. “Renee! These girls have c
ome to ask for a donation.”
“What for?” Renee darts a quick glance at me before she turns back to her customer.
Coward.
“We’re here representing the Key Club.” Amira holds up one of her flyers for the entire room to see. “To give Lullaby Doe a proper burial. You can donate as an individual, or on behalf of any business you own. I’ll leave some flyers here on the counter. They have instructions for how to go online and—”
“The nerve,” someone mumbles, and even at a whisper, the words slice right through Amira’s prepared pitch.
“Dana . . . ,” someone else scolds.
The gray-haired woman in the chair next to Karen shrugs. “I’m sorry, but we were all thinking it. Most online fundraisers are scams, and this one’s exploiting a dead child and preying on the generous hearts of the people of Clifford.”
By the girl who may or may not have killed the child in question. She doesn’t have to say that part out loud for everyone to hear it.
“It’s not a scam,” I say through clenched teeth. “It’s a GoFundMe. There are guarantees in place to make sure the money goes where we say it will.”
“And we’re just supposed to take your word for that?” Dana waves her stylist back and spins in her chair to face me.
“Dana . . .” Renee drops her dye brush into the bowl on her tray.
“This is still America,” Dana snaps at her. “And I’m free to say my piece.”
She turns back to me, and my entire existence narrows into the tunnel centering this hateful old woman in my sight. I should leave. I should just turn around and march out the door. Yet I am paralyzed.
“You killed that baby,” she snaps, sparks of her hatred flying like spittle to sizzle on the floor. “If you didn’t kill her outright, then you killed her through neglect in the womb. Then you just abandoned her like garbage, and now you expect the good citizens of Clifford to pay for your mistake. To provide for a child you didn’t care enough about to take to the damn hospital. To keep alive. Assuming that’s really what the money’s even for.”
My skin buzzes, flies crawling over the rotting corpse of my dignity.
I can’t make my voice work. This is . . . This is . . .
“Utter crap,” Amira snaps. “Not a word of that is true.” She slams the flyers down on the countertop. “If any of you have a conscience, you can get instructions for how to donate to give an innocent baby a decent funeral right here. The rest of you can—”
Her mouth snaps shut, holding back profanity at the last second, as a bell hanging over the front door rings behind me.
“Fuck off,” I finish for her. “The rest of you can fuck off.”
“Well!” Dana gasps, glancing around at the other ladies as if to drive home her point that I’ve insulted her. That I am Trashy McTrasherson, from a long line of Trashersons.
That blood will out.
Then her gaze focuses on a point over my shoulder, and I get the prickly feeling that whoever’s just come in is staring at me.
“Beckett Bergen?” a new voice says, and I spin around to find a camera in my face held by a heavyset man in sagging jeans, with a massive headset over his ears.
“Are you Beckett Bergen?” the woman beside him repeats, holding a microphone inches from my face. She’s wearing a pale blouse and a bright red skirt, with some kind of laminated badge hanging around her neck. “Could we get a word on camera for WBBJ in Jackson?”
But it’s clear, since they came in right before I finished Amira’s sentence, that they’ve already gotten several words from me. Naturally, 27 percent of those words were expletives.
“She’s a minor,” Mindy snaps, rounding the counter with her hands waving in front of her. “Get out of here. And turn that camera off!”
She shoos the reporter and her cameraman out onto the sidewalk. Then Mindy turns to me, and I can see that her lips are moving. I can hear syllables coming from her mouth, but I can’t process them because they sound . . . stretched. Warped. As if she’s saying them in slow motion.
Distantly, I’m aware that everyone in the salon is staring at me again, and that a timer is going off. Someone’s color is ready to be rinsed.
“Beckett!”
Amira has her hands on my shoulders, and she’s talking right into my face, trying to tell me something about a door. But I can’t focus on her either. All I can think about is how the walls seem to be closing in on me, the faces zooming in until they look like reflections in a carnival mirror.
“I have to go,” I mumble. Then I turn and shove my way through the door and onto the sidewalk.
Outside, cold air hits me like a slap to the face, shocking me back to reality—just in time for the cameraman to aim his lens at me again. I’ve run right into the reporter. Which is when I realize that Amira was telling me to go out the back door.
“Beckett, is it true that you gave birth to the Clifford baby, known online as Lullaby Doe?” The reporter goes straight for the big questions this time.
I push past her and take off down the sidewalk as fast as I can run, and for several steps, she keeps up.
“Beckett! Did you kill your baby? Are you aware that the Crimson Cryer account tweeted in defense of you? Do you know who the Cryer is?”
But the reporter’s wearing heels and her cameraman is out of shape. They can’t follow me for long.
I lose them when I turn the corner, and I’ve gone two more blocks before I realize I’m crying. That tears are starting to freeze on my eyelashes, even as they scald my cheeks.
I swipe them away and keep running.
Three blocks later, downtown turns into narrow residential streets full of one-story houses built in the sixties. Some of them have been kept up, but most have missing shingles and paint peeling from wooden siding. Most of the low, shallowly pitched roofs are outlined by a single string of Christmas lights, already lit up, though it won’t be dark for another hour.
Drifts of dead oak leaves gather in the shadows of cracked concrete porches, most of which sit just a few inches above the ground. There are no basements. No attics. Life happens right here on the ground.
This neighborhood isn’t mine, but it might as well be. In Clifford, there’s one “good” neighborhood: Briarwood, where the local dentists and doctors live. Those houses are two stories tall, and they have attached, two-car garages. A few of them have in-ground pools.
There are also several trailer parks, where single-wides are lined up at an angle from a central gravel through-way. None of those trailers are new. In fact, in my entire life, I’ve never seen a new single-wide. I’m not even sure they’re still making them. But I know where all the old ones have wound up.
Clifford also has an assortment of larger trailers—double-wides with bricked-up foundations, permanently installed on individual lots around the edges of town, or out in the country.
But everything that isn’t Briarwood or a trailer is basically my neighborhood, cloned all over town. One-story houses shaded by old-growth oak trees, connected by cracked sidewalks. Some of the yards are neatly mowed. Some of the backyards have trampolines or above-ground pools. Some of the front doors have screens. Just like my neighborhood.
But this is not my neighborhood.
A fissure in the sidewalk catches the toe of my right shoe as I run, and I go down hard, skinning the heels of both hands.
“Damn it,” I curse as I sit up, inspecting the new tear in my jeans, over my right knee. Blowing on the raw, red skin to ease the burn.
At least the camera didn’t catch my wipeout.
A car rounds the corner behind me, and I turn to find Amira rolling slowly down the street in her mother’s sedan. She’s clearly looking for me, but she doesn’t see me until I push myself to my feet.
She stops at the curb, and I get in.
“Hey,” she says as I buckle my seat belt. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry for bolting.”
She shrugs. “You’re lucky I found you. I might no
t have, if that reporter hadn’t told me which way you turned.”
“So the devil does have a heart?”
Amira gives me a sad smile. “She’s just doing her job.”
I blink at her as she pulls away from the curb.
“You’re too nice. Clearly I don’t have that problem. Neither do those gossiping bitches at the salon. They don’t know a damn thing about me or my family. My father’s never been arrested. My mother would never break the law.”
I stare out the window, watching houses slide past in a kaleidoscope of color from the Christmas lights. Amira puts her blinker on and turns right, heading toward the high school, where I left my car, and when I look at her, I find her staring straight through the windshield, both hands clutching the wheel.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Amira. What?”
“Nothing.” She drums her fingers on the steering wheel, refusing to look at me.
“Just spit it out.” She’s always been terrible at keeping secrets.
“Fine.” Amira glances at me, then she quickly turns back to the road. “But don’t get mad at me.”
“I’m not going to get mad at you.”
She sucks in a deep breath. Then she steals another brief glance at me. “Your dad has been arrested. Back when he was in high school. I know that much is true, because my mom went to school with him too.”
NINE
As we turn down Elm Street, plastic candy canes blow in the wind where they’re suspended from light posts.
“Your mom went to high school with my dad?”
Maybe I knew that, once upon a time. Maybe my dad told me that, back when Amira and I first became friends in the third grade. Maybe that fact got buried beneath the avalanche of more important things on my mind when I found my father’s body on the living room floor, in a puddle of vomit.
But I don’t think so. I don’t think my dad ever talked about high school. About friends he had as a teenager.
And for the first time, I wonder why.
Every Single Lie Page 10
