Lie to Me

by Kaitlin Ward

  She scoots toward me, careful not to touch my sheets with her drying toes, and hugs me. “You are never a moron, Amelia. You’re a person who had a crush and did something awkward, which means you are the same as literally everyone on the planet who’s ever had a crush.”

  “That’s true I guess.” I squeeze her tight. “What would I do without you?”

  “Oh, you’d be totally lost. But same, you know. I’d be, like, an empty husk without you.” She lets me go. “You wanna talk about it at all?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not sure what to say. I have a crush on Grace, I guess, which feels super weird to say out loud.”

  “Well, if you’re going to have a crush, Grace is a pretty good choice.”

  “But it doesn’t matter now, right? I mean, there’s Liam.”

  “What would you do if she told you she was interested?”

  Sky never lets me off easy. She is an asker of hard questions. Ones I don’t want to think about, let alone answer. “I … Well, I wouldn’t break up with Liam, not now, unless there were, like, other factors. Plus, dating someone who’s been your friend for years is pretty fraught. I’d have to think very hard about if the risk was worth it. I would be so heartbroken to lose her altogether. Anyway, she’s not interested, so there’s that.”

  “True about the risk. And don’t get me wrong, I think Liam’s great for you, and I’m not trying to lead you in any direction. But transitioning with your brother from friends to people who make out was … easier than you’d think. Just saying.”

  “Message received. Now we better get to bed. I may not be going to school tomorrow, but you are.”

  “Psh, please. No way in hell I’m taking the bus. Besides, I want to be around when you get back from the police station. I already convinced my mom to call me in sick.”

  Sky isn’t exactly student of the year. School’s a thing she does because she has to, not because she enjoys it. School isn’t something her parents care about, either. Her dad is always spouting about how real men don’t need school because they have trades and don’t require it. I get it, and I know it comes from a place of defensiveness, but taking that attitude doesn’t seem any better to me than someone being elitist about having to go to the exact right college and become a CEO or something. Sky’s parents’ laxity about education has rubbed off on her. She doesn’t skip school much, but when she wants to, she meets absolutely zero resistance.

  After a few more minutes, I head to the bathroom at the end of the hall to brush my teeth. As I pass by the top of the stairs, I pause because I hear Mom’s voice, and she sounds upset. I creep partway down the stairs as quietly as possible and listen.

  “Did you ever think, when Jenna and I were kids—did it ever even remotely cross your mind to worry about the possibility of someone trying to kill one of us?”

  She pauses to listen, and I realize with a jolt in my stomach that she’s talking to Gram. My mom is getting advice from her mom, about me. I feel tremendously guilty, even knowing that none of this is my fault.

  “I know it can happen anywhere but I— We live here so we don’t have to worry about this stuff so much. I’ve worked so hard raising them to be good kids and they are, I just—”

  She listens again. The silence is almost worse than listening to her speaking in a ragged-edged voice.

  “You’re right. No, they’re both upstairs. I don’t want her to know I’m upset, obviously. She’s so worried, and I don’t want to make it worse. But how do I even— I can’t protect my kid, Mom. It’s a pretty bad feeling. I don’t want to stifle her, but right now I don’t even want her to leave this house ever again. I can’t— She’s not safe out there and there’s nothing I can do to protect her.”

  Her voice breaks, and I don’t want to listen to it anymore. I edge back up the stairs as fast as I can and close myself into the bathroom, breathing deep to stave off tears. Mom’s words hit on what upsets me most about all this: the shattered illusion of safety. Bad things have happened here. Bad things happen everywhere. But it’s infrequent. That’s a big part of the draw of our tiny little town. Roots run deep, and people are here for one another when it counts. But no one can save me from this. We can’t have a dance or a spaghetti dinner or a firemen’s breakfast to raise money for my cause. I can’t be protected, because no one knows who to protect me from.

  There’s someone in this area who wants to see girls dead. Girls who have nothing in common beyond the fact that we’re teenage girls. Someone who wanted me to let it go. But I can’t, not now. I won’t.

  Because I will not be next.

  The police station makes me sweaty. I feel like I’m in trouble even though I know it’s super the opposite. Mom and Dad both came with me. I don’t usually mind that Dad’s not home a lot. It’s our family’s normal, and it makes the time when he’s there more special. But with all this going on, I’ve been sort of wishing he didn’t have to go back out on the road. It’s not that there’s anything he can do that Mom can’t, but two parents feel safer than one, I guess.

  Liam texted me a little while ago, a message of support and a photoshopped GIF of an ant lifting weights, which made me laugh. I also got a Where r uuuuu? text from Grace, who’s in my first-period class. I asked Sky not to fill anyone in on what’s up. I want to do it later, when I’m not feeling so tired and raw and frightened. I felt bad lying to Grace, but I told her I was sick and then put my phone away and haven’t looked at it since.

  They don’t make us wait around; we go directly into the office of Detective Heather Cheney, the woman who agreed to speak with us. It’s a bland, standard-looking office, but there are a lot of plants and pictures of someone who I assume is her daughter, and next to her computer monitor there’s a cute stuffed chicken.

  “So you had an accident a couple of months ago and were hospitalized with various injuries, is that right?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “And this happened behind the Comerford Dam? What were you doing over there? Walk me through the whole thing.”

  We’re jumping right into it, I guess. I glance at Mom and Dad, both of whom smile encouragingly. Dad squeezes my hand.

  And I recount everything I can remember. Driving down to the river because it’s one of my favorite places to go for walks with Sky and because she wanted to tell me something important. Sitting on the guardrail, watching water thunder out the back of the dam. I get brave and tell her the three things I remember: the snap of my necklace chain, the feeling of a push on my shoulder, and the echo of laughter as I tumbled.

  She digs into all of it. What was the thing Sky wanted to tell me? Had we gotten into any fights recently? Did I see anyone or anything strange? What makes me think it’s connected to the other girls? Do I know them or their brothers? Does my brother know them or their brothers? How is my relationship with Hunter? With my other friends? Every detail about Mr. Omerton and the picture I “allegedly” saw in his house. The text I received that said to let it go. On and on, and then finally: “Is it okay if I talk to you alone for a minute?”

  My throat goes dry. I don’t want Mom and Dad to leave, but I’m a big girl. I can do this. “Yeah. It’s fine.”

  She waits patiently while Mom and Dad exit the room and shut the door.

  “Do you feel safe at home?” she asks. “Please remember to be honest, okay? I’m here to help.”

  I gaze levelly at her. “Are you asking if someone in my home might have tried to kill me?”

  “No. I’m asking if you feel safe at home.”

  “Of course I do. Why would my parents have come with me to a police station if they were secretly hurting me?”

  She smiles sadly. “Honey, it happens so much more often than you’d think.”

  I frown. “Well, that’s terrible.”

  “Yes, it is. I think that’s all I need for now. If I think of anything I forgot to ask, or if there are any developments you and your family should be let in on, I will be in contact. Okay?”

&n
bsp; I thank her and leave, feeling kind of detached from reality. Mom and Dad take me to the grocery store to pick out whatever candy and ice cream my heart desires, and although it makes me feel like a little kid again, I’m also enjoying this time with them. I know they only want to distract me, but they’re laughing, joking around with me, and it makes me feel less heavy than I felt talking to that detective in the police station. We go to the cash register with a huge package of gummy worms and two quarts of ice cream, and Mom says, “We also feed her vegetables, I swear,” to the cashier, who looks unimpressed.

  On the car ride home, I start thinking about things again. I think about everything I said to the detective, and I think about Mom crying on the phone with Gram.

  “Thanks for taking me seriously about this stuff,” I blurt out.

  Mom glances in the rearview, and Dad turns in the passenger seat to face me. “Of course,” he says. “We’ll always take you seriously.”

  My throat feels tight. I know it’s true, but hearing it really means something.

  “I know you guys are worried about me now, but I … Are you going to, like, not want me to go places anymore?”

  A brief silence, then Mom says, “We’re not going to put you under house arrest, Amelia. We kind of can’t, and it’s not fair to you. Just promise you’ll be careful, all right? Beyond careful. And let us know where you’re going and when. If something seems like a bad idea, I’ll tell you. Otherwise … we have to be business as usual. We can’t keep you trapped in a glass tower, much as I wish we could.”

  “That is too bad,” I say lightly. “Because a glass tower sounds fun and terrifying all at once.”

  Mom smiles at me in the rearview.

  “One last time, though, I want to reiterate what Dad said: We will always be on your side. Don’t be afraid to tell us something because you think we won’t take it seriously. We will. We always, always will.”

  This is not the first time my parents have told me these words. Since I was a small child first learning about bodies and consent in its most basic form, they’ve been telling me this. And I’ve always believed them. But I never thought there would come a time when I had to talk to them about something so serious as this. It was scarier to do, in reality.

  But now that it’s over, I wish I’d said something so much sooner.

  School over the next couple of weeks is surreal. Everyone knows, somehow, that I spoke with the police. I would blame the small-town thing for this if I could, but with students from so many surrounding areas filtering into this one high school, it’s just not that small. There are whispers everywhere: that Maria and Lydia were killed, that someone tried to do the same to me. I’m getting even more attention than before, and a different kind of attention. Before, I was a girl who survived what people thought was a dumb accident. Now, I’m a girl who survived a murder attempt. I’m cool, suddenly. I’m fascinating.

  I hate it.

  I have a new level of empathy for the insects I trap and observe in my little bug sanctuary. Caged and surrounded by a million magnifying glasses, stared at openly while people try to figure out how I work. Why someone would try to hurt me. Jealousy? Hate? Random coincidence? All questions I’ve been trying to answer for weeks, with zero success whatsoever.

  I’m late for AP Biology because I get trapped in the bathroom by a bunch of sophomore girls I don’t even know who have a million invasive questions about my life. There’s practically no one around as I sprint out of the English building, down the sidewalk, and across the street to the science building. It’s funny, really, because I’ve grown to hate having other people around me, but solitude is terrifying, too. I’m in a no-win situation that I’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve.

  I’m almost to my classroom when I hear it, coming from a clover-shaped cluster of lockers at the center of the building’s main floor.

  Someone’s crying.

  I should ignore it and go to class, but I’ve gotten soft. So instead, I investigate. I almost change my mind when I see who it is: Steve Lugen. Sitting alone with his back against the lockers and his knees pulled to his chest. Don’t get me wrong; I have absolutely no problem with Steve. I just don’t know what to say to him, and I feel like I probably should have said something a long while ago.

  But it’s too late to escape. He sees me, stiffens, and scrambles to his feet.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I— Are you okay?”

  “I’m great, obviously,” he snaps. “Soon to be even better when you tell the whole school you saw me crying.”

  “Why would I tell anyone that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you wouldn’t. But everyone seems to think my whole life is their business these days, so.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  His defensiveness melts away. “You too, huh?”

  “Well, I am the Girl Who Lived.”

  I hope he gets my Harry Potter reference, otherwise that probably comes off flippant and jerkish. His half-hearted smile tells me that he understands.

  “Are you a good person?” he asks.

  I’m taken completely off guard. “I—I guess? I don’t know. I try to be.”

  “Maria was a really good person, you know. I’m not. I mean, I’m not evil or anything like that, but I’m just … I’m not that nice to people. Maria was nice to everyone. It seems like— Why her? It doesn’t seem fair, and I hope that you—”

  “I would rather you just don’t finish that sentence,” I interrupt. “I came over here because I heard crying and I wanted to make sure whoever it was was okay. This whole living and dying thing, it’s not a competition of merit. Otherwise, Maria would be here today and our attacker would not. I’m sorry that she was killed, so unbelievably sorry, but I’m not going to tell you I wish I’d died in her place. I’m not going to try to prove to you that I deserve to be here right now, because there’s nothing to prove.”

  I start to turn away, but I’ve made him angry now, and he blocks me off. “You think you’re so great, don’t you? Just because you’re smart and your brother’s good at soccer and your family’s some kind of Maple Hill royalty, you think you deserve more than everybody else.”

  “I’m sorry, are you kidding me?”

  It’s not the first time I’ve heard this Maple Hill royalty crap or some variation thereof. Not always directed at me. It happens a lot in all the towns around here, where people assume that other families are more highly regarded than theirs are, and it’s almost never true. There are a few families who have been rooted in Maple Hill since the beginning of time, and I’m not related to any of them. But if your family’s at all involved in town politics—which mine is—people love to assume it means they think they’re better than everyone else. It’s stupid. If everyone took that attitude and no one got involved, nothing would be taken care of. Our town wouldn’t be able to function. And most important of all: Steve lives in Hen Falls. His family has been there for generations. The church was so packed for Maria’s funeral, they had to ask tons of people to stay outside because otherwise it would break fire code.

  So, basically, everything he just said is completely hypocritical.

  “Don’t pretend you came over here to do anything but parade yourself in front of my face.”

  “Are you serious? What is wrong with you?” Tears burn hot behind my eyes, and it takes everything I’ve got to hold them in, because I don’t want him to see me visibly upset. I know why he’s taking this out on me, but I’m not strong enough to let myself be his punching bag. I’m still too scared, still too close to this whole situation.

  “Get out of here,” says a voice behind me.

  It’s Tera, glaring daggers at Steve. Tera’s a scary girl, honestly. She knows how to wear a scowl, and she’s not afraid to throw a punch.

  For a second, it seems like Steve is considering yelling at her, too, but instead he shoves past me and storms off.

  “You okay?” Tera asks, reaching for my arm.

  That’s when
I realize I’m shaking pretty badly. “I’m fine. He’s just upset, and I shouldn’t have even tried to talk to him at all. I heard crying and I didn’t know it was him …” I adjust my glasses, rake my fingers through my hair. “Where did you come from?”

  “Mrs. Marecaux sent me,” she says. “Since she knows we’re friends and she thought it was unusual that you weren’t in class.”

  “And what, exactly, was her plan for if you found me murdered in a bathroom?”

  Tera narrows her eyes, hands on her hips. “Not super funny, you know.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. It’s just laugh or cry, honestly.”

  She wraps her arms around me, and I lean my head against her shoulder.

  “Don’t let Steve get to you too much, okay? Roman told me he’s always been a little jerk. I’m sure Liam would say the same—I know they’ve talked about it. Just because there’s reason for him to be upset now doesn’t give him the right to talk to you like that. And he’s only thinking of all this from his own perspective. He’s not thinking about what it must feel like to be you and to still be scared.”

  “I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, though,” I tell her. “Because I do get it. I totally get it. If Hunter died and someone else lived through the same thing … I would know it wasn’t their fault, but I’m pretty sure I’d hate them anyway.”

  “You’re a really nice, good person, Amelia, and I respect the hell out of that.” Tera squeezes me. “But you know what? Screw Steve. I only heard the tail end of that, but he’s garbage to me now.”

  That makes me laugh. Tera’s a good friend. Loyal to the core.

  I am trying to give Steve the benefit of the doubt, but also, he’s not totally wrong about me. It’s horrid to hold yourself up against someone else, but if I hold myself up against Maria or Lydia, I easily come in third. I’m not a bad person and I’m happy with who I am, but I can be real petty at times. I kind of like it when someone I dislike doesn’t get their way. I like it when Mom and Aunt Jenna talk about other adults in town, because I enjoy hearing the gossip.