We Were Liars

by E. Lockhart

  Gat remained standing. He had to bend his head beneath the attic’s slanted roof.

  “Watch yourself, young man,” said Granddad, sharp and sudden.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Your head. You could get hurt.”

  “You’re right,” said Gat. “You’re right, I could get hurt.”

  “So watch yourself,” Granddad repeated.

  Gat turned and went down the stairs without another word.

  Granddad and I sat in silence for a moment.

  “He likes to read,” I said eventually. “I thought he might want some of Dad’s books.”

  “You are very dear to me, Cady,” said Granddad, patting my shoulder. “My first grandchild.”

  “I love you, too, Granddad.”

  “Remember how I took you to a baseball game? You were only four.”

  “Sure.”

  “You had never had Cracker Jack,” said Granddad.

  “I know. You bought two boxes.”

  “I had to put you on my lap so you could see. You remember that, Cady?”

  I did.

  “Tell me.”

  I knew the kind of answer Granddad wanted me to give. It was a request he made quite often. He loved retelling key moments in Sinclair family history, enlarging their importance. He was always asking what something meant to you, and you were supposed to come back with details. Images. Maybe a lesson learned.

  Usually, I adored telling these stories and hearing them told. The legendary Sinclairs, what fun we’d had, how beautiful we were. But that day, I didn’t want to.

  “It was your first baseball game,” Granddad prompted. “Afterward I bought you a red plastic bat. You practiced your swing on the lawn of the Boston house.”

  Did Granddad know what he’d interrupted? Would he care if he did know?

  When would I see Gat again?

  Would he break up with Raquel?

  What would happen between us?

  “You wanted to make Cracker Jack at home,” Granddad went on, though he knew I knew the story. “And Penny helped you make it. But you cried when there weren’t any red and white boxes to put it in. Do you remember that?”

  “Yes, Granddad,” I said, giving in. “You went all the way back to the ballpark that same day and bought two more boxes of Cracker Jack. You ate them on the drive home, just so you could give me the boxes. I remember.”

  Satisfied, he stood up and we left the attic together. Granddad was shaky going downstairs, so he put his hand on my shoulder.

  I found Gat on the perimeter path and ran to where he stood, looking out at the water. The wind was coming hard and my hair flew in my eyes. When I kissed him, his lips were salty.

  11

  Granny Tipper died of heart failure eight months before summer fifteen on Beechwood. She was a stunning woman, even when she was old. White hair, pink cheeks; tall and angular. She’s the one who made Mummy love dogs so much. She always had at least two and sometimes four golden retrievers when her girls were little, all the way until she died.

  She was quick to judge and played favorites, but she was also warm. If you got up early on Beechwood, back when we were small, you could go to Clairmont and wake Gran. She’d have muffin batter sitting in the fridge, and would pour it into tins and let you eat as many warm muffins as you wanted, before the rest of the island woke up. She’d take us berry picking and help us make pie or something she called a slump that we’d eat that night.

  One of her charity projects was a benefit party each year for the Farm Institute on Martha’s Vineyard. We used to all go. It was outdoors, in beautiful white tents. The littles would run around wearing party clothes and no shoes. Johnny, Mirren, Gat, and I snuck glasses of wine and felt giddy and silly. Gran danced with Johnny and then my dad, then with Granddad, holding the edge of her skirt with one hand. I used to have a photograph of Gran from one of those benefit parties. She wore an evening gown and held a piglet.

  Summer fifteen on Beechwood, Granny Tipper was gone. Clairmont felt empty.

  The house is a three-story gray Victorian. There is a turret up top and a wraparound porch. Inside, it is full of original New Yorker cartoons, family photos, embroidered pillows, small statues, ivory paperweights, taxidermied fish on plaques. Everywhere, everywhere, are beautiful objects collected by Tipper and Granddad. On the lawn is an enormous picnic table, big enough to seat sixteen, and a ways off from that, a tire swing hangs from a massive magnolia tree.

  Gran used to bustle in the kitchen and plan outings. She made quilts in her craft room, and the hum of the sewing machine could be heard throughout the downstairs. She bossed the groundskeepers in her gardening gloves and blue jeans.

  Now the house was quiet. No cookbooks left open on the counter, no classical music on the kitchen sound system. But it was still Gran’s favorite soap in all the soap dishes. Those were her plants growing in the garden. Her wooden spoons, her cloth napkins.

  One day, when no one else was around, I went into the craft room at the back of the ground floor. I touched Gran’s collection of fabrics, the shiny bright buttons, the colored threads.

  My head and shoulders melted first, followed by my hips and knees. Before long I was a puddle, soaking into the pretty cotton prints. I drenched the quilt she never finished, rusted the metal parts of her sewing machine. I was pure liquid loss, then, for an hour or two. My grandmother, my grandmother. Gone forever, though I could smell her Chanel perfume on the fabrics.

  Mummy found me.

  She made me act normal. Because I was. Because I could. She told me to breathe and sit up.

  And I did what she asked. Again.

  Mummy was worried about Granddad. He was shaky on his feet with Gran gone, holding on to chairs and tables to keep his balance. He was the head of the family. She didn’t want him destabilized. She wanted him to know his children and grandchildren were still around him, strong and merry as ever. It was important, she said; it was kind; it was best. Don’t cause distress, she said. Don’t remind people of a loss. “Do you understand, Cady? Silence is a protective coating over pain.”

  I understood, and I managed to erase Granny Tipper from conversation, the same way I had erased my father. Not happily, but thoroughly. At meals with the aunts, on the boat with Granddad, even alone with Mummy—I behaved as if those two critical people had never existed. The rest of the Sinclairs did the same. When we were all together, people kept their smiles wide. We had done the same when Bess left Uncle Brody, the same when Uncle Jonathan left Carrie, the same when Gran’s dog Peppermill died of cancer.

  Gat never got it, though. He’d mention my father offhandedly— quite a lot, actually. Dad had found Gat both a decent chess opponent and a willing audience for his boring stories about military history, so they’d spent some time together. “Remember when your father caught that big crab in a bucket?” Gat would say. Or to Mummy: “Last year Sam told me there’s a fly-fishing kit in the boathouse; do you know where it is?”

  Dinner conversation stopped sharply when he’d mention Gran. Once Gat said, “I miss the way she’d stand at the foot of the table and serve out dessert, don’t you? It was so Tipper.” Johnny had to start talking loudly about Wimbledon until the dismay faded from our family’s faces.

  Every time Gat said these things, so casual and truthful, so oblivious—my veins opened. My wrists split. I bled down my palms. I went light-headed. I’d stagger from the table or collapse in quiet shameful agony, hoping no one in the family would notice. Especially not Mummy.

  Gat almost always saw, though. When blood dripped on my bare feet or poured over the book I was reading, he was kind. He wrapped my wrists in soft white gauze and asked me questions about what had happened. He asked about Dad and about Gran—as if talking about something could make it better. As if wounds needed attention.

  He was a stranger in our family, even a
fter all those years.

  When I wasn’t bleeding, and when Mirren and Johnny were snorkeling or wrangling the littles, or when everyone lay on couches watching movies on the Clairmont flat-screen, Gat and I hid away. We sat on the tire swing at midnight, our arms and legs wrapped around each other, lips warm against cool night skin. In the mornings we’d sneak laughing down to the Clairmont basement, which was lined with wine bottles and encyclopedias. There we kissed and marveled at one another’s existence, feeling secret and lucky. Some days he wrote me notes and left them with small presents under my pillow.

  Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you.

  Also, here is a green toothbrush tied in a ribbon.

  It expresses my feelings inadequately.

  Better than chocolate, being with you last night.

  Silly me, I thought that nothing was better than chocolate.

  In a profound, symbolic gesture, I am giving you this bar of Vosges I got when we all went to Edgartown. You can eat it, or just sit next to it and feel superior.

  I didn’t write back, but I drew Gat silly crayon drawings of the two of us. Stick figures waving from in front of the Colosseum, the Eiffel Tower, on top of a mountain, on the back of a dragon. He stuck them up over his bed.

  He touched me whenever he could. Beneath the table at dinner, in the kitchen the moment it was empty. Covertly, hilariously, behind Granddad’s back while he drove the motorboat. I felt no barrier between us. As long as no one was looking, I ran my fingers along Gat’s cheekbones, down his back. I reached for his hand, pressed my thumb against his wrist, and felt the blood going through his veins.

  12

  One night, late July of summer fifteen, I went swimming at the tiny beach. Alone.

  Where were Gat, Johnny, and Mirren?

  I don’t really know.

  We had been playing a lot of Scrabble at Red Gate. They were probably there. Or they could have been at Clairmont, listening to the aunts argue and eating beach plum jam on water crackers.

  In any case, I went into the water wearing a camisole, bra, and underwear. Apparently I walked down to the beach wearing nothing more. We never found any of my clothes on the sand. No towel, either.

  Why?

  Again, I don’t really know.

  I must have swum out far. There are big rocks in off the shore, craggy and black; they always look villainous in the dark of the evening.I must have had my face in the water and then hit my head on one of these rocks.

  Like I said, I don’t know.

  I remember only this: I plunged down into this ocean,

  down to rocky rocky bottom, and

  I could see the base of Beechwood Island and

  my arms and legs felt numb but my fingers were cold. Slices of seaweed went past as I fell.

  Mummy found me on the sand, curled into a ball and half underwater. I was shivering uncontrollably. Adults wrapped me in blankets. They tried to get me warm at Cuddledown. They fed me tea and gave me clothes, but when I didn’t talk or stop shivering, they brought me to a hospital on Martha’s Vineyard, where I stayed for several days as the doctors ran tests. Hypothermia, respiratory problems, and most likely some kind of head injury, though the brain scans turned up nothing.

  Mummy stayed by my side, got a hotel room. I remember the sad, gray faces of Aunt Carrie, Aunt Bess, and Granddad. I remember my lungs felt full of something, long after the doctors judged them clear. I remember I felt like I’d never get warm again, even when they told me my body temperature was normal. My hands hurt. My feet hurt.

  Mummy took me home to Vermont to recuperate. I lay in bed in the dark and felt desperately sorry for myself. Because I was sick, and even more because Gat never called.

  He didn’t write, either.

  Weren’t we in love?

  Weren’t we?

  I wrote to Johnny, two or three stupid, lovesick emails asking him to find out about Gat.

  Johnny had the good sense to ignore them. We are Sinclairs, after all, and Sinclairs do not behave like I was behaving.

  I stopped writing and deleted all the emails from my sent mail folder. They were weak and stupid.

  The bottom line is, Gat bailed when I got hurt.

  The bottom line is, it was only a summer fling.

  The bottom line is, he might have loved Raquel.

  We lived too far apart, anyway.

  Our families were too close, anyway.

  I never got an explanation.

  I just know he left me.

  13

  Welcome to my skull.

  A truck is rolling over the bones of my neck and head. The vertebrae break, the brains pop and ooze. A thousand flashlights shine in my eyes. The world tilts.

  I throw up. I black out.

  This happens all the time. It’s nothing but an ordinary day.

  The pain started six weeks after my accident. Nobody was certain whether the two were related, but there was no denying the vomiting and weight loss and general horror.

  Mummy took me for MRIs and CT scans. Needles, machines. More needles, more machines. They tested me for brain tumors, meningitis, you name it. To relieve the pain they prescribed this drug and that drug and another drug, because the first one didn’t work and the second one didn’t work, either. They gave me prescription after prescription without even knowing what was wrong. Just trying quell the pain.

  Cadence, said the doctors, don’t take too much.

  Cadence, said the doctors, watch for signs of addiction.

  And still, Cadence, be sure to take your meds.

  There were so many appointments I can’t even remember them. Eventually the doctors came through with a diagnosis. Cadence Sinclair Eastman: post-traumatic headaches, also known as PTHA. Migraine headaches caused by traumatic brain injury.

  I’ll be fine, they tell me.

  I won’t die.

  It’ll just hurt a lot.

  14

  After a year in Colorado, Dad wanted to see me again. In fact, he insisted on taking me to Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and Scotland—a ten-week trip beginning in mid-June, which meant I wouldn’t go to Beechwood at all, summer sixteen.

  “The trip is grand timing,” said Mummy brightly as she packed my suitcase.

  “Why?” I lay on the floor of my bedroom and let her do the work. My head hurt.

  “Granddad’s redoing Clairmont.” She rolled socks into balls. “I told you that a million times already.”

  I didn’t remember. “How come?”

  “Some idea of his. He’s spending the summer in Windemere.”

  “With you waiting on him?”

  Mummy nodded. “He can’t stay with Bess or Carrie. And you know he takes looking after. Anyway. You’ll get a wonderful education in Europe.”

  “I’d rather go to Beechwood.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” she said, firm.

  In Europe, I vomited into small buckets and brushed my teeth repeatedly with chalky British toothpaste. I lay prone on the bathroom floors of several museums, feeling the cold tile underneath my cheek as my brain liquefied and seeped out my ear, bubbling. Migraines left my blood spreading across unfamiliar hotel sheets, dripping on the floors, oozing into carpets, soaking through leftover croissants and Italian lace cookies.

  I could hear Dad calling me, but I never answered until my medicine took effect.

  I missed the Liars that summer.

  We never kept in touch over the school year. Not much, anyway, though we’d tried when we were younger. We’d text, or tag each other in summer photos, especially in September, but we’d inevitably fade out after a month or so. Somehow, Beechwood’s magic never carried over into our everyday lives. We didn’t want to hear about school friends and clubs and sports teams. Instead, we
knew our affection would revive when we saw one another on the dock the following June, salt spray in the air, pale sun glinting off the water.

  But the year after my accident, I missed days and even weeks of school. I failed my classes, and the principal informed me I would have to repeat junior year. I stopped soccer and tennis. I couldn’t babysit. I couldn’t drive. The friends I’d had weakened into acquaintances.

  I texted Mirren a few times. Called and left her messages that later I was ashamed of, they were so lonely and needy.

  I called Johnny, too, but his voice mail was full.

  I decided not to call again. I didn’t want to keep saying things that made me feel weak.

  When Dad took me to Europe, I knew the Liars were on-island. Granddad hasn’t wired Beechwood and cell phones don’t get reception there, so I began writing emails. Different from my pitiful voice messages, these were charming, darling notes from a person without headaches.

  Mostly.

  Mirren!

  Waving at you from Barcelona, where my father ate snails in broth.

  Our hotel has gold everything. Even saltshakers. It is gloriously vile.

  Write and tell me how the littles are misbehaving and where you are applying to college and whether you have found true love.

  /Cadence

  · · ·

  Johnny!

  Bonjour from Paris, where my father ate a frog.

  I saw the Winged Victory. Phenomenal body. No arms.

  Miss you guys. How is Gat?

  /Cadence

  · · ·

  Mirren!

  Hello from a castle in Scotland, where my father ate a haggis. That is, my father ate the heart, liver, and lungs of a sheep mixed with oatmeal and boiled in a sheep stomach.

  So, you know, he is the sort of person who eats hearts.

  /Cadence.

  · · ·