We Were Liars

by E. Lockhart

  I understand so much that wasn’t clear before. My tea is warm, the Liars are beautiful, Cuddledown is beautiful. It doesn’t matter if there are stains on the wall. It doesn’t matter if I have headaches or Mirren is sick. It doesn’t matter if Will has nightmares and Gat hates himself. We have committed the perfect crime.

  “Granddad only lacks power because he’s demented,” says Mirren. “He would still torture everybody if he could.”

  “I don’t I agree with you,” says Gat. “New Clairmont seems like a punishment to me.”

  “What?” she asks.

  “A self-punishment. He built himself a home that isn’t a home. It’s deliberately uncomfortable.”

  “Why would he do that?” I ask.

  “Why did you give away all your belongings?” Gat asks.

  He is staring at me. They are all staring at me.

  “To be charitable,” I answer. “To do some good in the world.”

  There is a strange silence.

  “I hate clutter,” I say.

  No one laughs. I don’t know how this conversation came to be all about me.

  None of the Liars speaks for a long time. Then Johnny says, “Don’t push it, Gat,” and Gat says, “I’m glad you remember the fire, Cadence,” and I say, “Yah, well, some of it,” and Mirren says she doesn’t feel well and goes back to bed.

  The boys and I lie on the kitchen floor and stare at the ceiling for a while longer, until I realize, with some embarrassment, that they have both fallen asleep.

  73

  I find my mother on the Windemere porch with the goldens. She is crocheting a scarf of pale blue wool.

  “You’re always at Cuddledown,” Mummy complains. “It’s not good to be down there all the time. Carrie went yesterday, looking for a something, and she said it was filthy. What have you been doing?”

  “Nothing. Sorry about the mess.”

  “If it’s really dirty we can’t ask Ginny to clean it. You know that, right? It’s not fair to her. And Bess will have a fit if she sees it.”

  I don’t want anyone coming into Cuddledown. I want it just for us. “Don’t worry.” I sit down and pat Bosh on his sweet yellow head. “Listen, Mummy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why did you tell the family not to talk to me about the fire?”

  She puts down her yarn and looks at me for a long time. “You remember the fire?”

  “Last night, it came rushing back. I don’t remember all of it, but yeah. I remember it happened. I remember you all argued. And everyone left the island. I remember I was here with Gat, Mirren, and Johnny.”

  “Do you remember anything else?”

  “What the sky looked like. With the flames. The smell of the smoke.”

  If Mummy thinks I am in any way at fault, she will never, ever, ask me. I know she won’t.

  She doesn’t want to know.

  I changed the course of her life. I changed the fate of the family. The Liars and I.

  It was a horrible thing to do. Maybe. But it was something. It wasn’t sitting by, complaining. I am a more powerful person than my mother will ever know. I have trespassed against her and helped her, too.

  She strokes my hair. So cloying. I pull back. “That’s all?” she asks.

  “Why doesn’t anyone talk to me about it?” I repeat.

  “Because of your—because of—” Mummy stops, looking for words. “Because of your pain.”

  “Because I have headaches, because I can’t remember my accident, I can’t handle the idea that Clairmont burned down?”

  “The doctors told me not to add stress to your life,” she says. “They said the fire might have triggered the headaches, whether it was smoke inhalation or—or fear,” she finishes lamely.

  “I’m not a child,” I say. “I can be trusted to know basic information about our family. All summer I’ve been working to remember my accident, and what happened right before. Why not tell me, Mummy?”

  “I did tell you. Two years ago. I told you over and over, but you never remembered it the next day. And when I talked to the doctor, he said I shouldn’t keep upsetting you that way, shouldn’t keep pushing you.”

  “You live with me!” I cry. “Don’t you have any faith in your own judgment over that of some doctor who barely knows me?”

  “He’s an expert.”

  “What makes you think I’d want my whole extended family keeping secrets from me—even the twins, even Will and Taft, for God’s sake—rather than know what happened? What makes you think I am so fragile I can’t even know simple facts?”

  “You seem that fragile to me,” says Mummy. “And to be honest, I haven’t been sure I could handle your reaction.”

  “You can’t even imagine how insulting that is.”

  “I love you,” she says.

  I can’t look at her pitying, self-justifying face any longer.

  74

  Mirren is in my room when I open the door. She is sitting at my desk with her hand on my laptop.

  “I wonder if I could read the emails you sent me last year,” she says. “Do you have them on your computer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I never read them,” she says. “At the start of the summer I pretended I did, but I never even opened them.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just didn’t,” she says. “I thought it didn’t matter, but now I think it does. And look!” She makes her voice light. “I even left the house to do it!”

  I swallow as much anger as I can. “I understand not writing back, but why wouldn’t you even read my emails?”

  “I know,” Mirren says. “It sucks and I’m a horrible wench. Please, will you let me read them now?”

  I open the laptop. Do a search and find all the notes addressed to her.

  There are twenty-eight. I read over her shoulder. Most of them are charming, darling emails from a person supposedly without headaches.

  Mirren!

  Tomorrow I leave for Europe with my cheating father, who is, as you know, also deeply boring. Wish me luck and know that I wish I were spending the summer on Beechwood with you. And Johnny. And even Gat.

  I know, I know. I should be over it.

  I am over it.

  I am.

  Off to Marbella to meet attractive Spanish boys, so there.

  I wonder if I can make Dad eat the most disgusting foods of every country we visit, as penance for his running off to Colorado.

  I bet I can. If he really loves me, he will eat frogs and kidneys and chocolate-covered ants.

  /Cadence

  That’s how most of them go. But a few of the emails are neither charming nor darling. Those ones are pitiful and true.

  Mirren.

  Vermont winter. Dark, dark.

  Mummy keeps looking at me while I sleep.

  My head hurts all the time. I don’t know what to do to make it stop. The pills don’t work. Someone is splitting through the top of my head with an axe, a messy axe that won’t make a clean cut through my skull. Whoever wields it has to hack away at my head, coming down over and over, but not always right in the same place. I have multiple wounds.

  I dream sometimes that the person wielding the axe is Granddad.

  Other times, the person is me.

  Other times, the person is Gat.

  Sorry to sound crazy. My hands are shaky as I type this and the screen is too bright.

  I want to die, sometimes, my head hurts so much. I keep writing you all my brightest thoughts but I never say the dark ones, even though I think them all the time. So I am saying them now. Even if you do not answer, I will know somebody heard them, and that, at least, is something.

  /Cadence

  We read all twenty-eight emails. When she is finished, Mirren kisses me on the cheek. “I can’t even say sorry,�
�� she tells me. “There is not even a Scrabble word for how bad I feel.”

  Then she is gone.

  75

  I bring my laptop to the bed and create a document. I take down my graph-paper notes and begin typing those and all my new memories, fast and with a thousand errors. I fill in gaps with guesses where I don’t have actual recall.

  The Sinclair Center for Socialization and Snacks.

  You won’t see that precious boyfriend of yours again.

  He wants me to stay the hell away from you.

  We adore Windemere, don’t we, Cady?

  Aunt Carrie, crying in Johnny’s Windbreaker.

  Gat throwing balls for the dogs on the tennis court.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God.

  The dogs.

  The fucking dogs.

  Fatima and Prince Philip.

  The goldens died in that fire.

  I know it, now, and it is my fault. They were such naughty dogs, not like Bosh, Grendel, and Poppy, whom Mummy trained. Fatima and Prince Philip ate starfish on the shore, then vomited them up in the living room. They shook water from their shaggy fur, snarfled people’s picnic lunches, chewed Frisbees into hunks of unusable plastic. They loved tennis balls and would go down to the court and slime any that had been left around. They would not sit when told. They begged at the table.

  When the fire caught, the dogs were in one of the guest bedrooms. Granddad often closed them in upstairs while Clairmont was empty, or at night. That way they wouldn’t eat people’s boots or howl at the screen door.

  Granddad had shut them up before he left the island.

  And we hadn’t thought of them.

  I had killed those dogs. It was I who lived with dogs, I who knew where Prince Philip and Fatima slept. The rest of the Liars didn’t think about the goldens—not very much, anyway. Not like I did.

  They had burned to death. How could I have forgotten them like that? How could I have been so wrapped up in my own stupid criminal exercise, the thrill of it, my own anger at the aunties and Granddad—

  Fatima and Prince Philip, burning. Sniffing at the hot door, breathing in smoke, wagging their tails hopefully, waiting for someone to come and get them, barking.

  What a horrible death for those poor, dear, naughty dogs.

  76

  I run out of Windemere. It is dark out now, nearly time for supper. My feelings leak out my eyes, crumpling my face, heave through my frame as I imagine the dogs, hoping for a rescue, staring at the door as the smoke billows in.

  Where to go? I cannot face the Liars at Cuddledown. Red Gate might have Will or Aunt Carrie. The island is so fucking small, actually, there’s nowhere to go. I am trapped on this island, where I killed those poor, poor dogs.

  All my bravado from this morning,

  the power,

  the perfect crime,

  taking down the patriarchy,

  the way we Liars saved the summer idyll and made it better,

  the way we kept our family together by destroying some part of it—

  all that is delusional.

  The dogs are dead,

  the stupid, lovely dogs,

  the dogs I could have saved,

  innocent dogs whose faces lit when you snuck them a bit of hamburger

  or even said their names;

  dogs who loved to go on boats,

  who ran free all day on muddy paws.

  What kind of person takes action without thinking about who might be locked in an upstairs room, trusting the people who have always kept them safe and loved them?

  I am sobbing these strange, silent sobs, standing on the walkway between Windemere and Red Gate. My face is soaked, my chest is contracting. I stumble back home.

  Gat is on the steps.

  77

  He jumps up when he seems me and wraps his arms around me. I sob into his shoulder and tuck my arms under his jacket and around his waist.

  He doesn’t ask what’s wrong until I tell him.

  “The dogs,” I say finally. “We killed the dogs.”

  He is quiet for a moment. Then, “Yeah.”

  I don’t speak again until my body stops shaking.

  “Let’s sit down,” Gat says.

  We settle on the porch steps. Gat rests his head against mine.

  “I loved those dogs,” I say.

  “We all did.”

  “I—” I choke on my words. “I don’t think I should talk about it anymore or I’ll start crying again.”

  “All right.”

  We sit for a while longer.

  “Is that everything?” Gat asks.

  “What?”

  “Everything you were crying about?”

  “God forbid there’s more.”

  He is silent.

  And still silent.

  “Oh hell, there is more,” I say, and my chest feels hollow and iced.

  “Yeah,” says Gat. “There is more.”

  “More that people aren’t telling me. More that Mummy would rather I didn’t remember.”

  He takes a moment to think. “I think we’re telling you, but you can’t hear it. You’ve been sick, Cadence.”

  “You’re not telling me directly,” I say.

  “No.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Penny said it was best. And—well, with all of us being here, I had faith that you’d remember.” He takes his arm off my shoulder and wraps his hands around his knees.

  Gat, my Gat.

  He is contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. I love the lids of his brown eyes, his smooth dark skin, his lower lip that pushes out. His mind. His mind.

  I kiss his cheek. “I remember more about us than I used to,” I tell him. “I remember you and me kissing at the door of the mudroom before it all went so wrong. You and me on the tennis court talking about Ed proposing to Carrie. On the perimeter at the flat rock, where no one could see us. And down on the tiny beach, talking about setting the fire.”

  He nods.

  “But I still don’t remember what went wrong,” I say. “Why we weren’t together when I got hurt. Did we have an argument? Did I do something? Did you go back to Raquel?” I cannot look him in the eyes. “I think I deserve an honest answer, even if whatever’s between us now isn’t going to last.”

  Gat’s face crumples and he hides it in his hands. “I don’t know what to do,” he says. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Just tell me,” I say.

  “I can’t stay here with you,” he says. “I have to go back to Cuddledown.”

  “Why?”

  “I have to,” he says, standing up and walking. Then he stops and turns. “I messed everything up. I’m so sorry, Cady. I am so, so sorry.” He is crying again. “I shouldn’t have kissed you, or made you a tire swing, or given you roses. I shouldn’t have told you how beautiful you are.”

  “I wanted you to.”

  “I know, but I should have stayed away. It’s fucked up that I did all that. I’m sorry.”

  “Come back here,” I say, but when he doesn’t move, I go to him. Put my hands on his neck and my cheek against his. I kiss him hard so he knows I mean it. His mouth is so soft and he’s just the best person I know, the best person I’ve ever known, no matter what bad things have happened between us and no matter what happens after this. “I love you,” I whisper.

  He pulls back. “This is what I’m talking about. I’m sorry. I just wanted to see you.”

  He turns around and is lost in dark.

  78

  The hospital on Martha’s Vineyard. Fifteenth summer, after my accident.

  I was lying in a bed under blue sheets. You would think hospital sheets would be white, but these were blue. The room was hot. I had an IV in one arm.

>   Mummy and Granddad were staring down at me. Granddad was holding a box of Edgartown fudge he’d brought as a gift.

  It was touching that he remembered I like the Edgartown fudge.

  I was listening to music with ear buds in my ears, so I couldn’t hear what the adults were saying. Mummy was crying.

  Granddad opened the fudge, broke off a piece, and offered it to me.

  In my ears:

  Our youth is wasted

  We will not waste it

  Remember my name

  ’Cause we made history

  Na na na na, na na na

  I lifted my hand to take out the ear buds. The hand I saw was bandaged.

  Both my hands were bandaged.

  And my feet. I could feel the tape on them, beneath the blue sheets.

  My hands and feet were bandaged, because they were burned.

  79

  Once upon a time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters.

  No, no, wait.

  Once upon a time there were three bears who lived in a wee house in the woods.

  Once upon a time there were three billy goats who lived near a bridge.

  Once upon a time there were three soldiers, tramping together down the roads after the war.

  Once upon a time there were three little pigs.

  Once upon a time there were three brothers.

  No, this is it. This is the variation I want.

  Once upon a time there were three beautiful children, two boys and a girl. When each baby was born, the parents rejoiced, the heavens rejoiced, even the fairies rejoiced. The fairies came to christening parties and gave the babies magical gifts.

  Bounce, effort, and snark.

  Contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee.

  Sugar, curiosity, and rain.

  And yet, there was a witch.

  There is always a witch.

  This witch was the same age as the beautiful children, and as she and they grew, she was jealous of the girl, and jealous of the boys, too. They were blessed with all these fairy gifts, gifts the witch had been denied at her own christening.