“I’m treating you like I treat everyone,” she snaps.
“There it is. There’s you lashing out because you’ve forgotten how to do anything else.” I advance on her bed. “Kat, something’s messing up your life. You have got to figure it out.”
“God, leave me alone, would you? I’m better off alone.”
Before I can reply, she barrels on: “You’d be better off alone, too, but you don’t know, is the thing. You don’t even know who your friends are. Like, Claire? In CompSci, she sits there listening to these guys making slut jokes about you. Doesn’t say a word. And Juniper . . . well, Juniper’s a whole other story.”
“Stop it,” I say sharply. “Stop deflecting. My friends aren’t the point: you are. Answer me, would you? Why are you so obsessed with shutting me out?”
No answer.
I look hard at my sister, at her sharp chin and her gaunt cheekbones. She stares resolutely at her computer screen. I’ve lost her. Every time she goes quiet like this, I feel her leaving me a little more, like a word written on the back of your hand that wears away with every washing. Soon she’ll be completely gone.
Panic rises in the back of my throat. All of a sudden I feel the last two years draped over me like chains. I’m so exhausted from carrying them this long.
“It’s Mom,” I say. “Isn’t it?”
Kat slams her laptop shut. She says, low and dangerous, “I do not want to talk about her.”
“I know. That’s why we’ve never talked about her: because you don’t want to. Which, if we’re being honest, isn’t fair. Like, did you ever think I might need to talk about it? You think anyone could understand as well as my own sister?”
Kat slides out of bed, her feet hitting the floor hard. “Cut the guilt-trip bullshit,” she says. “You want to talk about her, and I don’t. Your side isn’t more valid than mine.”
“Kind of looks like it is,” I shoot back, “when you not wanting to talk about Mom has turned into you not talking about anything.”
A mutinous gleam enters her eyes. “Oh, okay. You want to talk? About boys and makeup and parties? That’ll work out great.”
“Wait, is that a joke?” I almost laugh. “When have I tried to talk to you about any of that? And when did you start judging me for wearing makeup and going out?”
“Maybe since you started judging me for staying in and gaming.”
“I’m not judging you for staying in, I want you to—to—”
“To what? Be exactly like you?”
“No, I want you to tell me what’s going on in your head!”
“Here’s what’s in my head.” She stalks toward me. “You always want to talk about Mom, but last time you said anything about her, you acted like she didn’t break Dad and like we should forgive her.” Kat stops a foot away. “Like hell I’m going to forgive her. Forget her, maybe. Throw her out with the rest of the trash, maybe. Forgiveness? Yeah fucking right.”
“You don’t miss her?” I say, reeling with the onslaught. “Not at all?”
Kat laughs disbelievingly. “Of course I miss her—that’s the point! If I didn’t miss her, and if you and Dad didn’t miss her, it wouldn’t have mattered that she left. But we do, all the time, and she dropped us like we meant nothing. No calls, not even a text on our birthday. And the three of us are fucked up because of it.” Her thin eyebrows draw together in fury. “I hope it’s hanging over her head every day. I hope she feels guilty for the rest of her life, because God knows I’m going to hate her for the rest of my life. That’s all she deserves.”
“No.” My voice surges up. “Mom’s a good person, Kat, but she hated this place. What, should she have stayed in Nowhere, Kansas, with someone she didn’t love anymore, going through fights and—”
“Yes! Yes, she absolutely should have. Would it have killed her to hang on four more years? We only had high school left. Who looks at their kids and says, yeah, high school, that’ll be a goddamn piece of cake—they can do that by themselves.”
“Four years is a long time—”
“Oh, stop. ‘Four years is a long time,’ ” Kat mimics, looking disgusted. “Jesus. You think you’re taking the moral high ground? You’re just taking her side. Why aren’t you on your own side here?”
“There’s no sides anymore. Don’t you get it? The game’s over, and everyone lost, and sometimes that just happens, and now we’ve got to clear the field and sort our shit out, Katrina!”
“Don’t call me that,” Kat snarls, slamming her palm into my shoulder. I stagger back against her desk, and she storms up, jabbing her finger between my collarbones. “Stop trying to be our fucking mother, Olivia. Stop acting like she’s a misunderstood saint, and stop trying to be my therapist and rescue me. I don’t fucking need it. I don’t need you.”
Her words flood cold over me, numbing the ache where her finger hit my chest.
“Being like Mom,” I say hoarsely, “is the last thing I want.”
Silence settles in the space between us. Strands of my hair have fallen over my face, fluttering with every shallow breath. As I brush them back, my fingers shake visibly, and something like regret slips across my sister’s face. But it’s gone so fast, maybe I imagined it.
“So. You don’t need me?” I repeat.
She opens her mouth. Nothing comes out. Her expression has a note of resolve, like she’s determined to stay furious.
“Okay,” I say. I slip out from where she cornered me. I walk out the door, and I don’t bother to shut it behind me.
WALKING INTO SCHOOL ON MONDAY, MOVING through the halls, I seem to see the same five people over and over. The Scott sisters, Matt, Valentine. Then there’s Juniper herself. They all pass in the hallways, smiling or blank-looking, preoccupied with their phones or laughing with their friends. It occurs to me how rarely people see each other afraid.
Every time one of them meets my eyes, the knowledge about Juniper yells out in the back of my head so loudly, I’m sure people can hear it. Guilt fills me up, rising like mercury in a thermometer, but I don’t know what I feel guilty for. Staying quiet? I would probably feel guilty if I told the administration about García, too.
I grew up feeling guilty. Given my parents’ altruism, growing up to realize I’m a selfish person was tough. I think back on elementary school, the times I hoarded crayons inside my desk or didn’t share my food when other kids asked, and I remember overwhelming guilt. These days, I’m better at managing it, but it still springs up fast. I’m always apologizing. I’m always wondering what I did—I can look at one angry face and feel I’ve ruined everything, that I’m responsible for war and disaster and every tiny evil.
So, of course, I descend into panic when Claire finds me at my locker during the break between first and second period.
In the aftermath of Saturday night, Claire’s finding out I’m not straight faded into the background, but now the accompanying anxiety revs back up full force. I knew this confrontation was coming the moment Matt apologized to me. I should have saved up my energy, instead of staying out so late last night, driving, laughing, learning about Valentine.
Thinking about him makes me fidget. I’m too interested in him. I want to talk to him and only him. I want to win his laughs, and I want to pick up every word he says and paste it between the pages of my journal. He’s an equation I never want to solve.
“Hey,” Claire says. “We need to talk.”
I catalog Claire. Her voice is clipped, her gaze blistering. She wears green eyeliner today, with the usual thick mascara and glittering eye shadow—a hypnotically weird combination with her pale blue irises. She’s zany in her own rigid, dogmatic way. After we broke up, life was too mellow for a while.
She frog-marches me away. We end up in a stairwell in the old wing, beneath the stairs. Gray light echoes through a dirty window. The bad signs check themselves off in my head:
• Claire’s arms, folded—heralding a yell.
• That twitch at the side of her nose—she
’s trying for control.
• My attention scattering—I can’t defend myself like this.
Claire dives in with no prelude. She’s efficient that way. “How long have you known?”
“Since, um, eighth grade.”
Her eyelids press tightly shut, showing off ridges of glitter that have built up in the creases. She takes a deep breath, then one more. “How’d you find out?”
“I mean, I had my first crush on a guy when I was maybe nine, but I didn’t really put the pieces together for a bit. Eighth grade, I heard about pansexuality, and it made more sense than anyth—”
“What did you—pansexual?”
“It means I could be attracted to someone of any gender.”
“So you’re bi.”
“It’s not quite the same. I . . . so, basically, there’s not just male and female. Some people identify with other genders. And yep, now you look like I’m telling you that aliens have landed.”
“What are you talking about, other genders?”
“Well, gender’s something society made up. I don’t mean, like, biological sex—that’s a different thing. But gender—so people think women are one way and men are this other way, but if you’re a blend between the two, for example, then neither gender’s a good description, so—”
“Lucas.”
“—pansexuals can be attracted to any gender, a boy or a girl or somebody off the binary, which, I mean, you can read about this stuff if you—”
“Lucas.”
“What? What is it?”
“I don’t understand anything you’re saying,” she says. “Would you hold on for a minute? Let’s just . . . I’m not gonna bite, okay?”
There’s a moment of quiet. Claire ties up her hair. It’s brushfire orange, crackling with static electricity in the dry air. In my gut, I have this feeling that none of this is real. Talking to her about this is unimaginably weird.
She fixes me with a skeptical look. “Okay. So. How do you know you’re not bi? Have you met anyone who thinks they’re not—you know, not a—a girl or a boy?”
I shrug. “How do you know you haven’t?”
“I . . .”
“It’s not like they’d be super public about it. Even gayness still has people being all, ‘Whoa, now, don’t get so political; this is an awful lot to deal with.’ ”
“Hmm,” she says. Not much of a concession, even by Claire standards.
It’s not as if she would care less if I were bi. She just wants to be right.
I abruptly remember how little I miss arguing with her. Memories of our fights snap out of my mind, bite-size pieces of discomfort scribbling themselves down.
• “I hate when you get like this—”
• “Shut up and listen—”
• Her gimlet eyes.
• My endless apologies.
Here I go, doing it again. “Look, I’m sorry, okay?”
“I mean, yes, I think you should be. You could have brought it up so many times. Even if you’d copped out and told me through a text, or, for God’s sake, on Facebook, it still would’ve been better th—”
“Claire, look. It was . . . easier, okay? It was easier not to.”
“That is such genuinely horrible reasoning.”
“Okay.” I avoid her eyes. We were together for over a year, and I knew the whole time, but somehow I don’t regret staying quiet. I wish she’d figured it out somehow. I wish it didn’t feel like this duty I have, to inform everybody.
It’s not that it was easy to keep it a secret, either. I remember every time I almost spoke up. Images flash by lightning-fast: every time I lay beside her, kissed her, or held her in my arms, I felt an invisible wedge between us. And every time, I backed down from the plate instead of stepping up, for fear, and I felt choked. It isn’t easy, keeping quiet.
But it’s still easier. Easier than walking around as myself.
“Look, Claire, if I’d told you . . .” I realize I don’t want to finish that sentence. Too late.
She crosses her arms. “What?”
“Well, the thing is, I knew if I told you, you’d make it a big deal.”
“It is a big deal.”
“Not to me. When we dated, you were the only one I was interested in, of any gender.”
“So you’re pretending it’s not an issue?”
“Don’t do that,” I say sharply. “Stop ignoring what I’m trying to—don’t derail this.” I don’t snap often, but Claire has a unique talent for yanking it out of me. She makes me feel so much. It used to be exhilarating.
“I’m not derailing.” To my surprise, her voice softens. “If you purposefully don’t talk about something, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. If anything, that means it matters more.”
I open my mouth, then shut it again.
Is she right?
If they dragged me onto The Confessor, would they have to pay me ten thousand dollars to face the swim team and say “I’m pansexual”? Twenty thousand to look Valentine in the eyes and say it? Fifty thousand to stand on our auditorium stage, walk up to the podium in front of the school, and say who I am? Because I haven’t done it for free, that’s for sure.
I’ve been telling myself that this is as much for other people as it is for me. After all, I go to church with kids from this school. I’m in a locker room with the swim team every day after school, and I don’t want them to feel like they have to worry about anything. I’ve been thinking, it’s simpler this way, it’s better for everyone, it hasn’t come up. But of course it’s come up. It comes up every time they call each other fags, joking, jostling, and I stay quiet.
Suddenly, my silence feels like suffocation.
“And I’m sorry,” Claire says, “but let me be honest: it feels weird for me. I’m not saying you being pansexual is weird, but I feel weird about it. We broke up, and you’ve been treating me like—like I’m nobody. You don’t say anything that matters. You look right through me. So we go from a hundred to zero overnight, and you turn into this stranger, and since then, I’ve been looking for a reason why you called it off, trying to come up with anything, because you never had the decency to explain. And now this, too? I don’t know. There’s more and more evidence that you’re a whole different person than I thought you were.”
“Wait.” This conversation is veering off the course I’d expected. “You want to know why I broke up with you? That’s what this is about?”
“Yes! I want you to tell me what I, quote, can’t compare to, unquote.”
“I—what?”
“That’s what you said in May,” she says, anger choking her voice. “ ‘You can’t compare.’ To God knows what. You don’t remember?”
“Of course I remember.” I close my eyes. “Jeez, Claire, I wasn’t saying you can’t measure up to something or someone. I was starting to say, you can’t compare yourself to other people, but then you were crying, and you tore off, and—”
She draws back, indignation glowing in her eyes. “I do not compare myself to other people!”
“Are you kidding?” I burst out. “That’s all you ever do. Don’t you see it? Don’t you see how obsessed you are with everyone else? You used to talk about Olivia and Juniper like they were your biggest rivals, like they were teams you needed to take down in your next tennis tournament. And I—” I swallow hard. “I started counting it, I started keeping a mental list of it, and it was driving me insane. You treat everyone like measuring sticks for your own self-worth, and if we’re being honest, I broke up with you because I hoped you’d work it out, but you obviously haven’t. Look at you, talking to me as if my sexuality is some sort of personal insult to you. I didn’t ask for this, okay? It’s not like I asked for it!”
The stairwell is a megaphone. The words seem to go on forever. Twirl and leap off the stone.
I rock back on my toes. My fingers are wound in my hair. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
She’s crying now. Claire calls herself an ugly crier, but I
don’t think it’s ugly. I still remember the things she used to say about herself. The worst mental list I ever kept:
• “God, I’m stupid.”
• “Sorry, I’m so hopeless.”
• “Ha. I look even worse than I thought I did.”
• “Why can’t I be more like her? Why can’t I be like—why can’t I be like—why can’t I be like—”
She always turned to me to contradict her, but no matter how many times I told her the opposite, she never listened. I never lied, because what I noticed in Claire first was everything wonderful: how sharp she was, how determined, how challenging, and I used to love every aspect of her. But what did that fix? Nothing I felt could change the way she felt about herself.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
“Don’t bother with sorry.” She closes her eyes. Wipes the smudged eyeliner away. “Okay, we’re done here.”
“Claire—”
“And I think it’s better if we don’t talk again. I think that’ll be easier.” She leaves me to stare out the window at the morning sun, frustration building behind my sealed lips.
SECOND PERIOD TRICKLES BY, THEN THIRD, BUT MY teachers’ words don’t sink in. I look down at my hands, which seem detached from me, trembling intermittently.
I bite my nails. I bite and bite and bite. The bitter coat of polish I slather on every morning sinks into my tongue, but the taste can’t stop me today.
By fourth period, my fingers are bleeding. It’s only when I see the blood that I realize I’m furious.
I still ache, as if somebody has hit me hard enough to bruise bone. My mind keeps rewinding to what he said, and the words throb in my ears, forcing my attention.
Compare yourself to other people. That’s all you ever do.
Well, at least I never lied to him, right? At least I didn’t conceal some huge part of my identity from him. How dare he preach to me about self-esteem?
Seven Ways We Lie Page 19