Seven Ways We Lie

by Riley Redgate

  with every word i am more fragile.

  with every word, older.

  the tears abate. so this was a mistake?

  No, that’s not—I made a mistake, June, but you weren’t a mistake. You are, I swear, the best thing in my life. My not waiting was the mistake.

  my mother stares at david like he is a painting she is beginning to understand.

  Juniper doesn’t graduate for a year and a half, she says slowly. And so help me, if you get in touch before then, I will file a restraining order.

  (Before then?)

  The words ring in my ears, making me dizzy with hope.

  My father’s balding head bobs. He takes over. If, anytime in the future, she has any interest in contacting you, you’ll hear from us. Us first. You understand?

  Yes, David says.

  He meets my gaze. Our eyes are lifelines. In his eyes I see myself holding him. In mine he knows I love him.

  He stands.

  Can I say good-bye? I ask.

  No, my father says, but my mother rests her hand on his wrist.

  They meet eyes, a brief and silent battle.

  My mother half lifts him to his feet. They leave us.

  · · · · · · ·

  Juniper—

  I fold myself into his arms, and he holds me so tightly

  so tightly

  I could merge into him, skin into skin and heart into heart. It’s okay, he murmurs. It’ll be okay. A clean break is going to hurt less, I promise.

  It’s . . . I pull back. I mean, I can’t help thinking you’ll find someone else in an infinitely larger, more interesting city.

  Yeah, no way. He brushes my hair back from my forehead. There’s only one of you.

  Well. As far as you know.

  The regret of making him laugh is instant—

  I miss the sound already.

  He kisses my cheeks, my temples.

  I look up at his forgiving eyes and see everything.

  I’ll see you again, he says.

  I know.

  And with that, he walks into the hall.

  It swallows him, foot by foot.

  He pauses in the doorway for one moment,

  a black-coated silhouette against the gold porch light,

  messy hair, strong profile, disappearing eyes.

  I lift my hand.

  The door shuts,

  the click of a clean break.

  I sway, expecting to dissolve,

  but my body holds fast.

  My hands don’t shake. My head is clear. My eyes are dry.

  And I think—

  somehow—

  I will be all right.

  This time, I will.

  THE DOORBELL RINGS AT 5:30. “I’LL GET IT,” I CALL down the hall. Grace thanks me from the depths of her room.

  I hop down the steps two at a time, catch sight of who’s behind the glass door, and slam to a halt at the bottom of the staircase.

  It’s Lucas. The second I see his face, I’m sure of it: he knows.

  I open the door. The sound of rain crashes in. The fact that he’s not smiling terrifies me.

  We sit down in the living room, his curly hair fluffing out from the dampness. The wooden mobile hanging in the alcove twirls and bobs in the air current from the heating vent, distracting me.

  “Hey. Why are you here?” I ask. It feels strange to ask, given the constant presence he used to be under my family’s roof. He’d pull into my driveway to pick me up every morning, and we’d drive back every afternoon talking. I kissed him on the roof, under the branches of our oak tree, in the humidity of a summer nightfall. I remember the roughness of his arms, his palms.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

  What do I say to that?

  I clear my throat. “How was, um. How was the meet yesterday?”

  “Fine, good,” he says. “I PR’ed in the 500 Free. Two seconds faster than my old best.”

  “I . . . congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  Seconds trickle by. I’ve never felt like I’m small-talking with him, not before now. Something is missing from us. Sometimes you can feel the detachment in the way someone looks at you, the way they arrange their body facing yours, the way they blink and sigh and put their hands on the table. Something has been subtracted. I don’t know if I lost it, or if he put it away, or if someone else has it, but this isn’t the pair we used to be.

  Then he’s saying something in a different voice, one I remember more clearly.

  “I’m sorry for being so . . . you know, after we broke up. I shouldn’t have acted like you weren’t—hadn’t been—special.” The veil of friendliness slips askew from the air, and I see his face. He’s saying sorry, but he means something else. What is it? This used to happen all the time. He’d make reluctant apologies, angry apologies, in the place of explanations or amends.

  “Right,” I say, and I know he expects me to apologize in return. Apologize for what I’ve done to him.

  The words, though, are somewhere else, somewhere I can’t reach them, because I’m looking at him and thinking, maybe it’s not so much that I’ve lost a grip on what we were. Maybe I never quite knew what we were in the first place.

  Looking at him, I don’t feel satisfied, not like I did yesterday when I heard everybody talking about him and Norman. Now I remember the weight of telling him I loved him. In March, we went out on his birthday, and we spent the day hopping around Paloma’s antiques shops, imagining that weird old junk was lost treasure from another world. After dinner, we drove home. He kissed me good night, and I told him in a nervous blurt, and his smile brightened and widened until it looked almost painful, and he said he loved me, too.

  No, this isn’t satisfaction.

  “That’s my last apology, I think.” His voice is strangled. “I hope you got what you needed.”

  “Right.”

  Lucas shakes his head and stands. He takes a breath as if he’s going to say something huge. His eyes are lit with accusation, but he shuts his mouth and leaves, and for the first time, I don’t want to call after him. I don’t want to say another word.

  I walk back to the kitchen, my steps uncertain. For so long, Lucas was my claim to myself. For months, I’ve lived on some hazy gas planet of confusion and bitterness. I never understood what made me so much worse than other people, that I deserved to be alone—

  But it wasn’t about me, in the end, was it?

  Maybe my self-blame was another kind of selfishness.

  My hands go to my mouth, but I don’t bite my nails. I level my eyes at my warped, dark reflection in the oven door.

  Some awful, acrid taste prickles at the back of my tongue, and it finally hits me. The weight of what I did. It slams into me so hard that I sit down at the kitchen table, the breath knocked out of my chest. I stare at my trembling hands.

  I am finally irredeemable.

  ZOMBIES PILE ONTO ME.

  “Shit.” I hit the down key, trying to turn and run, but their teeth have already dug into my legs. “Shit, shit, dammit,” I hiss, shoving my laptop forward in defeat. The zombies’ decayed faces rise up the screen, loose-jawed, flaps of flesh peeling from their pallid foreheads. They overpower me. Continue? asks the screen, taunting me. Of course I’m going to fucking continue. It’s been seven hours of me continuing.

  I sink down in the kitchen chair. This level is impossible. After the miniboss, there’s an ambush. None of my weaponry, let alone my armor, is strong enough to take this much undead power, but I’ve been trying all day. My second day of skipping school, slouching from spot to spot in our house, gaming.

  Not thinking about the play.

  Not thinking about Emily saying, “Please don’t. Please.”

  Not thinking about the look on my sister’s face when I said, “I don’t need you.”

  I have not been thinking about any of that.

  As I hit respawn and start again, the door swings open, ushe
ring in the sound of rain. Dad trudges in, pulling back his poncho’s hood. His facial hair has gone from stubble status to a legitimate beard, a furry salt-and-pepper shield covering half his face. He looks like a stranger.

  I keep playing. He approaches the table and sets down a couple of grocery bags beside Olivia’s things, which lie in an ungraceful pile opposite me. I heard her yelling at someone over the phone earlier. I’m not curious, I tell myself. I don’t care who it was.

  “Is this your sister’s?” Dad says, prodding the plastic pharmacy bag.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is she sick?”

  “No clue,” I say, climbing a fence. The barbed wire makes my health bar dip. I ransack a nearby dead guy for medicine as my dad opens the pharmacy bag, rustling through the contents.

  “Katrina,” Dad says. I hit pause and look up. His eyes, sharper and more awake than I’ve seen them in God knows how long, are flooded with disbelief. He’s holding a small green box. PLAN B: EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTIVE.

  “I . . . oh,” I say. “That’s . . .”

  “This is your sister’s?”

  I’m silent.

  “Go and get her, please.” He sits down hard opposite me. “Now.”

  THE THREE OF US SIT IN DEAFENING SILENCE. MY gaze darts around the kitchen. Walls the dismal color of soggy bread. Rain still tapping halfheartedly at the glass. Sunset through the window, like firelight, simmering low under heavy clouds.

  Why am I here? If they want to talk about this, fine, but why do I have to be involved?

  Dad folds his hands on the table and stares at them. “How long has this been happening?”

  “Maybe the start of sophomore year?” Olivia says. “Dad, please don’t be mad. The point of that pill is that I’m being responsible. That’s the whole idea.”

  “This is responsible?” he says, disbelieving. “Olivia, you’re seventeen years old.”

  “I know, but it’s—”

  “This is not acceptable,” Dad says.

  A weird look spreads across Olivia’s face. She chuckles.

  Dad frowns.

  “I mean,” she says, “you’ve got to admit, that’s funny. The idea of you popping in to pass judgment on, like, this kind of information, while the rest of the time you’re totally in absentia.”

  Dad leans back, looking baffled. “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She tilts her head. “Do you really not know?”

  “Know what?”

  “How distant you are.”

  His voice rises. “No, I don’t know what you—”

  I cut in. “She’s right.”

  In my peripheral vision, Olivia stares at me. I don’t look at her. Dad goes silent again, apparently stunned that I agree with this obvious assessment.

  “Dad,” Olivia says, “we have to talk. We have to. It’s not just this you didn’t know about. You’re missing so much, you know? I made Honor Society in September, and you didn’t come to the ceremony, even though I asked you. You didn’t come to the plays Kat was in last spring or fall. She was amazing in both of them, and you missed them. And she’s been skipping classes, and she told me you signed off to say that she was sick? That’s not—did you ask her what she’d been doing? Because I can tell you. She’s been getting addicted to gaming and isolating herself, and honestly? It’s scary. She doesn’t get out of bed on the weekends, she’s not eating, and you don’t see it. You don’t notice, Dad.”

  I stare at Olivia. Aimed at someone else, her words don’t sound like accusations anymore. They don’t trigger that defensive instinct in my chest—all I feel is a tight pang at the panic in her voice. Why does it sound so different when she’s telling Dad?

  When it clicks, I’m humiliated at how long it took me to figure it out. Olivia wasn’t trying to force me to be like her. She was worried.

  Every time she’s badgered me about something over the last year—Are you eating? Can you get out of bed? Are you going to class?—she was saying, I care about you. I care. I care. And all I heard was: You’re not good enough.

  I sit there in the silence, trying to process this. Trying to scrub off the shame that’s pouring thickly over me now, like honey, smothering me. I wish I could take back everything I said to her on Sunday. Every furious word.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Dad says, looking ashen. His arched eyebrows draw tight together. “I didn’t realize . . . I didn’t know you felt like this. Either of you.”

  “It’s okay,” Olivia says quickly. “I mean, I know it’s hard since Mom left. It’s just, sometimes I feel like we lost both of you. All I’m saying is, we need you back.” My sister glances at me. “Well, I need you back, at least.”

  I don’t need you, says that hard voice in the back of my head.

  Guilt surges up. I sit in our dingy kitchen, stifled in silence, watching two people I’ve held back with all my might. And a million memories flutter through my mind, a storm of ticker tape. They overflow with color, like photographs edited to death. I remember trading grins with Olivia, her eyes the sort of ultra-saturated blue you see in thick paint. I remember waiting at the top of the steps on Christmas morning, back when green and red twined around the banister, and seeing Dad appear at the bottom of the steps, arms open, smile on. I remember being eight years old and tearing down the sidewalks of our cul-de-sac, the sunset a rich burgundy. Me and Olivia. Together since birth.

  “I need you, too,” I say. “Both of you.”

  My sister meets my eyes, and it’s too much. Too personal, too loaded—too honest. I look down at my lap as Olivia glances toward the clock.

  “Hang on,” she says. “It’s seven. Shouldn’t you be at dress rehearsal?”

  “I dropped out.”

  “You did what?”

  “Yeah. On Monday. I had a sort of a freak-out.” I swallow. “By which I mean I yelled at everyone. And quit the show.”

  Another long silence. I sneak a glance at Olivia, whose mouth is open. I guess she didn’t think even I could go that far.

  A long minute passes. She’s clearly trying to think of something to say, but nothing comes out.

  Then Dad says, “Stand up.”

  “What?”

  He stands, fishing his keys out of his pocket. “You’re going to your dress rehearsal,” he says, his voice growing stronger.

  “Dad, I can’t go back there. I don’t think you understand what I—”

  “You’re right,” he says. “I don’t understand, but I want to. I haven’t been there. But that’s changing now.”

  I stare at him. There’s something familiar in his eyes. It’s the fervor he used to get when talking about his weird sports finals, Wiffle Ball International or Watermelon Bowling. It’s the sparkle he had when he would make a joke, wait for Mom to groan, and kiss her on the forehead triumphantly. It’s from a younger year, and I didn’t realize I’d missed it this whole time.

  “Up,” he says, heading for the door. “Let’s go.”

  I meet Olivia’s eyes. We stand and follow our father out the door.

  I JOG UP TO THE GREENROOM DOOR, BUT AS I PULL it open, Emily smacks into me, about to exit. The rest of the cast stands behind her. The crew, too, all crowded into the greenroom. Did I interrupt some sort of preshow pep talk?

  But nobody’s in costume, and it’s only a few minutes until the preshow music should start. Something in the air feels wrong. Too sober—none of the tense energy this place should have before a run-through.

  I slip inside, letting the door close with a bang behind me.

  “Kat?” Emily says. “What are you doing here?”

  I swallow hard and look from cast to crew. Every pair of eyes stares at me with bald accusation, and I don’t flinch. “I’m sorry,” I blurt out. “I’m sorry for blowing up, and I’m sorry for walking out. I shouldn’t ha—”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” Emily says. “Mr. García isn’t here.”

  My stomach plummets. “What? What do you mean? Is he sick?
”

  “No, h-he was in class and everything, but he—” Emily chews on a lock of her hair. “He hasn’t shown up tonight. He said yesterday he was trying to find someone to replace you, and I guess he figured it was hopeless.”

  “But he wouldn’t just not show,” I say, but then a horrible idea sneaks into my head. He wouldn’t miss dress rehearsal—unless he wasn’t allowed to be here.

  I remember the rumors that flooded the school on Monday about Lucas and Dr. Norman. I remember how tense, even desperate, García seemed in rehearsal that afternoon.

  Did someone turn him in?

  Everyone’s attention presses in on me. I straighten up, filling my voice with resolve. “You know what?” I say. “It doesn’t matter. So what if he’s missing? We know the show.”

  Emily half raises her hand. “Are—are we allowed to be in here unsupervised?”

  “Is anyone stopping us?”

  “Well, no, but . . .” Emily says feebly, looking around at the cast. My stage husband trades a doubtful look with her.

  “No,” I say. “No buts.” As I look around at these twenty uneasy faces, the empty space in my chest thickens, calcifying into a clot of determination. This is going to happen if I have to do the whole damn show myself.

  I turn to the crew. “You guys sat through eight hours of tech on Sunday. Andrea, your set took so long to build. Crystal, you made all these sound effects from scratch. And, Lara, you’ve been in production meetings about this thing since the start of the year.” I look back at the cast. “And God, you guys have put up with me for eight weeks, and this is the thing that makes you want to call it quits? That’s bullshit.” I fold my arms. “We all know what to do. So what if we’re doing it for an empty theater tonight?”

  There’s a long pause. Then Emily says, “I mean . . . as long as nobody’s stopping us, I guess . . .?”

  I smile at her. She looks as if she might pass out. It occurs to me that probably none of these people has ever seen me smile.

  Lara says, “All right. Everyone, get into costume. Crystal, go start the preshow music. Half an hour until curtain goes up.”

  The cast doesn’t say a word to me as we head downstairs to the changing rooms, but I catch them giving me glances. And for once, I don’t wish they would stop. For once, I meet their eyes unafraid.