The Liar's Girl

by Catherine Ryan Howard

  alison, then

  “Liz?” I whispered. “Are you awake?”

  The light was faint and blue-gray. Morning, then, but very early, still. The room was chilly—we’d turned the dial on the thermostat all the way to the snowflake symbol before we’d gone to bed—but the reddened skin on my back and arms still burned hot, every contact with the sheet like the rough scratch of sandpaper. Various items of summer clothing and accessories were taking shape in the shadows, messy little mounds on the tiled floor. I could see the neon strings of bikini tops, the tie-dyed print of cover-ups we’d bought from a beach stall, straw hats, damp towels, plastic flip-flops. Empty or half-drunk plastic water bottles of various sizes stood like an audience on top of the scratched chest of mahogany drawers stood against the opposite wall. Outside, the resort was uncharacteristically silent but for the clicking call of the cicadas.

  In the other single bed, Liz began to stir.

  “I don’t feel well,” I said into the semi-darkness.

  Her first response was something indecipherable, her voice thick with sleep. But then she rolled over to face me. “What time is it?” She swiped at her hair, pushing wayward strands of it out of her eyes. “Ali?” Liz raised herself up onto her elbows. “What’s wrong?”

  I was sitting up on the edge of my bed, arms wrapped around my stomach, hunched over, wincing as a sharp pain bisected my abdomen from hip to hip. It’d started a couple of hours ago, just brief stabs at first, but after a couple of trips to the bathroom that I could only describe as traumatic, it was now worse and near constant. I’d also broken out in a cold, clammy sweat.

  I felt awful.

  “I think I might have food poisoning,” I said miserably.

  “What? Why?” Liz sat up, swinging her spindly legs onto the floor. “Have you been sick?”

  “No, but I think I’m going to be.”

  “And have you been—”

  “Yeah.” I made a face. “Twice.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “I think it was the burgers. I was the only one who had a chicken one, wasn’t I? But”—I inhaled sharply as an especially painful pinch gripped some part of my insides—“those Sambuca shots probably didn’t help. And then there was the ice. Do they make that with tap water? Are you supposed to drink the tap water here?”

  “We’re in Tenerife,” Liz said, “not Calcutta.”

  Our third day in Playa de las Americas was dawning. Only our third day and here I was, doubled over with stomach pain. Presumably still asleep elsewhere in the apartment were another two girls from our class, and elsewhere in the resort were the remaining eight members of the group. So far we’d spent our time sunbathing, drinking, and overspending, and then sleeping those activities off until we were ready to go again. The quintessential post–Leaving Cert holiday.

  I’d actually been dreaming that I’d accidentally burned through my entire fortnight’s budget in just the first couple of days, and thought the panic of this is what had woken me up in the middle of the night. Then I’d felt the shooting pain, the sudden movement in my gut, and realized I had real problems.

  “Warning,” Liz said, standing up. “I’m turning on the light.”

  There was a click, followed by a blinding glare. When my eyes adjusted, I saw that Liz was bent over, rummaging in her suitcase. It was lying open on the floor where she’d left it on the first day. Her wavy blonde hair was a tangled mess, her eyes still rimmed with the thick eyeliner, and the T-shirt her drunk self had pulled on to sleep in was inside-out, the label and seams clearly visible. She found a small box of something—tablets—and straightened up, bringing the box close to her face to read the label.

  “These are the job,” she said, throwing it to me. She selected one of the water bottles and passed it to me. “Take two of them.”

  “What are they?”

  “Imodium. They keep things in and they keep things down.”

  I swallowed the tablets with a swig of water.

  Liz left the room, returning half a minute later with the large plastic dish that had been sitting in the sink, clean towels, and a bottle of sports drink, ice-cold from the fridge. She set them all down within my easy reach. Then she wet a facecloth in the bathroom and wiped my forehead and cheeks with it, tying my hair back from my face with an elastic band she’d had in hers.

  “God,” she said, “you look awful.”

  I smiled weakly. “Thanks.”

  “Any time.” She patted my shoulder, then jerked her hand away. “Jesus, the heat off that!”

  “Sunburn,” I said. “Unrelated.”

  “Unless you have heat stroke.”

  “Does that make you ...?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Do you want me to put on some more after-sun?”

  “No, no. It’s okay.”

  While I sat perched on the edge of my bed, clenched and tense, Liz worked around me to straighten my pillows and smooth out the crumpled sheets. When she was done I lay back down, drew my knees up to my chest to help with the pain, and closed my eyes.

  I spent the rest of the day like that.

  And then three more days after that the very same way.

  The pain did dull to mere discomfort, but I was hot and sweaty and sick, and too much of all those things to lift my head up off the pillow. I faded in and out of sleep. I couldn’t eat and only drank because Liz would appear every couple of hours with a bottle with a straw stuck in it, forcing me to take a few sips. Had this happened to me at home, in my own room with my mother nearby, it would’ve been horrible but tolerable. Here, hundreds of miles away, on a thin mattress on a hard, uncomfortable bed in a bare-bones holiday apartment, it was nightmarish.

  On the second evening Liz went to reception and arranged for a visit from a local doctor, who took my temperature, wrote me a prescription, and told Liz to start feeding me bananas. That’s what she said, anyway. I didn’t understand much of what he’d muttered in Spanish to me, but I got the feeling he was bemused more than anything. I guess he saw plenty of eighteen-year-old Irish girls away from home for the first time whose bodies quickly balked at their bad decisions.

  I pleaded with Liz to leave me to suffer alone, but she refused to go further than the resort’s swimming pool without me, and she only went there for short periods while I was asleep. Instead, she brought me magazines, played cards with me, and made sure I was drinking my water and eating my bananas. She had housekeeping bring fresh sheets and she dragged the TV in from the living room, although we couldn’t find anything on it in English except BBC News.

  The other girls wandered in and out, wrinkling their noses while they made the sounds of sympathy, but they didn’t let my sickness get in the way of their holidaying. I was vaguely mad at them for doing that and angry at Liz for not doing it at all.

  “I’m ruining your holiday,” I said to her. We’d been living for this fortnight for nearly nine months and now, thanks to me, she was spending it in the apartment. “You should go out with them. Go out tonight. I’ll be fine. Really.”

  “Are you serious?” She rolled her eyes. “If I was sick and you left me by myself, I’d bloody murder you. We’ll both go out when you’re feeling better.”

  “But we don’t know when that’ll be. You could miss this entire holiday.”

  “Eat your bananas.”

  The Plague, as we started calling it, lasted nearly four nights and days. I’d spent my first forty-eight hours in Tenerife sunburnt and hungover, so that was pretty much the entire first week chalked down to a loss. The second one was great, and I flew back to Cork with a tan, fabulous memories, and plenty of group photos I didn’t feel comfortable showing my parents, but I still felt bad that I’d reduced Liz’s holiday by half.

  I didn’t even mention I’d been sick until I was safely home. My mother’s open mouth and eyes grew bigger and bigger while I gave her all the
ghastly details. She wasn’t at all impressed that I hadn’t called to tell her while it was happening, and she was convinced that it was alcohol, not food, that had caused the problem, even though I pointed out that I didn’t think that was medically possible.

  “Well,” she said, “aren’t you lucky you had Liz? She sounds like a right little Florence Nightingale.” Then she muttered, almost to herself, “I didn’t know the girl had it in her.”

  * * * * *

  The summer that starts with the Leaving Cert exam and ends with the publication of their results—which alone will determine our college places—is the most glorious one of all for Irish teenagers. The worst is over; school’s out forever. College and adult life await. It’s the only one filled with possibility and adventure, but not yet sullied by reality. Anything could happen yet.

  But there’s a price to pay: it rushes by. One minute it was all stretched out ahead of us, the next it was a Wednesday in the middle of August and the college place offers were coming out.

  I was already awake when my phone began to chirp at 5:55 a.m. I’d barely slept, and whenever I had I’d dreamed of disappointment.

  I reached for my laptop, fully charged and waiting for me beside the bed. I booted it up, navigated to the CAO homepage and entered my log-in details. By then it was 5:56 a.m.

  The laptop’s fan buzzed and whirred, as if protesting at being woken up at this ungodly hour on a summer’s morning. The clunky machine was years old, on its last legs. I’d been dropping hints to Mam and Dad for months, cursing the thing every time it couldn’t handle new software or it failed to save my work. I hit refresh now because leaving it idle was the quickest way to get it to freeze up and I just couldn’t deal with that this morning on top of everything else.

  5:57 a.m.

  I felt sick to my stomach, a hangover without the headache. What if I didn’t get in? I could barely remember now what I’d put down as my second choice, symptomatic of my refusal to accept that I’d ever have to do it. If I didn’t get in, I’d repeat. That was the only option. Do the Leaving Cert all over again, try again next year.

  Please God, though, don’t let me have to do that.

  5:58 a.m.

  The house was silent. I’d warned Mam and Dad not to get up, promising I’d wake them when the results were posted. There was just no point in us all getting up for six, especially if it was bad news.

  The truth was, I wanted to find out by myself. I wanted to be by myself with it, just for a minute, whether it was good or bad.

  5:59 a.m.

  I wondered where Liz was checking hers. Probably sitting in bed with her computer, like me. Only, knowing Liz, once she saw them, she’d roll over and go back to sleep. She hadn’t even bothered going into school the week before to get her exam results. She’d just checked them online and then headed for the pub, cool as a cucumber, bemused at me when I said she was missing out on a rite of passage, on that moment of opening the envelope, on seeing the grades slide out.

  “I just don’t need all the amateur dramatics,” she’d said. “The day my brother got his there was a full-on performance going on outside the school gates. I just can’t be arsed with that.”

  I thought the real reason might be that she didn’t want to have to perform if things didn’t go well for her.

  I’d gone in.

  6:00 a.m.

  Time. Heart thundering in my chest, I hit refresh again.

  First round offer: English Literature, St. John’s College Dublin (SJC0492).

  I leapt out of bed so fast I nearly sent the laptop crashing onto the floor. I ran out of my room and across the hall into Mam and Dad’s room, ready to burst out, “I got in!” at the top of my lungs—but their bed was empty. I went back out into the hall, saw the bathroom door standing open, the light off.

  Where were they?

  I heard it then: muffled voices a floor below me. They were up already.

  I raced downstairs and into the kitchen with a flourish, pushing the door open so fast that it swung back and hit off the wall with a clatter. They were at the table, both still in their pajamas. Dad was sitting down and Mam was standing over him, about to fill his mug with coffee from the machine. They looked up at the noise, then at me with raised eyebrows.

  I indulged myself with a dramatic pause before yelling, “I’m going to St. John’s!”

  She squealed. He started clapping.

  “Brilliant,” Mam said. “I knew you’d do it.”

  Dad got up and patted me on the back. “Well done, well done.”

  “What are you guys doing up, though?” I felt breathless with adrenalin. “I told you there was no point in us all being up at this hour.”

  “I had to.” My father pushed his glasses up his nose. “I wanted to know sooner rather than later whether or not I have to remortgage the house. Is it too late to change your mind and go to UCC, do you think?”

  This had been his running joke all summer. All year, as a matter of fact. If I went to University College Cork, I could live at home. St. John’s meant campus accommodation fees, to the tune of nearly six thousand euro per academic year.

  A bottle of Buck’s Fizz and three champagne flutes appeared.

  “Mam,” I said, “it’s six in the morning.”

  “It’s only fizzy orange juice, love. You’ll be out tonight drinking shots of God knows what.”

  “Paint stripper,” my father said.

  “I’m sure you can manage a glass of this.”

  I rolled my eyes and took a sip.

  “We got you a little present.” My father moved back the dining chair next to his and lifted a huge box up onto the table. It wasn’t wrapped, but there was a red ribbon tied around it.

  All I had to see was the Apple logo and I gasped. The drink nearly flew out of my hand. My mother saw this happening and took it from me.

  “What?” I pulled the box toward me. “No way. No way.”

  “She seems more excited about this than St. John’s,” my mother said wryly.

  “Look after it,” Dad said to me. “And use it for studying.”

  “I will, I will. Thanks, Dad.”

  “Your mother did the bow.”

  She rolled her eyes. “And I made sure he got the right one, more importantly.”

  My phone beeped with a text message.

  “Liz,” I said, looking at the screen. The message just said, call me.

  “Oh—Liz.” My mother was pouring a glass for my father now. “How did she get on, I wonder?”

  “I’m about to find out.”

  I took my phone out the back door and into the garden, stepping carefully onto the patio in my bare feet. The sky was clear—it was going to be a gorgeous day—but the garden was in cold shadow, the sun still hidden behind the house.

  I selected Liz from my speed-dial list and put the phone to my ear. It only rang once before I heard her voice saying tonelessly, “I didn’t get in.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t make me say it a second time.”

  I didn’t understand. We had a plan: Liz and I, together at St. John’s. I was going to do English literature and she was going to do English and French. We were going to share an apartment on campus. We were going to have the time of our lives living in Dublin. We’d been talking about it for years, planning every detail for months.

  A week ago, we’d celebrated us both getting enough Leaving Cert points, at least based on what we could guesstimate from last year’s threshold for entry. I had a few more than Liz, but then the course I was hoping to get demanded a few more. For all our stress and anxiety, neither of us truly believed we wouldn’t end up with what we wanted when the college offers came through today: a place in St. John’s.

  “You mean you didn’t get your first choice?” I said. Both of us had put down more than one course at S
t. John’s, just in case.

  “No,” Liz said. “I got like, choice number five.”

  “Which was what?”

  She sighed. “Bloody business at CIT.”

  “You put down a course in Cork?”

  “I didn’t think I’d have to worry about getting it,” she snapped. “God. This is such bullshit.”

  The cold cement beneath my feet was making the rest of me shiver. “The points must’ve gone up,” I said.

  “Oh, you think?”

  I forgave the snappiness, considering.

  “You didn’t accept it, did you, Liz? You should wait for the second round.”

  “Why?” she said. “I’m not going to get it then either.”

  “You never know.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “So, what? You’re going to stay here for the next four years?”

  “Rub it in, why don’t you?”

  “I’m just asking what your plan is.”

  “My plan right now is to go back to sleep.”

  I knew from the tone of Liz’s voice that she was in one of her moods and there was no point trying to talk her out of it. She’d decide when and where she’d get over this, and I’d just have to wait for it to happen.

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, I’ll call you later. And I’ll see you tonight anyway.”

  “I’m not going tonight.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Liz …”

  We were supposed to be going a party at this girl’s house, Sharon. Her parents were away in France for a fortnight so she’d the run of the place, and the house was out in the middle of nowhere, on some back road past Ballygarvan, so there’d be no next-door neighbors to worry about disturbing. She’d invited half the class to it. A CAO Offers Day Party.