Love & Lies

by Julie Johnson

  I met Mrs. Patel’s narrowed eyes and shrugged my shoulders at her before forcing my lips up into what I hoped could pass for smile.

  From the way her face contorted in response, it wasn’t hard to guess that my lackluster grimace fell short of the mark. Her eyes flickered away from my face to study the exposed wine bottle tops peeking out from the paper bag I was clutching to my chest like a safety blanket, before returning to examine my features. A beat of silence passed between us before she opened her mouth and spoke. As in formed words, made conversation, actually communicated with me for the first time ever, which, I might add, left me dumbfounded and utterly unable to string together a coherent thought.

  “Are you alright, Miss Lux?” she asked in perfect, if accented, English.

  I started, shocked that she was — freaking finally — speaking to me after a year of resolute silence.

  “I— uh, I’m…” I stammered, at a loss. “I’m fine.” I swallowed roughly, again fighting welling tears. You know those idiotic people who, when they’re upset and someone is even the tiniest bit nice to them, immediately burst into tears?

  Yep. That’s me.

  “You don’t talk today,” she noted, her head tipping sideways as she studied me intently. I don’t think she blinked once — which would’ve been totally creepy if I’d had any brainpower left to dwell on things that weren’t the ex-love-of-my-life.

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  Abruptly, her head snapped upright and she nodded briskly in return. Without further ado, she reached beneath the countertop and pulled out a bottle of top-grade, black label scotch, followed by two stout glasses. Before I could fathom what was occurring or even begin to muster a protest, Mrs. Patel had poured two fingers of amber liquor into each glass and was shoving one across the counter at me.

  “I— what—“ I began, feeling like a bumbling idiot.

  “Drink,” Mrs. Patel snapped at me, her shrewd glare back in full force, pinning my feet to the floor. Jesus, she was scary. No wonder her grandkids were so well behaved whenever they were in the store with her.

  I nodded, grasping the glass with my free hand and watching as she lifted hers into the air — toasting god only knew what — before throwing back her scotch like an old pro. She didn’t even wince as it went down and only when she had again trained her glare on me did I realize I’d been frozen, staring at her in open-mouthed shock.

  Hastily, I threw back my own shot, gasping at the fire that burned down my throat, stole the breath from my lungs, and blasted an inferno of warmth into my empty stomach. My eyes a watery mess, I spluttered — clearly I was not in Mrs. Patel’s league — and leaned over the counter, heaving in large gulps of air. When I’d finally regained my composure, I looked up at Mrs. Patel who, if it weren’t such an impossibility, I would’ve sworn was smiling enigmatically at me from her maroon chair.

  “Thanks?” I whispered through a hoarse throat. I wasn’t quite sure what had just happened, or why ancient Mrs. Patel was forcing me to do shots with her at two in the afternoon, but I wasn’t about to argue. I’d always been more a lover than a fighter.

  Mrs. Patel eyed me speculatively once again. Seemingly satisfied with whatever she saw in my bewildered expression, she nodded sharply and snatched my empty glass from the countertop. Within an instant it had disappeared beneath the counter along with the bottle of scotch, and she’d folded her hands back in a demure grip on her lap. I stared at her in wide-eyed expectation, waiting for some wise words of Indian wisdom or, at the very least, any kind of explanation for the past five minutes.

  I should’ve known better, honestly.

  “That will be $8.99,” Mrs. Patel said with her usual perfunctory disregard, one liver-spotted hand outstretched for my money.

  Numbly, I handed over a ten-dollar bill and watched as she deposited it into the cash register.

  “Thank you,” I told her haltingly, as I accepted my change.

  “Come again,” she told me indifferently, as though I were a stranger rather than the girl who came in nearly every day spouting chitchat and who, at the moment, apparently looked like she could really use a good dose of high quality scotch.

  Shaking my head in confusion, I walked outside with my bag of snacks and my bottles of wine, the door swinging shut with the telltale tinkling of bells at my back. And there on a busy New York sidewalk, with a shot of liquor in my bloodstream and the hot August sun beating down on me, at two thirty in the afternoon on the worst day of my life, I threw my head back and laughed and laughed until tears were streaming down my face and the passing tourists were eyeing me with a wariness generally reserved for hookers and homeless people.

  My life was a freaking mess.

  Chapter 7

  Then

  * * *

  “Do you see her outfit today?” The girl’s halfhearted attempt at a whisper carried easily across the small classroom to where I sat beside the window. With a stubborn set to my shoulders, I stared steadfastly out the pane to my left and refused to justify her slur with a reaction. Cursing the clear blue Georgia sky, I wished silently for a bizarrely-formed cloud or even a low-flying plane on which I could focus my attentions and use as a distraction from the catty words that were unquestionably about my wardrobe choices.

  “Amber!” A second voice chimed in with a giggling rebuke. “Be nice! God, I hear her brother is, like, dying or something.”

  I knew those voices well.

  They found themselves hilarious — two miniature, Botox-free versions of Joan Rivers apparently hosting their own unofficial version of Fashion Police: Jackson High Edition. Nicole was the Skipper to Amber’s Barbie: a less popular, less blonde, and significantly less well-endowed version of her Queen Bee counterpart.

  “No shit?” I could hear the maniacal snap of Amber’s gum from across the room. “That is so totally tragic. Like something out of a movie, you know?”

  “I know, right? And Stacy’s mom told my mom that her parents are…” Cue dramatic pause. “Alcoholics.”

  I’d come to the conclusion early — approximately five minutes after the start of junior high, if you wanted the specifics — that while girls like Amber were catty and manipulative on an almost laughably shallow level, it was the ones like Nicole who were the worst. They were the followers, the sheep; the seconds-in-command who, beneath the bad hair, self-esteem issues, and remaining layer of baby fat, were intelligent enough to know better than to cater to frivolous high-school-peakers like Amber. Nicole had been my friend once. Back before she’d traded her glasses for contacts and fried her hair with a bottle of peroxide in a desperate ploy to gain entry into the elite circle. Evidently the lure of popularity — even if it was the JV version — was too strong to resist.

  “Jeeze. Some families in this town.” I heard Amber exhale sharply. “Did you catch One Tree Hill last night?”

  It was at this point that I tuned out.

  Fingernails biting harshly into my clenched fists, I pictured their words sliding around me, bouncing off my forcefield of indifference and never coming close enough to pierce my heart. Yet, like a tidal wave across the sand, the whispers left their mark each time — a dark, damp imprint that eroded the beach in infinitesimal amounts over days and decades. I could pretend they didn’t wound me with their insensitivity, but the callous words crashed against me in unrelenting, inevitable strikes, slowly eating away at my unaffected facade and disturbing an already fragile foundation.

  “Sit down please, everyone.” Ms. Ingraham’s stern voice rang out, calling for the juniors loitering in groups at the back of the classroom and in the hallway to take their seats. Fighting off a yawn, I listened to the acquiescent groans, the shuffle of unwilling feet, and the scrape of metal-legged desks against the linoleum as my peers settled in. It had been another long night for me. After Sebastian had dropped me off at the hospital, my already bad day had descended even further on the shit scale. When I’d arrived at his room, Jamie had sensed immediately that something
was off. His twin-spidey-senses must’ve been tingling.

  “What’s wrong, light of my life?” he’d asked immediately, sitting up straighter in his gurneyed hospital bed. He’d called me that for years, his little nickname a play on my name’s Latin origins. “And why are you all wet?” He eyed my tangled damp blonde locks curiously.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I said, shrugging lightly and forcing the worry lines to smooth from my forehead. “Ms. Ingraham kept the entire class late today to conjugate a million extra verb tenses. She’s clearly gunning for teacher of the year.”

  Jamie smiled easily, but his face was too pale. His latest surgery had taken more out of him than any of his previous ones. He tired easily these days and, though still his ever-cheery self, he must’ve been in considerable pain.

  “The lonely old bag probably just didn’t want to go home to her cats,” Jamie said, scooting over so I could join him on the bed. Once I’d settled in, I dropped my head on his shoulder and he slid a comforting arm around my back.

  “My thoughts exactly.” I sighed, letting my tired eyes droop closed. This was always the best part of my day. Though school had never been my favorite place, the last year without Jamie there with me had made it exponentially worse. “Missed you, Jamie.”

  “Missed you too, sis,” he said, his arm tightening in a brief reassuring squeeze. “But I’ll be back on my feet in no time and we’ll rule Jackson High, you mark my words,” he joked lightly, knowing that in all likelihood he would never again walk the halls alongside me. “Ms. Ingraham will be so infatuated with my handsome mug, she’ll give both of us A’s for the term. Oh, and we’ll have a free pass to skip out of classes. I mean, seriously, what hall monitor is going to stop me? I can pull the cancer card. You’ve gotta be a real dick to turn in the kid with osteosarcoma, even if he is tardy three days in a row.”

  I tried to smile at his attempts to lighten the mood but I couldn’t quite find the strength within myself. Squeezing my eyelids together harshly, I did my best to get control over my gathering tears. Jamie hated it when I cried — he’d much rather joke about his illness than weep about it. He didn’t do self-pity and, while most days I admired that, sometimes I just needed to be sad. I needed to cry and rage against the world for its injustice. Shake my fists at whatever god was up there, for slowly draining the life from the best person I’d ever known.

  We fell silent for a time. Jamie likely sensed I wasn’t in the mood to joke with him and instead gave me the quiet solace I desperately needed. His very presence recharged me whenever my batteries dropped to dangerously low levels and I’d begun to fear that I couldn’t go on juggling school, work, his illness, and my scatterbrained parents.

  “So who do I have to beat up?” he whispered quietly, breaking the silence.

  “What?” I lifted my head to look him in the eyes.

  “The boy, sis. Whoever he is, brotherly duty requires that I give him a piece of my mind.” Jamie lifted his hand to touch his chin in a gesture of deep contemplation. “Perhaps even a beat down is in order. Put the fear of god into him, and all that jazz.” As if he could even stand, let alone give someone a beat down. I rolled my eyes affectionately.

  “There’s no boy, Jamie.”

  “The size large, $200 cashmere you’re wearing would suggest otherwise,” he said, staring pointedly at my torso. Sebastian’s warm sweater was swimming on my petite form, cocooning me from neck to mid-thigh — I’d forgotten to give it back in my rush to escape both the confines of his car and the perceptive look in his eyes. “Thought we didn’t lie to each other, Lux?” Jamie’s voice held an unusual note of hurt.

  “We don’t!” I protested immediately. “This is nothing! It’s nothing. I’d tell you if there was a boy.”

  “Well, if it’s nothing, then explain.” He looked at me expectantly.

  I sighed in resignation.

  “I was walking here in the rain and apparently some guy was practicing for the Indy 500 in his Mercedes. The maniac took a turn too fast and doused me with a puddle in the process. He felt bad so he gave me his sweater and a ride here. That’s it. End of story.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Does it matter?” I deflected, for the first time in my life hesitant to share something with my twin. There was something personal about the car ride, something I didn’t want to share with anyone just yet. I wanted to hold it close to my heart for a little while longer, a private memory that belonged only to me and the beautiful boy in the rain.

  “Clearly it does, if you’re being so secretive about it.”

  Damn. Jamie was never one to beat around the bush and, when it came down to it, I was a pushover for anything he asked of me. I sighed again.

  “It was Sebastian Covington, okay? Satisfied?” I could feel the heat of a blush rise to my cheeks and I avoided eye contact with Jamie at all costs, afraid of what my gaze might reveal.

  “Oh my god,” Jamie said, a note of incredulity lacing his tone. “I can’t believe it.”

  “What?” I asked, staring pointedly at the flowers I’d brought with me last week in an attempt to brighten up the dreary hospital room. Their stems were limp now, their shriveled brown petals scattered on the particleboard tabletop. I’d have to bring some new ones with me tomorrow.

  “You like him,” Jamie said matter-of-factly.

  “I don’t.” The denial came swiftly, shooting from my lips like a curse word.

  “Mhmm,” Jamie hummed. “Whatever you say.”

  “I. Don’t. Like. Sebastian. Freaking. Covington,” I growled out.

  “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” Jamie was grinning at me irritatingly.

  “Drop it, James.” I only called him James when I was pissed — a fact he knew all too well, which could explain why his grin got even bigger. “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Really? I didn’t think I was being ridiculous. But if you’d like, I could certainly be more ridiculous,” he offered. He waited a beat, then raised his voice several octaves up into a girlish falsetto. “Lux has a cruuuuuush,” he singsonged.

  “What are you, seven years old?”

  “Lux and Sebastian, sitting in a tree, K-I-S—“

  “That’s it!” I yelled, turning to glare at him. “Enough! I didn’t tease you when you had a crush on Amber! Amber! Of all people.”

  “Actually, I think I was seven years old at that point.”

  “Like that’s an excuse. That girl has been a demon-spawn since preschool. If you shaved off all her bleached blonde tresses I bet there’d be a 666 inscribed on her skull.”

  “Touché,” Jamie allowed. His grin faded a little as he examined my flushed features. “And if it’s really bothering you, I’ll stop. I was only teasing.”

  “I know,” I said, swallowing roughly and trying to regain my composure. “I don’t know why I got so upset.”

  Except I did. I knew exactly why I was so upset by Jamie’s teasing. Because, deep down, maybe I did like the hazel-eyed boy who listened to classical music and who’d given me a sweater that cost more than I made in a shift at Minnie’s without blinking. Maybe I liked him a little too much. And that, I knew, was the stupidest thing I could ever allow myself to do.

  After leaving Jamie at the hospital, I’d hopped a bus to the diner and taken impatient customers’ orders for five straight hours. By the time I got back home to our dark empty house, it was nearly eleven and my parents were nowhere to be found. Well, actually, they’d be pretty easy to track down if I really wanted to; no doubt they were cloistered away in one of the five seedy bars Jackson boasted, slurping down vodkas to cope with the shit hand life had dealt them.

  I’d hopped into the shower, eager to wash off the smell of fry grease and coleslaw, only to find we had no hot water. The rusted old water heater in our basement must’ve finally bit the dust. Shampooing as quickly as possible, I shivered beneath the frigid torrents and vowed that once I had enough money for Jamie and me to cut ties and get away from Jackson, I�
�d never take cold showers again. I’d choose a hot shower over a hot meal every time.

  Thankfully, more often than not Minnie, my boss, would force dinner on me before I left after my night shifts. She knew that things were tough at home and, despite her lack of creativity in the diner-naming process, she had a heart of gold. She eked out a measly living with her restaurant proceeds and didn’t have much to spare — but what she could afford to give, she did without hesitation. She’d even hired me when there were plenty of qualified applicants who had more than my zero waitressing experience.

  I owed Minnie a lot.

  After toweling off, I’d forced myself to complete the workbook sheets Ms. Ingraham had assigned earlier that afternoon along with some of the required reading for my English class. We were covering the American classics — Steinbeck, Lee, Fitzgerald, Salinger — and although that proved to be a constant source of grumbling for many of my peers, who’d rather be reading Luster or Vogue, it wasn’t a chore for a bookworm like me. When lines from Cannery Row began to blur before my eyes long past midnight, I’d finally fallen into a dead sleep, only to be jarred awake by the chirping of my cellphone alarm at 7:00 a.m.

  Hence my serious case of the yawns, today — and pretty much every other day of the week.

  I tried not to let my eyes drift closed as I focused on Ms. Ingraham, who was bustling around the front of the classroom, absently wiping excess chalk dust on the too-tight black pants that encased her thighs like stuffed sausages. I couldn’t help but think that there should be some kind of statute of limitations on wearing legging jeans. Camel-toe on a sixty-year-old spinster was not something I needed to see. Ever.

  She launched into her lesson, pushing smudged glasses up higher on the bridge of her nose and leaving a smear of chalk on her cheekbone in the process. She’d pulled her dark curly hair back from her face with a large clip, but it did little to tame the inch of frizz that haloed her head.