I Swear

by Lane Davis

  “Do you want to eat with us?” Krista asked.

  “Well, that depends . . . ,” said Macie.

  “On what?” asked Kelly.

  Macie reached into her bag and pulled out a Sharpie. “I think we should let Leslie know what we think of sluts. Maybe on her locker, say, first thing in the morning?”

  Krista looked at the Sharpie in Macie’s outstretched hand, then looked up over her glasses with a grin.

  “Atta girl,” said Macie. “You’ve got potential, Kristen.”

  “It’s Krista.”

  “Whatever. We’ll see how you do tonight, and if it goes well, I’ll work on names tomorrow at lunch.”

  “Macie! What are you doing?” I hissed as she pulled me away from the table.

  On the other side of the vending machines, Macie stopped and burned holes through me with her eyes.

  “I’m winning,” she said softly. “It’s what I do.”

  “But . . . Leslie didn’t have a boob job—”

  “How do you know?” said Beth. Macie and I both stopped and turned around. We’d forgotten she was following us.

  I saw a slow smile spread across Macie’s face as she cocked her head and looked once more at the tiny gymnast.

  “Beth’s exactly right, Jillian. Look around you. None of these students knows anything about us. Our whole class is a blank slate. The story gets written this week. The future of high school is set in the next four days. Get on board, or tell me now, and I’ll find a new class vice president. Krista seems pretty resourceful, and Beth here is beginning to impress me.”

  The next morning, the word “WHORE” showed up in big, bold black letters scrawled across Leslie’s locker, and Leslie didn’t show up for first period. When she walked into geometry second period, a general hush fell over the room. Then the talking started again, only this time in whispers. She saw me sitting in between Macie and Beth. She looked at me strangely, then settled into a desk across the room.

  Krista walked up to our table at lunch and placed the Sharpie on Macie’s tray. Macie saw the crimson fingernail polish and grabbed her wrist, which made Krista jump. Macie raised her eyes and winked.

  “Where are you going? Sit.”

  Krista smirked and sat down with her lunch bag. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Nice work,” said Macie. “Oh, and don’t look now, but here comes Thunder Boobs.”

  “Didn’t have to look,” said Beth. “Felt the ground shaking.”

  Macie laughed so hard she almost spit out a mouthful of water. She was choking and coughing and pounding her chest as Leslie walked by, and just as she passed, Macie coughed the words, “Kill yourself.”

  Leslie wheeled on us. “What?” Her eyes were smoldering.

  “Easy, Thunder Tits,” said Macie. “Don’t you need to go scrub your locker or something?”

  Leslie smiled. “I’d love to chat, Macie, but Jake is waiting for me.”

  Macie narrowed her eyes as she watched Leslie go. “Not for long he’s not.”

  • • •

  “So our little Beth is no dummy. She decided to hitch her ride to the Macie Merrick bandwagon,” Katherine said.

  The phone was warm against my ear. I really wanted to hang up. Suddenly I was angry.

  “Sort of the way you jumped on Macie’s bandwagon?” I said. I was tired of Katherine’s smugness, like she was somehow above all this.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Katherine.” The sarcasm in my voice was thick, but I couldn’t stop myself. “When I got back from summer vacation before junior year, suddenly I’d been replaced on the student council. What did she promise you?”

  “This isn’t about me and you anymore, Jillian. This is about all of us. I just think it’s weird. Everybody says that Leslie and Beth seemed really close before school started, then Beth just ditched her?”

  “Maybe you should ask Beth,” I said.

  Katherine sighed. “Okay. Look, Macie wants us to get together tomorrow night to discuss—just the girls. Is your place okay? After Beth gets done with practice around eight?”

  Another call buzzed in, and I looked at the screen. It was Brad.

  “Sure—that’s fine. Sorry, Katherine—that’s Brad. He’s hopeless with calculus.”

  “Mm-hmm,” she said. “You should probably get that. See you tomorrow.”

  I frowned as I clicked over. What was that tone in her voice?

  “Hey,” I said.

  “I’m on my way over.”

  “What? Why?” I dropped my voice to a whisper, but I couldn’t contain my grin. “Is Jake with you?” I asked.

  “He will be,” Brad said. “He’s in the bathroom right now. We’ll leave in five minutes. When you hear him come in, meet me on your sidewalk a few houses down. We have to talk.”

  “Brad? Is everything okay?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s not.”

  I heard a door open behind him, and he hung up.

  • • •

  I climbed into Brad’s truck four houses down from ours and he eased off the curb and turned around to head away from our windows.

  “What is going on?” I asked.

  Four blocks away from our street, he pulled to the end of a darkened cul-de-sac and switched off the lights.

  “Who knows?” he asked quietly.

  “About . . . what?”

  “Us,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Jake?” he asked.

  “What about us—that we’re . . . ?”

  “Yes, Jillian!” he said, his voice raised. “Yes . . . that we’re . . . whatever we are.”

  “No,” I said. “Jesus, Brad. Why are you yelling?”

  He reached over and grabbed his iPad off the seat of the truck and handed it to me. I looked at him.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Open it,” he said.

  I flipped open the magnetic cover and the screen blazed to life. I slid the lock off and entered his password—my birthday: 0723. The screen slid into place—an email shined into my eyes. There was no subject, and just a single line of text:

  The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  I looked at Brad, confused. “What does this mean?”

  “Scroll down.” Brad put his forehead in his hand and leaned against the driver’s-side window.

  I flicked the email up with a swipe, and pictures flashed into view. A girl being kissed by a guy. In a car.

  My car.

  In the parking lot of a Starbucks.

  It was us.

  18. KATHERINE

  On the way to Jillian’s the next day, all I could hear in my head was Aunt Liza telling me not to show my cards, but I could feel the unrest in my stomach and I knew that if I didn’t take deep breaths and stay calm, this whole thing could crack right down the middle like a cake on a cooling rack.

  When I walked through the door, they were all looking at me. It was just the girls tonight.

  “Did you ever find the video at your dad’s office?” Macie snapped.

  I didn’t answer one way or another. “All I know is that Patrick said it was an unmitigated disaster.”

  No one was smiling. I’d been round and round in my head trying to figure out if I should show Macie the video of the deposition, but I just couldn’t see what good it would do. We were already in this deep, and I didn’t want to make this any worse on Beth than it was going to be.

  “Why was it such a disaster?” Krista asked, looking from me to Beth and back again.

  “The only reason it would have been a disaster is if somebody didn’t deny everything the way we’d planned.” Macie was on pins and needles. She was about to blow her stack, and for the first time in almost a year, I was ready to stand back and watch it happen.

  Jillian reached over and patted Beth’s hand. “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,” she said. “What did he ask you about? What was he like?”

  Beth glanced up at all of u
s from the couch I’d been sleeping on the morning we’d found out Leslie was dead less than two weeks ago. It felt like it had been a year. Suddenly I felt tired. Tired and old. As Aunt Liza called it, weary.

  “He’s handsome,” said Beth. “He’s got blue eyes and a nice smile . . .” Her voice trembled. She cleared her throat.

  “Oh, who gives a shit what the lawyer is like?” blazed Macie. “They’re all the fucking same. They want one thing. To trip us up. And it sounds like he succeeded.”

  “I’m sorry!” Beth yelled back, fighting tears. “It was awful. He brought up stuff that happened in ninth grade. He asked me if Leslie and I had been friends first.”

  “Friends,” scoffed Macie, rolling her eyes. “I’ll say.”

  “Shut up,” Beth shot back. “Just. Shut. Up.”

  “Did you deny it?” Krista asked.

  “I couldn’t,” Beth said, almost pleading. “I was under oath.”

  “Oh. My. God.” Macie fell back against the couch across from Beth and closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose with a thumb and forefinger like this was a bad dream and she could massage away the vision. “What else?” she asked, defeated.

  “He asked me about the very first rumor. The one about the breast implants.”

  Macie didn’t move a muscle, her hand still on her closed eyes. The room got very still as Krista and Jillian took in this news. They looked at Beth, and then at Macie. She musta felt the eyes all burrowing into her like a gopher in a bluegrass backyard ’cause her eyes popped open and she was on fire.

  “What?” she spat. “What are you all looking at?”

  Jillian and Beth both dropped their eyes, but not Krista. She glared at Macie, but turned to Beth. “What did you tell him about that rumor? Did you deny it?”

  Beth kept her eyes trained on the shaggy blue area rug between the toes of her pink Chucks and shook her head.

  “I told him I heard it. Then he wanted to know if I’d repeated it.”

  “And what did you say?” Macie asked in a tone that could have frozen the Mississippi in May.

  Beth started crying. Hard. She covered her face with her hands. “I told him that he had no idea what it was like to be in high school—,” she started.

  “Great,” Krista said flatly. “So basically you admitted that you were part of it.”

  “Fantastic,” sneered Macie. “Way to go.”

  “Whatever, Macie.” Beth was yelling now. “You’re the one who started that rumor. This was all your idea in the first pla—”

  Macie stood up, stopping Beth in midsentence, and took a very deliberate step around the coffee table between the couches. She slowly knelt down and looked into Beth’s eyes.

  “I swear to God, Beth. Don’t you get it? If you don’t start claiming not to know who started the rumors, we’re all going down for this.”

  She stood back up and surveyed the rest of us like a mother mantis deciding whether to eat her husband now or later.

  “So, how do they even know about all of this?” Krista asked. She was picking at the red polish on her nails, sending tiny flakes drifting into the carpet.

  “It’s their job to know,” I said. “They’ve subpoenaed Facebook records, and between that and all the police interviews that were done last week with kids in the school, there’s plenty to go on. They may even start to cooperate with Graham Braddock’s office.”

  “What?” Macie asked, shocked.

  “Who is Graham Braddock?” asked Jillian.

  “The district attorney,” I said quietly.

  “They’re working with the DA’s office? On what? This is a civil suit,” said Macie.

  I took a deep breath. There was no way around this. “All I know is that Daddy said the DA is working with a couple of police detectives, continuing to take statements from students.”

  “That bastard . . .” Macie was grabbing her purse and fishing for her phone and her car keys.

  “Why would the DA care about this?” Jillian was frowning, worried.

  When I didn’t answer right away, Macie looked up from her phone and rolled her eyes. “Go ahead, Katherine. Tell her. Clue them in, for fuck’s sake.”

  “The DA would mainly be interested if there was going to be a criminal trial.”

  Macie’s phone buzzed, and she glared at it, then tossed it into her bag. “There will be no criminal trial,” she said. “My dad has enough dirt on Graham Braddock to bury him six feet deep. But let me assure you ladies that if we do not circle the wagons now, this will get far uglier before it gets better.”

  Just like that, camera-ready Macie was back in action, and I realized in that moment that I hated her. Truly, deeply hated her.

  “Krista,” she said. It was more a command than anything else. When Krista looked at her, Macie said, “You and Josh are tomorrow after school, correct?”

  “Yep,” chirped Krista.

  “I need you to stick with the plan,” said Macie. “Deny it. Downplay it. Whatever they ask you about, just stay calm and tell them it didn’t happen.”

  “You got it, boss.” Krista smiled.

  “Katherine?” The way she said my name made the back of my neck burn. I stared straight ahead. She waited for some confirmation that I’d heard her.

  “Hello, Kat? You go on Monday, correct? Are you with me?” She snapped her fingers in front of my eyes like she was trying to bring me out of a hypnotized state.

  “Don’t call me ‘Kat,’” I said slowly.

  “Don’t let me down,” she said through clenched teeth. “Okay, Monday night after Katherine’s deposition, let’s meet to regroup at Pike Street, deal?”

  Then she smiled and whirled toward the door. “And for chrissakes, cheer up, people! I mean, really, you guys. Nothing happened here. We weren’t involved. Leslie Gatlin was a wing nut who killed herself because her parents weren’t aware of her mental instability. Period. Unless one of you did something to Leslie on your own that I’m not aware of, you have nothing to worry about. I’ll see you all tomorrow. Remember to be there early—it’s TeenReach volunteer sign-up day. I’ll need all four of you to help me man the table.”

  Then she blew us a kiss like we’d been discussing pom-poms and push-up bras, and disappeared into the hallway.

  • • •

  Aunt Liza called when I was on my way home from Jillian’s. It’d been a coupla weeks since we’d talked. I almost didn’t answer when I saw her on the caller ID. I wasn’t sure what to say. I wasn’t sure how to tell her. I wasn’t sure how to ask for help. I wasn’t sure that I needed help, but I pushed the button on the steering wheel that answers my phone hands-free anyhow, ’cause I was sure I needed to hear her voice.

  “Hey, Aunt Liza.”

  “Hey, Li’l K.”

  And something about hearing her voice broke me open just a little on the inside and I choked out a sob that musta sounded like a hydrogen bomb in a blender, so I gripped that steering wheel and told her the whole story about what was going on in Seattle.

  • • •

  When I’d finished, Aunt Liza was real quiet. It had started to rain lightly, and I turned on the windshield wipers. They made a slow, smooth swoosh across the windshield.

  “Li’l K, you remember when you first wanted to do pageants?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “After that night you and I watched Miss America on TV while Mama and Daddy were in New Orleans for the weekend.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” she said. “And you remember what we watched the next night?”

  “My Fair Lady,” I said with a smile.

  Aunt Liza laughed in the way she does. “That Audrey Hepburn was more’n just a pretty face,” she said. “She had brains like you, too. In fact, you’re more like her than you’ll ever know. But, Li’l K, when you go into that room and you sit there with those lawyers, you got to tell the truth. Even if you afraid. Fear is what got you into this mess—fear of what other people think, fear you ain’t beautiful enough as you is, fear that if you sta
nd up, you’ll be all alone.”

  I was crying again.

  “You was too young to remember this when we watched the movie together, but that Miz Hepburn always been one of my favorites ’cause a something she said ’fore she died. I wrote it down when I heard it years and years ago. Keep it in my dresser drawer with my favorite things.”

  “What was it?” I asked.

  “It was her instructions for bein’ beautiful,” Aunt Liza said.

  “What were they?”

  I heard her clear her throat and I pictured her there in Atlanta, talking into the phone with her eyes closed, remembering.

  “For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.”

  It’s funny how a lifetime of people talking at you can make you numb to hearing your own voice, but somehow the right person can say the right thing in the right moment—even if it’s something they’ve said before, or something you’ve heard before—and when it rat-a-tats across your eardrum, for some reason at that precise second, you hear it. You hear it loud and clear, like a heavenly bullhorn, or the beat of the bass in a song you’ve always loved.

  Aunt Liza cut through the haze of all the other voices I’d been hearing in my ears and my head, and suddenly, in the silence, I heard the voice in my heart.

  I pressed down on the gas and finally felt ready for my deposition. I knew exactly what I had to do.

  19. BETH

  When I got home from Jillian’s, Mom’s Bible study was just finishing up. There were still seven or eight women hanging out, drinking coffee and eating cake and cookies. I’d almost made it through the living room when I heard my mom’s voice.

  “Oh, Bethany, honey. How wonderful you’re home! How did things go at your deposition? Mrs. Warren, Bethany has been called as a witness in a civil case! It’s very important! Did you say hello to Mrs. Warren, Bethany?”

  I stopped, then slowly turned. “No, Mom, actually I was fleeing through the living room in hopes of not being noticed. I’m tiny and fast.” I smiled to Mrs. Warren, who must’ve been eighty if she was a day. “Usually I can get away with it.”