Secrets, Lies, and Scandals

by Amanda K. Morgan

  “Well, apparently he likes to hike. They’re combing some of the wildlife areas to see if he had an accident. Or they’re thinking maybe he got sick somewhere.” He wanted to give Derrick more. He wanted to talk to him. He just didn’t want to talk to him about this.

  “Do you know his wife?” Derrick pressed. “I heard she was crazy with a capital C.”

  “I met her once.”

  “Ooh, tell me everything.”

  Mattie’s chest felt funny. “Can we . . . can we talk about something else? I’m . . . I don’t know. I’m worried about it.”

  Derrick was quiet for a second. “Yeah. Sure. Can I choose, though?”

  “Sure.” Mattie was happy to spill his guts about anything but Stratford. He just wanted to get away from it. Pretend like everything was fine. For just a little bit. He felt his insides unclench, just slightly.

  “How about you tell me where you were that night when you accidentally called me.”

  All the sickness came rushing back. It slammed into him with the force of a tidal wave, and Mattie clenched his teeth, trying to regain his composure. “I was with some people from class. We were going to study, but we snuck into a movie instead.”

  “Anyone special there?” Derrick’s tone was a precisely designed sort of lightness.

  “No.”

  “Did you do anything you’re not telling me about?”

  “No.”

  Derrick was quiet for a second. And then another. And still, another. And quite suddenly, Mattie couldn’t stand the silence anymore.

  “Who were those guys you were all over in your Facebook photos?”

  Derrick didn’t say anything.

  But then he cackled. Mattie recognized the sound; he’d just never heard it applied to him. It was angry. It was the sound Derrick used when he was cutting someone down. Making them feel worthless. “You know what, Mattie? How about I tell the truth when you decide to.”

  And then he hung up.

  Kinley

  Saturday, June 20

  Kinley panted, her hands on her knees, in the middle of her room. Every drawer was hanging open. She’d pulled almost everything out of her closet. She’d looked under her bed. Checked every corner.

  And still, it wasn’t there.

  It wasn’t anywhere.

  Her earpiece. And the flash drive. They were gone. They were gone and she couldn’t find them anywhere.

  And a girl like Kinley didn’t lose things. She just didn’t. She put her head in her hands and gathered up big handfuls of her hair.

  Her father would kill her for losing it.

  No. Even worse.

  Losing it would kill her father.

  Her whole life, she would never, ever be forgiven for doing this to him.

  She knew what had happened. She knew exactly what and how.

  Tyler. He hadn’t believed her story. He was too smart. And he’d taken it. She dug out her phone from under a pile of sweaters she’d ripped from the bottom drawer and called him.

  She counted the rings. He answered on the fourth.

  “Hey, Kin.”

  Any other day, she would have smiled at the nickname. But not today. “I need you to come over right now,” she said. “Please. I need you.”

  “Are you okay?” he asked. His voice was soft.

  “No. Please, please come. My parents are gone again. Just come.”

  And within ten minutes, Tyler had pulled up in his car—even though Kinley knew he was grounded from it for the entire summer—and was vaulting through her window.

  “Holy shit,” he said. “Kin, did you get robbed?”

  She shook her head. She tried to paw her hair back from her face, but gave up. She wanted to give in to sobbing, too, but she couldn’t. She had to be strong. She had to get the flash drive back.

  “What happened?”

  She looked up at him through her hair. “I think you know, Tyler. You took it.”

  “Took what?” he asked, but he looked guilty.

  She looked up at him. “Why, Tyler? Why did you have to take it? Couldn’t you just have left it alone?”

  He paused. She read the truth in his face.

  “Couldn’t you have been real about it? Or just told me you didn’t want to talk about it?” Tyler asked. He cleared a spot next to Kinley and sat down. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Did you really have to make up an elaborate story? I thought we trusted each other, Kin.”

  His voice was small. Hurt.

  She’d never heard him sound like that before.

  “If I tell you the truth, will you give it back?” Kinley put both of her hands on either side of his face.

  He lifted a shoulder, not meeting her eyes.

  “Look, Tyler. No one—and I mean no one—can ever have that flash drive. They can never know that it exists. They can never see it. Okay?”

  Tyler frowned. “Okay. But why?”

  She released his face. “Because I’m not partially deaf, okay? I lied. I made the whole thing up.” She ducked her head, and her cheeks burned. She was so stupid. Why had she ever lied to Tyler, the one person she felt close to in all of this? Why had she put this between them?

  “I know,” he said quietly.

  “You did?”

  He nudged her with his shoulder. “There wasn’t a May Day parade five years ago. It really was canceled. I guess I should have told you that my mother’s on the board. She would have mentioned if some adorable little girl sustained a grievous injury in her parade.”

  Kinley still didn’t look up. “Do you hate me?”

  “No,” Tyler answered without hesitation. “But I wish I understood why you lied.”

  Kinley felt a tear start in her eye, but she blinked it away quickly. She could not cry. She couldn’t. “Because I’m not as smart as everyone thinks I am.”

  It was the first time she’d ever said it out loud. The first time she’d admitted it, even to herself.

  She just wasn’t that smart. Not really. She wasn’t the genius. She wasn’t the prodigy.

  She was just like everyone else.

  Except worse.

  Tyler’s expression didn’t change. He just watched her, waiting.

  “I use them to study. They’re a trick. It’s a sophisticated recording-and-playback system. Sometimes, during class, I record the lectures to listen back to them. But honestly . . . I have the answers. And I listen to them during the tests.” She paused and swallowed hard.

  “You have the answers,” Tyler repeated, very slowly. “How?”

  Kinley pulled on her hair. “I used to volunteer in the office, you know. With standardized testing, teachers have to submit all sorts of crap to the front office and the state and stuff, so most of the teachers turn in copies of their big tests. I make copies of the Scantron forms and record the data onto the flash drive, which is, as you know, almost imperceptible. I just listen and fill in all the answers as I go.”

  Tyler shrank away from her, almost imperceptibly. She almost didn’t notice.

  She wanted to not care. But she did. There was some part of her that needed him.

  “Say something,” she pleaded. She reached out and put her hand on his arm, and he didn’t pull away.

  “You’re cheating,” he said, and his voice was a little dull around the edges. “You’re not even . . . You’re not making all those scores that you’re known for.”

  “Yep,” she said, and suddenly, she was bitter. “I’m a big old cheat. I’m too stupid to make the grades that my family expects for real, and so I have to be creative. So if you listen to what’s on that flash drive, you’ll just hear almost exactly what was on Stratford’s test.”

  “Why not use notes like everyone else?” Tyler asked.

  Kinley half smiled. “Teachers check notes. Remember Cade? If they ever happened to notice I was wearing an earpiece . . . well, what teacher in their right mind would make a student remove a hearing aid? Talk about a lawsuit.”

  Tyler laughed, but Kinle
y couldn’t tell if there was any humor in it at all. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Don’t believe what?” Kinley drew her knees up and rested her elbows on them.

  “That you’re not smart enough to get the grades on your own.” He began to laugh again then, a little more. “You’re kind of an evil genius, aren’t you? God, this is so messed up. This is like a movie: the perfect girl with a dirty secret.” He laughed harder, and she shoved him, and suddenly she was laughing too, even though her heart hurt and she wasn’t sure if she found anything funny. It came from a strange place deep inside of her, where something was coming loose.

  “Will you give it back?” Kinley managed finally, when her gut was aching from so much laughter. “Please?”

  “Yeah,” Tyler said. “I think I can do that.”

  And they sat together amid the mess for a while. When they moved, they didn’t talk much, but Tyler helped her fold all of her clothes and straighten the trophies and rehang the ribbons that had fallen in the search. That night, they didn’t kiss at all.

  And Kinley wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  Tyler

  Saturday, June 20

  Guilt was a funny thing.

  Tyler sat on the couch in his living room. The TV was on—more for company than anything else, since neither of his parents were home—but he didn’t even know what channel it was. The remote was on the coffee table, unused.

  It was screwed up, Tyler thought, how the principal emotions were considered to be love and hate. Love and hate controlled everything. Except they didn’t.

  Guilt did.

  Guilt, like they’d discussed the first day of class. Guilt, for what they’d done to Stratford. Guilt, for tossing his body in the river like so much shit.

  For causing his wife so much worry.

  And now, for stealing Kinley’s earpiece. Beautiful, clever, cheating, lying Kinley.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about her. And he wanted to. He desperately wanted to.

  He reached forward for the remote and began clicking through. Blindly. Watching a man demonstrate a blender. A woman on an obstacle course, climbing an impossible wall. An old man, dying, while a young man watched him.

  Another news report about Stratford. It flashed to a picture of his family—Stratford, actually smiling, and not in the angry half way that he did in class. The bastard was really smiling, with his arm around his wife.

  And his daughter, blond haired and gap-toothed, sat in front of them.

  He had a daughter.

  Tyler felt his heart collapse in on itself.

  He’d helped cover up the murder of a man with a daughter. A wife. A family. He’d been more than the crotchety old man who despised his students. He’d had a life. He was a real person, not the mean-teacher caricature that Tyler had been erecting in his mind.

  “Hey, Ty.”

  Tyler jumped. He hadn’t realized anyone was home. Jacob held out his hands, palms up. “Whoa. Calm down, buddy.”

  “I’m fine,” Tyler said. He tossed Jacob the remote. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Bed?” Jacob squinted at him. “Dude. It’s seven thirty.”

  Tyler didn’t look at his brother. He just walked past him, toward the stairs that led to his bedroom.

  “I need more.”

  Jacob’s voice was cold and clear and desperate. Tyler turned around, halfway up the stairs. “Sorry, bro. I told you to make that stuff last. My probation officer is putting the pressure on. I have to keep my nose clean.”

  It wasn’t a complete lie.

  Jacob jogged up a couple stairs to face his brother. “Please? I need it.” His face was tight and pleading; his lower lip jutted out.

  Tyler stared through him. “Find it from someone else. I’m not your guy anymore.”

  “Shit, Tyler. No one gets the shit you get. I can’t risk it showing up in a drug test. I’m begging you, dude.”

  Tyler leaned back against the wall. “Don’t you want to actually win on your own for once without steroids?”

  “Just enough to get me through the summer,” Jacob begged. “I have a scout coming to a summer meet next week to watch me. I need it for that, and then I’ll stop.”

  “And then what? You get recruited and screw up your sophomore season because you quit?”

  Jacob hunched his shoulders, and Tyler could see his anger growing. “I’ll figure it out, okay? Just get me more. I need you to get me more.”

  And Tyler, who had always been in the shadow of his brother, had had enough. He couldn’t be a part of this for one second longer. He couldn’t be a part of one more shitty thing.

  It couldn’t happen.

  “You’re done, Lance Armstrong.” Tyler punched his brother on the shoulder playfully. “Good luck in your next meet, though.” He jogged the rest of the way up the stairs.

  “I’ll tell Mom and Dad,” Jacob said.

  Tyler froze. He turned back to stare at his older brother. “What are you going to tell them? That you’re juicing?”

  Jacob met his eyes. “I’m going to tell them that you made me. I’m going to tell them I didn’t know about it at first. I’ll tell them you got me addicted.”

  “That’s stupid, Jacob.”

  “Who will they believe?” Jacob smiled nastily up at him. “Me or you? Don’t you know all the cops on a first-name basis?”

  Tyler studied his brother. Jacob was right. They’d believe his brother over his word any day of the week. They never believed him. If anyone ever, even once, believed Tyler, he would never have gone along with all the Stratford bullshit.

  But he knew better.

  “Get my shit, Tyler,” Jacob said, his voice unusually high. “Figure it out.” And Jacob ascended the stairs and pushed past his brother.

  Tyler resisted the urge to punch him. He resisted the urge to lay him out, right then, and to scream at him. But who was he kidding? His roid-rage dick of a brother would kill him. He was bigger. Stronger.

  Angrier.

  He let him go.

  He swallowed hard.

  Kinley would have to wait on her flash drive. And he was going to have to take the car out again. He knew that his guy, Jer, was at home right now. And Jer probably had some.

  And before he’d even made the decision, Tyler was in his car, behind the wheel, driving. He was leaving the relatively good part of town and he was going toward . . . if not the bad, then what his mother would call the less fortunate.

  He drove slowly. And he hated himself with every mile his car crept forward. He should have told his brother no. Not just tonight, but the first time, when his brother had come to his room, crying, and begged him for help. Any kind of help. Anything.

  Now his brother—his perfect, sweet brother, who charmed every old lady he’d ever met and had a secret Pokémon collection—was an addict. He was a mess and he was ruined and he was staking his entire swimming career on a drug that Tyler had gotten him started on because he’d just wanted to help. A drug that—maybe unfortunately—broke down really quickly in the blood. A drug that didn’t show up in standard tests.

  He wanted to run away now more than ever. But what would happen if he did?

  He pulled up across the street outside of Jer’s house and put the car in park. But he didn’t shut it off. He rested both his hands on the steering wheel and put his head down. He didn’t want to go inside. He didn’t ever want to see Jer again, not even for a joint.

  They’d been friends, at first. They’d smoked together. They’d tried new shit together. And then Jacob had gotten involved and it hadn’t been fun anymore.

  Tyler put his hand on the door handle. The shitty Jeep was in the driveway with the hood popped. Not surprising. The thing was always breaking down, but Jer refused to replace it.

  In his pocket, his phone buzzed. He glanced down at it. A text from his mom. Either she was coming home soon, or she already was there, and she’d noticed his car missing. He wasn’t exactly supposed to be driving.

  He
opened the door, just a crack, and that was when the car pulled up.

  Tyler froze, his senses tingling. He very softly, very carefully shut the door. He did not look at the car directly.

  “Damn it,” he said under his breath.

  It was a light blue car with an extended mirror and state license plates.

  A cop.

  Shit.

  A cop.

  The officer opened the door of his car, stepped out, and walked around to Tyler’s door, where he paused. Tyler’s heart went frantic. For a moment, he was sure he was going to die.

  In the two seconds it took for the cop to reach his car, he saw it all laid out before him. Being thrown over the hood. Arrested for murder. Charged, while his parents and his brother watched from the back of the courtroom. Jailed for the rest of his life.

  The cop pounded on Tyler’s window with an open hand.

  Tyler sucked in his breath. His fingers shakily pressed the down button, and the window rolled downward with a quiet hum.

  “Can I help you, sir?” Tyler asked. He thanked God it wasn’t a cop he knew, not anyone who’d arrested him or ticketed him before.

  The cop eyed him. “What are you doing here with your car running?”

  Tyler held up his cell phone. “My mother told me if she heard I was texting and driving one more time she’d take away my phone. So I pulled over.”

  “Can I see the phone, son?”

  Tyler bristled inwardly. He hated when cops called him son. Like they actually cared.

  He quickly unlocked the phone and showed the officer his mother’s text message—which, thank God, said simply: Home soon. Lasagna ok?

  “Is your mom’s lasagna good?”

  Tyler shrugged. “It depends on if she decides to put spinach in it, sir.”

  The cop guffawed, and Tyler smiled tentatively.

  The officer patted the side of his car twice. “Get home. This isn’t a good neighborhood.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tyler said “sir” like the police said “son,” usually. He didn’t mean it. But if a cop, for once in his life, was letting him go, he could “sir” all day.

  “Have a good night,” he told the officer.