The Safest Lies

by Megan Miranda

  I felt my shoulders deflate, my back slumping. “Ugh,” I said. My name. In the newspaper. My mom was going to flip. She was big on privacy—so big, in fact, that I was probably the only student not on one of the vast assortment of social networking sites. I only had an email account because it was required from school so teachers could send us assignments. I was sure she wouldn’t have gotten me a phone if it didn’t also double as a GPS. “Isn’t that illegal to print my name? I’m a minor.”

  “Apparently not,” she said. “Or else someone missed that memo.” I decided this was something best kept from my mother, for her own peace of mind.

  “You home for a while?” I asked, itching to change the subject.

  “Fall break. Just the week.” Annika’s newest boarding school worked on some nontraditional schedule, not really adhering to typical holidays, and I could never remember when she was supposed to be home. “I emailed you when I got home last night, when I couldn’t reach you.”

  “Oh, sorry,” I said. I’d never made it to Mom’s office and the computer. I was used to using my phone for email, and I wasn’t working on any school projects. I had barely made it out of my room at all—mostly on autopilot, to the kitchen and back again—until the fear of Jan seeing me this way knocked me out of my stupor.

  “I even tried your home line,” Annika said. “Busy signal. All day.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I just tried it again before I came out here.”

  “Huh. I’ll check it.” Maybe it had been knocked off the cradle. I hadn’t heard it ring since the accident, now that she mentioned it.

  “So, listen, you want to come over tomorrow? I’m sentenced to family time today with Brett home from college for the weekend, but he’s going out tomorrow, so I should be free at least part of the day.”

  “I can’t come over,” I said, shaking my head. “Maybe later next week but…not now.” Not when it took three days to leave the house. Not when I already felt the vastness, as my mom called it, of the open air. The feeling of all the things that could go wrong the farther I walked from my door.

  “Sure. Later, then,” she said. This was another reason I thought we got along so well. We didn’t ask too many questions. I never asked why she kept changing schools, and she never asked why I lived behind bars and gates and wires.

  I slid off the wall, back to my side of the property, an invisible tether—the promise of safe, and predictable. She stared at the weeds, squeezed her eyes shut, and dropped down after me. “Hey,” she said, hand on my arm. “You’re okay, right?”

  I wasn’t sure if Annika knew about my mom, or what she suspected, but she must’ve known something. The leash I was kept on, the things I couldn’t do, the fact that we always went to her house instead of my own.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m okay.” The darkness over the edge, the grip of my fingers…

  I felt an ache in the bruise on my shoulder, my elbows, and the line across my hands.

  Annika shuddered and picked her feet up, one exaggerated step at a time, like there might really be snakes in the grass. I uncurled my hand, overwhelmed with the sudden impulse to show her the line across my fingers—that maybe she would understand—

  “Annika?” A woman’s voice, from the other side of the wall.

  Annika rolled her eyes. “Gotta run.” But before she climbed back over the wall, she pulled me toward her, squeezed me tight, the ribbons in her hair tickling my neck. “I’m glad you’re okay, Kelsey darling.” Then she air-kissed my cheek, which was something only Annika could get away with, before finding a foothold in the stone wall.

  Back inside, Mom’s office door was closed, and Jan’s car was still parked just outside the front gate. They were probably having an official session. The box of my recovered items was still on the living room floor. I stepped around it and picked up the phone line—it had been left off the hook. I hung it up, picked it up again, heard a catch, a click, and then the dial tone. If it hadn’t been working before, at least it was now.

  Just as I hung up, a shrill ring cut through the silent living room. I let it ring twice, until the number flashed on the caller ID. Something local that I didn’t recognize. And then I remembered that my cell had been out of commission, and I’d called home from Ryan’s phone, and, in an uncharacteristic surge of irrational hope, I thought maybe he was checking in, like he said he would. I held the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

  But it was a woman. “Am I speaking with Kelsey Thomas?”

  “Yes,” I said slowly, shifting the phone from shoulder to shoulder, my eyes on the closed door of the office.

  “I’m Moira Little, and I was hoping to get a quote from you for a piece I’m writing for the Covington City Gazette.”

  “Uh,” I said, “no comment.” That was a thing, right? Would that be printed in the paper? Ryan Baker, hero, rescues Kelsey Thomas, who has no comment. “Listen,” I added, keeping my voice low, “it’s just, I’m not supposed to do this.”

  “Give quotes to reporters?”

  Among other things. “Yes.” Ryan Baker, hero, rescues Kelsey Thomas, who is not supposed to give quotes to reporters. “No,” I said, “I mean, I’m just happy to be alive.”

  Silence, and then, “There’s a slight discrepancy between the police report and your school paperwork. Are you the Kelsey Thomas born on September seventh or November seventh?”

  It was a simple question—I’d turned seventeen last month, in September, and she probably only wanted my age for whatever she was writing. But my mother had taught me to guard my privacy. I heard her voice, an echo in my head: Careful. So I settled on a neutral answer, an answer this woman could presumably get anywhere. “I’m seventeen,” I mumbled.

  “And will we be seeing you Monday?”

  “Uh,” I said. Was she asking if I was going back to school? Or whether I was planning to show up at her office? I felt like I was missing half the conversation. “Maybe,” I said. That seemed like the safest answer. “Bye now.”

  And I thought that possibly my mother had left the phone off the hook for a reason.

  —

  I went to my room and started the process of reconfiguring the new cell phone. As soon as I had it all set up, it started beeping, downloading a bunch of texts from the last few days. First, a string from Annika—Where are you? Omg, I heard. I’m home. Call me, doll—and an indication of a voice mail as well. Then a bunch of texts from an unknown number, and I felt my smile growing involuntarily as I read through the messages.

  Hey, it’s Ryan. Checking in…

  I didn’t see you at school. What’s going on?

  Are you okay?

  Hmm, okay, not much for texting, huh? Call me when you get this.

  Okay, from the non-response, it has just occurred to me that you probably don’t have a new phone yet.

  And now I feel like a stalker. Man, I wish I could delete those.

  Oh God, please say something.

  I heard Jan and my mother in the living room—session over, I assumed. I hoped Jan didn’t notice I was back from visiting Annika just yet.

  Hey, I wrote. Phone acquired.

  He wrote back almost immediately:

  So, just pretend I didn’t send like half of those, okay? It was a weird few days…

  Consider it done.

  The phone rang in my hand, and my heart ended up in my stomach when I saw his number displayed. I answered quickly so nobody else would hear.

  “Hi,” I said, trying to keep my voice low. But it came out all breathy, like I was trying to seduce him or something. I cleared my throat. Flopped back on my bed. Died.

  “Hey,” he said. “So…you okay?”

  “Sure. I guess so.” I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, which my mother had painted pale blue when I was a baby, complete with white clouds.

  “Are you coming back to school?” he asked.

  “Yes. On Monday. Did I miss anything interesting?”

  “Is that a joke? A
re you making a joke, Kelsey Thomas? I didn’t know you were that funny.”

  “Oh yeah. Math must be super-boring without me.” I put my hand over my eyes, my smile stretching to beyond-stupid levels. But that was the great thing about the phone—you could smile stupidly to yourself and not feel embarrassed by it.

  Ryan was choosing not to speak at the moment, and I pushed myself up on my elbows, worried I’d said something wrong. This would not be a surprise.

  “So,” he said, “what have you been up to the last few days while playing hooky?”

  “Nothing,” I said. Embarrassingly nothing. And now there was nothing on the other end of the line. Say something, Kelsey. “I keep dreaming about it,” I said, then squeezed my eyes shut. Pitfall of the phone: you could say something stupid, with no possibility of deleting the statement.

  I waited for Ryan to do the Hey, my mom’s calling, gotta run bit, but instead he said, “Me too.”

  I sat up, balled my pillow in my lap. “I keep thinking about this story we read in English about a man about to be hung, who dreamed an entire escape in the moment he fell, never realizing he was still falling in slow motion, on the way to being dead.”

  Please, somebody save me from myself.

  A pause from Ryan Baker, who must’ve been reevaluating his decision to call and check in on me. “So…you think we might still be falling? Right now?”

  “No. No.” God, this was why I didn’t try to flirt. “I just keep thinking about it.”

  But I wondered if he felt it too, wherever he was, the gust of air coming in through the window, off the mountains—like we were rushing through it still.

  “I haven’t slept,” he said. “At first I thought it was just too much adrenaline, but now I don’t know. Every time I close my eyes, I think maybe they won’t open again.” He paused. “So, there’s that.”

  I shifted on my mattress, tipping my head back on the pillow again. “We’re hilarious,” I said.

  He laughed. “You really are funny,” he said.

  “So…,” I said.

  “So…you’re kind of okay, but kind of not, and we’ve established that I’m the same. And I have to work the rest of the weekend. I’ll see you Monday, then?”

  “Yes,” I said. “See you in math class.”

  His laughter filled my head as I hung up the phone.

  —

  Something woke me Sunday morning, and it took me a moment to realize it was the sound of my phone vibrating on the bedside table. I rubbed my eyes, trying to focus, as I opened the message from Ryan. It was a picture of the firehouse—all brick and red paint, like a cartoon—with the caption Home for the next 14 hours.

  I texted back: Looks like fun.

  By the time I got out of the shower, I had another message from him. This time, a picture of the bathroom floor, with a mop and a bucket, caption: Not exactly. This is what I get to do here most of the time. Sorry to shatter the illusion.

  I went to the window, positioned the phone between the bars of the grate, and snapped a picture of the mountains in the distance. I sent it to Ryan with the caption Illusion: peaceful and serene. To the people who’ve never driven off the side of one.

  A few minutes later, he sent a picture of the protective gear the firefighters wear, hanging from a peg. Illusion: nothing can touch you.

  When Mom called me out for lunch, leftover casserole lumped on a plate, I quickly snapped a picture before she sat down: Illusion: edible.

  She had dark circles under her eyes—a telltale sign that she wasn’t sleeping. But she was out of her room, and she was cooking, and she smirked as I slid the phone under the table. “You sure are glued to that thing today,” she said. And she had this faint smile, like she knew.

  Faced with deciding between two equally difficult options—talking to my mom about who I was texting or eating her food—I took the martyr stance, shoved a heap of food in my mouth, and gave her an exaggerated thumbs-up.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” she asked, moving the food around on her plate.

  “Delish,” I said, still chewing.

  She sighed. “I hoped we wouldn’t be like other mothers and daughters.”

  “Don’t worry. We’re not,” I said, chasing the bite with an entire glass of water.

  She cringed but said nothing. And I remembered that she’d grown up in a home without a mother at all, and with a father she probably wished had not existed, either. I remembered all that had happened after, and that she was doing the best she could.

  “It was a joke, Mom.”

  “Mm,” she answered, pushing the food around her plate.

  After lunch, I had another picture from him, the backs of several men hovering around a kitchen. It looked like they were cooking. Caption: I’ll fight you for title of worst lunch.

  “Kelsey?” Mom called from her office. “I’m about to place the grocery order. Anything you need?”

  I stood behind her at the computer, scanned her list on the grocery-delivery site, and said, “Shampoo, please.”

  “I just bought you shampoo,” she said.

  “It’s terrible. It doesn’t do anything except sit on top of my hair.” Mom had the perfectly straight, no-need-to-style type of hair. I, on the other hand, did not. “Go back to the old kind.”

  She sighed, but placed the order. I saw she’d set the delivery time for after school Tuesday, so I’d be here to take it in. This office was where she spent most of her time, for work and for research. This computer was her lifeline. Security screens stood guard in the upper corners of the room, and pictures of the two of us lined the walls, a timeline from infancy to now. And beside the door, a shadow box framed my first artwork—a swirling mess of finger paint—where it had hung for as long as I could remember.

  I shifted from foot to foot. “Any word on the car insurance?” I asked.

  My mom raised her eyes from the screen for just a moment, then went back to staring at the bright light, her eyes unmoving. “No,” she said.

  I searched for the box of returned things from my car, thinking about sending a picture to Ryan, sure he would understand, that it would need no caption to say what I was feeling—but I couldn’t find it. Mom must’ve moved it, or trashed it. I hurried back to my room, planning out my next photo message, but found a message waiting for me again:

  Is this Ryan’s girlfriend???

  It had been sitting unanswered for over twenty minutes.

  The phone chimed when it was still in my hand:

  Sorry. I work with assholes. Gotta go.

  I debated how to respond for an embarrassing amount of time, finally settling on See you tomorrow. A literary masterpiece.

  —

  I didn’t hear from Ryan again that night, and I slept fitfully, thinking I heard the vibration of my phone every time I drifted off. It was just after midnight, and I checked my phone one more time, but there was nothing there. Pathetic, Kelsey. I rolled over, pulling the sheets up to my chin, and heard a shout. I bolted upright in bed, tiptoed out into the dark hallway, feeling for the light switch.

  I checked the alarm display next to the front door—the red light, the house armed and ready. “Mom?” I whispered.

  I heard a sharp intake of air from her room, like a wheezing gasp. The word “No.” And I was running.

  My feet skidded along the cold, tiled floor. Her door was closed, as she always kept it. I turned the handle, held my breath. The door creaked as I pushed it open, and Mom sat upright in bed, breathing heavily, the whites of her eyes catching the glow from the hall light. “I thought I heard you…,” I said.

  Her eyes skimmed the walls around her, and I imagined what she was checking for. Spiders, crawling over the walls, the furniture, her. It was the only thing I ever knew about her nightmares. “The spiders, get them off,” she’d once said, half-asleep, as I tried to shake her awake.

  I’d told Jan once, back when she first came into our lives. That Mom was afraid of spiders. And Jan must’v
e told Mom, because after Jan left, she grabbed my arm, tighter than ever, and shook me—asking where I’d heard that.

  “In your nightmare,” I’d told her, and she released my arm. I knew better than to ask again.

  I dreamed of them too after that. Spiders spilling out of the corners of a room. Spiders crawling over her skinny, pale body as she lay curled up on a cold basement floor somewhere, with burns on her back. I’d feel them myself, the spiders creeping between the covers of my bed as the fears settled in.

  “Mom? Are you okay?” I asked, taking a step inside her room.

  She ran a hand over her shoulder, looked at the red glowing numbers of the clock, stared at me again, like she was orienting herself. “Go to bed, Kelsey,” she said.

  I shivered as I closed her door—the goose bumps rising across my arms and legs—and smelled the faint whiff of gasoline-soaked gear, like a lingering memory.

  Mom wasn’t out of her room by breakfast. No big deal, I thought, opening the curtains, letting in the sunlight cutting through the mountains. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. She could’ve been catching up on sleep after the nightmare. She could be on the phone with Jan in there.

  I slowly packed my backpack from last year, which I’d pulled out of the coat closet.

  I checked the clock. I peeled a banana. I slammed cabinet doors.

  My shoulders finally relaxed as I heard the creak of her bedroom door, and I kept my back to her as her footsteps approached, so she wouldn’t see the relief on my face. “Hey,” I said, holding up a banana. “Last one, want to split?”