If I Lie

by Corrine Jackson

  Nothing matches in Bob’s. It’s decorated with tag-sale tables and chairs of every style and size. The place reminds me of better times, when Carey, Blake, and I used to come here on weekends before Carey went off to basic. Blake and I haven’t bothered to keep up the tradition since Carey left. Too much water under that bridge.

  I can’t think about how life will change if Carey never comes home.

  I’m scooting untouched pancakes around my plate when the front door swings open and a bunch of girls from our school’s cheer squad walk in. A few of them sport red, splotchy cheeks and look like they have been crying, including Angel and Nikki. They must know about Carey. Like me, they’ve come to Bob’s for pancakes and comfort. When Angel spies me, she tenses with anger, and I know my father was right. Seeing me makes things worse for everyone. Six months of hating me and this news will only feed their rage.

  I throw money on the table to cover my check and rise to leave. I feel their eyes on me, and shame heats my face.

  I bargain. If I can just make it to the door, I will never show my face here again. If I can leave without being humiliated today, I will take whatever my old friends dish out tomorrow. Just please, not today, when I feel bloody and raw. I’m almost past the squad’s table. Please . . .

  A foot sneaks out and hooks my leg. I crash to the tiled floor, my knees and one elbow breaking my fall. Nobody laughs in the sudden silence. I gasp in pain.

  “Watch where you’re going, slut.”

  Nikki. Her eyes narrow. She hates me, but usually she’s just a follower. Jamie starts most of the crap. Jamie, who has loved Carey ever since that day he saved her from her father. Today, with the news of Carey’s disappearance still fresh, Nikki doesn’t need Jamie to humiliate me.

  Clamping a hand on their table, I pull myself to my feet. A tear leaks out and my knees throb like hell. Angel won’t even look at me, her petite face turned away as if to deny I exist.

  Anger has saved me every time they’ve hurt me these past few months, but I can’t find it now. Maybe because I think I deserve this in some twisted way, though not for the reason they think. Embarrassment flickers through me, and I shrink under the weight of everyone’s judgment.

  I force myself to find a backbone, and lift my chin in defiance. Nikki flinches like I’m going to hit her when I lean forward. As if.

  “Did that make you feel better about Carey, Nikki?” I ask in a quiet voice.

  She crosses her arms and drops her gaze, in a small way acknowledging that Carey would have hated what she just did to me. He always rooted for the underdog, and they all treat me like a dog these days.

  “Me neither,” I whisper.

  The silence is terrible. Angel finally grounds out, “Just leave, Q. Nobody wants you here.”

  From anyone else, those words would have hurt. Coming from Angel, they make my breath hitch in a sob before I stifle it.

  I limp to the door, bruised in places they can’t see. And I feel pathetic, because all I want is for one of them to be my friend again and tell me everything will be okay. Six months ago, they would have. I took it for granted.

  You never know what you have until it’s too late.

  * * *

  Ten months ago, Carey had come home for a brief leave. He had graduated a semester early so he could start BT sooner. For the three months he’d been gone, we’d only spoken through letters and a couple quick phone calls.

  If he had seemed different that May, I ignored it. I was too relieved to have him with me again. If it seemed like he didn’t have a lot of time for me during that leave, I ignored that, too, because I thought, like me, he might be struggling with the separation looming before us.

  The last time Carey, Blake, and my friends were all together was on Carey’s last day of leave. The Breens had thrown a party to celebrate his graduation from BT and his departure to Camp Geiger, where he’d make the transition from Marine recruit to combat-ready Marine. I hated the sound of “combat ready” and all that went with it, but Carey wanted to be a Marine more than anything. So I supported him, and arranged a surprise after-party. A party parents weren’t invited to.

  Angel and Nikki helped me plan everything and decorate Blake’s house early in the day. They handled getting everyone there, and my job was to bring Carey. He thought I’d planned a quiet night at Blake’s, just the three of us, so he was shocked when fifty of his friends erupted in cheers and hoots when he walked in the door.

  Blake gave Carey one of those half-hugs guys give each other, smacking him on the back. But Blake avoided my eyes like he’d done for the past few months.

  Carey, overwhelmed by our surprise, hooked one arm around Blake’s neck and one around mine, yanking us into a close circle. Blake seemed to stiffen for a moment as he brushed up against my side before relaxing and returning Carey’s grin.

  “I love you guys,” Carey said.

  I shot Blake a small smile. “Would you believe he’s not even drunk?”

  “We can fix that.” Blake pulled away and headed off to the kitchen where the keg lived.

  Carey wrapped both arms around me, and I tucked my cheek against his chest.

  His chin on my head, he said, “What’s up with you and Blake? Did you fight?”

  He never missed anything where I was concerned.

  I shrugged. “You know Blake. He’s always hot and cold with me. Really he only puts up with me when you’re here.”

  A warm hand smoothed down my back. “You want me to talk to him?”

  “Nah.” I squeezed his waist. “I missed you. I hate that you’re leaving tomorrow.”

  Something shifted in his expression. Something I couldn’t read. Carey opened his mouth to speak, but Angel and Nikki interrupted.

  Angel shoved us apart. “Give us a break, Barbie and Military Ken. You look serious, and that’s definitely not allowed tonight. We’re here to drink, party, and be a little reckless.” She smacked a loud kiss on Carey’s cheek. “Don’t worry about your girl, Care. Nikki and I’ll take care of her.”

  He grimaced. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Nikki slugged him in the gut. “Hey, we’re cheerleaders. We excel at cheering people up. Though I’m not sure why Q would be sad about your sorry ass leaving.”

  He just laughed and mussed her hair.

  Blake returned with red plastic cups of beer and passed them around.

  Somehow I ended up on the couch with my legs thrown over Angel’s lap.

  She rolled her eyes. “Who invited Jamie? I swear, if she throws herself at Carey any harder, I’m going to kick her ass.”

  I followed Angel’s gaze to the other side of the living room, where Jamie wrapped her arm around my boyfriend’s waist. Carey tried to sidestep her, but Jamie followed, trailing a hand down his arm. Blake stood behind him, cracking up while he watched the whole scene. Carey shot me a pleading glance, and I grinned, blowing him a kiss. Blake’s smile turned into a frown, and I stuck my tongue out at him, wondering what the hell his problem was.

  “Carey can handle her,” I said to Angel. “But I should probably go save him. Come with?”

  I stood and helped her up, then we headed toward the boys. Jamie scowled when she saw us.

  “Why do you put up with her?” Angel asked. “It’s gross how she’s always crawling over him.”

  “I’m not happy about it, but I trust Carey.” I didn’t add that I felt kind of sorry for Jamie. It had to be hard growing up with Jim Winterburn for a father.

  Angel sighed heavily, and I bumped her with my hip. “What?”

  She smiled. “Nothing. I’m just jealous of you guys.”

  I raised a brow. “You’re jealous of how I’ve just spent three months alone and how it’ll be August before I see Carey again? Or maybe you’re jealous of how he’ll probably be in Afghanistan or Iraq while we finish out our senior year?”

  I tried to keep my tone light, but Angel must have heard my unhappiness. She hugged me. “Well, when you put it that way, who
doesn’t want a Military Ken? Seriously—you know I’m here for you, right? And Nikki will be too.”

  With perfect timing as ever, Nikki let out a shriek of laughter. Gabriel Palucki had yanked her onto his lap and was tickling her to her obvious delight. Angel and I shook our heads. Where the boys were concerned, Cyclone Nikki left a devastating path.

  “Okay. I’ll be here for you,” Angel amended, and we snickered.

  Familiar hands clamped on my shoulders from behind and turned me so I was facing Carey and Jamie again. I looked over my shoulder into Blake’s shadowed hazel eyes, and he pushed me forward.

  “Do him a favor, and save the poor bastard. He’s too polite to tell Jamie to go to hell.”

  “Yes, sir!” I mock-saluted him, and Blake scowled again. “You keep looking at me like that, Blake, and your face is going to get stuck that way.”

  Finally his expression lightened up and he laughed, against his will, if I had to guess. I headed for Carey, whose eyes lit up when I launched myself at him. He caught me in midair, holding me against his chest, and I looped my arms around his neck.

  “Good-bye, Jamie,” I said, without taking my eyes from my boyfriend’s. “Things are going to get embarrassing if you stand there watching us kiss.” My feeling sorry for her only went so far. She needed to keep her hands to herself. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her slinking away, her cheeks flushed a brilliant red.

  Carey planted a chaste kiss on my mouth, rather than the passionate one I’d wanted. He’d done that a lot that week. Maybe he saw my disappointment, because he kissed me a second time, lingering a little longer.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, sensing something was off.

  “Nothing.” He squeezed me tighter when I continued to frown at him. “What could be wrong? I have the best friends in the world and I have you. Things are perfect.”

  We were pulled apart again by friends all wanting to spend time with Carey before he left. He had a way of making people feel special, and I couldn’t blame them for wanting a piece of that.

  But later, I wondered if I should have pushed Carey that night.

  Our last perfect night together had somehow felt like the beginning of the end.

  Chapter Three

  On the way home from Bob’s, I accidentally-on-purpose steer the Jeep down Carmichael, Sweethaven’s main street. Breen’s Auto Body sits in the middle of the block, and Blake’s motorcycle is parked to the side of the ancient brick building. For the past two years he’s worked at the garage after school and on weekends. Carey’s parents have taken him in as a kind of surrogate son since Carey left.

  On days like today, I envy him. I wish I could be with the Breens, grieving with them instead of driving around alone. I am so sick to death of myself. Of the loneliness that has cleaved itself to me like a disease. People can tell I’m in quarantine from a mile away, and they avert their eyes and hold their breath so they don’t catch what I have.

  My foot eases up on the gas when I see Blake bent under the open hood of a station wagon. On impulse, I pull into the garage’s driveway. He hears the sputtering of my engine—he’s worked on it many times in the past—and his head turns toward me. Our eyes meet, and I wish I could read his mind. I once thought I knew his moods better than anyone’s, except for Carey’s. But Blake has become a stranger.

  He straightens and glances around, wiping his hands on the dirty rag tucked into his back pocket. I know he is checking to see if Mr. Breen is around to spot us together. Nobody but him seems to be working the Saturday evening shift. Blake hesitates a moment longer before walking over. He climbs into my passenger seat, easing my camera case onto his lap to make room.

  Black hair. Muddy hazel eyes. Whipcord lean, muscled body. Masculine but not really handsome.

  Blake is nothing like Carey. Negative to positive. I think their differences were the basis of their friendship. Each was what the other wanted to be.

  “How are you?” he asks finally, staring at a splat of gray bird shit on my windshield.

  “Seriously?” I say with a short laugh.

  He sighs. “What do you want from me, Q?”

  The truth, for a start. Maybe a lie to make me feel better.

  “This isn’t the best time for you to come around. I wouldn’t even be here, except I offered to finish up for Mr. Breen.”

  It’s hard to look at him, so I watch the shop’s Stars and Stripes snap and snag around the flagpole. “I wondered if you’d heard anything about Carey. The last time he wrote me, he was headed to Marjah. Is that where he went MIA?”

  Blake’s surprise is palpable. He didn’t know I still talked to Carey. “You know how it is. The military isn’t telling the Breens much. His unit was on a scouting mission, hunting for IEDs. They got pinned down by snipers. The rest of his unit made it back, wounded but alive. Carey wasn’t with them.”

  I imagine it like it’s a spread in National Geographic. Carey in his dusty camo, focused on doing his duty and trying not to be a target. Wondering how he can save everyone. Marjah’s one of the last Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. Poppy fields keep the local opium suppliers in business and the insurgents funded. Taliban soldiers use women and children as human shields and take cover in civilian homes. Marines are dying, fighting an invisible enemy.

  “God! Why the hell did he have to go there?”

  A smile lifts one side of Blake’s mouth. “Because he’s a damned hero.”

  He hasn’t smiled at me in months. Not since before Carey left. If only I could snap a portrait of him and frame it for the hours I spend alone. I think about Blake’s mouth on mine and yearning spirals in my belly. Carey, I have loved for years, but Blake makes me ache. I don’t feel safe with him. I feel alive in a way I never did with Carey. That should have been my first clue.

  I pull my gaze from Blake’s mouth and realize he is staring at my lips too. Maybe he is remembering. His eyes take on that tortured look he’s worn for months. It’s my fault. My silence put that expression there.

  My jaw unclenches to tell him the truth that would set us both free: We. Didn’t. Cheat.

  Three little words. A breath and we could comfort each other. Hold each other.

  But he says, “You can’t be here, Q. It hurts the Breens to see you.”

  I recoil. “What about you, Blake? I wasn’t the only one in those pictures.” Just the only recognizable one. In the picture, Blake held me, our clothes more off than on, but his back faced the camera. Innocent, due to the bad angle the photo was shot from.

  He hunches his shoulders like he is warding off a chill. My camera strap is wound around his hands, and I study the grease creased into the side of his nails. Funny. He hates having dirty hands.

  “I’m sorry,” Blake says to my windshield. “But I don’t think it would help them if I told the truth. I don’t want to hurt them any more than we already have.”

  He looks like a hero for supporting the Breens, both emotionally and at the shop, while I continue to take the blame alone. My knees and elbow throb as a reminder. I don’t understand how I can simultaneously want to both hit him and touch him. Once upon a time, he was my best friend besides Carey. Back when I was still Carey’s Quinn.

  “Why did you call me? I know it was you.”

  You wanted to hear my voice. You missed me.

  “I thought you should know about Carey. So you could steer clear of the Breens.”

  I close my eyes and inhale one, two shutter clicks. “Get out,” I say calmly. He’s reaching for the door handle when I say, “You’re a coward. You know that, right?”

  He stiffens and, for an instant, he reminds me of my father. Then he shakes me off with a violent twist of his arm. “Fuck you, Q. After what you did, you don’t get to judge me.”

  The Jeep door slams behind him, and my camera bounces on the seat where he threw it. He stalks back to the garage, and I put the Jeep in gear. If Carey were here, he would have poked at Blake until he stopped acting lik
e a prick. Then Carey would have scolded me for being such a bitch to Blake because the guy was doing the best he could, given the circumstances. If Carey were here, I would tell him to take his damned secret and shove it.

  But he’s not here. And I won’t break another promise.

  So I will pretend we were still together when he deployed, lying to our best friend and everyone who hates me for cheating on him. And I will forget that he broke up with me two days before those pictures of Blake and me were taken.

  Because then I would have to remember how Carey had admitted that he loved a boy.

  * * *

  My father is in his garden when I get home.

  The permafrost is melting, and he is itching to get his hands in the dirt. His gardening obsession started the year my mother left. Each winter, he kills hours mapping out the rows of fruits, vegetables, and herbs that he will plant. March arrives, and he fades from the house, consumed with preparing the soil for the seeds and bulbs he’s cultivated from last year’s harvest. He tends to the plot of land with the tenderness of a sweetheart caring for his lover.

  Carey and I used to laugh at him. At the way he would force the land to grow at his command. This year, I’m not sure I can stand to watch my father dote on his plants.

  He sees my Jeep pull into the driveway, but he ignores me, stomping through the dirt and snow. He pauses to test the fence he put in to keep the rabbits out, and his chest heaves with the exertion.

  I try to remember what he was like before my mother left, but it’s hard to call up a clear picture. After 9/11, I felt more of his absence than his presence in my life. And when he made it home, he spent his time preparing to go back.

  My mother hated it. She said he used to be fun and paid more attention to us. She hated how the war changed him and how he was always gone. Enter Uncle Eddy, who was assigned a post on base. He had one huge thing going for him: He stayed behind.

  * * *

  I was supposed to be at Carey’s.

  In those days, I was one of the boys. We had plans to build a fort, and Carey had invited Blake, the new boy in town, to join us. At twelve, Carey and Blake should have been too cool to play with me, but I wasn’t like other eleven-year-old girls. For one thing, I was a better shot with Blake’s BB gun than the two of them put together. I could snag the head from one of Mrs. Murphy’s tulips from the oak tree in Carey’s yard. For another, I thought bows and ruffles were the devil’s invention, and I dressed like a boy, except when my mother got her hands on me.