Liar

by Justine Larbalestier

  I nod. “Yes, I understand.”

  Rodriguez coughs. “I suspect we’ll be talking to you again,” he says. “In the meantime, if you think of anything else—no matter how small—let us know.” Rodriguez leans over to hand me his card. I put it on the table, staring at it. Maybe they don’t suspect me after all?

  Stein stands up and bangs his head on Dad’s bicycle. He swears.

  Dad looks down and Mom bites her lip. Rodriguez smiles briefly. I’m the only one who’s not tempted to laugh.

  AFTER

  “I’m sick,” I tell my dad, who’s slipped into my room to see why I haven’t gotten up yet. I’ve been holding an ice pack in my hands and overheating my face by holding it too close to the radiator. The sheets and comforter are pulled up to my chin. I’m hot and cold and sweaty.

  I can’t face school. I bet they all know that the cops were here. The rumors about me and Zach and what I did to him are getting out of control. Today I can’t deal with the whispers.

  “Sweetheart,” Dad says, sitting down on the bed, “I know it’s all been a shock. You need to take time off. Go upstate.”

  I have an urge to tell him how bad it is at school. To beg him to let me finish the school year at home. Stay in my room and send in my assignments. But I’m afraid he’ll pack me off to the Greats. No finishing the school year, no college. Just the farm for the rest of my life.

  Faking sick is my compromise. I want to have a legitimate absence from school. Maybe I can fake a serious illness long enough not to have to go back and yet still finish the school year.

  “Dad,” I say, weakly, worried I’m trying too hard. It’s hard to fake regular sick when you’ve almost never had a cold or flu. Only the family illness. “I’m really sick.”

  He puts his hand on my forehead. “You do feel a bit hot. Is your throat sore?”

  I nod. It feels like it’s full of razor blades, but not the way he means.

  “Give me your hand.”

  I do.

  “Cold! Clammy, too. That can’t be good. Maybe I should take you to a doctor?”

  I look at him. Dad knows how I feel about doctors. There have been way too many in my life.

  “Okay, not a doctor. But if you’re still like this when your mom gets home you might have to. I’ll get you some water. What do you want for breakfast? Scrambled eggs okay?”

  I nod. For once I’m glad he works from home.

  He stands up. “Did you take your pill?”

  I don’t groan, just nod weakly. When he closes the door behind him, I pull the covers up over my head, close my eyes, and fall asleep.

  Sometimes I can be very still.

  BEFORE

  “Why’d you tell that lie about being born messed up?” Zach asked me, his mouth tickling my ear.

  We were at his place, curled together on his bed. His parents were out of town visiting family. The window was wide-open and we could hear all the traffic noises from the street seven stories below. Sometimes even snatches of conversation from people walking by. I hear people talking all the time at my place, but I figured that was ’cause we’re only on the fourth floor. Seven stories ought to bring some quiet with it. Especially here in Inwood, so much less congested than downtown.

  “C’mon, Micah, why’d you lie like that?”

  “Wasn’t a lie,” I told him, turning so that our faces were barely an inch apart. “I was born messed up.” I was tempted to tell him about the hair. I was tempted to tell him the truth.

  Zach leaned up on his elbow, looked at me straight. His eyebrows unmoving. His mouth still, like he didn’t approve, but wasn’t going to show it.

  I leaned up, too. “My parents don’t like to admit that I was born funny. They’re the liars, not me.”

  “Born with boy parts and girl parts?” He stared at me, trying to read my face. “You know that’s gross, right? If I believed you there’s no way—”

  “Really?” I asked, shocked. “It would change how you think about me?”

  I don’t know why I was surprised. I was brought up my whole life on the belief that telling people the truth leads to disaster. I’ve done it, too. Told the truth and watched everyone freak out.

  “Are you kidding me?” Zach said, moving a little farther away from me. “Bad enough that you’re a liar without thinking about you being all messed up down there.” He shuddered.

  “Fine,” I said. “Think what you want to think.”

  “I think that you’re a mess. But not that kind of a mess. I like you. But I wish you wouldn’t lie to me. You don’t have to. You can tell me true things. You can tell me nothing at all. But I don’t like you lying.”

  “You want me to tell you a true thing? Okay, and I never told anyone this before.” I truly hadn’t. I could feel myself holding my breath, getting ready to let it out. But Zach laughed.

  “Never told anyone before? Tayshawn said that’s what you said when you told him about being a girl and a boy.”

  “Tayshawn told you that?” I asked, leaning against the wall, making myself smaller. Talking was making Zach not want to touch me. I wanted us to stop talking and start kissing.

  “Tayshawn’s my boy. You told him you’d never told anyone before, but then you went and told Chantal and Brandon and I don’t know who else.”

  “Well, they were giving me grief for pretending I was a boy. I wanted to shut them up.”

  Zach didn’t say anything but I could tell that he didn’t believe me. Fair enough. It was a lie: I told them for the attention, for the pleasure of fooling them, for the look of shock on their faces.

  Zach put his thumb to my mouth like he didn’t want to hear it. My lips felt warm and tingling.

  “How long you been lying for?” he asked. “Tayshawn thinks you don’t know how to tell the truth. Why is that?”

  “How come you and Tayshawn talk about me?” I asked. I didn’t want to answer his questions. “I thought we were a secret!”

  “We’re guys, we don’t talk about nothing. Not like girls do. I never told him about you and me. We’re a secret. It was before, when everyone was talking about you.”

  “Great.”

  Zach laughed. “Well, you pass for a boy, you lie inside out—people talk.” He held my face in both hands and then kissed me, a short closed-mouth kiss. Not the kind of kiss I was longing for. “How long you been lying?”

  “All my life,” I said, because he wanted honesty.

  That’s the truth. I don’t know if Zach believed me, but I hope you do. Because you’re the only one I’ve never lied to.

  “What?” Zach asked, pulling his hands away. “When you were a baby in your crib sucking on your pacifier you were telling lies?”

  “Okay, so maybe I haven’t been lying always. But from the time I started talking. I learned it from my parents. Well, my dad mostly. My mom’s lies are white ones. ‘You look fine.’ ‘Oh, is that what time it is?’ You know.”

  “Regular lies.”

  I agreed. “What about you? What kind of lies do you tell?”

  “Regular ones. And as few as possible. I don’t like ’em.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not right.”

  “What do you tell Sarah when you’re with me?”

  “White lies. The kind that don’t harm anyone. But your lies are crazy. Why would you pretend you was a boy? That you were born messed up? Why do you lie all the time?”

  “If you’ve got a big secret it’s best to paper it over with lots of little ones.”

  “So what’s your big secret, huh?”

  The moment had passed. I wasn’t going to tell him about the family illness. “I can’t tell you.”

  “I’ll tickle it out of you,” he said, going for my armpits.

  “No!” I yelled, trying to roll away, but I was against the wall. “You will not!”

  I grabbed for his wrists. He twisted away. He was on top of me and then I was on top of him and we were going around and around and there
was less tickling and yelling and mouths were close and hearts were beating faster and I forgot what he was asking. Lost it in the taste of his mouth. The feel of his tongue and lips against mine.

  “Micah,” Zach breathed, “I don’t care what you are.”

  I did.

  Do.

  HISTORY OF ME

  You’re wondering if we slept together, aren’t you?

  I know you are. It’s what everyone wants to know. Did they?

  Then there’s me telling you about us in bed together. With no mention of whether our clothes are on or off. And we’re doing what?

  Talking.

  You don’t believe that’s all we did, do you? Not with all that tickling and kissing and stuff. You want to know what else we did together. How far it went. First base? Second? Third? All the way home?

  You know I’m on the pill so it’s not like I’d get pregnant. You know I’m old enough. It wouldn’t make me a slut, would it? He was my only one. But then there’s Sarah—Zach’s real girlfriend. She’s allowed to think that I’m a slut, isn’t she? I mean, it’s her boyfriend we’re talking about. If she’s allowed, then everyone else can think it, too. Sleeping with someone else’s boy is the definition of slut.

  Except that, as it happens—and not that this is any of your business—we weren’t.

  We didn’t.

  It was kissing and holding and hugging. Lots of kissing. But we never took our clothes off. Never got past that very first base. He didn’t touch mine; my fingers got nowhere near his.

  See?

  I am a good girl after all.

  I didn’t kill him either.

  AFTER

  For the first time in my life I want to be up at the farm, out of school, and out of the city. I want to go running with Hilliard. Have him show me some new tricks.

  I know that after a few days up there I’ll be longing to be back home, but right this instant it’s what I want.

  School is too much.

  But I make myself go anyway.

  A day in bed was more than I could stand. Dad worrying over me was too much. Everything is too much.

  In the hall, Tayshawn nods at me. I nod back. He’s always been nice to me. I don’t know why. I’ve heard that the police have been interviewing him at home, too.

  No one else greets me. They stare. They talk about me, but not to me.

  I eat my lunch in Yayeko Shoji’s room. She’s not one of the popular teachers. It’s not one of the popular rooms. I can sit in bio, eat, look at the diagrams and posters on the wall, think about evolution and fast-twitch muscles, entropy, death, and decay.

  Zach.

  All right, the biology room is not such a good idea. But what doesn’t remind me of Zach? Of what happened to him. What place in this school, this city, is safe for me now?

  Nowhere.

  There are seven more months of school left. I don’t think I’m going to make it.

  But if I go upstate now I might not ever finish school.

  Worse, if I go upstate now I’ll miss the funeral.

  AFTER

  I haven’t been entirely honest. I mean, I have been about the facts. About Zach and the police. How awful it was at school, at home. My family history. My illness. How I showed Zach foxes. How everyone suspects me, if not of killing Zach, then of something.

  I haven’t made myself out to be better than I am. Or worse.

  But I haven’t been entirely honest about my insides. How it is in my head and my heart and my veins.

  Let me come clean:

  This is what it felt like when the principal strode into the room to tell us that Zach was dead:

  Sharp and cold and wrong.

  Like the world had ended.

  I thought I knew what the principal was going to say. I thought I knew that Zach was dead. Zach had been missing since Saturday. If he’d been found alive he would have texted me. The principal didn’t drop in on classrooms, not unless something was seriously wrong.

  But I’d been hoping. I’d been praying that I was wrong, that Principal Paul was going to say something else. That Zach had been found and was coming back to school. He could have lost his cell phone. He could be in the hospital with a broken leg. Hurt but nothing serious.

  I sat there staring at the principal, thinking about everything Zach had ever said to me. That he needed me. That he depended on me. That the smell of me could keep him going all day.

  Or did I say that to him?

  Him being dead confuses things.

  I know he told me that what we had wasn’t love. It was something stronger. Me and him weren’t like him and Sarah, or him and anyone else. Or any two people together ever.

  Zach said that.

  Then he went away. He didn’t come back.

  I thought he would. I was sure he would. Even now, I’m waiting for him.

  I wore the mask to keep my face unmoving and unseen. To keep everything inside where it belonged.

  When the words were leaving Principal Paul’s mouth—in that moment—I wanted to leap at him. Hold his mouth shut. Or tear out his throat.

  Keep the words in.

  Because maybe then Zach would be alive.

  And I wouldn’t be so alone.

  BEFORE

  One of the true things I told the police was that Dangerous Words was the last class I had with Zach before he disappeared that weekend—before he was murdered. It’s not nearly as good as bio but it’s the only other class I don’t actively hate. Partly because Lisa Aden is a blusher and partly because she’s pretty smart and sometimes it’s kind of interesting hearing about what gets banned, how the meanings of words have changed, censorship. All that stuff.

  We need signed permission from our parents to take it. Because in Dangerous Words we’re allowed to use any dirty words we want. But none of us does. It doesn’t feel like we really can. It feels like a trick.

  The only time we say dirty words in that room is when we’re reading out loud. Some of the assigned books have them. But it feels awkward and forced and we stumble over the same words that, outside the classroom, flow from our mouths easy as lies.

  Most of our mouths. I’ve never heard Sarah swear.

  No one said any of the words we were supposedly allowed to say. Not until the teacher, Lisa Aden, invited a guest the Friday before Zach was killed. A writer. A foreign writer, from England or something. I wasn’t paying attention when he was introduced or when he started talking. I didn’t listen to a thing until he picked up a piece of chalk and wrote all the worst words on the board. One by one. Then everyone was paying attention to the chalk in his hands and the words he made.

  He wrote each word up on the board, then he said each as if it weren’t any different from saying “yes” or “no” or “pie” or “sky.” After each word he wrote a date. Really old dates. Every single word was hundreds of years old. From the 1300s or 1400s or 1500s. I tried to imagine people in the olden days saying them, but I couldn’t.

  “These dates, of course,” he said, “refer to the earliest written records, but it’s very likely the words themselves are much older. Much. But they were not written down. This is often true of taboo words. Until very recently written language has tended to be more formal than spoken.”

  He stopped and looked at us like we were supposed to say something. I noticed Lisa Aden had changed color. Even whiter than usual, except for her cheeks, where all the blood in her body seemed to have gathered.

  “Of course, some of these words weren’t always taboo. And the way we use them now is not necessarily the same as how they were originally used. Words change. I’m sure your teacher has mentioned how the word ‘girl’ originally meant a child of either sex.”

  She hadn’t.

  “This is my favorite.” He tapped the worst word on the board and underlined it. The red in Lisa’s cheeks spread. “Here in America it’s probably the most shocking. But back home, where I come from, there’s little force behind it. In fact, it usually gets used a
s a synonym for ‘lad’ or ‘bloke.’ ”

  “What’s a bloke?” Zach asked. His voice buzzed in my ears even though he was at the back of the room.

  “A guy. A fella. A man.”

  “So you wouldn’t say, ‘those guys over there’?” Zach asked. I didn’t turn to look at him. “You’d say, ‘those—’ ”

  “Yes.” The writer nodded.

  Lisa Aden was starting to sweat. I could smell it on her.

  “What if they’re your friends?” Zach wanted to know. “Or you weren’t mad at them?”

  “Wouldn’t matter,” the writer said, and I wondered what kind of books he wrote. Probably not travel guides. My dad never even said “shit,” let alone wrote it. “Angry has nothing to do with it. Friends, enemies, acquaintances. They’re all—”

  “Um,” Lisa Aden said, then faltered.

  “What about girls? Women?” Kayla wanted to know.

  “Just men. If you say it of a woman it means the same thing it means here. So you don’t. Unless you’re really angry.”

  Zach looked fascinated.

  “So, um, that word doesn’t mean the same thing here that it does where you’re from?” Aaron Ling asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Like the way English people don’t use ‘erasers’?” Aaron Ling asked. “Or say ‘lift’ instead of ‘elevator’ or ‘flat’ for ‘apartment’?”

  The writer nodded.

  “Can you tell us a little about how you came to write a book about taboo words?” Lisa Aden asked.

  The writer laughed. “Well, you could say it was a lifelong interest.”

  Half the class laughed, too.

  “This is my first book about language. Before that I mostly wrote true crime, which grew out of covering the crime beat in Glasgow. The kind of people I write about, they’re not clergymen, you know? Not even close. Rough as guts, more like. I got interested in the words they used so often, and so, er, colorfully. Then I started looking stuff up and before I knew it I was writing a book about so-called bad language.”

  “So what’s the worst swear word where you come from?” Zach asked.

  “You know, that’s a hard question to answer. The more research I’ve done on this, the more it seems to be that it’s not the words so much as the force behind them. I think people get too caught up in whether a word is or isn’t offensive and lose sight of what’s actually being said. I mean, is it more offensive for someone to advocate the killing of Arabs or the killing of ‘fucking Arabs’? Either way, that’s racism, pure and simple.”