Liar

by Justine Larbalestier

  “I like you, Micah,” Sarah says. “Aside from Zach and all that . . .” She blinks, takes a deep breath. “Aside from that and from you being a crazy liar, too.” She smiles at me and my cheeks feel hot again. I don’t know where to look except at her. “Yesterday was the best I’ve felt since . . . Zach. The talking, I mean. The three of us being friends. I don’t want to lose that, too. We can stay friends, right?”

  I nod, though I really doubt it.

  “Good,” she says. The top she’s wearing clings to her arms. They’re slim and not at all strong-looking. How exactly do they think a girl like Sarah could have killed Zach? He was stronger and taller and bulkier than her.

  And Tayshawn? Why on earth would he kill his best friend? His boy that he’d known since the third grade.

  Sarah’s waiting for me to say something, but I have nothing.

  “Could you help me with bio?” she asks.

  “Help you?” I repeat, not understanding.

  She gestures at the plastic model pieces. “I’m not doing as well as I should. Biology’s not really my thing.”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “I can help you with your other classes.”

  “Okay.” I’m not bad at any of them, but biology is what I’m best at.

  Sarah’s looking at me, expecting more words, but I have no idea what to say. She hasn’t said anything, not really, about what happened. It’s as if it didn’t.

  It did. When I’m not thinking about Zach, I’m thinking about what happened between me and Sarah and Tayshawn after the funeral. Would Zach be mad at me if he knew? I know he’s dead. But I can’t help thinking that he knows, that he cares. I’d undo what we did, I’d undo anything, if it would make him alive again. I’d stop lying. Tell everyone about the wolf within.

  I miss him.

  The ache of where he isn’t is so large that sometimes I can barely manage to stay upright. Even with his coffin lowered into the ground, with soil on top of him, I cannot believe he’s dead.

  “Micah?” Sarah asks. She puts her hand on mine. Hers is warm, a little dry. Her touch makes me tingle. I wonder if it makes her tingle, too. I’m about to say something stupid when Tayshawn joins us.

  Sarah pulls her hand away. “I was asking Micah if she’d help me with bio.”

  “Uh-huh,” Tayshawn says. He pulls up a chair, sits. His eyes are red and he’s a little sweaty, as if he’s been running. I brace myself for what he’s going to say. Is he mad about finding us alone together with Sarah’s hand on mine? Does he think we’re leaving him out? Is he going to be weird?

  “Erin Moncaster isn’t dead,” he announces, looking at both of us.

  AFTER

  Erin Moncaster was found in a hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with her skeezy eighteen-year-old boyfriend. Now she is back in the city and back in school.

  In class they’re not talking about me. Erin the slut replaces Micah the liar and possible killer.

  I see her later that day between fifth and sixth periods. She’s dressed the part, walking down the hall with too much paint on pale white skin, making her look as garish as a clown. Her short skirt and low-cut top are supposed to be clingy, but she’s so skinny they hang off her, like the white boy, but she looks fragile, not fearsome. She keeps her head high like she doesn’t care, but her eyes are red, and her lips tremble.

  Everyone is staring at her. The whole whispering, giggling thing that I am so used to. It belongs to Erin now.

  “Hey, Micah,” Tayshawn calls, coming down the stairs.

  I wave. To my right I see Brandon “accidentally” knock into Erin.

  “While your boy’s in jail,” he breathes at her, “you can get some from me.” He’s licking his lips the same way he did at me that day under the bleachers when he was making me the same offer.

  I don’t remember moving.

  My hands are around his neck. I’m pressing Brandon into the wall. The Amnesty International poster behind him tears, leaving barbed wire floating at his left shoulder. My face is inches from his. He’s gone red. He’s coughing, struggling to breathe, clawing at my fingers.

  I step away, dropping him.

  “Bitch!” he screams, sliding to the floor, rubbing his throat where my fingers have left red marks. “Fucking bitch! Is that what you did to your boyfriend?”

  My urge to hurt him floods back. I step forward.

  Brandon cowers. “Bitch,” he whispers.

  “Don’t,” Tayshawn says, grabbing hold of my upper arm, pulling me away. “Leave the wuss on the floor. Beaten up by a girl again, Brandon? How many times is that this week?”

  Several people laugh.

  “Fuck off. She’s no girl,” Brandon says, but he’s mumbling, looking down. “Girls don’t fight like that.” The bruises are starting to show on his neck. “Bitch.”

  I’m realizing what I’ve done. Shown how fast and strong I am. In front of everyone. Any doubts they might have had about my ability to kill Zach are gone now. I’ve done what Dad’s always told me not to do. I’m lucky no teachers saw. Now it’s down to whether Brandon tells or not. But at least he will respect me.

  “Stop looking at me,” Brandon says quietly. I doubt anyone but me can hear.

  “Why would I look at you?” I say. “There’s nothing to see.”

  “Come on,” Tayshawn says, pulling me farther away. The hall has thinned out. Classes must be starting.

  We pass Erin. She’s staring at me. I wonder if she’s grateful that I pulled Brandon off her. Though that isn’t why I did it. I don’t feel sorry for Erin; I just hate Brandon. After all, Erin isn’t dead, is she? Her boyfriend isn’t dead either. She’s not a wolf. Her life is fine.

  “That was amazing,” Tayshawn says. His hand is still around my upper arm. “Where’d you learn skills like that?”

  “Dad used to be a boxer,” I lie.

  LIE NUMBER FOUR

  What I told the police isn’t what really happened the last time I saw Zach.

  School was out for the day. We were in the library. Both of us on giving-back-to-the-school duty. Brandon and Chantal weren’t there. They’d forgotten.

  “How did you find those foxes?” Zach whispered. We were in front of the fiction shelves. Zach was shelving and I was pulling out the books that did not belong.

  We weren’t the only ones there. The librarian, Jennifer Silverman, and a handful of freshmen, working on a project that seemed to involve a lot of loud talking and giggling.

  “Wasn’t a big deal,” I said.

  Zach wasn’t listening. “I saw how you followed them. I’ve never seen anything like that. The path was lit up for you: this way there’s foxes. I never saw a fox in the park till you showed me. You’re like magic or something.”

  I looked down to hide my grin.

  “What?” he asked. He was paying attention now.

  “I kind of cheated.”

  “That’s a shock. She lies. She cheats.”

  He touched my forearm. I tried to ignore it. Just pheromones. Chemical receptors. Biology. Controllable. Ignorable.

  “It looked real to me,” Zach said. “How’d you cheat?”

  “I’d seen the burrow before,” I confessed. “So I knew where the fox was going.”

  “Ah. Okay. You already knew? Damn.”

  “You should see your face.”

  He looked mad, annoyed, and kind of impressed all at the same time.

  “You’re a piece of work, you know.”

  I did know.

  “You suck. You can’t track shit. And here was me thinking you were some kind of wild girl of the woods! Damn.”

  “I am. I could have tracked those foxes, I just didn’t have to is all.”

  “Why would I believe you?” Zach asked, and I could tell he was really angry. “You lie about everything.”

  “Not about this. I know a lot about tracking animals, hunting. Every summer I’m upstate with my grandparents. We hunt together all the time.”

  “So you sa
y.”

  “Scout’s honor,” I said.

  “You’re not a scout and even if you were I wouldn’t believe you. You’re a liar, Micah.”

  “I could track you,” I said. “You go hide yourself in the park and you’ll see how damn easy it is for me to find you!”

  “Shhh!” the librarian said, walking over to us. “I know school’s out but there’s no need for you to be yelling.”

  “Sorry, Jennifer,” Zach said.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  She walked back to her desk.

  “How do I know you won’t cheat?” Zach said.

  “I can’t cheat on this one. I won’t know where you’re going.”

  Zach considered, shelved the book in his hand, turned back to the cart for another. “Alright,” he said. “How you want to work it then?”

  Jennifer the librarian walked over again and handed Zach some more fiction to shelve.

  I ducked down and straightened the lowest shelf. She smiled at both of us and returned to her desk. Two of the books were mis-shelved: one about censorship in the USSR and the other an inorganic chemistry textbook. Neither of them belonged with novels written by people whose names began with Q or R.

  “We’ll both come in on the Columbus Circle side,” I said to the shelf. “Me a half hour after you.”

  “What’s to stop you following me?”

  “I won’t.”

  Zach didn’t bother to answer. He was still angry. I wondered if it was weird of me to really want to kiss him. He returned to shelving.

  “Okay then. I’m leaving now. You come and find me in the park when Jennifer lets you go.”

  He kissed my mouth quickly and I almost blushed, looking around to make sure no one had seen. He walked over to Jennifer’s desk and started sweet-talking her into letting him go early. It was three thirty. We were supposed to be shelving until four.

  She let him go. Zach almost always got what he wanted.

  HISTORY OF ME

  Details. They’re the key to lying.

  The more detailed you are, the more people believe. Not piled on one after another after another—don’t tell too much. Ever. Too many details, that’s too many things that can be checked.

  Let them tease the information out of you. Lightly sprinkle it. One detail here, the smell of peanuts roasting; one there, the crunch of gray snow underfoot.

  Verisimilitude, one of my English teachers called it. The details that give something the appearance of being real. It’s at the heart of a good lie, a story that has wings.

  That, and your desire, your overwhelming desire, not to be lied to. You believe me because you want what I tell you to be the truth. No matter how crazy.

  And because I promised no more lies.

  Which I’ve stuck to: nothing but the truth.

  BEFORE

  It wasn’t summer but it felt like it. Spring had sprung for a day and then turned hot and sweltering. Central Park was entirely green. Not like winter, with the city leaning in on the leafless skeleton trees, making sure it is never out of view. The reprieve from the city buoyed me, but it was scary, too: city is city and forest, forest. I don’t like them getting muddled.

  It feels as if I’m seeing myself reflected in the leaves, and in the glassphalt sidewalk. That hurts my head.

  I caught Zach’s scent coming out of the subway. I followed it, jumped over the fence, into the park, trying to name the parts of his scent: the meatiness, the sweat, and the something else underlying it, something sweet. No one else smelled like that. Just Zach.

  The smell of him warmed me, drew me toward him. As if the finest thread stretched out between us. He was reeling me in. Tracking him would be easier than finding the foxes.

  I slid into a jog, following the molecules. If they had been visible they would have glowed brighter than neon.

  Before I got to the lake the strange white boy crossed my path. He didn’t turn to look at me. Just ran past me in his wild and uneven way. Erratic but fast. He was out of sight down the path almost instantly, leaving a lingering pungent smell.

  I shivered and continued chasing Zach.

  AFTER

  “Come on,” Tayshawn says, leading me down the front steps, past reception, out onto the street. We’re seniors so we’re allowed to go off campus for lunch but it’s not lunch, it’s fifth period.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Away,” Tayshawn says. “I gotta tell you stuff.”

  “Like what?” Is he going to talk about what happened? Between him and me and Sarah?

  Tayshawn stops on the sidewalk, leans in to whisper in my ear. “It was dogs,” he says. “Zach was killed by dogs.”

  My knees stop working, as though the cartilage has melted. I stumble. I would fall but Tayshawn’s holding me. I’m not thinking about dogs; I’m thinking about wolves. That’s why Brandon kept calling me “bitch.” He meant it literally. Will the cops be coming after me?

  I’m screwed. How will I tell my parents?

  How does Brandon know about me? No one outside my family knows.

  “Micah,” Tayshawn says. His eyes are bruised. “I know.” He puts his arms around me, holds me tight.

  What will they do to me?

  “I know,” he says again. His voice sounds thick like he’s trying not to cry. “How could dogs have killed him?”

  Dogs. Tayshawn’s not talking about me. I breathe. He makes a kind of crooked grimace with his mouth. He’s looking at me, but not accusingly. The thought of me being a wolf hasn’t occurred to him. Or to anyone else. Why would it?

  I’m being crazy.

  “Dogs,” I say, though dogs didn’t. That strange white boy did.

  Tayshawn wipes at his eyes, drags me into a dark café that’s all coffee: huge coffee-making machines, giant sacks of beans. The smell so overwhelming that when we’re sitting in back and drinking it hot and burned it becomes the murk we’re floating in.

  Tayshawn switches off the lamps on either side of us. Darker is better.

  Dogs. This is what the cops haven’t been telling us. This is why the coffin was closed. Zach’s body was torn apart. Like prey.

  I take another sip. I’ve never drunk coffee before. It’s something else I’m forbidden. I think I like it.

  Dogs. But then why were we ever under suspicion? I ask Tayshawn.

  “The autopsy report was a big surprise to the police. They thought the dogs”—Tayshawn pauses, swallows—“that they got at his body after. They never thought the dogs were what killed him.”

  “But now they’re sure it was dogs?” I sip more coffee, feeling it make my eyes widen, my spine straighten. I want to run. “Your uncle told you?”

  “Yeah. He called me last night. Dogs. Not a murder. It’ll be all over school pretty soon.”

  I reach across and put my hands on Tayshawn’s. His are shaking. “Where?” I ask. “Where did they find the body?”

  “Central Park.”

  That’s what I was afraid of. Zach found dead, torn to pieces in the place we spent the most time together.

  “Well,” I say, “at least the cops won’t be bothering us again.”

  Tayshawn manages half a laugh. “No more killer Tayshawn rumors.”

  “No one really believed that shit,” I say, though it’s not true.

  “Right. You just believe that. Not that it matters. Because those rumors are gone now. No killer Tayshawn, no killer Sarah, no killer Micah. Just a pack of dogs.” His voice breaks on dogs.

  I wish I could tell him it wasn’t dogs. That it was wolves. A lone wolf. But surely the police can tell the difference? Aren’t the bites of dogs and wolves different? I want to ask Yayeko. Or do the police know? Is “dogs” a cover story?

  Tayshawn is crying again. I squeeze his hands. “It’s a lot,” I say. The coffee is making my head spin. I’m not allowed anything with caffeine in it. It’s like avoiding alcohol. We don’t know what could happen to me, what could trigger a change. No sex, no drugs, no alcoh
ol. No nothing. That’s my parents’ policy.

  I take a much bigger sip—to spite them. The more I drink, the more I like it. Bitter, but not as bad as it smells. I think it’s making my blood move faster.

  I have to find the white boy.

  Then what?

  Kill him?

  I’ve never killed a person.

  Or a wolf.

  I need to talk to the Greats. I need to get upstate.

  “Sorry,” Tayshawn says. His eyes are red. “I keep imagining what it would have been like. Dogs . . .”

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess it’s better, right?” he says. “At least Zach wasn’t murdered. I was afraid . . .”

  He was afraid that it was me or Sarah or someone else he knew? He doesn’t say it though. I never suspected them. I think I always knew it was the white boy.

  “God,” Tayshawn says. He touches his bottom lip, pulling at it. I want to kiss him. I wonder if it’s wrong that I’m thinking about that. I’m pretty sure he isn’t thinking about kissing me.

  “Have you told Sarah?”

  He shakes his head. “I was going to, you know, at lunch. But then I didn’t find you until just before the bell.”

  “So you told us about Erin Moncaster?”

  “Funny, huh? I saw you both there and I couldn’t do it, couldn’t figure out how to tell you. I still can’t believe it’s true. Dogs?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I know.”

  “My uncle, he says there’s a pack on a vacant lot in Hell’s Kitchen. There’ve been a ton of complaints. That pack’s attacked other dogs. They’re vicious. Their owner’s a crazy old guy who owns the lot. Says he has the dogs under control, but he doesn’t.”

  “Hell’s Kitchen?” I ask. I know that pack. They might be vicious but they back up when I run by. Snouts to the ground, cowering. They smell what I am. The lot is a long way from Central Park. Too far for a pack of wild dogs to roam. There’s at least ten of them. How would they get all the way up and into Central Park without someone seeing and freaking? It’s not exactly an empty part of the city.

  We look at each other. My eyes are on his mouth. Tayshawn looks away.