Liar

by Justine Larbalestier

  “He’s disgusting,” Dad says. “I’m running a bath.”

  Our bathtub is barely a half tub. The whole bathroom is tiny. Skinny as the boy is it’ll be a tight squeeze.

  “Not washing. Don’t like water.”

  “No kidding,” I say.

  “Come on,” Dad says. “I’m cleaning you up. Putting you in fresh clothes.”

  “Don’t like water.” He doesn’t move.

  “I can see that,” Dad says. “But wash, you will.”

  “If you don’t go with Dad, we won’t take you up to the farm.”

  “The wolf farm?”

  “Yes, the wolf farm. But you have to be clean. Wolves are clean animals.”

  “Alright,” he says, standing, slowly. Mom and I move toward the front door to avoid touching him, trying not to get tangled up in the coats hanging there.

  “This way,” Dad says, as if there were another way. The boy follows him.

  “Should I help?” Mom asks.

  Dad shakes his head, leads the boy into the bathroom, closes the door behind him. There’s a few seconds of silence, then the boy starts screaming, but it’s too loud and angry for me to pick words out. It sounds like water is going everywhere.

  “Will Isaiah be alright?” Mom asks. “He won’t hurt him, will he?”

  I press my ear to the door. Dad’s talking soft, trying to soothe the boy, coax him. “Dad’s okay.” The boy’s unhappy but not murderous. “It’ll be okay.”

  “He killed your Zach?” Mom asks. “You are sure?”

  I nod.

  “He’s not slow? He understands?”

  “He’s slow but he understands. He’s like me. You should see him run. No style at all. Totally spastic, but he runs as fast as I do.”

  “Oh,” Mom says.

  “Yeah. There’s no doubt.” I walk the length of the hallway, twisting to get past Mom. It’s not very long. I walk from the front door past the coats, the kitchen, the bathroom, my parents’ room, mine. Fifteen not-very-big paces. Then back again. Water is trickling out from under the bathroom door. But the yelling’s died down. Mom grabs a tea towel and shoves it under the door.

  “Where did you find him?”

  “He found me. I didn’t know, Mom. I didn’t know he was like this. A street kid! He had no idea what happened to him. Didn’t know he was a wolf.”

  Mom looks distressed. She puts her hand on my shoulder. It’s the first time she’s touched me since last night. I am so relieved I almost cry.

  “He doesn’t have any family to tell him what he is, Mom. He’s homeless. I don’t think he’s had much education. Or food for that matter. Did you see how skinny he is?”

  “Yes. He is a wretch. It will be good for him upstate,” Mom says. “The Wilkins will help him.” She goes into the kitchen. Opens the windows. Then gets out the mop and cleans the floor.

  I pace. Now’s not the time to tell her what the Greats plan to do with him. Each time I pass the bathroom door, it smells a little less bad. Dad is probably washing away evidence. Zach’s blood and DNA from under the boy’s fingernails. Not that it matters, because we won’t be turning him over to the police. But still. It bothers me.

  I am imagining how Zach’s blood and DNA got there. A surge of hate sweeps through me.

  I can’t wait till he’s up on the farm meeting the Greats. I can’t wait till they tear him apart limb by limb. I hope they let me join in. Werewolves punishing their own. I wonder if there’s a special ritual for it. I doubt it. It’s not like the Greats have much of a ritual for anything. Stuff just happens the way it’s always happened.

  I want to make a fuss. I want to celebrate killing the white boy. Let off fireworks. Not that they allow fireworks on the farm. Makes the horses skittish and freaks out my kin. We wolves don’t hold much with fire or loud noises. Too often it’s gunshots and a bullet in our side.

  But he knew it was Zach. Your boy, he said.

  Dad opens the door, nods grimly at me, then closes it behind him before I can peek. “His name is Pete,” Dad says, before disappearing into his bedroom.

  Pete? It hasn’t occurred to me to ask the boy’s name. Hasn’t occurred to me that he’d have one. Dad comes back out with some clothes and a towel, then returns to the bathroom.

  If I didn’t know better, I’d say Dad was enjoying himself.

  I’m not. Nor is Mom, in the kitchen, cleaning.

  I wonder what the white boy—what Pete—thinks of all of this.

  AFTER

  Clean, the white boy still looks bad. He’s got scabs and scars all over him, and the black eye I gave him is already a lurid mess of greens, blues, and purples. He smiles at me, which only renders him more hideous and makes my heart contract with guilt. How could I have punched someone so beaten down? So pathetic?

  Dad inventories Pete’s injuries, old and new. His ribs are bandaged as well as Dad could manage. “I think at least one of them is broken,” Dad says, and I try not to cringe. “Pete’s had a rough time.”

  No kidding. When we take him upstate it’s going to get rougher. But half of me wants him to die. I want my life back. I’m willing for Pete to give his in exchange. He killed Zach; he deserves what the Greats give him.

  Dad is on the phone, trying to borrow a car. Mom hands the boy a cold pack. I slouch against the fridge, watching.

  “Cold,” he says, dropping the pack.

  She picks it up. “It’s for your eye,” she tells him.

  “My eye?” he asks. He’s sitting at the table under the bikes, where he’s eaten practically all the food we have, including four bowls of cereal. He tore into the food worse than I ever have, pulled each plateful close, and hunched over in case we change our minds and snatch it from him. I can’t help thinking that this may be his last meal.

  He looks at me for confirmation.

  “Yes,” I tell him. “It’s to stop the swelling.”

  He lets Mom put the pack on his eye.

  “ ’S there more food?” the boy asks.

  Mom pours him another bowl of cereal with the last dribble of milk. He plows into it. One hand holding the pack to his eye, the other spooning cereal into his mouth.

  The boy’s skinnier than I thought. Dad’s clothes hang off him like he’s made of string and air. He’s younger, too. Looks more twelve than fourteen. That might account for how stupid he is. Or it could be all the beatings he’s had. Or the lack of food. Brain damage or malnutrition or both. Mom asks him how long since he last ate. He shrugs.

  She shakes her head and tuts, sounding for a second like Grandmother. I don’t tell her so.

  “You are sure you killed Zachary?” she asks, sitting opposite him at the table and giving him her warmest smile.

  The boy pauses briefly in his eating, nods. “Was me,” he says almost cheerfully. A little bit of cereal flies out of his mouth.

  Mom discreetly wipes the fleck of cereal from her cheek. I can see she’s struggling to comprehend. “Where were you born, Pete?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Where are your parents from?”

  “Dunno.”

  “What happened to them?”

  He shrugs.

  Mom sighs. “Why are you not in an orphanage? With a foster family?”

  “Dunno.”

  “You live on the streets?”

  “Parks, too. Benches. Stoops. Slept in sewers. I can sleep anywhere.” He sounds proud of his sleeping skills.

  “Mon dieu. Does anyone know how you live?”

  He looks up. The cereal’s all gone. “How’d you mean?”

  “Do you have any friends? Anyone who looks after you?”

  “Nope. Just me.” He’s not sad or upset. It’s how things are, that’s all.

  “I cannot believe you live like this!” Mom says, her voice rising. She’s plenty upset on the boy’s behalf. “With no help or support? Pete, it is so wrong.”

  The boy shrugs.

  Mom takes his plate, ducks her head to avoid the bikes, and w
ashes it in the sink. Her eyes are red.

  “When do we go to the farm?” Pete asks.

  “As soon as we get a car,” she tells him, putting the plate to drain in the rack above the sink.

  He nods. At least he doesn’t smell so bad now. There’s still a funk to him, though. You’d have to take all the layers of his skin off to get rid of it. He may never smell okay, let alone good.

  Not that it will matter for much longer.

  “Got a car,” Dad announces. “I’ll be back in half an hour. Be downstairs and ready. I’ll call when I’m close.”

  “Good,” Mom says. “Hurry.”

  Light is streaming in through the windows. I go into my bedroom and take my pill.

  BEFORE

  Sometimes I don’t think Zach felt the same way about me that I felt about him. Okay, not sometimes, often. Often I felt like that. We didn’t have that long together. That one winter, a little bit of spring. Then I was away for the summer. Then early in the fall he was dead.

  He didn’t try to contact me once during the summer. Admittedly that was hard. No internet, no phone. I gave him an address for letters—the gas station. But who writes letters anymore?

  I wrote him exactly one:

  Dear Zach,

  I run every day. I’m not sure how many miles. It’s not like we have a real track or anything. I do the dynamic stretching. Knees to my face and that. It’s not too hard. I think I’m faster.

  See you in the fall.

  Micah

  I didn’t send him kisses or love or tell him I missed him. But I did.

  That was the longest summer of my life. I wish I could have been a wolf the whole three months. Wolf time was golden. Human time stretched out long and aching and not a word from Zach.

  I wish we’d had longer.

  I can measure our time together in minutes. Sometimes a week—two even—would go by without seeing him. Glimpses at school, his scent. Nothing real.

  He didn’t miss me the way I missed him.

  He didn’t love me the way I loved him.

  There was nothing constant about his heart. Not like mine.

  LIE NUMBER NINE

  I do have a brother.

  I did have a brother.

  If only I’d made Jordan up.

  He died.

  I was twelve. He was ten. It was an accident.

  We don’t talk about it.

  I can’t think about it.

  AFTER

  It takes Dad considerably longer than half an hour to show up. He’s borrowed a car from one of his journalist friends. It’s battered and has a top speed of about forty miles. Dad drives. Mom sits beside him. I’m in back with the white boy. I’m along because my parents want me to keep an eye on him. I said no, but Mom and Dad insisted, and as soon as they did the white boy declared that he wouldn’t leave without me.

  Here I am in a car so small I can hear my parents breathing in the front seat. The windows are down despite the chill because the boy’s still a bit too rank. No one’s talking. The boy’s peering out the window. He’s been stuck that way since we left the city and there started to be real countryside.

  He’s definitely not playing with a full deck.

  The farther we are from the city the more fall announces itself. Trees on the side of the highway have turned to flame—gold, red, purple as far as I can see. In the city, trees are still mostly green and lush. Fall’s come late. I’m glad. I haven’t been looking forward to my first winter without Zach.

  “Cows!” the boy announces. “And another one! And another! And another! Five cows!”

  At least he can count.

  “Seven cows!”

  This is going to be the most fun drive ever. Slow and cold with the cow-counting savant to entertain us. Kill me now.

  “Eleven cows! Two horses!”

  Please don’t let him count and name every animal we pass.

  “You’ve never seen a cow before?” Dad says.

  “No,” the boy replies.

  Mom turns from the front seat to look at him. “You have been outside the city before?”

  The boy doesn’t move from staring out the window. “Don’t think so,” he says. “Never been in a car before.”

  That can’t be true. “What about a bus?” I ask.

  “Nope.”

  “What about the subway?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Used to sleep there. Don’t see cows or horses out subway windows.”

  “No,” I say.

  “I like cows,” he says.

  “There are cows on the farm. Four of them.”

  He turns to look at me, making sure I’m telling the truth. “Really?”

  “Yes, really. Cows, horses, pigs, geese, chickens.”

  He’s impressed. “Horses? Can I play with them?” I revise my estimate of his age further downward.

  “I don’t know about playing with them but you can help feed them,” I say. Maybe there’ll be time before they kill him.

  “Cool,” he says, turning back to the window. He’s reminding me of a puppy. A puppy we are taking to be put down.

  AFTER

  We arrive at the road to the farm well before sunset, which is a first. But then, we don’t usually leave before noon or come up on a weekday. We’re against traffic the whole way. It’s the densest leaf coverage since we left the city. The trees are close to the side of the dirt road, they lean in over it, obscuring the sun. Golds, reds, browns, and purples surround us. The light shining through the leaves sets them ablaze. It is beautiful.

  The boy is openmouthed.

  If I’m going to tell my parents about what the Greats have planned for the white boy—for Pete—now’s the time. We’re only about ten minutes from the house, even driving as slow as Dad is. What do I say to them? What do I say to Pete?

  What would Zach want me to do? Get vengeance on his killer? Or forgive him?

  “Is that a house?” the boy asks. “It’s covered in trees.” You can see part of the porch and two of the windows. The rest is lost in the foliage.

  Dad stops the car. “It is,” he says. “My mother’s house. I grew up here. I’m sure you’ll like it.” Because Dad sure didn’t.

  We all get out as Grandmother and Great-Aunt Dorothy walk down the front steps to meet us. Too late for me to say anything. I am a coward as well as a liar. But the boy’s a killer. Zach’s dead because of him.

  “This is him, then?” my grandmother says, looking at the boy.

  My cousins come crowding around. Pete cowers, ready to be struck. The wolfish ones stand back a bit, still scratched up. Yesterday they were wolves. But I can tell they’re curious. More even than their human brothers and sisters and cousins.

  “How old are you, boy?” Grandmother asks.

  “Dunno.”

  “He told me thirteen or fourteen,” I say, “but I think he’s younger.”

  “Could be. He is scrawny,” Grandmother says. “Come into the house,” she says to my parents. “Micah, show the boy around.”

  “Okay,” I say. I’m relieved the Greats will explain what’s going to happen to the boy. Better them than me. My mother will try to save him. I’m not sure whether I want her to succeed or not.

  “Get back to your chores and lessons,” Great-Aunt tells the cousins. They melt away from the boy. He peers back at them, eyes wide. One of the youngest girls waves. He smiles at her.

  This is not going to be easy.

  “What’s her name?” he asks.

  “Um,” I say, “not sure. I can never keep them all straight.”

  “I thought you said they were your family?”

  “They are. They’re my cousins, second cousins, like that. The old ladies are my grandmother and great-aunt.”

  “Then why don’t you know who’s who?”

  “I don’t spend much time here and there’s a lot of them.” Also, I don’t want to know. I’ve always kept myself as separate as I can. I belong in the city. I am only ever here temporarily
. “And she’s not a wolf.”

  I never wanted to belong on the farm. That’s why I hardly talk to my cousins. I don’t want to know them.

  But I can’t avoid knowing the wolves. When we change, we’re a pack.

  I do not want to be part of a pack with Pete.

  “They’re really your family?” he asks.

  “Yes, they’re really my family.”

  “But they’re all white.”

  I roll my eyes. “You may have noticed that my grandmother’s white and my dad’s black. It’s not that tricky to figure out.”

  “But none of your cousins are black?”

  “No.”

  “So wolfs aren’t all black?”

  “Wolves. No. How could they be? You’re a wolf. You’re white.”

  “I thought they’d be black like you.”

  “I’m the only black werewolf I know.”

  “Huh,” the boy says. “How soon will I be a wolf again?”

  “In about a month. Give or take.”

  “Why does it take so long?”

  “Only happens once a month. They’ve all just changed back so you missed it.”

  “Oh,” he says. I can’t tell if he’s disappointed. His voice is too flat.

  “You have to wait,” I tell him.

  “Can I see the horses?”

  I lead him to the stables, wondering what to do. He’s so young and stupid. So deprived. This is the biggest adventure of his life. He was excited about seeing a cow, and now about seeing horses. He’s never been outside the city before. He’s never seen or done anything.

  My youngest cousin, Lilly, is mucking out one of the stalls with a spade that’s almost bigger than she is. She’s a wolf, but young. Her first change is a few years off yet. “This is Pete,” I tell her. “Want to introduce him to the horses?”

  “Sure,” she says. “You’re a wolf, too? I never met a wolf that wasn’t a Wilkins before.”

  I leave them to it, running back to the house as fast as I can. I’m going to talk the Greats out of killing him.

  FAMILY HISTORY

  I’d like to tell you I have good memories of Jordan. But it would be a lie. There’s not a single one. Everything I told you about him, everything I described? All true.