Tell Me No Lies

by Adele Griffin

  “Me, either. I’ll never be her. Ever. But the other day, I dug up her Argyll yearbook. Varsity lacrosse, class vice president, shit-eating grin in every picture like she was ready to own the world. Now look at her. A madwoman searching for her dead cat.”

  “What did she mean by—that you were ‘a fine one to talk’?”

  Claire frowned. Her hands were gripping the wheel. “Basically, Aunt Jane thought my mom was dumb and easy because she was pregnant when she ran off with my dad. So I guess she thinks I’ve got that slutty DNA, too. I mean, whatever. I hardly listen to her. Who can pay attention to a freak like her?”

  “My mom says she used to throw big parties at Lilac House. But after your uncle died, she got all reclusive.”

  “Yeah, that’s ancient history. I barely knew Aunt Jane before we moved here.” Claire shrugged. “I get it that she misses him, but she forces everyone to be part of her great tragedy, because she pays the bills.”

  “Paying the bills is something,” I ventured.

  “Well, yeah, and that’s why I’d never drown her cat, although she thinks I did, and I understand that things could suck much harder for me. But still, I’m counting the months until I graduate and escape from here.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Claire smiled wryly. “I didn’t even believe in monsters till last year. But now I know better. Just because I couldn’t see them, didn’t mean they weren’t right in front of me. But they are, Lizzy. And no matter where I live, no matter what I do, I’ll always be on the lookout for them.”

  fifteen

  10/2

  Dear Claire,

  You’ll laugh to read this but it’s midnight and I’m in bed and wearing the hat you knit me. Seriously, I love it—and it’s the opposite of “dorky,” okay? And you must be some kind of angel to have spent all that time knitting it for me. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a kickass homemade present since—okay, since those lemon squares you baked me. Even if I’ve got no idea how you can make anything delicious happen in the Strick Kitch, is that place a dungeon, or what? Those were great lemon squares but let me tell you—this is an excellent hat.

  I wish I’d met your grandma. She sounds like a righteous dame. And she taught you a hell of a lot, besides knitting.

  Aright it’s late and I’ve got so much work to get through but thought I’d procrastinate on a note to you. Gorgeous night if you can get out in it for a minute. I’m still thinking about you calling me “Ace” in French—ya minx. I’ll bring my cards and read your fortune tomorrow sometime, as promised, but we gotta go somewhere so I don’t have to do everyone else’s, too.

  J.

  10/15

  Dear C,

  So it looks like Hutch is on the warpath again—I swear the Strickland Charter is a throwback to the Reformation. Also I’m catching heat from Mike and the guys, so maybe we should ipskay ourway ecretsay eetingmay in Lothrop tonight, okay by you? My bet is that Friday is better when it’s emptied out.

  But tell me if you’re thinking about what I’m thinking: weekend field trip? Permission notes to get outta this town, get to another town? Philly, Beantown, Baltimore? (A vote for Philly means I can show off my excellent knowledge of where to get the best cheesesteak. There’s like a bazillion things I want to show you there.)

  And we gotta keep it quiet—no tagalongs, though I think it’ll be easier over Parents Weekend, since most everyone’s got parent plans. Just a thought, so tell me your thoughts. Nights like this I can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t work, can’t hang out. I’ve been having too many of these days and Jesus Christ I sometimes wonder what’s wrong with me. It’s like all I think about is getting out of here. That time last week when we were in Robertson’s and we were all sitting around shooting the shit, talking about old movies, I wanted to stand up and grab your hand and just—jump into one. Literally escape into the black and white, trade reality for a kiss and fade out to The End. Sheer desperation, but I know it comes out of the total lockdown stupidity of this place.

  X J.

  10/23

  You,

  It’s late and I’m awake again, with you on my mind. I was thinking how many nights I’ve spent thinking about you, how when this all started it was fall and now we’re in these dark, cold months where it could be any month, all gray and brown and melting snow—like maybe it’s October or March, it’s all the same, doesn’t matter, since you’ve been on my brain for what feels like an eternity.

  Have you put some kind of spell on me?

  Sometimes I feel this kind of bad, sick, worried thing in my gut that I’m gonna lose something before I’ve even gotten a chance to have it, you know? It’s totally irrational, but the thing is, if you want to do something to get what you want most, you need to take a risk that you don’t even know you have in you. Being in school or sitting at my desk and especially in those long, goddamn empty hours lying in bed seems like all the worst, dumbest, most inane ways to handle the intensity of what I’m dealing with. Most of the time I feel like I’m going to do this thing, go forward in this way that breaks everything apart between us and messes us up forever. How do I know that we’re salvageable? It’s what I keep asking myself.

  X J.

  I folded the letters, returned them to their single envelope, and lay back in my bed. I’d read them over and over, searching for meaning and hints about how and why it had ended, and when I closed my eyes, I could still see Jay’s handwriting, his words trailing inky scrawls of barbed wire across the page.

  In every note, the clearest thing was the J. that was his signature, dark and heavy, like an ancient symbol.

  Claire had mentioned they’d ended things this spring, when he’d left for Paris. Maybe that’s why I’d imagined Jay as a guy who would send a note sprinkled in cheesy French phrases and brimming with poems and references to Voltaire and the Marquis de Sade. But these letters seemed different. They were thoughtful and frank and not so Frenchish, not so intellectual or airy-fairy.

  I mentally removed Jay’s sulk, along with his beret and baguette, and revised him with new touches of quirkiness. Like maybe he had some Mom-bought polka-dot socks, a beat-up leather backpack, a charming need of a haircut. I saw him striding to class, kicking his way through New England snowdrifts in his boots and a heavy overcoat. I even sketched him in my notebook, though I had zero idea what he looked like. I gave him Bambi dark eyes and Claire’s cute homemade wool hat yanked over his head.

  What I couldn’t find in his words was a guy who’d coldly decided to break Claire’s heart. In fact, Jay seemed a lot like Matt—almost too well liked, to the point where he had to find ways not to be hounded by others. Lots of Jay’s thoughts were about desperately trying to be alone with Claire without getting crowded.

  Why didn’t a funny, sweet guy like Jay even write or speak to Claire anymore? If I could see clearer to the end of Claire and Jay, and the mistakes they made, I might be better equipped for the beginning of me and Matt.

  Of course, it was horrible that I took these letters, and worse that I’d read them. I felt hot with shame for even having touched Claire’s property.

  I needed to figure out how to return them, although imagining myself slithering around Claire’s room and fumbling with her personal items made me feel like such a creep. In the end, I tucked the envelope into my retired-since-sixth-grade Holly Hobbie purse that hung on a hook in my closet, where it would have to stay until I could get myself back to Lilac House and put everything right.

  sixteen

  Over the weekend, Gage tied for third place at a fencing tournament in Pottstown, while Mimi had been lucky caller number eight to Hot-94 radio and won two tickets to see the Hooters on tour next summer. So Monday’s lunch was upbeat, and when the talk finally did roll around to me, I was surprised by my reluctance to share. Liz’s party and Matt’s kiss both felt secret—and
so did Lilac House, the cats, Suze, Aunt Jane, and most especially Claire.

  “I made turtle brownies last night,” I volunteered instead, “and I brought extra.” I took them out of my book bag to pass around.

  After school, toward the end of my Monday shift at the library, Matt dropped by Ludington. He looked princely in a long dove-gray overcoat that probably cost more than everything in my closet.

  “I like your coat.”

  He rolled his eyes. “It’s too preppy. Mom wants the entire family to look exactly like we fell out of some flaming Ralph Lauren ad.”

  “Oh, poor baby. How totally awful to be dressed in all that cheap, sucky Ralph Lauren.”

  He frowned. “I know I sound like a spoiled brat. It’s just I’m eighteen and I never get a say in what I wear.”

  “I get to choose all my own clothes, but I also have to pay for them,” I said.

  Now Matt looked shamefaced. “Stripes, this is why I’ll be working for you one day. You’re already the boss.” And even if it would have taken me all year to save up for his Ralph Lauren coat, I wondered if he really thought I had the better deal.

  We wheeled a cart to a far end of the stacks, where we pretended to shelve books as we traded stories about the crazy end of Saturday’s party. Liz had been fined a hundred dollars and her parents had been called.

  “Nobody told you?”

  “I’m not friends with Liz and that group,” I admitted.

  “Who’d you hang out with before Claire?”

  “Gage and Mimi. Those same two girls I was with at the mixer when you . . .”

  “When I kissed you the first time?” he finished teasingly.

  I shrugged, as if I barely recalled it, let alone spent three years pining over it. “They’re my oldest friends.”

  Matt nodded. “Jonesy and Tommy and I go back to kindergarten. It’s cool but—”

  “But sometimes I feel like my oldest friends know me too well.”

  “Yeah, and at the same time, don’t know me at all.”

  I nodded agreement, consumed by the sweetness in Matt’s smile, and remembering last weekend’s surprise electricity of his mouth on mine. Maybe I knew him better than his jock friends already.

  “So,” he began slowly, “what are your plans for Halloween? Technically it’s next Monday, but this weekend’s some parties. You and Claire hitting clubs in Philly?”

  “Maybe.” I flushed. I’d been playing up my connection to Philadelphia, unspooling that one trip I’d made with Claire to make it sound like a few different adventures. “The thing is, I need a good fake ID. The one I’ve got isn’t letting me into anywhere. I feel like bouncers have really cracked down lately.”

  Matt snapped his fingers. “Okay, you’re talking to the right person—Tommy’s older brother Walt’s home on fall break this week. He’s a junior at NYU, he’s a great guy, and the ID he made me is how I got into Palladium. Walt told me that last weekend he got himself and some of his friends into Limelight, no problem.”

  “Wow, nice.”

  “So here’s a plan.” Matt touched my wrist lightly. I’d never been so conscious of the tap of fingers on my skin. “Thursday, a few of us are coming to Argyll to watch Kreo play, and after the game, I’ll give you a ride over to Tommy’s and you can get yours made? I know Kreo and Jonesy want in. Walt won’t charge much, but don’t forget to bring cash.”

  “Yeah, sure. This is so great.”

  His smile pierced me. “Then Claire can hook us up with finding a scene downtown. Something different than basement beer pong.”

  “Absolutely, we can just move the party to Philly.”

  He hesitated. “Nah. Just you, me, and Claire. We can make our own party.”

  So maybe Matt really was sick of the jock herd. And Claire was wrong, he didn’t crave a social butterfly, Wendy Palmer connection. Whatever else we talked about, Thursday became the new blood-beat in my brain. My wild fantasy that Matt Ashley would stroll back into my life was the real thing, and I could hardly sleep at night.

  Later that week, when I found time with Claire in the art room, I told her about Walt Powers. She was working on a charcoal, intently sketching her face onto a wrinkled brown paper bag.

  “So . . .”—I stumbled to the finish—“if you want a really good ID . . . and with Halloween coming up . . . and going to the clubs and all . . .”

  Now Claire looked up, her black-smudged gaze refocusing from a distance deep inside herself. I thought of those guys from KISS, how a few years ago they started performing without makeup, and it was like they’d turned into a whole different band from those scary clowns of my childhood. Makeup could really hide a person if you wanted it to.

  “My ID works great, and I’m not that big on Halloween.” She cupped her chin in one hand, her eyebrows arched, her face a shield to protect her thoughts. “But thanks for inviting me. For thinking about me. Maybe your friends Winnie and Gage need them?”

  “Mimi and Gage.”

  “Right.” If Claire asked, I’d admit I’d taken the envelope. It would be a relief, in a way. I never stole things, and even though I was planning to return the letters as soon as humanly possible, the guilt hammered at me.

  But then Claire went back to her paper-bag portrait, calmly dismissing me. It seemed like that was the end of that. And so I was surprised when she called me that night, and the urgency in her voice made me exchange the kitchen phone for the more private one in my parents’ bedroom.

  “What’s up?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Aunt Jane has lost her mind.” Claire was speaking in a furtive whisper, like a hostage. “She made me go to Tosca’s funeral.”

  “Wait—a cat funeral?”

  “Yes. Outside. In the rain.”

  “Tell me everything.” I kicked off my shoes. Whatever else Claire thought about me, I was the one she’d wanted to talk to. Me. As she described the whole insane ordeal, I climbed onto my parents’ waterbed, settling in, the receiver cradled against the side of my face.

  “We all had to wear black. There’s a chapel on the property, and Aunt Jane was carrying a CD player, and she was playing Mozart’s Requiem.”

  “In fairness, cats love Mozart.”

  Claire snorted. “And of course the whole time, Aunt Jane is giving me dirty looks. You saw how she was, and you know how she blames me for it. Like I’ve got it out for her stupid cats.”

  “Hey, you can confess anything to me. I wouldn’t be judgmental if it was an act of self-defense. Those cats are humungous—I wouldn’t want to be alone in a room with one.”

  Now Claire laughed outright. “Then Aunt Jane did the eulogy and Mom read a poem and Mr. Mack dug a little cat grave.”

  “For many reasons, I’m so glad I wasn’t there,” I said. “But mostly because I think it would have been too hard for me to stop laughing.”

  “Believe me, Mr. Mack and I almost lost it. But considering he needs his job, and Mom and I need a roof over our heads, we sobered up quick. It was ridiculous to see everyone trying so hard to be dignified.”

  “You know, Claire, I might as well tell you—the first time I met you, I suspected you were plotting a cat assassination.”

  Claire laughed, and we kept up that joke for a while, and we stayed on the phone until my parents came upstairs and demanded their room back.

  But Thursday morning, when we passed each other in the hall, Claire smiled at me closemouthed, but didn’t stop walking.

  Did she know how much it hurt, when she changed her mood on a coin toss? Did she care?

  “I’m exhausted,” Mimi said at lunch on Thursday. “Between my AP workload and these college essays, I’m totally wired and disconnected at the same time.”

  “Me, too,” agreed Gage. “Anyone want to take a break Saturday night? We can order Domino’s pizzas, eat cookie dough, watc
h movies, the works.”

  “Fun,” said Mimi. “I’ll need something to look forward to.”

  “Not me. I’m too behind.” I cleared my throat, then delivered my lie. “I think I’ll just stay home and finish my Princeton application.”

  Gage looked skeptical. “With all those hours at Ludington, how are you behind?”

  “It’s not like it’s always study hall for me at the library. Monday I couldn’t do any homework because I needed to reshelve books while the Roto-Rooter guys worked on a plumbing leak. But I’m going to come catch your game this afternoon,” I added.

  “For real?” Gage brightened. “That’s a surprise.”

  The three of us saw one another so often throughout the school day—and usually weekends, too—that our unwritten rule was nobody needed to attend the extras: my lame modern dance recitals, Mimi’s junior varsity tennis matches, or even Gage’s varsity field hockey games.

  But Gage was smiling now. “We’re playing Saint Hubert and they’re not very good, so it should be a nice easy victory—I expect to hear lots of cheering.”

  “Definitely.”

  It was unsettling for me to see Gage so happy at the prospect of my coming to watch her. I hadn’t banked on that. She didn’t think I’d be there for any other reason than to cheer her on.

  I couldn’t bring myself to give another.

  seventeen

  Parents, siblings, and boyfriends were already on the field when I walked over after my last class. The Saint Hubert girls, jumpy with pregame tension but not comfortable enough to scatter all over another school’s playing field, did calisthenics in place. My eyes picked out Gage on the bench and Claire stretching.

  Jonesy, Tommy, and Matt were third row up on the bleachers. Jonesy Sweet was like the electric version of Tommy Powers. Or maybe Tommy Powers was the acoustic version of Jonesy Sweet. Both guys were good-looking, but Jonesy was wiry and reactive, a contrast to Tommy the mellow brick.

  Matt wasn’t like either of them, though from a distance you could see he was also their leader. As soon as Matt saw me, the guys looked in my direction, too. And when I came closer, Matt shoved Jonesy over so that I could tuck into the tight space between them.