The Thing About the Truth

by Lauren Barnholdt

  “We are,” he says. “They have the best fries in town.” He looks at me. “Don’t tell me you’re a food snob.”

  “I’m not a food snob,” I say haughtily. “You’re the one who . . .” I’m about to tell him he’s the one who’s a snob, but he’s out of the car now. I sit there for a minute, debating whether or not I should just tell him to take me home. I don’t even know why I’m here.

  But then he’s at my side of the car, and he’s opening my door for me. Which, let’s face it, is kind of cute. Besides, I’m already here. And if I tell him to take me home, who knows what kind of stunt he’ll try to pull with this whole Face It Down Day thing. I have to stay on his good side now that we’re going to be working together.

  So I step out of the car and head into the bowling alley.

  • • •

  The restaurant in the bowling alley is called Strikes, and it’s actually surprisingly cozy, with big oak tables and comfy, oversize brown chairs. A flat-screen TV is mounted on the wall, and it’s tuned to ESPN, where they’re showing a Red Sox game.

  “I always sit here,” Isaac says, leading me over to a table in the corner with a view of the lanes. The two guys I saw come in a couple of minutes ago are plugging their names into a console on lane eleven, and their names flash on the scoreboard. One’s named Butch. The other’s named Harry. It’s very fitting.

  A few seconds after we sit down, a waitress comes over to take our order. She’s older, probably in her fifties, with close-cropped ash-blond hair and bright pink lipstick.

  “Isaac!” she says, grabbing him by the face and kissing him on both cheeks. She leaves a lipstick mark, which Isaac, surprisingly, doesn’t seem to mind.

  “Hey, Irene,” Isaac says, grinning while Irene wipes the lipstick off his face with her thumb. “How’s it going?”

  “Don’t ‘how’s it going’ me, mister,” she says, and wags one acrylic-nailed finger at him. “I haven’t seen you in here for ages.”

  “Yeah.” Isaac shifts on his seat and kind of looks uncomfortable. “I’ve been busy.”

  “I heard,” she says, clucking her tongue at him. “Had to start a new school, did you?”

  “Yeah.” They exchange a look, and I wonder why she cares that Isaac’s starting a new school. Everyone knows it’s because his dad wanted to prove some big point about how the public schools are just as good as the private, don’t they? Unless there’s something else going on. Something more scandalous. Does Isaac have a secret? A potential secret and/or nefarious past definitely makes him a little more interesting. But not much. Being a pompous jerk totally trumps any hidden scandals.

  “Who’s this?” Irene asks. She looks at me suspiciously, her eyes traveling up and down my whole body. I feel like I’m under a microscope, and I smooth my hair self-consciously.

  “This is Kelsey,” Isaac says. “My friend from school.”

  “Your friend from school? From Concordia Public?” She’s looking at me skeptically, and she puts emphasis on the word “friend” like she can’t believe anyone would ever be just friends with Isaac. Which makes me wonder how many other girls he’s brought here. Probably lots. Probably they all looked like Marina. Although the thought of Marina in a bowling alley is pretty hilarious.

  “Nice to meet you,” I say, giving Irene a smile.

  “Mmm-hmm.” She disappears without saying it back or taking our order.

  “She didn’t take our order,” I say. So far? Not so impressed with this place. Yes, it’s cozy. But the service leaves something to be desired, for sure. Talk about impolite.

  “She doesn’t have to take our order,” Isaac says. He reaches for the bowl of popcorn Irene placed on our table before she disappeared and pops a handful into his mouth.

  I look around, pretending to take in the surroundings. “But isn’t this a restaurant?”

  “Yes,” Isaac says, “but she already knows what we want.” He glances at the television. “Hmm,” he says, “I wonder if they’ll switch it to the lacrosse game.”

  “You ordered for us?” I ask.

  “No,” Isaac says, “Irene just knows what we want. You’ll see. Trust me.”

  “Trust you? Ha!” I laugh at the absurdity of it. And yet, for some reason, I’m here, sitting in the bowling alley, munching on popcorn, and watching while a guy named Butch bowls a strike and then shakes his butt in the middle of the lane.

  “You don’t think I’m trustworthy?”

  “Are you seriously asking me that?”

  “No.” He grins. “It was rhetorical. I’m not trustworthy. Like, at all.”

  “That’s good,” I say, nodding mock seriously, “that you’re able to admit your problem. It’s the first step on the road to recovery.”

  “Who says I want to recover?” he asks. “And besides, shouldn’t that make me more trustworthy? That I’m at least able to admit it?”

  “No,” I say, “because you’re only doing it to make me think you’re trustworthy. It’s like manipulation.” He smiles at me and shakes his head like I’m just too much. Something about the way he’s looking at me makes me a little uncomfortable. Almost like he’s amused by me, but also . . . I don’t know, like he likes me. Not likes me, likes me, but just that he’s . . . I don’t know, enjoying being here with me. It’s making me feel weird, joking around with him like this, and not in a bad way.

  Now I understand why all those women went so crazy over Bill Clinton. It has to be a politician thing. Not that Isaac’s a politician. But his dad is, and so it’s probably in the genes. They have this way of getting one over on you. How else do you explain how Bill could cheat on his wife with Monica Lewinsky and still come out as one of our most-loved presidents?

  Before I can analyze this any further, Irene returns to the table and sets down two steaming plates. On each one is a mound of crispy-looking French fries and a grilled cheese sandwich with bacon and tomato peeking out from under golden-brown crusts. Then she plunks down two vanilla milk shakes and disappears again before we can even say thank you.

  Suddenly I’m starving. I usually try to stay away from high-fat stuff like cheese and meat, but this meal looks delicious. There’s nothing I want more than that sandwich.

  “This does look really good,” I admit, picking up the sandwich and taking a bite. It’s perfect. Buttery, with crisp bacon, juicy tomatoes, and the exact right amount of gooey melted cheese.

  “See?” Isaac says. “I told you you’d get what you want.”

  He’s looking right into my eyes as he says it, and giving me this really sexy smile, and I feel a little bit of an excited shiver go up my spine. Because even though he’s talking about food, I can’t help but think he’s also talking about something else.

  • • •

  We make small talk while we eat, mostly about our new school. He tells me a funny story about some guy named Marshall who he’s kind of sort of becoming friends with, and how they had to be partners in biology today until Marshall dropped a microscope and shattered it, and then freaked out and tried to put it back on the shelf because he thought he was going to have to pay for it. And then he tells me a little bit about how he thinks Marina is stalking him.

  “She seems harmless,” I say.

  He raises his eyebrows at me and drains the rest of his milk shake. “Trust me,” he says, “she’s not.”

  “Oh, please,” I say, popping the last bite of my sandwich into my mouth. “She’s just a little overeager. Don’t guys like you like that?”

  “Guys like me? Are we doing that again?”

  I roll my eyes. “Calm down,” I say. “I’m not stereotyping you. I’m talking about guys in general.”

  “Then why did you say ‘guys like you’?”

  “I don’t know.” I take a fry and drag it through some ketchup. “Force of habit.”

  He grins. “Well, I’m not interested in her.”

  “Not enough of a challenge?”

  He shrugs. “Sometimes you just know when you lik
e someone.”

  He’s looking right at me again, and that same shiver of excitement rushes through my body.

  • • •

  When we’re done eating, we bowl. I’m kind of horrible at it. And when I say “kind of,” I mean, you know, completely. Isaac is really good, and he does his best to give me some pointers, but I’m sort of a lost cause.

  At one point he’s trying to show me how to stand. “Like this,” he says, putting his hands on my hips and moving them slowly into the right position. I feel a flush of heat fill my body, and when I turn my head toward his, he’s so close I can see the scar through his eyebrow, the curve of his mouth, and the small scratch he has on the side of his neck.

  By the time we leave, I realize that we never talked about the stuff with his dad. And I’m also starting to think that I might be starting to like him.

  Before

  Isaac

  “That was fun, right?” I ask Kelsey as I open the door to my car and wait for her to climb in. I don’t know why, but suddenly I want her to say that it was fun, that she had the best time, that she wants to do it again. Maybe it’s because I like her. And maybe it’s because I had the most fun I’ve had in a really long time.

  I know, it makes no sense. That I like her, I mean. She’s completely controlling. And she’s constantly giving me shit. But she’s also pretty. And smart. And funny. Not always-making-jokes funny (although her jokes are really hilarious), but just funny in the sense that her reactions to things make me laugh. Like how she got all flustered when she realized I was taking her to a bowling alley. And how she freaked out when Irene didn’t take our order. It’s like she can’t let go for one second, or surrender control to anything. I want to be the one who makes her let her guard down.

  “It was okay,” she says, and shrugs, trying to be all cool.

  I roll my eyes, then walk over to the other side of the car. “Come on,” I say as I climb in and buckle my seat belt. “You had fun, just admit it.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why is it so important to you that I admit it?” she asks, turning slightly in her seat so that she’s looking at me.

  “Why is it so important to you that you don’t?”

  “Anyway,” she says, obviously ready to change the subject because she doesn’t like the fact that I have her on the ropes. “We should probably talk a little bit about this Face It Down Day thing. I mean, if we’re going to be working on it together.”

  Oh. Right. Face It Down Day. I’d kind of forgotten about that. That’s the thing about me. I never think ahead when I get myself embroiled in these crazy schemes. Earlier today when I brought that notebook into Mr. Colangelo’s office, it was mostly about showing Kelsey that I could. I never stopped to think about the fact that now I’m actually going to have to do some work on this thing.

  Oh well. It will keep my dad happy, at least. And I’ll get to hang out with Kelsey.

  “Sure,” I say. “Well, I’d love to hear your ideas.” It’s a trick, of course. It’s something that my dad does when he wants to get ideas from other people.

  “Oh no,” Kelsey says, and shakes her head, obviously too smart for that. “You came up with the idea. Why don’t you let me know your thoughts?”

  “Of course I will.” As soon as I have any. “Do you want to come over to my house and work on it?” I don’t know why I ask her that. The words just come out of my mouth. Partly I think it’s because I’m stalling for time. And partly it’s because I don’t want to stop hanging out with her.

  “Right now?” she asks.

  “Sure. I can show you my ideas, and we can go over how we’re going to advertise.” I pull onto the highway and start heading back toward my house, even though she hasn’t agreed to come over yet.

  “Advertise?”

  “Yeah, you know, how we’re going to get people to join? Of course, once they find out I’m involved, it should be easy. But we don’t want to take any chances.” I give her a grin.

  “You think we need to advertise for our club?”

  “Of course.”

  “What are we, Coca-Cola? You’ve obviously never done this before.”

  “And you have?”

  “Of course.” She smooths her skirt, and I sneak a look at her legs. She has great legs. Long and tan. I think about how it felt to have my hands on her hips back at the bowling alley. I wonder what it would feel like to run my hands over her legs. She catches me looking and raises her eyebrows at me, and I look away quickly.

  “When?” I ask her, trying to keep my focus on the road and resist the urge to keep looking at her.

  “When what?”

  “When have you done this before?”

  “Are we still talking about starting a school club?”

  I look over at her, shocked. Is she flirting with me? Is she trying to make me feel like a perv for looking at her legs? I’m a red-blooded American teenager! Of course I’m going to look at her legs. Especially when she goes around wearing skirts like that.

  “Of course we’re still talking about starting a club,” I say, feigning confusion. “Aren’t we?”

  “Yes,” she says, “we’re still talking about starting a club.”

  I’m a little disappointed. Half of me was hoping she’d be like, “We’re talking about how you’re looking at my legs,” and then slide across the seat and kiss me. Which is ridiculous. Because she doesn’t like me like that. In fact, she thinks we’re enemies.

  “And you advertised?” I ask her.

  “No,” she says, “that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Are you even paying attention to me?” She starts to rummage through her bag and then pulls out a lip gloss. She lines her lips, making them shiny. And kissable. “You don’t advertise. Do you know what kind of crazies will show up if you do that? No.” She shakes her head and drops her lip gloss back in her bag. “We’ll just ask a couple of people we know to join. We won’t need many. Maybe, like, two each?”

  “Do you even know two people at our school?”

  “Um . . .” She thinks about it. “I know this one girl. Who I met in the bathroom.”

  “Who you met in the bathroom?”

  “Yeah, but she could definitely be crazy, so I’m not sure if I should invite her.” I give her a look. “What?” she asks, sounding defensive. “What’s wrong with meeting her in the bathroom? Girls talk in the bathroom. Besides, who are you going to invite?”

  “I’ll invite Marshall.”

  “Marshall who might be on steroids and dropped a microscope and then tried to cover it up?”

  “Yeah.”

  She closes her eyes and leans her head back against the headrest.

  “Fine,” I say, “you don’t like Marshall? We’ll advertise. I’ll make some really nice posters with—”

  “No, no,” she says, “the devils we know are better than the ones we don’t, right? And besides, it worked really well at my old school.”

  When she mentions her old school, she sits up and looks out the window, and her tone kind of changes.

  “Did you like your old school?” I ask, trying to keep my tone light.

  She shrugs, still turned away from me. “It was okay. It was a school, you know?” But something about the way she says it makes me think that she really does miss it. Which is a foreign concept to me. Yeah, I can understand maybe missing your friends or whatever. But a school? They’re all the same. School sucks, no matter where it is or what goes on there.

  “Why’d you transfer?”

  She doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then finally she says, “My parents couldn’t afford the tuition anymore.” She turns away from the window. She’s smiling, but something about it seems forced. “What about you?” she asks. “Why did you leave your old school?”

  “Got kicked out,” I say happily.

  Her mouth drops. “You got kicked out? For what?”

  “A bunch of shit,” I say. “The thing that finally got me kicke
d out was that I pulled a prank on the headmaster and stole his wig during an assembly. But that was just the last straw. I’d been getting in trouble for months.”

  “Were you upset?”

  “That I got kicked out? Not really.” I shrug. “I’m used to it.”

  “But you had to leave your friends.”

  “Most of my real friends are all over the place,” I tell her. “They’ve been kicked out of tons of schools too, so it doesn’t really matter.”

  “Must be nice,” she mumbles.

  “What?”

  “Just that you can get kicked out of school and not really have to worry about if it goes on your record or not. You’ll get into college because of who your dad is.”

  I think about it and realize that she’s right. But the thing is, I’m not sure I even want to go to college. College, to me, seems like a complete waste of time. If you’re talking about college like what most people think of as college, it seems fun. A state school, maybe, with lots of frat parties and kids going to class in their pajamas. But the kind of college I’m expected to go to? An Ivy League, where I’ll have to take some specialized curriculum and write some kind of thesis on environmental policy or whatever the new issue of the moment is? That sounds horrible.

  We’re pulling into my driveway now, and I cut the engine.

  My dad’s car is in the driveway, which is a surprise. My dad spends a lot of time in the capitol, obviously, and he wasn’t supposed to be home today. The last thing I want is for him to meet Kelsey, (a) because he might scare her away, and (b) because he’s going to judge her. Not to her face, of course. Oh no, he’s way too smart for that. But later he’ll call me into his study and start asking me all kinds of questions about who she is, who her family is, what she’s into, etc. My dad’s a real dick like that.

  It’s not that he doesn’t have reasons to question my choice in girls—at pretty much every school I’ve gone to, I’ve picked out the one or two hot girls who are there just to party. And you’d actually be surprised by who they are. In fact, they’re usually the students who have the most high-profile parents. But they’re definitely not the kinds of girls you’d marry. Or even bring home.