The Best Lies

by Sarah Lyu

  “You promised it would be different,” she said, and I could tell she’d been crying. I almost felt bad for her but she didn’t deserve my sympathy, not after all the things she’d said and done.

  “It is different,” he said. “It’s been different. I’m different. You’re the one who hasn’t changed. You’re the only one stuck in the past.”

  “Fuck you, don’t lie to me! Just. Don’t.”

  She was disdain, and he, resentment. The things they argued about changed, but the script remained the same.

  Angry stomps. A frustrated growl from Mom. Glass shattered against the floor.

  I felt a tug on my wrist and was surprised when I turned to see Elise. Shame burned through me. They aren’t usually like this, I wanted to say, the lie locked and loaded. Everything’s fine, everything’s fine, I wanted to tell her.

  I’m normal, I’m happy, I’m like everyone else. That’s what I wanted people to see, what I allowed them to see.

  By this point, Christian and I were both experts at keeping our two lives separate. The unspoken rules were simple: always hang out at other people’s houses and avoid bringing friends home, especially if we knew they’d be there.

  I hadn’t even let Cameron pick me up unless they were both at work. Melody lived on the other side of town, but when we were kids I went to her house almost every afternoon and her mom or dad would drive me home in the evening.

  Cameron had no idea, and while Melody may have suspected something was wrong, she never explicitly said anything.

  A slipup, that’s what it was. Bad luck that we went inside when we did. They weren’t supposed to be awake. And now someone had glimpsed the truth about them. About me.

  Elise’s expression was unreadable. Our eyes locked and I winced at the sound of more glasses and plates being shattered above us, punctuating angry screams that tore through the house. I wondered if Christian was home, if he was upstairs in his room, headphones squeezed on tight in the dark. If it even bothered him anymore or if he was now immune, safe in the knowledge he’d always have Mom, protected by the only person who had any real power in this family.

  “Are they always like this?” she asked.

  Elise’s eyes were kind. Soft, warm. A safe harbor.

  “Come on,” she said, two fingers still hooked around my wrist. “Let’s go.”

  “Go where?” I said, feet heavy, limbs frozen. I wanted to disappear, hide in my room, crawl into my closet until the storm ended. I wanted to escape Elise’s searching gaze.

  “To my house.”

  “No, it’s okay.” But I did want to go with her. I wanted to escape that house. Though maybe what I wanted to escape most was that life.

  “I think you like it,” my mother said upstairs, breath hitching. “I think you like me like this. Weak, powerless. Begging.”

  “You have all the power,” my father said. “You’ve always had all the power.”

  “Don’t you dare leave!” she commanded, but I heard the door slam and the car start.

  Elise squeezed my wrist.

  “I don’t have any of my things.” I looked up at the ceiling in the direction of destruction and madness. I wanted her to leave but I couldn’t stand the thought of being alone.

  “I have clothes. And a spare toothbrush.”

  “Okay,” I finally said.

  She put an arm around me, lightly, as if she didn’t want to scare me away. As if I were fragile, and I guess I was. As if I needed protection, and I guess I did.

  I followed her out and she pulled the door closed silently behind us. Together we slipped away into the night.

  MONDAY // SEPTEMBER 12 // DAY 3

  12.

  After we left my house that night, Elise never brought up what she’d witnessed. She didn’t ask about my parents, or look at me the way Melody would whenever I deflected questions about my family, like she was worried about me, like maybe she pitied me.

  That’s what I loved the most about Elise from those first days. She made me feel safe. She understood what it was like, having to keep part of yourself hidden.

  At school, we discovered we only had two classes together. I gravitated toward her in both and sat next to her, sharing small, secret smiles. We walked to lunch together after fourth period World History and I tugged her along to Melody’s table.

  “This is Elise,” I said, sitting down and dropping my backpack onto the floor. “She just moved here.” I introduced Elise to Melody and two other friends, Danielle and Anjali. They were really Melody’s friends, and the three of them did almost everything together—all honors and APs, Speech and Debate, soccer team, National Honor Society.

  “Hey,” Melody said. Danielle and Anjali glanced up with polite smiles.

  They were nice, always trying to include me in everything they did, but I wasn’t really like them. I didn’t get straight As, or give up my Saturdays to teach little kids how to read. No one ever said it, but we all knew they kept me around because of Melody, and Melody kept me around because of how long we’d known each other.

  The only two Asians in kindergarten, we glommed onto each other and became best friends. But over the years, our interests diverged. Melody had still never been kissed; Cameron was my third boyfriend. Melody got special permission to take AP Chemistry early; I was in only two honors classes and had racked up a grand total of zero APs.

  Even though our school system grew more diverse over the years and we were no longer the only Asians in class, Melody was loyal and stubborn, as persistent in her friendships as she was with building her resume, and that, along with our shared history as outsiders, was why I liked her.

  “So where are you from?” Mel asked Elise.

  “Chattanooga,” she answered.

  “Oh, I think I’ve been once,” Danielle said. “The Tennessee Aquarium’s there, right?”

  “Yep,” Elise said, biting into an apple.

  “Do you miss it? Your old school, your friends?” Anjali asked, and Elise just shrugged.

  “Did your parents get transferred for work?” Danielle said.

  “Something like that.”

  It went on for a while—polite questions and short answers. I grew nervous, unsure why Elise was so reserved. She wasn’t rude, just quiet, like she didn’t like all this attention on her. She only seemed to relax when the others moved on, shooting me a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes as Melody, Anjali, and Danielle talked about a bake sale they were organizing for that Thursday.

  By the end of lunch, Melody had pushed me into baking muffin tops and asked Elise to contribute too.

  “I’m not really good at that kind of stuff,” Elise said.

  “Oh, I’m not good at that kind of stuff either,” Melody said, even though that was a lie. For each of our birthdays she’d bake our favorites: coconut cake for me, brownies for Anjali, and red velvet cupcakes for Danielle. And she’d do it all from scratch.

  “I just get mix or frozen cookie dough,” she continued, waving Elise’s concerns aside.

  “I’d burn them,” Elise said with a forced laugh. I looked between the two of them, just trying to think of a way to prevent a fight over some stupid cookies.

  “I could come over and help Wednesday after school if you want,” Melody offered, still oblivious. I knew they were different, but I still wanted Elise to like her, or at least give her a chance. Though I think I was also secretly impressed—most people had a hard time saying no to Melody when she was this determined, but not Elise.

  “No, thank you,” Elise said firmly, not making an excuse this time. Melody frowned in confusion.

  “But—” she began to protest.

  “I can do cookies too,” I said, trying to defuse the situation. “If you want.”

  Melody stared at Elise’s stoic expression and answered me without looking over. “Sure, I guess.”

  After lunch, as Melody and I walked to honors language arts, the one class we still shared, she asked how I’d met Elise.

>   “Why?” I said.

  “Just wondering.” She adjusted her backpack straps.

  “At homecoming.” Cameron had broken up with me only a couple days ago and I hadn’t had a chance to tell her yet, so I didn’t elaborate.

  “So that’s where you were,” she said. “I texted but you never got back to me.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “She gave me a ride home.” That was technically true. There were just a few detours.

  Melody paused outside of our classroom, tapping her chin as she considered this.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “No reason. She’s just a little weird.”

  “Because she didn’t want to help with the bake sale? Come on, Mel,” I said. Elise hadn’t acted weird, she just didn’t want to give in to Melody’s demands.

  “No, it’s not that,” she said. “I don’t know, I tried so hard to talk to her and she just seemed so . . .”

  “Yes?” I said as the one-minute warning bell went off.

  Melody finally settled on a word: “Cold.”

  “What?” Maybe she’d been a little standoffish at lunch, but Elise wasn’t cold. She’d been there for me even though we were just strangers.

  “Yeah, that’s it. She seemed cold.”

  “Okay, so not wanting to bake cookies makes her cold?” I said, my irritation growing.

  “No, it’s not about the cookies.”

  “Miss Tsai, Miss Moon,” Mr. Hunter called out to us in the hall. “Are you planning on joining us today?”

  “Sorry,” Melody said, rushing inside.

  Even after class, Melody didn’t want to let it go. She seemed genuinely confused, like she’d never encountered anyone like Elise.

  “Why didn’t she want to answer any of our questions?” she asked as we walked to our lockers. “It was just weird. That’s all I’m saying.”

  I didn’t know what to say because I wondered the same thing. Elise hadn’t minded the attention two days ago when we were setting off firecrackers outside Cameron’s window.

  Elise was a mystery, but I liked that about her.

  I liked that she didn’t care about fitting in, that she kept parts of herself locked away. That she made being different look so easy.

  FRIDAY // OCTOBER 14 // DAY 35

  13.

  With little effort, Elise could’ve had her pick of friends. She was beautiful and electric, fearless and uncompromising. She didn’t follow, she didn’t act like anyone else I knew.

  Elise was everything I ever wanted to be.

  She dropped by our lunch table a couple times after that but seemed to like floating better, changing tables often, sitting in the senior section one day and with the gamers the next. But soon she had her own table, and was gathering people up like strays. Lance Krasinski, who had bright red hair and wore ironic T-shirts that said things like CECI N’EST PAS UNE PIPE; Julie Adichie, who was the captain of Science Olympiad and wore her hair cropped; Mark Ransom, who modeled for department store catalogs on the weekend and rode a Vespa to school; Jae Park, who once performed magic tricks on Good Morning America when he was in middle school.

  And for a little while I thought maybe that was it for Elise and me. One bright, explosive night of abandon, a comet lighting up my sky for a brief moment.

  • • •

  I couldn’t keep the news about Cameron from Melody forever. When I told her later that week, we went to her house and marathoned Law and Order: SVU, her favorite show, and got sick eating an entire carton of ice cream. Everything Mel knew about love she learned from the movies, including the parts about how to handle breakups—bingeing on ice cream and TV. It made talking to her about it difficult. I never knew how she’d react.

  She never liked Cameron, but then again, she never liked any of the guys I liked. Whenever I tried to talk to her about them, she’d end up lecturing me about how immature high school boys were and how they weren’t worth the distraction.

  So I learned to keep most of it to myself rather than risk more I-told-you-so’s from her. And of course I never told her the rest of the story, the fireworks and the surge of satisfaction I experienced when I saw that look of genuine fear on Cameron’s face. It felt like a secret, and Melody would never understand. I could just hear the panic in her voice: But that’s illegal.

  • • •

  The call came late Friday night. I was surprised when I saw her name lighting up the screen of my phone. “Hey,” I said, my heart skipping a beat.

  “So here’s the plan,” Elise said without preamble. “Can you get some peanut butter and go to the address I just texted you?”

  “What?” I looked at my phone and saw her message. “Why?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I didn’t hesitate, grabbing the peanut butter out of the cupboard and jogging to my car, easing it out of the driveway with the headlights off to avoid waking anyone up. I had no idea what I was doing or why. I wasn’t really sure if she’d even be there when I arrived, but I had to find out. Whatever it was, I knew it’d be fun and thrilling, a hammer to break the monotony of school, sleep, repeat.

  I pulled in behind a white Camry parked up the street from the address Elise sent. She and a few others stood by the car in dark clothes, huddling over something.

  “Hey,” I said as I walked up to them, my heart racing.

  “Remy!” Elise gasped, and enveloped me in a tight hug like we were the best of friends. We hadn’t talked much lately, so I was surprised, but I was also secretly thrilled to see her so excited by my arrival. Even though we weren’t best friends, it felt like we could be someday. “Did you bring the PB?” she asked once we separated.

  Nodding, I held up the jar. “I wasn’t sure how much you needed. If you want, I can go get some more,” I said, ready to do anything for her.

  “No, this is perfect,” she said with a big smile that lit up her eyes before turning to introduce me to Julie, Mark, and Jae. I knew of them, but I’d never exchanged more than two words with Julie or Mark, and Jae was a junior, so we’d never even had a class together. “Lance’s home with the flu. Thanks for helping us out—I knew you’d come,” she said like I’d saved the day.

  “Of course,” I said, a little dizzy with anticipation. “What are we doing?” Then I noticed the thing they’d all been hovering over, a small box Julie held gingerly. When everyone quieted down, I could hear light scratching and tiny squeaks. “Is that—”

  “Mice?” Elise finished for me. “Yes, and that’s what we need the peanut butter for.”

  I looked at her in confusion.

  “I told them what we’d done to Cameron,” she said, and I felt surprisingly hurt. I thought it was our secret, I thought that night belonged only to us. “Jae just found out his girlfriend, Dana, was sleeping with his best friend.”

  “Oh shit,” I said before glancing up to see his jaws clench. Anger was coming off his body in waves. He was clearly hurting, just like I was homecoming night, and Elise was here to fix it—to right a wrong.

  “I don’t have any more firecrackers, but I had another idea,” she said, that familiar glint in her eye.

  • • •

  Dana Wolfert occupied the basement suite of her house. We quietly marched around to her backyard and tried the door. It was locked. Then the four of them fanned out, trying the windows one by one. I stayed close to Elise, unsure of what we’d do if we couldn’t get in.

  “This one’s open,” Elise whispered. “Thank God, or we would’ve had to break a window.”

  That surprised me, but I remained quiet because I didn’t think she would’ve actually broken into the house for something as silly as a prank. But then I saw that spark of determination in her eyes and wasn’t so sure anymore. It didn’t scare me though. I found her dedication kind of romantic, that she’d be willing to risk getting in trouble for her friends.

  Inside, Elise took on the riskiest job, smearing peanut butter around Dana’s bed, her pillows, her nightstand.

  “Dan
a sleeps like the dead,” Jae had assured us.

  Mark stood by the stairs to keep watch for any movement above while Julie pulled out a small bottle of cooking oil and coated all the doorknobs. Then Jae dealt the final blow, walking in with the box of mice and tearing it open just enough for the mice to climb out. Then they closed the door behind them and ran, trying to stifle their laughter.

  “Are you sure she’s going to wake up?” Elise asked Jae when they were outside.

  “Fuck,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  Dana answered the question with a terrifying, high-pitched scream. The mice must’ve found the peanut butter—and her.

  “Oh my God,” Julie said, eyes wide, hand covering her mouth in an attempt to keep from laughing.

  “Run, run, run,” Elise whispered sharply, taking me by the wrist. Once we got to the cars, she said, “You guys go ahead. It’s too crammed with all of us. Remy can drive me home.” I looked at her in surprise, so happy that we’d be alone, even if it was just for a car ride.

  More screams pierced the night. Lights began to flood the street.

  “Shit, guys, we have to go,” Mark said, jumping in the driver’s seat. The others scrambled in and tore out of the neighborhood.

  “Are we following them?” I asked, frantically starting the car.

  “Nah,” Elise said, nonchalant. “I’ll meet up with them later.”

  “Oh.” I slowed down.

  “But I don’t want to go home yet,” she said as we came to a stoplight. “Let’s go to your house.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, worried about my parents and what they might do. Then I remembered that Mom was away at a conference. “Yeah, okay.”

  At my house, Elise and I went straight to the pool. We stretched out on loungers, the weather-resistant fabric rough against my skin, and she lit up a cigarette for each of us.

  “Why’d you call me? You didn’t need me,” I said. In the rush of the moment, I was only focused on what we were doing, but now that we were alone, I was curious.

  “Yes, we did! You brought the peanut butter. It wouldn’t have worked without the peanut butter,” she said, shooting me a sleepy smile.