The Best Lies

by Sarah Lyu

  “Yes!” I said, and we shared relieved laughs.

  The plane hit the ground with a thud but I was still soaring.

  “So here’s the thing—I haven’t been totally honest,” he continued, clearing his throat. “Brenda, she’s more than just a colleague. It’s complicated.”

  Suddenly it all made sense. Why she was with us all the time, why she was so nice to me.

  “Oh.” It felt like a punch to the gut. He’d lied to me.

  “I just wanted you to get to know her without any pressure,” he rambled on as we taxied to the gate. “So you could be honest with me. And you said you like her, so it all worked out.”

  I gave him a small smile but I didn’t feel like smiling.

  When we deplaned and headed toward baggage claim, I was still in shock. A million questions flooded my mind. Had it all been Brenda’s idea? When did Dad decide all of this? When did they even start seeing each other? And, oh God, Mom. Dad had asked me to keep a secret, but now I couldn’t imagine facing her.

  “It’s going to be okay, Remy,” Dad said on the way home. “We’ll figure everything out—I’m just so happy that you’re on my side. I feel like I can do anything, knowing I have you.” And like magic, all of my doubts seemed to evaporate. We were a team, we were a family, just the two of us. I was his favorite, like Christian was Mom’s favorite. Someone wanted me, someone loved me. Everything would be okay.

  Elise listened quietly as I talked about that weekend in Chicago, a warm hand on my shoulder. We were in the Pink Caddy, passing her last cigarette back and forth between us.

  “What happened?” she asked when I finished.

  “I don’t know. For a few weeks, my dad seemed euphoric. Then he left for another work trip, this time without me, and came back sad.” I turned away, blew smoke out, and watched it disappear into the night. We sat with the top down, shivering in our coats, fingers shaking and clumsy with the cigarette. “He and Brenda must’ve broken up. I don’t even think he asked Mom for a divorce that time.” An errant tear slipped down my face.

  “Unlike now,” Elise said.

  “Unlike now,” I confirmed. I didn’t understand what had changed in the intervening two and a half years, how he could go from acting like he cared about me to not wanting me at all.

  “Come here,” Elise said, pulling me in and tucking my head against her shoulder. I played with the lighter she’d given me, flipping the heavy top open and closed.

  “No one ever wants me,” I cried harder. “Not Cameron, not my mom, not even my dad.”

  “Shh,” she said softly, letting me cry and cry, smoothing my hair away with a gentle hand. “Did I ever tell you about my mom?”

  I looked up, lifting a wrist to wipe away my tears. It was really a rhetorical question—we both knew she’d never told me about her mom.

  “I mean, there isn’t much to talk about. She left when I was six.” I remained quiet, focused on her voice. “She left one day, walked out the door without a single glance behind her.” Elise still sounded shocked after all these years. “It’s been just me and my dad ever since, not that he’s ever been father of the year.”

  I waited for her to continue, and when she didn’t, I asked about him. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” she said quickly. “I’m just saying, I know what it’s like to have shitty parents who don’t care about you.”

  I began crying again, feeling sorry for both of us.

  “Come here,” she said, squeezing me closer. “They’re all assholes, forget about them. Look, let’s just leave everyone behind and start over, just the two of us.”

  I looked up at her through wet eyes. “Just the two of us?”

  She nodded. “You and me, we can be each other’s family, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, sniffing.

  “We don’t need anyone else, not when we have each other.”

  I’d never felt more loved than in that moment, Elise holding me as I cried.

  MONDAY // NOVEMBER 28 // DAY 80

  17.

  My dad left that Saturday night and was still gone two days later when we went back to school. Time slowed to a drip and I found myself checking my phone between every period, unsure of what I was even hoping for. Dad wasn’t going to text me in the middle of the day, wasn’t going to call to say he was there to pick me up and take me with him to his new life. He wasn’t going to swoop in to save me.

  He was gone, maybe for good this time. And of course Christian wasn’t fazed. Sitting with friends in the senior section at lunch, he was too busy laughing and joking to care. Our eyes met briefly across the lunchroom when he caught me staring and his smile faltered for a second before he turned away from me.

  After school, he stopped by my locker, which he never did. “What’s your problem?” he asked, leaning against the wall, arms crossed.

  “My problem?” I said.

  “Yeah, at lunch.”

  Before I could answer, someone down the hall spotted Christian and called out to him. “Hey, Chris, you coming to practice?” It was Cory from the basketball team.

  “Yeah, be there in a minute, just talking to my sister.”

  “Oh. I didn’t you know had a sister,” he said, glancing at me before returning to Christian. “See you on the court.” And with a mock salute, he was gone.

  “Do you just tell people you’re an only child?” I said, yanking my chem book out and shoving it in my bag.

  “What? No,” he said.

  “Whatever,” I said, turning to go.

  “Wait.” He stopped me with a heavy hand on my arm. “Why are you acting so weird?”

  I’d never loathed him more than in that moment. “What’s wrong with you?” I shot back. “Dad’s gone and you don’t even care.”

  “Really? That’s what this is about?” he said with a scoff. “It’s not like this is the first time he’s disappeared. And for the record, I care.”

  “No, you don’t. Because you don’t have to care. You’ve got Mom.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? We have Mom. Both of us. Dad’s the one who left and he left all of us. I didn’t make him go. He ran off. Again.”

  “He only left because of Mom.” Christian was willfully distorting what happened. I didn’t know why I was bothering. He’d been brainwashed by our mom. He’d never understand. “Were you even there Saturday night? Did you hear them?”

  “I was there,” he said. “I was going to get my keys and bounce but then they started arguing downstairs, so I couldn’t leave.”

  “Did you hear the whole thing?” I could still hear the disdain in Mom’s voice when Dad said he wanted a divorce: Oh, really?

  “As a matter of fact, I did. It’s basically the same fight they have all the time.” He rolled his eyes. “Dad’s flakey, Mom gets mad, Dad runs off for a few weeks, comes back all contrite. Things are okay for a while and then it starts up all over again. Rinse and repeat.” His voice was devoid of emotion, like he’d been reading me the weather report. Cloudy with a 30 percent chance of divorce. “I don’t know why you’re so worked up. You know he’s coming back.”

  That was the thing. I didn’t, not this time.

  “Hey.” Elise seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Her eyes traveled between us a few times, curious, then she smiled at Christian. “What’s up, guys?”

  “Nothing, let’s go,” I said, pulling her along.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked as soon as we were out of earshot. I just shook my head. In the Pink Caddy, I drew my knees in, curling into myself.

  “I hate him,” I said.

  “Your . . . dad?” she asked, passing a cigarette to me and lighting one for herself.

  “Christian.” I held my cigarette between my fingers, unlit, forgotten. “Dad left two days ago and he’s just acting like nothing’s happened.”

  Elise studied me but didn’t say anything, releasing a stream of smoke to the side.

  “How can he just—” I broke off. It wasn�
�t that he didn’t get what I was going through—he didn’t want to. It was easier for him to live in his bubble where everything was perfect and he was perfect.

  She took the cigarette from my hand and lit it for me before passing it back. “People react differently to things,” she said, shrugging.

  “Are you defending him?”

  “No,” she said, but I wasn’t convinced. She didn’t know Christian like I did. When she looked at him, she saw what everyone else saw—student council president, valedictorian, star athlete, loved by all for his sly smile and self-deprecating jokes, the future leader of men. She saw who he was to everyone who wasn’t me.

  “We were close when we were little. We used to hide in the closet together when things got bad. We used to—” We used to be a team, he and I. Before the lines were drawn, it was the two of us. At least until he began to believe Mom’s bullshit about how special he was, how he was so much better than me. “Christian doesn’t care about anyone but himself,” I said. He never stood up to Mom for me, never looked for me after a fight to tell me she was wrong or that he was sorry.

  “Yeah, but maybe he’s sad and just doesn’t want to show it. Maybe—”

  “Stop defending him!” I said, cutting her off. “Not you too. I don’t think I could stand it coming from you.”

  “What?” she said, looking startled. “I’m not defending him.”

  “I just want someone to be on my side,” I said, beginning to tear up.

  “Hey, I am on your side, come here.” She pulled me in for a long hug. “I’ll always be on your side.” When Elise dropped me off at my house, she placed a light hand on my forearm. “I meant that. I’ll always be on your side, okay?”

  We shared a small smile, and I thought: It’ll be all right as long as I have her.

  FRIDAY // DECEMBER 9 // DAY 91

  18.

  By the end of her first semester here, Elise had cemented her reputation around school as something of a badass. She didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought of her, and she had this effortless beauty that drew other people toward her—long, glossy hair, thick lashes, startling blue eyes. The combination gave her a strange sort of invincibility, like she was untouchable, and she knew it.

  But Elise only ever wielded her power for good, sticking up for people who needed it. She saw herself as a protector of the downtrodden, an everyday heroine.

  There was a girl in math, Jane, who was frequently tortured because her mother was in prison for embezzlement.

  “Hey, Jane,” Ethan, an obnoxious meathead, would say. “If your parents got divorced, who’d you rather live with?”

  “It’s a tough choice,” his friend George would join in. “I mean, on one hand, you’ve got boring old Lyndens Creek, and on the other, you’ve got prison. It’s a tough call.” They’d crack up, give each other self-congratulatory high fives.

  Or the time they made a show of opening a copy of the school paper issued that day. “Look,” George said innocently. “The school raised almost ten thousand dollars for the Red Cross. It’s a record. Hey, Jane, didn’t your mom used to organize that fundraiser?”

  “No wonder they raised more this year,” Ethan said, followed again by laughter.

  Timid and soft-spoken, Jane mostly endured it quietly. Elise would occasionally shoot them dark looks or tell them to shut up, but one day they crossed the line and she silenced them for good.

  “When was the last time you saw your mom, Jane?” Ethan asked, feigning concern. When she ignored him, he poked her in the shoulder with his pen. She continued to ignore him, which pissed him off. “It doesn’t matter. I heard she got a ten-year sentence. Oh no, what if she dies in prison? Then you’ll never see her again.” Jane teared up almost immediately.

  “Oh shit,” George said, shaking his head appreciatively. “Harsh.”

  Elise swung around. “Hey, assholes, say another word and I’ll fucking end you.”

  They were stunned into silence. It wasn’t just the words. It was the way she delivered them, like she had power and they were nothing.

  Maybe they heard she orchestrated the revenge prank against Jae’s ex-girlfriend, Dana. Rumor was that her family had to hire exterminators to get rid of the mice and that she was too scared to sleep in the basement anymore.

  Or maybe they could sense Elise Ferro was someone you didn’t fuck with. Either way, they stopped torturing Jane, at least whenever she was around.

  • • •

  Then there was the Friday we had a substitute in World History, the only other class I had with Elise. When doing roll call, Mrs. Jones stumbled through all the names and then got to mine. “Katherine Te-say?” I always dreaded moments like this.

  “It’s just ‘sigh,’ or ‘zai,’ like the word ‘tsar,’ ” I said. “And I go by my middle name, Remy.”

  “Sah-ay,” she said, drawing it out, clearly annoyed at being corrected. “And Remy. What an odd name. Katherine is what your parents picked for you and it’s a perfectly good name, so that’s what I’ll call you.”

  Sliding down in my chair to avoid drawing any more attention to myself, I caught Elise staring at me, anger flashing in her eyes. I shook my head slightly: Please don’t make it worse. To my relief, she said nothing, but I could see that rage simmering right beneath the surface. She remained quiet the rest of class, but as soon as the bell rang, she strode up to Mrs. Jones. I thought Elise was about to say something that’d land her in detention when she turned the wattage up on her smile and began chatting with her, laughing even. Confused, I waited for her outside.

  “Come on,” she said, looping an arm around mine and steering us away from the crowd heading to the cafeteria for lunch.

  “Where are we going?” I asked once we were outside.

  Grinning, Elise pulled out a set of car keys from her pocket.

  “Wait, is that—”

  “—the rude woman’s keys?” she finished. “Yep.” So that’s what she’d been doing. “They were just sitting on the desk.” We wandered the teacher’s parking lot using the key fob to locate her car.

  “What are we going to do?” I said when we found it, now worried about what Elise might have in mind. I knew she liked pranks, but we’d never pulled something off at school, and definitely not on someone who could get us into real trouble.

  “Nothing crazy,” she said, getting into the driver’s seat. “Come on.”

  “Are we stealing her car?” I asked, not moving.

  “Nah, just borrowing it. Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal,” she said, pulling the seat belt across her.

  It was a sign of how much I trusted her that I finally got in. “Okay.”

  We didn’t go far, just to the parking lot of a nearby strip mall. Elise pulled out her cigarettes. It’d become a little ritual of ours, Elise lighting two and passing one to me. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll drive back and drop the keys off in the lost and found. She’ll look for them when she realizes they’re missing, but she’ll find them eventually.”

  “You didn’t have to do this for me,” I said quietly, feeling vaguely embarrassed but also secretly happy that she cared so much about me.

  “I wanted to! People like her are the worst. What the fuck did she even mean, ‘What an odd name’?” Elise scoffed, that sharp glint in her eye. “It’s unfair that we couldn’t say anything just because she has all the power.” That kind of thing really bothered her. The world was unjust, and someone had to right those wrongs. She was that someone.

  I looked at her in awe.

  “What?” she asked. “Do I have something on my face?”

  I laughed. “No, just—thanks. For caring.”

  She smiled.

  After we finished our first cigarette, Melody texted me.

  Melody: Where are you?

  I’d begun to hang out with Elise and her friends at lunch most days, and the more I avoided or ignored Melody, the more she tried to pull me back.

  Me: Getting lunch off campus


  Melody: We’re not supposed to do that!

  “Is that Melody?” Elise asked, rolling her eyes. “Let me guess, you’re in trouble.”

  “No,” I said. “Maybe.”

  “Melody’s mad at you, isn’t she?” she said.

  “Probably,” I admitted. “But it’s not a big deal.”

  “I wasn’t going to tell you this but she cornered me the other day,” she said like she was confessing a secret.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, we’re both in sixth-period Spanish, right? So after the last bell, she followed me out and pulled me aside. She kind of threatened me.”

  “Um . . . What?” I repeated. I couldn’t imagine tiny Melody Moon threatening anyone.

  “Okay, maybe not threatened, but warned. She was all huffy about how much time you were spending with me, how you and her were friends first, blah blah blah.” Then Elise laughed, like it was Melody who was being completely ridiculous.

  “Wow,” I said, feeling a little worried about Mel—that she would corner Elise like that. She was stubborn and loyal but she’d never seemed possessive. Maybe it was a misunderstanding. Maybe she wasn’t trying to threaten Elise but was just venting. Maybe she was even trying to get us all to hang out together more. Whatever it was, it backfired. “What’d you say?”

  “I chose to be the bigger person. I just smiled sweetly and walked away.” She let out a big sigh. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t care about being nice. Sometimes I wish I always said what I wanted.” This surprised me—didn’t she always say what she wanted? What was she holding back?

  “What’d you want to say?”

  Elise grinned, a mischievous spark in her eye. “You and me, outside after school”—she raised her fists, shadowboxing in mock seriousness.

  “Oh my God,” I said, laughing, eyes wide.

  She laughed too. “To the victor goes the spoils.”

  “What, I’m the spoils?” I said, pretending to be offended but secretly pleased.

  “Yes,” she said, slinging an arm around my shoulders. “You’re the spoils, the prize.” It was incredible how a few words from her could make me feel lighter than air.