The Best Lies

by Sarah Lyu

  I laughed and he kissed my forehead. I closed my eyes again and we fell into a lovely silence. I was almost asleep when he nudged me. “Remy.”

  “Yeah?” I said, rubbing my eyes.

  “Tonight’s been magical,” he said softly. “I haven’t felt like myself in so long.” His words reminded me of what he’d said earlier that night, about how he wasn’t the same person he used to be.

  “What do you mean?” I rested a light hand on his cheek, fingers brushing his hair.

  He hesitated, looked unsure.

  “You can tell me,” I said.

  “I don’t want to make things weird.” He turned away from me to stare at the sky. “People don’t know how to deal with me when I—”

  My hand slipped down his arm to find his. “Tell me.”

  He kept his eyes on the stars as he began. “My grandfather passed away last year,” he said quietly. “We were really close.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. Christian and I rarely saw our grandparents, even over the holidays, and we’d never been close, but the pain in Jack’s voice was so raw, it cut right through me.

  Jack really was different from all the guys at school, all the guys I’d ever met. He seemed older, even though he was the same age as Christian. He seemed real, like maybe he also had a wound that needed attention. The damaged parts of myself could see that he carried the shards of his broken heart with him everywhere he went, and I thought it was tragic, romantic even.

  “Growing up, my mom was around but she was working all the time,” Jack said. “She’s a flight attendant, gone for days at a time. Grandpa was kind of the one who raised me. He was the one person I could count on.”

  I wanted to hold him tight, comfort him.

  “I never thought he would ever lie to me. That was the worst part—he didn’t tell me until the start of senior year—” He broke off, looked away.

  “What happened?” I asked gently.

  “My grandfather hadn’t been feeling well all last summer, nothing serious, just getting colds all the time and headaches and random pain all over. He insisted it was just him getting old.” Jack sighed and turned away, blinking fast like he was on the verge of tears. “I ended up taking the year off school to spend more time with him, and he was so angry, telling me not to waste such an important year of my life.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Unsure what else I could say to ease his pain, I shifted closer and pressed a kiss against his forehead.

  We remained like that for a while, me leaning on my elbow watching over him, a soft hand resting on his chest, a finger tracing small circles against his black tee.

  Jack was so vulnerable, and he reminded me of myself before I met Elise, alone and in need of protection. In that moment, I knew I could be the person to give it to him.

  “Remy?” he said. “Tell me something true.”

  I looked into his eyes. “I’m really glad I met you.”

  His smile could light up the world.

  “Tell me something true?” I asked.

  “You’re the first person I felt like I could talk to in a long time,” he said, and under the moonlight, he was beautiful.

  SATURDAY // APRIL 1 // DAY 204

  25.

  I texted Elise as soon as I got home, so excited to tell her about Jack, my anger from our fight largely dissipated in the rush of the last few hours. Maybe it’d been an off night for her, I thought. Maybe I’d misunderstood her. I thought she’d want to celebrate her birthday the same way we celebrated mine, but maybe what she really wanted was a party.

  Whatever it was, I could never stay angry at her for long, and I thought that things would just go back to normal.

  Me: Where are you?

  Me: I have to tell you something omg

  She didn’t respond. I was so tired I fell asleep waiting for her.

  The call came at three in the morning. “What? Hello?” I answered, barely awake.

  “Remy?” Elise sounded like she’d been crying. Elise never cried. Ever.

  “Elise?” I rubbed my eyes and swept my hair back, sitting up.

  “Can you come get me?” she asked, voice small.

  “Just tell me where to go,” I said, already getting out of bed.

  “I’m in that strip mall near school,” she said. “Hurry.”

  The streets were empty that time of night, giving the town an eerily abandoned feel. Standing in front of the CVS with her arms wrapped around herself, Elise was alone, shivering. I pulled up alongside the curb.

  “What happened?” I asked, waiting for her to get in. I didn’t understand where the others had gone, or how she’d ended up there. “Are you hurt?” She looked awful, hair in disarray, eyeliner smeared from crying. It was terrifying seeing her like that.

  “I’m fine. But I don’t want to talk about it.” She buckled her seat belt and stared stubbornly forward. “Where’s my car?” She sounded tired but also irritated. Was she upset that I didn’t show up any sooner? It took me a moment to wake up before I sneaked out. Why wouldn’t she just tell me what’d happened?

  “It’s parked in front of my house.”

  “Okay,” she said, softer this time, and that was when I noticed it.

  “You’re drunk.” It was less an accusation and more of a statement.

  “Maybe,” she said, closing her eyes. “Please, Rem, let’s just go.”

  We remained silent on the drive back. I wished she would just talk to me. I was her best friend. In the ten minutes we spent on the road, I spun through all the things that could’ve happened. She said she wasn’t hurt but she didn’t clarify what that actually meant.

  When we arrived at my house, she stumbled inside with me through the basement, careful not to wake anyone.

  “Come on,” I said, heading for the stairs, one of her arms slung over my shoulders, half of her weight on me.

  “No, can we just stay here?” She collapsed on the sectional, burying her face into a pillow.

  “E—”

  “Shhh,” she mumbled. “Sleep now. Talk later.” I was worried but I was afraid of upsetting her, so I just filled a glass with water and left it on the coffee table next to her.

  I turned off the lights and lay down, dragging a quilt over me. When I was about to fall asleep, she reached out and touched my shoulder.

  “Remy?”

  My eyes flew open. “Yeah.”

  “Nothing, never mind,” she said, falling silent again.

  “What is it?” I flipped over to face her. “You know you can tell me anything.” Please, I thought. Please just talk to me.

  She swallowed slowly and turned, our eyes meeting in the dark. “You and me, we’re family,” she said. “Right?”

  I nodded, though I couldn’t help thinking about earlier that night, when she’d left me behind for her other friends, when she made me feel like I was a burden.

  “That’s all that matters. You and me, just the two of us,” she said, and I decided then that all was forgiven.

  “You and me,” I said in agreement, like it was a promise.

  26.

  When I woke up again, it was almost noon and Elise was sitting cross-legged on the couch watching Kill Bill: Vol. 2 with the TV muted.

  “Hey,” she said, smiling at me.

  “Hey,” I said, rubbing my eyes and sitting up next to her. “Why are you watching this without sound?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t want to wake you. And I know pretty much every word anyway.” Nudging me over, she shifted to rest her head on my shoulder.

  “What happened last night?” I asked quietly. I couldn’t wait to tell Elise about Jack, about us swimming in the dark, kissing under the stars. But I pushed all of that aside for now. “Did someone hurt you?”

  “No, nothing like that.” She sighed. “So we went to the football field. Then word got out and everyone showed up. I mean everyone. It was less an anti-anti-prom party and more a prom after-party.”

  “That sounds fun?” I said, uns
ure of where this was going.

  “It was, for a while at least.”

  The movie continued playing in front of us in silence—the Bride showing up at the residence of her next target, Bill’s brother Budd. She geared up, katana drawn and ready, but before she could even get close, Budd hit her in the chest with a shotgun blast of rock salt. I winced even though it was still on mute.

  “Christian came,” Elise said, her voice tensing. “We—”

  “What?” I was shocked.

  She’d said that he wouldn’t be there. But she was only talking about Summer’s anti-prom party—she hadn’t said anything about the party she was throwing on the football field. Had she known he’d be there? Was that why she ditched me?

  “What happened?” I asked, wondering if he was back at the house too, if that was why she’d insisted on staying in the basement the night before.

  She looked miserable. “I have to tell you something first,” Elise said. “About Christian. And me.” She looked away. “Last night wasn’t the first time we hung out.”

  I didn’t immediately understand what she was saying. “Wait, what?”

  “I was sleeping over one night, and I went downstairs for a glass of water. He was there too, and at first we just talked. But then—”

  I could picture it: she and him in the kitchen, chatting and laughing. Flirting. Maybe even talking about me. What would Christian have said about me? What would Elise?

  I knew she had feelings for him. She didn’t acknowledge them after the fundraiser, refusing to admit she liked him when I asked, but she defended him unprompted. And now I was almost certain she wanted to throw that party on the football field because she thought he might come. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to talk to me about it because he was my brother or because she knew I hated him.

  But this was worse, so much worse. She’d lied to me. A lie of omission, but still a lie.

  “Then what?” I turned to fully face her. She finally looked up, meeting my eyes.

  “He told me that he and his girlfriend had been fighting. And we talked about, I don’t even know, and I—” She stared at her hands on her lap. “Then he kissed me,” she said.

  Her words sent me reeling. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I couldn’t believe she’d hidden something like this from me. The betrayal stung. We were best friends, we were family. She clasped my wrists, holding on to me tightly. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, okay? I’m sorry.”

  Maybe it wasn’t fair, but all I could think was that Elise was mine, the only thing that was mine in a world where Christian almost always got everything, even if he didn’t want it—didn’t want her. She was the only person in the world who had chosen me. We’d chosen each other. And now it felt like everything we’d been was a lie, even though I knew that wasn’t true.

  “When?” I whispered, the only question I could manage.

  “A couple weeks ago.” She was still squeezing my wrists, not letting me turn away. “It was stupid. I was stupid. And last night, I saw him and he was with his ex and he wouldn’t even talk to me, wouldn’t even acknowledge me standing in front of him. When I tried to talk to him, he turned and walked away without a single word.”

  “Let go,” I told her, looking down at our hands. “You’re hurting me.”

  “Sorry,” she said, releasing me immediately.

  I pulled into myself, drawing my knees up and hugging them with my arms.

  “It was humiliating,” she went on. “You were right—he’s an asshole.”

  Even angry, I could sense something off about Elise’s story. All of this over a kiss. Maybe there was something she wasn’t telling me. Maybe it’d been more than a kiss.

  “I should’ve listened to you,” she said. “I—”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the Bride being bound up and dragged to a pine box.

  “Say something?” Elise said, eyes pleading.

  I didn’t know what to say. I could tell how upset she was, but how could she not have seen that this would affect me too? She’d kissed Christian and intentionally kept it from me even though she knew how I felt about him. Or more important, how I felt about the two of us. I told her everything. And now I was supposed to just forget about this betrayal because it’d all blown up in her face? Now she told me that I was right about Christian all along, that he was an asshole, and I was just supposed to commiserate with her? Fuck that.

  I turned to face the screen and watched the Bride get buried alive. “I know she’s supposed to be this hero or something, but she spends most of the movie getting beaten up.”

  “What? No,” Elise said. “I mean, she does get beaten up a lot, but she comes back stronger than ever every single time.” She could tell I was unconvinced, so she continued, “Every superhero needs a villain that is their equal. The stronger the villain, the stronger the hero. Every one of these stories has the hero failing again and again and again but getting stronger each time so that they’re ready for a final showdown at the end.”

  I stared at her.

  “That’s why you have to be strong,” she said. “That’s why you have to get up every time you’re knocked down. That’s why I love all of these movies so much. That’s why I love this movie so much.”

  I turned back to the screen, watched a flashback of a younger Bride training under the cruel tutelage of Pai Mei—suffering but growing stronger. Then, as if drawing on that strength, the present-day Bride punched through her coffin and clawed her way up. I understood what Elise was saying. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

  “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Christian, okay? Are you going to be mad at me all day?”

  “No, it’s whatever,” I lied. I was still mad at her, but I knew it’d be hard to stay mad at her for long. She said she was sorry, and she seemed sincere. She acknowledged it’d been a mistake but now she knew what Christian was really like.

  “Good,” she said. “Because you’ve just given me an idea and I need your help.”

  27.

  Elise’s plan was simple. She’d go to the hardware store and buy liquid chalk markers, the ones that car dealerships used to write prices on the windshield. That night, after everyone had gone to bed, she’d strike.

  “It’s just chalk,” Elise said with a shrug. “It’ll wash off.”

  She wanted to call Christian out on all the things he’d said to her, how he’d led her on. She planned to mark up his Mercedes, take a picture, and post it on the school’s Facebook page, tagging all the right people. She wanted to humiliate him like he’d humiliated her. She wanted to destroy him. Her other plans had been brilliant but this one seemed to have evolved. This was much more personal, designed specifically for Christian. The golden boy. The flagship child. Student council president, popular at school, going places. It had to be as public as possible.

  “It’s what the Bride would do,” Elise said, the excitement in her voice rising. “Actually, no. I’m going easy on him. The Bride’s justice wouldn’t be this nice.”

  I questioned her. “Nice?”

  She nodded. “This is nothing.”

  I was so glad I hadn’t gone with her to the football field then, glad I hadn’t witnessed whatever it was that made her so determined to do this.

  “Don’t worry, Remy, I know what I’m doing,” she said. “It’ll be a birthday present to myself.”

  “But—” What she was about to do just didn’t feel right. Her plan, while genius, felt particularly vindictive. The price didn’t seem to fit the crime. Cameron and I had been together for a year and he was an asshole when he broke up with me at homecoming. Jae’s girlfriend Dana had cheated on him with his best friend. Christian had kissed Elise once and led her on for a few weeks. It just seemed extreme.

  “Oh, I forgot about your text,” she said suddenly. “What’d you want to tell me?”

  Jack. I didn’t know how to tell her about him. Our nights had sharply diverged when she left me at Summer’s hou
se. She seemed so devastated by what happened at the party that I felt bad telling her what an amazing time I’d had with Jack.

  “Nothing,” I said, deciding to fill her in later. I told myself I was sparing her feelings, but maybe I was just scared to tell her about him, unsure of how she’d react when she was angry like this, if it would only anger her more.

  I kept hoping she’d change her mind about the prank on Christian. We spent the day watching movies, going for a drive, and smoking in the car—all the things I’d wanted to do with her the night before. I didn’t mention Christian at all until the drive back to my house late Saturday night when she brought up the plan again, clearly still intent on going through with it.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked her when we pulled into my neighborhood. “I mean, will it really make you feel better?”

  She turned to me sharply. “Of course it’ll make me feel better. That’s the whole point. Remember when we pranked your ex?”

  “Yeah, but—” I wanted to tell her it wasn’t the same. That Christian was my brother. That we couldn’t just do this, drive away, and never look back.

  As much as I hated him, I still had to live with him. And I could get into serious trouble with my parents.

  “Why is this so important to you?” I said, growing frustrated. Things were bad enough at home for me, and I couldn’t afford to make it worse.

  “It just is,” she snapped.

  “But why?” I asked. Christian had been right—Dad was gone for ten days but ultimately returned. The house had recently settled back into a tense quiet, with Mom and Dad avoiding each other, sleeping in separate rooms. One of them leaving early for work, the other coming home late.

  I hated that Christian had been right, that they ran on such an awful but predictable loop, but I was also just relieved that Dad had come back.

  She parked down the street from my house but left the car running. “Look. I can’t always do something about every single injustice, but when I can, I will.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said.