Why We Lie

by Amy Impellizzeri

  “Well, ok. That sounded dumber when you said it like that. But seriously—why aren’t more activist groups getting wind of this and doing what that whistleblower group did?”

  “Because IM is on to the fact that they are the subject of investigations now. They are no small-time operation. They have an entire team dedicated to vetting new-account openings now. I’ve tried to open a phony account under various teen aliases for four months now. Nada.”

  “I bet I could do it.”

  “Ok, vigilante. You go for it.” I heard the mocking in her voice.

  “So what are we left with?”

  “Well, if we could get some true influencers from the Out The Bullies fanbase to help us, we might be able to get some momentum on our side.”

  “Influencers?”

  “People with enough followers to make a difference.”

  “You have some in mind?” I felt warm air blowing on the back of my neck without any identifiable source.

  “Well, Aby, I’m going to scour these lists.”

  I felt the sweat dripping down the middle of my back.

  “But we already have one in mind.”

  “But Corelle, she’s gone.” I looked up at the fan with tears biting at my eyes. It was turning, but all I felt was a warm hot wind blowing eerily on my neck.

  “No. We want you, Aby. We know you’ve been posting as SassyCorelle. And as ChelseaCat. I mean, this drive will prove it now, but we know you’ve been active on Out The Bullies for quite some time. And we want you to help us bring IM down for real now.”

  Chapter 21

  I left the meeting with Monica feeling like I’d been run over by a truck; I headed right for the campaign office.

  I didn't like that when I got to the office, only Laila was there. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, I tried to make small talk and avoid substantive talk until Jude got there.

  “Working later than usual, Aby?”

  “Yeah, in the middle of a big fundraiser. I feel a little scattered between that and the campaign right now.”

  “Oh Aby, I really feel sorry for you.”

  I ignored the fake sympathy dripping in her voice. “Me? No thanks. How about if you direct all that newly found sympathy in someone else’s direction. Like some of the kids at my Foundation who don’t have running water or heat this week? I’m good. I don’t need your sympathy. I don’t feel sorry for myself. Plus, Jude deserves this. I don’t mind spreading myself thin for him.”

  “Ah, there she is. The consummate do-gooder I’ve come to admire so much.” Laila added her trademark wink, and much as I always coveted one, I didn’t enjoy her words on this occasion. Especially when she added, “Plus. Plot twist. Staunch stand-by-her-man stance. You’re like a country song now.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? What shouldn’t I stand by Jude? Aren’t you standing by him as well? Isn’t that what you’re being paid to do?”

  Laila shrugged and started to back out of the room. I tasted her almond cologne on my tongue and started to cough.

  “Ack. Cool down, Aby. Just kidding around. Killing time until Jude gets here. Isn’t that what we were doing?”

  Another misplaced wink.

  I wondered if Laila knew or would care that Kylie Rutter’s daughter was a mean girl on LessThan. Would it be helpful information to pass along? But then I’d have to tell her how I knew. That could get complicated. I was still working through this stream of thought when I noticed Laila looking down at some files I’d placed on the table. I’d brought some work along with me.

  “Foundation work?”

  I nodded, and then I dove into one of them, trying to ignore Laila. It was Isaiah Morris’s file. I wanted to use some of it for a fundraising brochure I was putting together. But there were problems with that. Hypocrisies.

  Isaiah was an 11-year-old student who spent every weekday at Apple-treese’s D.C. playground program. I tried hard not to think about how he spent Friday night through Sunday night. I wanted to believe his days at Appletreese were formative, were imprinting him—in a way the other days in the other places were not.

  He wanted—no needed—to stay with his friends at Third Street Elementary. He had a close-knit group of friends who played basketball after school and came together on a neighborhood program-funded bus to Appletreese. Third Street Elementary had a vibrant after-school program in which the students studied contemporary and local artists. They made murals together on walls around the playground. Walls for which the neighborhood program bartered for additional funding for the bus and the program. He’d been through so much transition in the last two years. His older sister had succumbed to drugs the year before at age 16. His mom had succumbed to depression around the same time. Dad had left two years earlier and was nowhere to be found. He could have been alive. He could have been dead. It wasn’t exactly clear which or if it mattered.

  When mom was hospitalized with depression and Isaiah went to live with a foster family in a neighboring floundering school district, he was going to lose his spot at Third Street Elementary and with it, access to the neighborhood bus, his basketball squad, and his mural projects. I could not let that happen.

  I filled out forms and forged absent mom’s signature to say that Isaiah was going to be staying under the legal guardianship of his paternal grandfather. I worked out a deal with the foster mom, that she would drive Isaiah to Third Street Elementary in the mornings and the Appletreese bus would get him to the playground every day and back home again by dinnertime. Foster mom received an extra subsidy each month. She never questioned why it was in the form of a money order signed directly by a Chelsea Boyle. And I never volunteered that the additional subsidy was neither sanctioned by nor financed by Appletreese officially.

  Isaiah was safe for now. The gymnastics required to keep him so seemed worth it. Or at the very least, warranted.

  Still, with Laila clucking nearby about me being a consummate do-gooder, I felt a little shamed.

  She started reading the file over my shoulder, and I shut it quickly, too quickly.

  Jude walked in then and saved us both from ourselves.

  On the way home later that night after a late night campaign meeting, I looked at Jude’s profile while Washington D.C. continued speeding by behind him, and wondered why Laila seemed so disappointed that I was still standing by Jude.

  Even though we had agreed the night would be a late one, and everyone was tired, Jude had insisted on driving instead of Uber’ing home. My car was in the shop, finally getting an overdue new windshield, and I had been taking the Metro and Uber’ing everywhere. But Jude declined my suggestion. I knew that Jude felt in control in his own car. More than the ability to choose his own music, his own route, and his own seat reclining options, Jude liked to be in the driver’s seat, both figuratively and literally. Was that what Laila hated so much?

  Or worse—was that what she loved?

  After a late evening of pouring over demographics and reports and website changes and additions, I decided to hold onto the silence for the ride home. Jude hadn’t mentioned money. He didn’t even ask why Laila hadn’t mentioned money. A new round of just-released Out The Bullies ads endorsing Jude hung between all of us like a dangerous secret.

  I wanted to talk to Jude about Out The Bullies. About how I had discovered them when I was doing some research before meeting him years ago. I wanted to tell him about how I used Out The Bullies to stick up for Corelle when I suspected she was being bullied by a high school classmate.

  I wanted to tell him why that had struck such a powerful nerve for me.

  I wanted to tell him that lying on my resume and lying to Mena and lying about breaking down outside Little Miss Whiskey’s, and lying to Sol about my school status, and lying to my mom when her cancer diagnosis got too real—that none of those lies were the ones I was ashamed of.

  I wanted to tell him about the one lie I’d told, when I’d reached my breaking point, that ruined everything.

&nb
sp; But instead I sat in silence and Jude hummed along to Ed Sheeran, and I leaned my head back and closed my eyes to the sound of Jude’s growling hum, and pushed out all my guilt and other thoughts. I needed the music louder. I reached over and pressed the volume higher and higher, until Jude finally called out, “Aby!” He must have had to yell it several times, because when I opened my eyes, we were stopped at a stoplight and my hand was poised on the volume control of Jude’s car, and Jude was closing his hand around me trying to pry my hand off the knob. “Aby.” He said it this time more gently. “Stop, it’s too loud. What are you trying to drown out?”

  Chapter 22

  The first time it happened, it was a pen cap.

  Just a small little pen cap in my back. Jabbed so hard, it broke the skin below my favorite white Abercrombie and Fitch shirt and made a tear drop-shaped blood stain that I couldn’t get out after pre-washing and soaking the shirt for hours, until I had to give up and throw it out.

  But it was just a pen cap, so that didn’t seem like big enough news to share with anyone.

  “Chelsea, stop being a freaking bitch. You have to finish my math homework before you leave. You’re not even late yet.” I was sitting on the edge of the bed, putting away my homework, telling Rafe that I had to get home because my mom would be home from chemo soon and I wanted to be home before she and Kane got there. He was so angry that he jabbed his pen into my back.

  I massaged my back while I finished his homework, and he told me to stop being such a baby, and I thought about my now completely bald mom who would be hovering over the toilet shortly, heaving up her guts and I agreed that I was being kind of a baby over a little bruise on my back that I’d asked for anyway, because I knew packing up my homework early was going to piss him off, and I’d done it anyway.

  And then things escalated. It wasn’t pen caps anymore, it was hits to the back of the head. It was shoes thrown across the room. It was grabbing my hair by the fistsful and hissing at me that I was an “ungrateful bitch, and probably a little crazy, too. Isn’t that why you have to go to a shrink?”

  I had told Rafe about Dr. York, hoping to receive a little empathy, a little compassion from someone who was supposed to care about me. He used that information and more against me.

  I wondered in dark moments why I had confided in Rafe. I didn’t tell Dr. York about Rafe. I lied and told Dr. York I wasn’t seeing anyone. I wished I had lied to Rafe. I wondered when I’d stop lying about Rafe.

  My mom rolled out red carpets for Rafe when he came over.

  He’d charm her with stories of his plans for the future. The lacrosse scholarship. College degree. Law school eventually.

  “He seems so good for you, Chelsea.”

  She didn’t appear to notice that his future plans never seemed to include me.

  “You seem happy. I’m so glad you have Rafe.”

  “Me, too.” I nodded and wondered why my Mom knew when I was lying about eating brown rice cereal, but couldn’t tell I was lying about Rafe Wilson.

  Rafe Wilson, who was in jail now. Finally. But not before I told the lie I was most ashamed of.

  The abuse went on throughout high school. And still I told no one. Until one day—with graduation looming on the horizon, I finally found a pained voice deep inside myself. We were in a small sound-proof study room cordoned off from the school library where Rafe was standing too close to me waving history notes at me. My own history notes. I had just finished tutoring a younger student in geometry and was packing up my things to go home and study for my own finals. But Rafe had other plans.

  “This is no joke. I swear to you, Chelsea. You better freaking fix this. I’m failing history. Do you understand me? I’m failing history. You said you’d do this paper for me, and it’s due tomorrow and I need some words on a paper and fast. And I need them to be words that get me an A.”

  I leveled my gaze at Rafe. I didn’t dare turn my back on him. He’d punched two holes in my bedroom wall in the last week. My mom had been too weak to notice them. I’d told Kane that I’d done it in anger. He’d nodded at me slowly and sadly, like he understood. Even though he didn’t understand at all.

  After he’d put the holes in the wall, Rafe had hissed, “Do you know how lucky you are that I have the self-control not to put your freaking head through that wall? You are so damn lucky, you whore.” I had assumed this was an apology, and had accepted it as such.

  “Rafe, I have a calculus final tomorrow. I can’t finish your paper for you. I gave you the notes; you have to work on it yourself.”

  I held a protractor in my hand from the geometry tutoring session as Rafe balled and unballed up his fist. He continued with his tirade. “You are an ungrateful pig, you know that. You might not have a future outside that little peep show gig of yours. But I do.”

  Then he shifted gears. The mention of my night job aroused him as it usually did. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. You know I think it’s hot that you work there. When are you going to get me in there?”

  I’d wanted to spend fewer and fewer nights with Rafe, so I’d been avoiding him, but when he asked me one night whether I had a night job or something, I snapped. I made up a lie about a gig at Divas, the exotic nightclub on Route 25B. I actually hoped it would disgust him. That he’d become less interested in me. I’d hoped it would get rid of him but it seemed to have the opposite effect. He couldn’t pass as 21, and he didn’t have access to a fake ID yet, and so he couldn’t even go there, but still he was overly excited about the news. He kept making me promise I’d get him in there one day. And I kept the lie alive by saying “yes.”

  The truth was, with my mother dying, and no plans for college or a job after high school, Rafe was the only thing I had in my life at that point, and he had cast some sort of spell over me that I was anxious to rid myself of. And yet, every time I tried to break up with him, I couldn’t. I was captured by him. I’d thought the Divas gig would be his undoing. But no such luck. Sure he called me a “whore” more often than usual after that one, but he also kept trying to make surprise visits to the club. I realized I was going to have to think of another way to get rid of Rafe. To get out from under him.

  “I’m in the middle of finals, Rafe. They know I can’t work this week. They let me have the week off.”

  “Classy,” Rafe smirked. Then he resumed his tirade. “Chelsea, listen. This history thing. This is it. Last chance. Or you will be sorry.” He kept waving the notes at me. He was too close. I felt dizzy.

  I felt the protractor point against my thigh. I slid it up and down while Rafe screamed and yelled about a history paper and how his parents would kill him if anything happened to his lacrosse scholarship and I wondered why no one would kill Rafe for torturing me day after day for the last three years. I’d called him Prince Charming when I first met him. He shared orange Gatorade with me from the secret employee frig, and he remembered me from a year earlier. At a time when I needed attention, he showered it on me. He was my first love. But first love had turned gruesome in no time at all. I was too embarrassed to tell my mom and Kane that I’d been utterly wrong about him. And what could I tell them anyway? That he called me a whore because I lied and told him I danced part-time at Divas? That he yelled at me when I backed out of promises to do his history papers for him? These seemed like sins of mine, really. And things I couldn’t exactly reveal to my parents without severe consequences to me. It felt selfish to even think about burdening them given all my mom was going through at the time.

  I was trapped in the relationship, and it was all my fault.

  These were my thoughts as the protractor stung my thigh. I imagined myself driving its pointed end through Rafe’s heart. But no. I loved him. I wouldn’t kill him.

  Only his parents would kill him if I didn’t help him with his history paper.

  But dear God, I didn’t want to write his history paper. I wanted to finish my calculus studying and I wanted to go home and be with my mom, and I wanted Rafe gone bef
ore high school graduation.

  I heard myself yell out before I felt the pain of the slice.

  Rafe was looking at me funny. His face was twisted in on itself, and he was pointing, and it took me a moment to look down in the direction his finger was pointing. My outer thigh below my shorts was pierced and the protractor was digging its way in deeper and deeper. There were long white fleshy rows surrounding the protractor. I stared at them in disbelief. How could I have sliced my leg open by accident? When I was really thinking about slicing Rafe open?

  And how was the gash in my leg not bleeding?

  With that, the white flesh started to bubble pink and then red as the blood rushed forward and leaked out of the gash and down my leg.

  I thought I was screaming, but after a fuzzy moment, I realized it was Rafe. Rafe was screaming. “You crazy bitch. What are you doing? What the hell are you doing? You’re bleeding all over the rug.”

  I felt myself on auto-pilot as I walked out of the room, with blood streaming down my leg. “He did this. Rafe did this to me,” I pointed at Rafe as I walked toward the school librarian, blood running down my legs and a loud static in my ears.

  Rafe raced up behind me. I heard him behind me. “Chelsea! How could you lie like that?”

  I wheeled around on him, emboldened by the eyes of dozens of other students who had turned to watch what was unfolding.

  “How could you? How could you lie like that? You said if I didn’t do your history paper for you, I’d be sorry.”

  “Dear God, Chelsea, I didn’t mean it!”

  Victory.

  It made my fingertips tingle. The cut on my leg started to throb and I reached for a chair. The librarian helped me into it.

  “Rafe Wilson, did you threaten this girl?”

  “Well, I—she’s lying.”

  “Did you or did you not?”

  “I was mad. I didn’t mean it.”