Lies You Never Told Me Page 4

  I turn to look at her. “Huh?”

  “Yeah, remember?” She takes my hand in both of hers. “You said we could go to Houston. Hit up some clubs, watch the fireworks. Get a hotel room.” She says the last part softly, suggestively, but instead of stirring my interest it sets my teeth on edge.

  “Uh, no, I don’t remember,” I say. Because I never said that, I finish silently.

  “You’re such an asshole sometimes.” She stands up abruptly. “Whatever. Have a good time in the backwoods. I hope you get murdered by hillbillies.” She stalks away, her profile icy with disdain.

  “What a lovely girl,” Irene says, watching her go. “Are you sure she’s not the one who ran you down, Gabe?”

  “Ha, ha.” I throw my sandwich wrapper down on the table. “Thanks a lot, Irene. Now I’m in deep shit.”

  “Oh, you were going be in trouble no matter when she found out.” Irene flips a page in her book and starts to embellish a hair-metal mullet onto a portrait of Dolly Madison. “Relax. She’ll be pissed about something else by dinner.”

  “Great, that’s a huge consolation.” The first bell rings. I scoop up my books. “I’ll see you guys after school.”

  I head down the hall toward my fourth-period photography class. I’ve got a whole roll of film to develop today, all of Sasha. Sasha posing with her hands lifting her hair, pin-up style. Sasha posing in her Mustang Sally costume. Sasha posing by pretending not to pose.

  Then, ahead of me, I see something that draws me up short: purple Keds, scuffed along the white rubber sole.

  My whole body seems to lift up, floating a little at the sight of her. She’s walking away from me, but I recognize her dark hair bunching around her backpack, the way her shoulders slope. I pick up my pace, try to catch up, but she disappears into the library before I can say her name.

  Hardly anyone uses the library here, aside from a few mousy-looking girls who reshelve materials during their lunch breaks. I’ve only been in there once, freshman year, when Mr. Doyle brought us down to try to instill in us the magic of reading. We spent the whole time sneaking up on each other in the stacks.

  It’s silent inside. I guess that’s the idea, but after the noise of the hallway it feels almost like a tomb. Like a beige-carpeted, industrial-metal-shelved tomb. A plump-cheeked man wearing a bow tie sits at the front desk. He raises an eyebrow at me as if to say, Really? You, in a library? I give him a little wave, hitch up my backpack, and breeze past as if I know just where I’m going.

  Catherine’s the only one there. She’s sitting under a window in a vinyl armchair, her legs curled beneath her. The sunlight skims the top of her head, making a glossy halo in her dark hair. She’s reading, her earbuds in again. I watch her for a second, trying to read something in her clothes, her body language, her expression. Trying to figure out something about her. I’m usually pretty good at that kind of thing—but with her, I can’t. Her jeans are faded, her dark-blue T-shirt nondescript. She has a plain green backpack, no pins, no patches, no Sharpied song lyrics.

  She looks like she’s trying to be invisible.

  Her eyes dart up from her book and widen when she sees me. I take off my hat again, squeeze the brim. “Hey,” I say. “Sorry.”

  She takes out her earbuds. “What?”

  “I said … I mean …” I take a breath. “I just wanted to say thanks. I didn’t mean to freak you out the other day. At the food-truck park. I really just wanted to say thanks.”

  She puts her feet back on the ground, sits up straight. On guard. But she doesn’t close her book or get up to go. She bites the corner of her chapped lower lip.

  “I wasn’t supposed to be out that night,” she whispers finally. “I’m sorry I didn’t stick around for the ambulance, but my dad’s really strict. If he found out …”

  “Yeah, no … don’t worry,” I say quickly. “I’m just glad you called them. I was really out of it. I could have been there all night. You saved my life.”

  She shrugs uncomfortably. The silence stretches out between us for a moment.

  “Yeah. I mean, they never caught the guy who ran me down,” I say, trying to keep the conversation going. “You didn’t happen to see who it was, did you?”

  She shakes her head. “I was around the corner when I heard the tires squeal. I didn’t even see the car.”

  “Man. Oh well, I guess I’m just happy to be alive.” I sit down on the chair adjacent to her. “What’re you reading?”

  She holds up the book. I recognize it right away; there are about ten copies of it around my house.

  “One Hundred Years of Solitude? Cool,” I say. “You should read it in Spanish. So much gets lost in the translation.”

  She raises an eyebrow. I feel my cheeks get warm, and give a sheepish grin. “Or so I’ve been told,” I say. “I’ve never read it. My father teaches Latin American lit at UT. He named me after García Márquez.”

  “Gabriel?” she asks. Something about the way she says my name gives me a shiver of pleasure, like a breath on my skin. She catches the music in the syllables.

  “Gabe,” I say. “Yeah. I can’t even read it in English, much less español. It just kills my dad. I’m more of a comic book guy, myself.”

  “I like comics, too,” she says with a small smile. “The Sandman is one of my favorite series.”

  “Oh yeah?” I lean forward. “Have you read The Wicked and the Divine? It’s kind of like Sandman. But with, like, magic rock stars.” She shakes her head. “I’ll bring you the first issue. You’ll love it.”

  Her eyes light up for a split second, but then they fade again. “No—no, I can’t. Thanks. I’ll … I’ll see if they have it at the city library, or something.”

  The warning bell rings. Two more minutes to get to class. I stand up and linger for a second, waiting to see if I can walk with her toward her next class. She doesn’t move.

  Almost as if reading my mind, she gives a faint smile. “I have a free period. I spend it in the library getting caught up on homework.”

  “Getting caught up? I’ve only ever seen you do homework. Do you ever do anything else?” I shift my weight. “You know, besides rescuing strangers by night.”

  Her face falls back to her hands on her lap. A lock of hair slips past her ear and hangs down in front of her, like a curtain.

  “I really have to get back to work,” she says softly.

  Conversation over. It stings, but I give a careless shrug. “Cool. Well … thanks again, Cat. I’ll see you around.”

  I force myself not to look behind me as I walk back to the entrance. But I can’t get the image of her out of my mind: the fragile way her shoulders curl around her book, the slate blue of her eyes. That lock of hair, slipping free. I don’t know what her deal is, but if she’s trying to be invisible, she’s failing—at least with me.

  SIX

  Elyse

  “Juliet? Juliet. This is your entrance.” Mr. Hunter looks up from his clipboard. “Elyse?”

  “Oh!” I dart forward, hurrying to join Laura and Brynn at center stage. “Sorry. Here.”

  Out in the audience, I hear a low giggle. My cheeks burn.

  We’re only halfway through the first week of rehearsal, but no one else seems to be struggling quite as much as I am. We’re still on book, after all. Still reading through all the scenes. It’s the easiest it’ll ever be. But even with the script in hand I keep losing my place. This is the fifth time I’ve missed my cue.

  “… where’s this girl? What, Juliet!” Brynn says again in an exaggerated tone. Her eyes bore into me like she’s trying to telepathically transmit the lines straight into my head. This must be making her crazy, watching me butcher the role she wanted.

  It takes me a moment to find my place on the page. “How now, who … um, who calls?” The words come out awkward and stilted. My tongue keeps tripping over itself.

  We plow on. Laura, playing Lady Capulet, reads her words with stately grace. And Brynn is actually already off book, her lin
es memorized. I’m more and more aware of the glare of the lights, the eyes in the darkness beyond the edge of the stage. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve done cold reads plenty of times and done all right, but now that I’ve got the biggest role of my life I’m a mess.

  “Speak briefly. Can you like of Paris’ love?” says Laura.

  “I’ll like to look, if l-l-liking looking … no, I mean looking liking … I mean …” I trail off. “Sorry,” I finish lamely.

  “How did she get this role again?” It’s a stage whisper, meant to be overheard. I don’t recognize the voice. It doesn’t matter; my gaze drops down to my shoes.

  “She got the role because she’s good, Kendall.” Brynn spins to squint out at the audience. “And it’s just a read-through, so why don’t you chill?”

  The room goes deadly quiet. I can feel all those eyes raking over my body, peering from the darkness. Just last week, I was eager to be seen; I was ready to step into the spotlight. Now it occurs to me that there’s a flip side to that attention. Now I realize that there are people waiting—hoping—for me to fail.

  “Why don’t we call it a day?” Mr. Hunter stands up, glancing around at everyone. “We’ve done a lot of good work today, guys. This is all part of the process.” His eyes fall on the little cluster of girls where Kendall Avery is sitting. “And I expect everyone here to be supportive along the way.”

  “Don’t let them get to you,” Brynn whispers as everyone gathers their stuff to go. “Kendall’s hated me since I stole a lead right out of her grasping little hands in sixth grade.” She smirks. “She told me a Filipina couldn’t be Orphan Annie. She was so mad when the casting list went up.”

  I stare down at the script. It shakes in my hand.

  “This was a mistake,” I say softly. I look up at her. “You should’ve gotten this role. Everyone knows it.”

  “Well, everyone except Kendall,” she jokes. “Kendall thinks Kendall should’ve gotten it.” She gets a look at my expression and softens again. “Oh, come on, Elyse, you know that’s not true. Everyone fucks up their first read-through. Especially with Shakespeare. It’s hard.”

  “You didn’t,” I point out.

  She throws her hands out wide. “Yeah, because I’ve got, like, thirty lines. You just choked because you got stuck in your head. After you’ve done it about a hundred thousand times, you’re going to be amazing.” She puts her hands on my shoulders. “Come over Saturday. We’ll do the usual.”

  I finally smile a little. “The usual” means ordering pizza, sharing a beer stolen from her dad’s stash, and running lines all night. Except usually I’m the one helping her learn her parts.

  Suddenly those eyes in the audience, leering, waiting for me to mess up, don’t matter as much.

  “You’d do that for me?” I ask.

  She frowns. “Uh, obviously,” she says. “I kind of owe you for the last, like, year and a half of doing it for me.”

  I can’t help it; I throw my arms around her neck.

  “You don’t give me any credit at all, do you?” Her voice is muffled against my shoulder. But she hugs me back.

  She’s right. I’m acting insecure. Brynn’s looked out for me from the moment we met, when she stumbled on me crying in the girls’ room our first week of freshman year. It was a bad day. My mom’s most recent boyfriend had left the night before, giving Mom a black eye as a parting gift. I didn’t know anyone at East Multnomah; we’d moved that summer, and all my junior high friends were on the other side of town. My clothes were all stained and old, my jeans too short, my sweater pilling, and at lunch a junior boy had snapped my bra so hard the strap broke. I’d gone to the bathroom to fix it, but instead, I’d just collapsed over the sink, tears pouring down my cheeks. In came this girl in a pink sequined skirt and a T-shirt with a giant sloth face printed in the middle, like a fairy godmother in a Wes Anderson movie, and instead of ignoring me like three other girls had done, she gave me a hug before she even asked my name.

  And that was it. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but suddenly I was sharing half of her peanut butter sandwich at lunch, and following her to drama club after school, and spending my weekends at her house singing along to musical soundtracks and eating dinner with her family. She was the one who made me audition for my first role; she was the one who coached me on speaking to the back of the room.

  So why am I treating her like she’s waiting for me to fail?

  “Thanks,” I whisper.

  That’s when I hear Mr. Hunter’s voice behind me.

  “Elyse, can I speak to you for a moment?” he asks.

  My stomach dips again. I turn around to face him, expecting disappointment in his eyes. He looks serious. No dimple today. I swallow hard, my throat tight.

  Brynn glances at him, then back at me. “Text me later?”

  “Yeah, okay.” I watch her go, my skin bristling with panic. I can hear Mr. Hunter’s voice in my head, crystal clear, telling me his casting was obviously a huge mistake, that I’m not the actress he thought I’d be. I’m so busy letting him harangue me in my head I almost don’t hear him when he speaks in real life.

  “Are you okay?” He sits down on the edge of the stage.

  “Um, yeah.” I roll up my script in both hands and tap it idly against my leg. “Sorry about today, Mr. Hunter. I’ll do better tomorrow.”

  “Of course you will. And there’s no need to apologize.” He leans back against his palms and looks up into the lights. “What you’re doing is brave. It’s hard to stand up in front of all of your peers and risk making a mistake. It makes you vulnerable. Which, for the record, is partly why I gave you the role.”

  I cock my head to the side. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you have a vulnerability that some of these other girls have taken pains to hide. You really get at Juliet’s … hope. Juliet’s not stupid. She knows the risk she’s running, and she still takes it. She takes it out of hope and out of love, and it leaves her … really exposed.”

  “It also ends in death,” I say.

  “Well, sure,” he says seriously. “Everything worth doing has the possibility of ending in pain.”

  I bite the corner of my lip. I want to argue, to say something light, amusing. But I think of my mom fading by the day. I think of how my dad left her in the months after the accident; I think of the one postcard I got from him, written from a prison cell in Idaho. Put some money in my commissary, it said. It had arrived two days before my birthday. I think of the treasures I’ve lost over the years being evicted from apartment after apartment—the tiny diamond studs my grandma gave me, the crumbling cardboard box of secondhand Barbies I’d played with as a little kid. I think of the contours of my life, sparse and small and drab.

  “Everything does end in pain, sooner or later,” I say softly.

  He looks up at me, his eyes flaring slightly. “Not everything.” He takes my hand, gives it a quick squeeze before he lets go. “You’ve got something special, Elyse. You may not know it yet, but I can see it. I believe in you. And with some work, I think the sky’s the limit for you.”

  My breath seizes up in my throat. I don’t know what to say.

  “Anyway, don’t bolt on me because of one bad rehearsal.” He rubs his chin thoughtfully. “I have an idea. Why don’t you come in Sunday afternoon? Three P.M.? We can work on some of the scenes one-on-one.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that,” I say quickly, turning pink. I don’t want him to think he’s got to put in extra work just because I’m not good enough.

  “I don’t mind,” he says. “I’m going to be here anyway—I have a lot of papers to grade. It’ll be a nice break. And I think you’ll get it really fast without so many people around.”

  I wrap the end of my ponytail tightly around the tip of my finger. As embarrassed as I am to need extra help, the idea of getting special attention from him makes my toes squirm with pleasure.

  “Okay,” I say. My voice is soft, but steady agai
n, thank God. “Thanks, Mr. Hunter.”

  “Great.” He finally smiles. It’s dazzling. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow afternoon. I’ll have to go through it all again: the snickering, the staring. The snide whispers. Another burst of anxiety hits me.

  If I fail, I’ll be worse than invisible. I’ll be pathetic.

  Almost like he’s reading my mind, he gives me a serious look. “You weren’t cast by mistake, Elyse.”

  “Now I just need to prove it to everyone else.” I square my shoulders. “Thanks, Mr. Hunter. For everything. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I step out of the theater with a fresh sense of determination. Between Brynn and Mr. Hunter, I’m not just going to learn this role. I’m going to own it.

  SEVEN

  Gabe

  “Jesus, Sasha, slow down a little.” I brace myself against the dash, gritting my teeth as we hurtle through the darkness. She just laughs and turns the sound system up, Pretty Lights blaring from the speakers, the beat pulsing through my bones.

  We’re on our way to Savannah Johnston’s party in Westlake. Sasha’s been particularly prickly all day. This morning, instead of going with her to the mall, I went to my little sister’s soccer game. Then I spent the afternoon doing my homework instead of running straight to her. By the time Sasha picked me up in her electric-blue Mini Cooper, she was in a foul mood.

  “Scared?” she asks, a thrill in her voice.

  I just look out the window at the dark shapes of trees flying past.

  She doesn’t like being ignored. “Fine. Be that way.”

  And that’s when she snaps the headlights off. The road disappears out from under us. There’s nothing around us, no streetlights, no houses, no stores—only rolling hills, hunched forms in the darkness.

  “Jesus!” I grip my seat belt in both hands. The car vibrates as it swerves across the rumble strips at the side of the road and then corrects its course. I can hear the engine whine as she presses further and further on the gas pedal. “Sasha! This isn’t fucking funny.”