Deadly Little Lies (16 page)

I track debbie marcus down in front of the school as she’s waiting for the late-bus to arrive.

She looks in my direction and then quickly turns away, as though I’m the last person on the planet she wants to see right now.

“Hey.” I approach her anyway.

“What do you want?” she asks, fidgeting with the scarf around her neck.

“I was hoping we could talk for a second.”

“Not if it involves you trying to tell me what a swell guy Ben is, or how I need to give him a chance, or how I’m seeing things all distorted.”

“It sounds like somebody’s already been talking to you.”

“Whatever,” she says, pulling her ski hat down over her ears, perhaps to block me out. Only a few stray auburn curls peek out from under the rim. “Ben is the reason I was in a coma. End of story. Is that why you wanted to chat?”

“I’m not here to defend Ben.”

“Then why
are
you here?” She turns to face me. There are giant circles under her eyes from lack of sleep, and her face appears less freckled than I remember.

“I got this weird phone call,” I tell her. “The person on the other end said that if I’m not careful, I’ll be victim number-three.”

“And?” she asks, seemingly unsurprised.

“And you don’t think that’s weird?”

“I think there are a bunch of losers at this school who like to play games, as evidenced by what happened to me,” she says.

“But you don’t even blame them,” I say. “You blame Ben. Why is that?”

“Because, if you must know, I think Ben’s the one who hit me that night.”

“A car hit you.”

“Maybe Ben was driving it. All the witness said was that it was a dark car. Ben’s aunt drives a black sedan. Ever think that maybe he arranged the whole thing? Maybe he dropped his motorcycle off at home and then took her keys.”

“Your friends were the ones stalking you. Even you admit that.”

“So?”

“So, Ben had no reason to come after you.”

“My friends may have been playing up some of the stalker stuff for laughs, but no one can deny the way Ben stared me down in class . . . and how he used to follow me around on occasion.”

“Do you seriously believe that?” I ask, shaking my head, wondering how she can twist things around so much.

“Plus,” she continues, “for all I know that so-called ‘witness’ standing in front of Finz at just the right time could totally have been a friend of Ben’s. Tell me that isn’t possible.”

I sink my teeth deep into my lip, not knowing what to say, or how to answer.

“Exactly,” she says, when I don’t respond. “Maybe that caller’s right. Maybe if you aren’t careful, you
will
end up victim number-three. I wouldn’t even be surprised if Ben was the one who called you.”

“Ben saved my life,” I remind her.
“Twice.”

She shrugs, like it doesn’t matter. “He’s smart. I’ll give him that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s like that with all wackos. They’re completely normal on the outside, but it’s all a facade. They use that nice little Boy Scout exterior to their advantage, to hide the darker parts of themselves.”

A second later, the late-bus pulls into the traffic circle.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.

“No!” she barks. “
You
don’t. Ben doesn’t belong here. Things were just fine before he arrived. Even you can’t deny that.”

“I can,” I say, feeling my chin tremble. “If it wasn’t for Ben, I wouldn’t even be here right now.”

The doors of the bus creak open. “Do yourself a favor,” she says. “Tell the principal about that phone call you got; tell your parents, and tell the police.”

“Even if it’s a joke, like you say?”

“Being tied up in the back of someone’s trailer isn’t a joke; neither is spending over two months in a coma.”

“But you’re doing so well now,” I remind her. “I mean, don’t you think there comes a point where you have to stop looking back? When you should finally move on?”

Her pale blue eyes narrow, as if she can’t quite grasp my words. “My grandfather died while I was in that coma. My parents said it was too much for him.”

“Debbie, I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“Sorry doesn’t change it, though. It doesn’t change the fact that I never got to say good-bye. . . . That he was so worried I’d never make it out of the coma that his heart couldn’t handle it.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeat, for lack of better words, finally able to understand her need to assign blame.

“I gotta go,” she says again, wiping her runny eyes with her mitten.

“Are you sure?” I ask, wishing we could talk more.

Debbie doesn’t answer. Instead she climbs the school-bus steps. And the doors slam shut behind her.

May 6, 1984


Dear Diary,


Sometimes I wonder what my life would’ve been like if my father hadn’t left mymother. I wonder if she would have loved me, and if I’d be wanted.


My mother left Jilly’s father shortly before my dad came into the picture, so Jilly and me are only half-sisters. Jilly says she doesn’t remember too much about it, but she thinks our mother must have really loved my father. And then when I came along, it ruined everything.


Alexia


When i get home from school, my parents are sitting at the kitchen island waiting for me.

“What’s going on?” I ask, dropping my backpack to the floor. I glance at the clock. It’s a little after four. “Dad, why aren’t you still at work?”

“Your mother asked me to come home.”

“Why?” My pulse starts to race.

Dad’s brown eyes narrow. “Is there something you want to tell us about?”

“What do you mean?” I ask, wondering what they might know, if Kimmie or Ms. Beady talked to them.

“You aren’t keeping things from us again, are you, sweetie?” Mom asks.

Dad runs his fingers through his thick dark hair, the sides of which are starting to gray.

“Is it Aunt Alexia?” I ask, suspecting that it isn’t.

“It’s
you
,” Mom says. Her hands quiver as she retrieves a postal-wrapped package from her lap and slides it across the island toward me. “At least, it’s addressed to you. It was delivered with today’s mail.”

The package is about the size of a concrete block. My name and address are scribbled across the surface, but there’s no return address.

“Do you have any idea who it might be from?” she continues.

I shake my head, trying to appear calm, but my head starts spinning and I need to sit down.

“I don’t think she should open it,” Dad tells Mom.

“Well then, you open it for her,” Mom says, getting up from the island. She pours two mugs of dandelion tea and sets one of them in front of me.

“I’ll open it,” I say.

“Are you sure?” Dad asks.

I hesitate but then manage a nod, noticing how the package was actually mailed. There are postal marks in the corner. I reach out to take it, surprised at how light it is. Mom offers me a pair of scissors for the taped-up seams. I cut the sides open, finally unwrapping the entire package.

It’s a dark blue box.

“No card?” Mom asks, leaning closer to look.

I flip the box over in my hands, noticing the moisture in my palms. “I guess not,” I whisper, wondering who it could be from.

Slowly, I remove the cover. Wads of crumpled tissue paper collect on top. I pick through them, finally able to see the object inside.

“What is it?” Mom asks.

It appears to be a wooden box of some sort. I lift the object out, despite my dad’s protests to do it for me. Popsicle sticks have been glued together to form the model of a shop. The sign on the top reads “Camelia’s House of Clay.”

I grab the gift tag attached and flip it over to read the message, feeling a megawatt smile illuminate my face.

“Well?” Mom asks. “What does it say?”

“‘Here’s to an interesting journey,’” I say, reading the words aloud.

“And who’s it from?”

“Adam.” I flash them the card where he’s signed his name.

A huge rush of relief runs over my body as I explain to them how I told Adam I wanted to open up my own pottery shop one day. “And since he wants to be an architect . . .” I continue, marveling at the clever design. There’s a pair of double doors at the front that open, revealing a studio area and what appears to be a kiln room in the back. I lift the roof to peer inside, noting the care he took in creating tables and storage shelves for pottery pieces.

“Why didn’t he include a return address?” Mom asks. “Where does this boy live?”

“Jilly, relax,” Dad tells her. “His name isn’t Matt.”

“Not funny,” she snaps.

“You should go call him,” Dad says to me.

“Better yet, I have to work in a bit,” I say. “I think I’d rather thank him in person.”

Dad grabs the keys and tells me he’ll give me a ride. But instead of taking me straight to Knead, he pulls into the drive-through of Taco Bell for a quick side order of nachos and cheese. “You have a couple minutes, right?” he asks, turning into a parking spot.

I look toward the digital clock on the dashboard. “About twenty minutes before my shift starts.” Just enough time to fill him in on stuff.

“Well, this won’t take long,” he says, using the console as a makeshift table. “We’ll have these polished off in no time.” He peels the lid off the cheese sauce and offers me first dibs on the chips.

“So I was relieved about the package you got today,” he says, watching as I take a bite. “Adam seems like a really nice guy.”

I nod, suspecting there’s far more on Dad’s agenda than just Adam’s niceness and nachos with cheese.

“You haven’t received any other packages, have you?” he asks. “Because you know you can tell me anything, right?”

“Right,” I say, relieved that he’s brought it up.

“And I know you haven’t been sleeping the greatest lately,” he continues. “At least I’ve heard you get up a couple times in the middle of the night to go downstairs and work on your stuff. I’m assuming that can’t all be attributed to nighttime artistic inspiration. Can it?”

“I guess not,” I admit.

“But you don’t have anything to report?” He studies my expression, trying to tell if I’m lying.

“Well, there have been a lot of pranks going on at school,” I venture. “Even with me.”

“For instance?” he asks, without missing a beat.

And so I tell him about the bathroom incident and how someone hung a G.I. Jane doll in the center of the hallway. “They tied the doll in place with a jump-rope-turned noose. And then a bunch of kids were batting it back and forth like a lame-o game of handball.”

“Did the principal or anyone do anything about it?”

I shrug, vaguely remembering hearing something about how a couple of the boys got detention, but the administration couldn’t really do anything serious since no one would fess up to hanging the doll in the first place. “There’s supposed to be an assembly coming up. Ms. Beady said something about the school instituting a no-tolerance policy for pranks.”

“Well, it’d better be sooner rather than later, because obviously some jokes can get out of hand.”

I nod, thinking about Debbie and how she had said something similar.

Dad and I sit in silence for a few more minutes, just the sound of each other’s crunching as we finish off the remainder of chips and dip. In my mind, I try to formulate the words to tell him everything. The thing is, it all sounds so crazy inside my head. I can only imagine how it’ll sound to him.

I look toward the side of his face, confident that, crazy or not, he still deserves to know the truth, that it wasn’t fair of me to keep things from him and Mom last semester, and that part of the reason I ended up in trouble was because of those secrets.

“Dad,” I begin, my voice barely above a whisper.

“I’m really glad we had this chat,” he says, obviously not having heard me. “Sometimes I think things get a little hectic at home and we forget to take a pause.”

“Now you sound like Mom.”

“Which brings me to the next item on my agenda. If things between your mom and me seem a little intense lately, know that it has nothing to do with you.”

“Intense?” I ask, feeling the surprise on my face.

“I think therapy has been good for your mom, but it’s also brought out some unresolved issues from her childhood. Issues that I wasn’t there for and can’t understand completely . . . or at least not in the way that she wants me to. Add that to the stress she still feels about you—”

“Why
me
?”

“About what happened this past fall,” he clarifies.

“Oh,” I say, biting down on my tongue.

“Bottom line,” he continues, “your mom is going through some pretty tough stuff right now. And I love her more than anything. I just need to remind myself to have patience, you know?”

“Yeah,” I say, not fully sure what I’m agreeing to. “Are you guys okay?”

“We’ll be just fine.” He gives a less-than-reassuring pat to my lap. “Now, what do you say we get you to work?”

I manage a nod, and Dad puts the car in reverse, backing out of the parking spot. We pull up in front of Knead not three minutes later. He gives me a quick peck on the cheek and pulls away. Meanwhile, inside my head is a tangle of confusion.

Spencer notices. “Are you okay?” he mouths almost as soon as I come through the door. He’s teaching a group of moms how to paint using a crackle glaze.

I give him the thumbs-up and then move toward the stairwell, taking a moment at the very top. It just seems so surreal. I mean, all along I thought I was the one keeping secrets from my parents, but it seems they’ve been keeping them from me too.

A few breaths later, I move down the stairs, eager for a diversion. Adam has his back to me. He removes several thick rubber bands from a huge block of a mold, and then, using all his strength—I can see the veins in his forearms pop—separates both mold halves.

“The elephant table,” I say, recognizing the piece. The very top of the elephant’s back has a flat surface, enabling someone to affix a piece of glass, creating a tacky table.

“I’ve been pulling these since two,” he says, gesturing to the stampede of elephants collected in the corner.

“So, I got your gift in the mail today,” I say. “Thank you. It was really cute and really thoughtful.”

“Yeah well, that’s me,” he jokes, wiping his clay-covered fingers on a rag. He moves closer, a beaming smile stretched across his face. “You inspired me the other night. I had a great time.”

“Really?”

“Is that so hard to believe?” He reaches out to touch my hands. The residual clay on his fingers feels gritty against my skin. “So, what do you say we do it again?” he asks. “Are you free after work? We could try out the new pizza place across the street.”

“Regino’s?”

Adam inches even closer, sliding his fingers in between mine. “Yeah, I think that’s what it’s called.”

“Except it isn’t new.”

“It’s all new to me.” He smiles. There’s a smear of clay slip on his cheek. “I’ve only been here a couple weeks, remember?”

“Right.”

“So, is that a yes to the pizza?”

At the same moment, a piece of greenware catches my eye and I have to pull away. It’s a ceramic tree. Its limbs branch out in sharp angles, twisting together, and reminding me of Ben. Of the scar on his arm.

“Is everything okay?” Adam asks.

“Yeah,” I lie.

“Hey, if pizza’s not your thing, we could always do Chinese.”

“No,” I say. “Pizza’s fine. I should probably just get upstairs.” The image of Ben’s scar still vivid in my mind, I move quickly up the steps, anxious to get to work.