Liar (27 page)

HISTORY OF ME

Details. They're the key to lying.

The more detailed you are, the more people believe. Not piled on one after another after another—don't tell too much. Ever. Too many details, that's too many things that can be checked.

Let them tease the information out of you. Lightly sprinkle it. One detail here, the smell of peanuts roasting; one there, the crunch of gray snow underfoot.

Verisimilitude, one of my English teachers called it. The details that give something the appearance of being real. It's at the heart of a good lie, a story that has wings.

That, and your desire, your overwhelming desire, not to be lied to. You believe me because you want what I tell you to be the truth. No matter how crazy.

And because I promised no more lies.

Which I've stuck to: nothing but the truth.

BEFORE

It wasn't summer but it felt like it. Spring had sprung for a day and then turned hot and sweltering. Central Park was entirely green. Not like winter, with the city leaning in on the leafless skeleton trees, making sure it is never out of view. The reprieve from the city buoyed me, but it was scary, too: city is city and forest, forest. I don't like them getting muddled.

It feels as if I'm seeing myself reflected in the leaves, and in the glassphalt sidewalk. That hurts my head.

I caught Zach's scent coming out of the subway. I followed it, jumped over the fence, into the park, trying to name the parts of his scent: the meatiness, the sweat, and the something else underlying it, something sweet. No one else smelled like that. Just Zach.

The smell of him warmed me, drew me toward him. As if the finest thread stretched out between us. He was reeling me in. Tracking him would be easier than finding the foxes.

I slid into a jog, following the molecules. If they had been visible they would have glowed brighter than neon.

Before I got to the lake the strange white boy crossed my path. He didn't turn to look at me. Just ran past me in his wild and uneven way. Erratic but fast. He was out of sight down the path almost instantly, leaving a lingering pungent smell.

I shivered and continued chasing Zach.

AFTER

“Come on,” Tayshawn says, leading me down the front steps, past reception, out onto the street. We're seniors so we're allowed to go off campus for lunch but it's not lunch, it's fifth period.

“Where are we going?”

“Away,” Tayshawn says. “I gotta tell you stuff.”

“Like what?” Is he going to talk about what happened? Between him and me and Sarah?

Tayshawn stops on the sidewalk, leans in to whisper in my ear. “It was dogs,” he says. “Zach was killed by dogs.”

My knees stop working, as though the cartilage has melted. I stumble. I would fall but Tayshawn's holding me. I'm not thinking about dogs; I'm thinking about wolves. That's why Brandon kept calling me “bitch.” He meant it literally. Will the cops be coming after me?

I'm screwed. How will I tell my parents?

How does Brandon know about me? No one outside my family knows.

“Micah,” Tayshawn says. His eyes are bruised. “I know.” He puts his arms around me, holds me tight.

What will they do to me?

“I know,” he says again. His voice sounds thick like he's trying not to cry. “How could dogs have killed him?”

Dogs. Tayshawn's not talking about me. I breathe. He makes a kind of crooked grimace with his mouth. He's looking at me, but not accusingly. The thought of me being a wolf hasn't occurred to him. Or to anyone else. Why would it?

I'm being crazy.

“Dogs,” I say, though dogs didn't. That strange white boy did.

Tayshawn wipes at his eyes, drags me into a dark café that's all coffee: huge coffee-making machines, giant sacks of beans. The smell so overwhelming that when we're sitting in back and drinking it hot and burned it becomes the murk we're floating in.

Tayshawn switches off the lamps on either side of us. Darker is better.

Dogs
. This is what the cops haven't been telling us. This is why the coffin was closed. Zach's body was torn apart. Like prey.

I take another sip. I've never drunk coffee before. It's something else I'm forbidden. I think I like it.

Dogs
. But then why were we ever under suspicion? I ask Tayshawn.

“The autopsy report was a big surprise to the police. They thought the dogs”—Tayshawn pauses, swallows—“that they got at his body
after
. They never thought the dogs were what killed him.”

“But now they're sure it was dogs?” I sip more coffee, feeling it make my eyes widen, my spine straighten. I want to run. “Your uncle told you?”

“Yeah. He called me last night. Dogs. Not a murder. It'll be all over school pretty soon.”

I reach across and put my hands on Tayshawn's. His are shaking. “Where?” I ask. “Where did they find the body?”

“Central Park.”

That's what I was afraid of. Zach found dead, torn to pieces in the place we spent the most time together.

“Well,” I say, “at least the cops won't be bothering us again.”

Tayshawn manages half a laugh. “No more killer Tayshawn rumors.”

“No one really believed that shit,” I say, though it's not true.

“Right. You just believe that. Not that it matters. Because those rumors are gone now. No killer Tayshawn, no killer Sarah, no killer Micah. Just a pack of dogs.” His voice breaks on
dogs
.

I wish I could tell him it wasn't dogs. That it was wolves. A lone wolf. But surely the police can tell the difference? Aren't the bites of dogs and wolves different? I want to ask Yayeko. Or do the police know? Is “dogs” a cover story?

Tayshawn is crying again. I squeeze his hands. “It's a lot,” I say. The coffee is making my head spin. I'm not allowed anything with caffeine in it. It's like avoiding alcohol. We don't know what could happen to me, what could trigger a change. No sex, no drugs, no alcohol. No nothing. That's my parents' policy.

I take a much bigger sip—to spite them. The more I drink, the more I like it. Bitter, but not as bad as it smells. I think it's making my blood move faster.

I have to find the white boy.

Then what?

Kill him?

I've never killed a person.

Or a wolf.

I need to talk to the Greats. I need to get upstate.

“Sorry,” Tayshawn says. His eyes are red. “I keep imagining what it would have been like. Dogs . . .”

“Yeah.”

“I guess it's better, right?” he says. “At least Zach wasn't murdered. I was afraid . . .”

He was afraid that it was me or Sarah or someone else he knew? He doesn't say it though. I never suspected them. I think I always knew it was the white boy.

“God,” Tayshawn says. He touches his bottom lip, pulling at it. I want to kiss him. I wonder if it's wrong that I'm thinking about that. I'm pretty sure he isn't thinking about kissing me.

“Have you told Sarah?”

He shakes his head. “I was going to, you know, at lunch. But then I didn't find you until just before the bell.”

“So you told us about Erin Moncaster?”

“Funny, huh? I saw you both there and I couldn't do it, couldn't figure out how to tell you. I still can't believe it's true. Dogs?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”

“My uncle, he says there's a pack on a vacant lot in Hell's Kitchen. There've been a ton of complaints. That pack's attacked other dogs. They're vicious. Their owner's a crazy old guy who owns the lot. Says he has the dogs under control, but he doesn't.”

“Hell's Kitchen?” I ask. I know that pack. They might be vicious but they back up when I run by. Snouts to the ground, cowering. They smell what I am. The lot is a long way from Central Park. Too far for a pack of wild dogs to roam. There's at least ten of them. How would they get all the way up and into Central Park without someone seeing and freaking? It's not exactly an empty part of the city.

We look at each other. My eyes are on his mouth. Tayshawn looks away.

“What a way to die,” he says, shuddering. “I can't even imagine.”

I can. I know exactly what it would be like. I've torn creatures apart. I've watched them die. It's mostly quick.

“My uncle told me if they can prove it was the old man's dogs, they'll put them down and press charges against him.”

“What charges?” I ask. “Murder?”

Tayshawn shakes his head. “I don't know. I don't think so. My uncle didn't say.”

“Didn't they use to do that in the old days?” I say. “Set dogs on people? Could the old man have done that?”

“But Zach's white,” Tayshawn says.

“Hispanic,” I says.

“White Hispanic. He didn't even speak Spanish. Plus it's now.”

Not to mention that dogs had nothing to do with Zach's death. I sip at the no-longer-hot coffee. Lukewarm it's not so good.

There have been so many rumors. I'm not sure how I feel now that we have the official truth and dealing with Zach's murderer has become my responsibility.

AFTER

The week after the funeral seems unending.

Erin Moncaster brings a tiny bit of distraction from thinking about Zach and the white boy, about Tayshawn and Sarah. Erin's certainly occupying everyone else's thoughts. I think it's because the idea of Zach being killed by dogs is too weird, too horrible for them to dwell on. So instead we hear about how Erin wept when her boyfriend was arrested, how she insisted that they were married and that they couldn't take him away from her.

They could, though. She's only fourteen and her parents didn't give permission, so the marriage isn't real.

Next I hear she's pregnant. Then that she's diseased. Or both.

Everyone is talking about her. No one's talking about me and Sarah and Tayshawn. No one knows that happened.

When Zach's name is mentioned, it's followed by silence and then a change of subject. No one's wondering who killed him because now we know. Except we don't.

I'm the only one who
really
knows. I'm the one who has to do something about it.

I haven't seen the white boy since after the funeral. I'm nervous, but not as nervous as if I'd seen him. Either way is bad. Friday after school I'm going upstate. I'm hoping the Greats will have answers for me. Instructions.

I need someone to tell me what to do.

Sarah, Tayshawn, and me don't talk about what happened between us. I still want to kiss them, they show no signs of feeling the same way. I wonder if maybe they're getting together when I'm not there. I work hard to keep that thought out of my head.

My body is hollow.

The end of rumors about Zach and his death brings another kind of relief. I was sick of people, like Chantal, who'd hardly known Zach, acting as if they'd been best friends. As if his death was her own personal tragedy. Now she's forgotten all about Zach and is all gossip about Erin all the time. She's newly best friends with Kayla so she can stay up on juicy Erin gossip. She shakes her head and tsks as she passes along each new scrap.