Liar (3 page)

Brandon mouths a word at me as the final bell rings.

Killer.

At least I think that's what it is.

I push my way out of class, down the corridor, down the front steps, quick as I can with backpack slung over shoulder, hands gripping the straps tight, away from school, from people I know. When I turn the corner onto West Broadway I take off.

I run all the way to Central Park and once I get there I run harder and faster, lifting knees high, pumping arms hard. I run distance at a sprint. I pass even the fastest joggers. No one is as fast and fevered as me. I'm going to run all the poison and whispers and grief out of my veins.

I don't go home until I'm run into the ground and taking another step would kill me.

FAMILY HISTORY

You probably think I'm weird with the mask and the sort-of-but-not-really boyfriend who's dead and all the lies.

Past lies, I mean. I haven't lied to you and I won't. Saying that Zach was my boyfriend when he was mostly Sarah's is not a lie. He
was
mine. Like Brandon said—after hours.

You want to know why I used to lie?

Let me tell you about my family:

My parents are still together. Living in the same house. When they aren't arguing, they're doting. I can never decide which is worse.

My dad's name is Isaiah Wilkins. He's black like me. My mom is Maude Bourgault, or was, she's Maude Wilkins now. She's white. Though Dad doesn't believe it. Dad can see the black in anyone even when it isn't there. He tells the world the way he wishes, not the way it is. Dad says Mom's hair is near as nappy as his own and doubts that her full lips came from anywhere white. Mom laughs. How would she know? She's adopted and hated her family. She ran away.

I've never met my mother's family. Just Dad's.

Dad's dad was black, but his mom is white. Grandmother's our whole family. She and Great-Aunt Dorothy, and, when he was alive, Great-Uncle Hilliard. The oldest ones left are Grandmother and Great-Aunt. I call them the Greats.

To say the Wilkins are reclusive would be to understate it. They take keeping to your own a long way past crazy. They stay on their farm. All two hundred acres of it. They are self-sufficient. They don't understand why everyone doesn't do the same thing. Grandmother has never been down to the city.

The Wilkins came to New York State more than a century ago: all the way from Poland or Russia or the Ukraine. One of those. They're from the Carpathian Mountains. Where they lived for generations, going into town as seldom as possible, living far from other families. Mountain people: long-lived, rail-thin, cranky, and taciturn.

They brought that mountain chill all the way to America, to upstate New York, where they live and breed, getting older and crankier and skinnier.

That's my family. All of them
much
weirder than me.

BEFORE

At the end of the second day of my freshman year, Sarah Washington found me out.

Nothing dramatic. I didn't slip up and go into the girls' room.

I laughed. Sarah heard me.

“You're not a boy,” she said.

We were in the hall. Brandon Duncan slipped—I am not making this up—on a banana peel. I laughed. Lots of people laughed. But Sarah was walking past me. She heard me laugh, she turned.

“You're not a boy,” she said again.

“Huh?” I repeated, continuing toward the exit.

“Boys don't laugh like that,” she said, walking beside me, her voice rising.

“He what?” Tayshawn said, sliding across to join us, standing in front of me, blocking my escape. “We played hoops yesterday. He—” He was staring at me now, moving in close. I was forced toward the wall. “She?—shoots like a boy. You are a girl, aren't you? Look at her cheeks. No fluff.”

“I'm only fourteen,” I squeaked, my voice betraying me.

Now Lucy O'Hara was staring. Will Daniels, too. And Zach. All of them crowded around me.

“You're a girl,” Sarah said. “Admit it.”

“I'm a boy,” I declared, wanting to push through them, to run.

“Let's pull off her clothes,” Will said, laughing. “Know for sure that way.”

I hugged my schoolbag to my chest.

“Girl!” Tayshawn shouted. “Boy would've guarded his nuts. Hah! You fooled us good, Micah.” He nudged Will. “A girl beat you, man. A girl!”

Will looked down, saying nothing, and kicked his shoes into the floor.

I fought an urge to cry. I'd loved playing hoops with them. Tayshawn and Zach were so good. Especially Zach. When you play with the boys and they know you're a girl they either won't pass to you or treat you as if you're too fragile to breathe or they'll try to beat you down. Whatever way it goes it sucks. Playing as a guy had been so great. They'd passed to me, guarded me, blocked my shots, bodychecked me so hard my teeth rattled. But now Will wouldn't look at me. Zach had already gone.

“Freak,” Lucy said, walking away. Sarah stared at me a second longer before walking after her.

Then there was me, alone, leaning against the wall, bag still clutched tight, as more and more students flooded by. I waited till they were all gone. Looking back, I saw the banana peel, trampled, broken into bits, but still identifiably a banana peel.

AFTER

I come into the apartment fast as I can, zooming through the kitchen without glancing at Dad, who says hi, looking up at me from his work on the kitchen table.

I lock myself in my room. Collapse on the bed. My eyes are sharp and burning. Without tears.

Slut.

Killer.

Zach is dead.

Through the wall I can hear the
thud thud thud
of the stupid girl next door's music. There's five of them in there. College students, but the loud-music one never seems to go to classes. Never seems to do anything but stay in the apartment and deafen us.

I wish she was dead and Zach was alive.

I hate music. It hurts my ears, my brain. Even the membranes in my nose. Any music. All music. I can't distinguish between hip-hop and hillbilly ramblings, between symphonies and traffic noise. All of it hurts.

The best thing about going up to the Greats is that there is no music there. No noises to make me grind my teeth. Only wind through trees. Foxes burrowing. Deer running. Ice cracking. Mockingbirds singing their never-repeated three-note sequences, each note clear as rainwater. Wood thrushes trilling.

Beautiful sounds.

Zach loved music. He couldn't understand my hate.

Zach is dead.

I wish I had my dad's noise-reduction headphones. He wears them on planes. I like to sneak them from his room, put them on, plugged into nothing, dulling the thud through the walls. If I could, I'd wear them all the time, but I can't afford a set of my own. I'll ask for my birthday or Christmas or something. Not that my parents have much money. The only reason Dad has the headphones is because he had to review them for a magazine and never gave them back.

He gets many things that way.

Someone knocks at the door. Dad probably. Mom's coat wasn't hanging by the door.

“Micah,” Dad calls. “Micah! Are you alright?”

I have no idea how to answer him.

Zach is dead.

AFTER

The Greats are keener than ever for me to come up to the farm. Dad says they're worried. They think I need fresh air. They want me to be able to run free. I'm wishing Mom and Dad didn't know about Zach.

Ever since Zach went missing the Greats have been calling. This, despite them not even having a phone. They have to ride all the way to the gas station and call from there. Grandmother hates phones. She says they make her ears itch.

It used to be she would only talk to Dad and keep it as short as possible. Barking calls, Dad said. Now she only wants to talk to me.

“Micah?” she says loudly. Then she starts telling me what I should do. Go upstate and spend time with my family. I don't point out that I'm already with my family. Mom and Dad are right here.

She says coming upstate, staying on the farm, running in the forest is the best cure for a broken heart.

I tell her I don't have a broken heart. It's still beating, the blood still moves around my body; it only aches when I remember to breathe.

Grandmother isn't listening. “A broken heart can make you pine away,” she says. “Till there's hardly anything left to bury.”

I swallow. Zach will be buried. I can't imagine him in a box, six feet under.

“You'll be much happier up here, Micah,” she said. “The forest is good for you.” I go into my room with the phone against my ear and shut the door.

“I've got Central Park,” I say, holding the phone lightly, too tightly. I'm willing it to fly out of my hands. Central Park is where Zach and me truly met. It's our place.

“Too tame for you, my love.”

I hate it when she calls me that. It doesn't suit her tongue. My grandmother is not very loving. She orders, she doesn't cajole. Besides, Zach was not at all tame. Neither is Central Park.

“There's so much more for you to learn up here. We miss you, Micah.”

I didn't say anything. I never miss them. I miss Zach.

“I wish your uncle Hilliard was still with us. He'd talk sense into you.”

The Hilliard I remember was taciturn and gruff. He didn't spend time talking sense into anyone.

“Your aunt wants to talk to you now,” she says. I listen to the phone going scratchy. Muffled voices. I put my nose to Zach's sweater, breathe him in. His scent is fading.

“Micah?” Great-Aunt Dorothy shouts at the phone. “That you?”

“Yes.”

“We want you to come up. Don't have to stay. Just a week or two. Get away from all the trouble.”

“I'm not in any trouble,” I say, kicking my desk. The metal clangs.

“Well, I suppose not. But your father thinks you need time away. Death isn't easy. Especially not when you're young.”

I sigh, making sure she can hear it. “Then why would it be any easier upstate?”

Zach's still dead no matter where I am.