Seven Ways We Lie (15 page)

“Sure.” He heads down the hall. I follow, peering through the doors to the left and right: a whirring laundry room, a tiny bathroom with a stained mirror, and another small hall ending in a staircase. An indistinct smell hangs around—the new air of an unfamiliar house. Different-smelling detergent, maybe, mixed with a few types of scented air fresheners.

His kitchen, bigger than the living room, fits in a long counter, an island, and a fat wooden table with six chairs. Beside the table, three plates hang on the wall, painted dappled blue. Delicate green and orange floral designs blossom out from their center.

“Those are gorgeous.” I wave at the plates, setting the poster materials on the table.

“They're my grandma's.” Matt draws out a chair and sits. “They're, like, sixty years old.”

“Did she make them?”

“Nah. Mom's side of the family is from Puebla. There's this special ceramic style, regional, called Talavera, and those are from the city.”

I sit across from him, unzipping my backpack. “Puebla. Is that in . . .”

“Mexico. South-Central Mexico.”

“You still have family there?” I ask.

“Yeah, a few great-aunts, but my grandparents moved to St. Louis in the seventies, so all my closer family is up here. Except my uncle. He's, like, a stock market guy in London.”

“Fancy.” I unroll the poster, flattening its edges under a pair of
textbooks. “Man, I want to go to London. Mexico's on my to-visit list, too. I've never been out of the country, so.”

“Yeah?” Matt says. “I've visited Mexico a few times, for, like, two weeks at a go, but I always feel so fake-Mexican, 'cause I'm only half. I haven't lived there or anything, so all my Mexican relatives think of me as white-bread American.”

“Do you speak Spanish?”

“
Claro que sí.”

“Aha,” I say. “
Yo también
, sort of.”

Matt smiles, pulling off his beanie. His messy hair falls across his forehead. “So, this poster thing. Should—”

“Matt?” says a voice.

I look over my shoulder. The cutest child in the world, probably, stands in the doorway. A mop of dark hair tops his tan little face, and unlike Matt's, his eyes are bright blue. When he sees me, his mouth shuts, and he takes a step back.

“Hey, Russ,” Matt says, standing. “You came down the stairs by yourself?”

“I can climb down stairs,” Russ says, the picture of three-year-old indignation.

I grin. Matt lifts his hands. “Right, obviously, my bad.” He points to me. “This is Olivia. Want to wave hi?”

Russell flaps a hand frantically at me. “Hi. My name is Russell.”

“Hey, Russell,” I say. “Nice to meet you. I like your house.”

He doesn't reply, looking back to Matt with pleading eyes.

“What's the matter, Russ?” Matt says.

“I want car. The car was . . . the car was too high. I tried to climb.”

“Oh jeez, don't climb your shelves,” Matt says. “I'll get it for you.” He glances at me. “Give me a sec?”

“Sure,” I say. “I'll start this.”

“Thanks.”

As he vanishes into the hall, I start writing
INFERNO
across the top of the poster. I know perfectly well how to spell
inferno
, but I catch myself starting to draw the wrong letter twice. Something about these giant, red, unsubtle letters makes the word stop looking like a word.

Matt returns before I finish the
N
. “Sorry,” he says, sitting down. “I gave him a bunch of stuff to keep him busy, but three-year-olds are sort of, you know. Attention-thirsty.”

“He's adorable.”

“Yeah, I know,” Matt says. “And he's super smart for his age. I couldn't do actual sentences until I was five or some shit, but Russ already knows words like—what did he say the other day?—‘effective' or something. And ‘philosophy.' It's crazy th—” He cuts himself off. Something in his eyes happens, like shutters closing, hiding away the fondness. “Anyway.”

I fight back a smile, returning to the poster. “You're a good brother.”

“What?”

“You are. You're, like, enthusiastic about him. It's cute.” I glance at him, but he avoids my eyes. “Um,” he says.

We sit in silence for a second. I examine him—his narrow brown eyes, his thick, heavy brows—and our phone conversation swims back to the forefront of my mind. I want to tell him how Kat acted last night—progress!—but he could so easily turn back into the kid from English class, the too-cool-to-care guy. He could say,
Oh, I was high on Thursday
, and dismiss it.

“So,” he says carefully. I tense up. I don't know why or what I'm expecting him to say.

“What's up?” I ask.

After a second, he picks up one of the sheets of paper strewn across the poster. “I—nothing,” he mumbles. “Nothing. I, uh, I didn't finish reading
Inferno
.”

“Oh. Right. Me neither.” I cap my marker. “I'm a slow reader.”

“Really?”

“You surprised?”

“I don't know,” he says. “I guess I am, a little. 'Cause you're smart.”

I grin. “Hey, thanks, but I'm also slower than a slug in quicksand. Anyway, I got a bunch of themes and stuff off SparkNotes, so we can put the important bits on here.”

“I did start it, though,” he says. “I swear, I read like fifteen cantos.” He sounds so urgent, you'd think his
Inferno
progress was the only thing standing between us and Tartarus. A hint of intensity shows in his face, too, the corners of his thin mouth tightening.

I tilt my head. “I mean, I believe you.”

“Right.” He flaps the sheet in his hand. “Right, I . . . yeah.”

I look down at the poster for a long second, not thinking about the project at all. “Hey, um,” I say.

Matt meets my eyes. I've never seen a brown that clear. Like dark honey, or amber, with something bright crystallized deep in the center. The tightness in my chest winds up.

“I wanted to thank you, I guess,” I say. “For talking on Thursday. I . . . yeah.”

He sits quiet and still. I hold my breath, praying he won't shrug
it off. Talking with him felt like it meant something, late at night like that, quiet and unexpected. I don't know why I mentioned Mom like that, in retaliation, but he didn't throw it back at me. He traded me a little piece of his life, instead, and that deserves a thank-you, in my eyes.

“It's . . .” he says, a crease forming between his straight eyebrows. “I . . . it was a good . . .”

He doesn't finish.

“Yeah,” I say. “It was a good.”

Matt smiles. His cheeks press his eyes up into half-moons.

“All right.” I clear my throat. “We should probably work on this thing.”

And for two hours, we do, cutting orange paper into tongues of flame, writing quotes, collecting characters from each circle, listing sins and virtues.

It's quiet except for the occasional rumble from the refrigerator, and sometimes we lean close enough above the poster that the light sound of his breathing distracts me. The sight of his dark forearms folded on the table catches me, too, his knobby wrists and the thin hair leading up to his elbows. It feels weirdly intimate, the two of us tucked into a corner of his kitchen, working in silence that's more comfortable than it has the right to be.

I WAKE UP AT 11:30
PM
TO MY RINGTONE BLARING.
Instantly alert, I grab my phone, squinting at the screen. The blue light makes my eyes ache in the dark.

I pick up. “Juniper? What's going on? What's happening?”

“Claire,” she sings. “Claire fair, Claire bear. Claire Clah-Claire, Claire, Claaaire. We're hanging out, and we miss youuu.”

I shut my eyes, settling back under my covers. So nothing's wrong—just a drunk dial. I'm not sure whether I'm more relieved or irritated. “Juniper, I need to sleep,” I say. And I don't need a reminder of how much fun they're having without me. Is a little consideration too much to ask?

“Oh no,” Juniper says. The phone rustles. I hear her talking to Olivia. “I woke her up.”

“Well, yeah, you dork,” Olivia says in the background. “It's, like, eleven thirty.”

“Juni,” I say, “how much did you drink?”

“Whaaat? Drink? Don't worry about it,” Juniper says. “Don't even worry about. Yeah.”

I scowl, nibbling my thumbnail. Before I can say anything,
static rubs against my ear. I catch a snatch of a muffled protest. Then Olivia's voice says, “Yo.”

“Olivia. Hi. Can you please explain what's happening?”

“Juni drank a little too much and got sick, so I'm spending the night. We watched
The Road to El Dorado
, and Juni wants to do
Finding Nemo
next.”

I picture them curled up in the living room, on the plush rug in front of Juni's TV. My frustration builds. “Why is she drinking?”

“I don't know. She wanted to. Sorry about the late call. I know you have to get up early.”

“I mean, it's fine.” I straighten up, resigning myself to the fact that I'm awake. “Just . . . I thought you two were supposed to be having a chill night in, and this is two weeks in a row she's done the shitty-drunk thing. You think there's something wrong?”

“She hasn't mentioned anything,” Olivia says. “But . . . yeah, you're right, she's been weird. I was gonna ask, but I got distracted by the whole impossible-quantities-of-vomit thing.”

“Ew.”

“That's better, though, right? Get it all out of her system or whatever.”

“Is that how that works?”

“I think so,” Olivia says. “Science!” The sound of a commercial blares through the phone. Her voice grows distant. “Juni, want to put
Nemo
on? I'm gonna get some blankets.”

“So. Did Dan text you again?” I ask. The second the question comes out, I wonder why I brought it up. Talking about boys with Olivia is never a good idea.

“No, thank God,” she says. “But Richard Brown got a hold of my
number somehow, so now I have to deal with that. Even though I made it totally clear I wasn't into him.”

“Someone's popular,” I say.

“Not necessarily a good thing.”

I sigh. She always does this weird denial thing, as if guys being interested in her is bad.

“I'm serious,” she says. “What, you think I'm bragging?”

“I dunno,” I say, chewing harder on my thumbnail. From the perspective of someone totally unnoticed by the male population, it's hard not to hear it as bragging.

“Getting hit on is one thing,” she says. “But when guys won't leave me alone, even after I've made it apparent I'm not interested? That just means they've heard I'll jump on anything that shows me attention. Not a compliment.”

“Okay,” I say, still not getting it. If she stopped sleeping around, guys wouldn't expect anything from her anymore, right? Isn't that the obvious fix?

“Anyway, it's stressful,” she says. “Like, one time I said no to this guy, and he was all, ‘Fine, I'll find someone better, skank bitch.' ”

Anger jolts me out of my confusion. I keep my voice from rising, but only because Grace is asleep in the next room. “I—what? Someone
said
that to you?”

“Eh, don't worry about it. He was wasted, so—”

“Is this someone we know?”

“No, 'course not,” Olivia says. “I never know guys who act like that. My point is, you never know if you're dealing with some guy who's going to get scary-angry or just plain mean if you're like, hey, sorry, not interested.”

“I . . . okay,” I say, starting to see it from her angle. I don't know why I feel so reluctant to agree with her. It's not like I
want
this stuff to be her fault. “I mean . . . yeah.”

I hear her fumble with what I assume are blankets. “Aight,” she says, “I should go care for our dear, drunken June bug.”

“Night, Liv.” I plug my phone back in to charge and set it on my bedside table, then roll over, burying the side of my face in a cool pillow.

My eyes won't close. My hands wander to my mouth, and I catch myself about to start biting again. I form fists, protecting my nails.

Skank bitch
. Olivia made it sound as if the insult meant nothing to her. How many times has she heard that? How many times has she put up with it and not told me or Juniper?

Or is it only you she's never told, Claire?
whispers that voice in my head.

Of everything, that's the thought that sticks: that yet again, I'm being excluded. I squeeze my eyes shut, selfishly hating myself, as if it's the time for that sort of thing.