Seven Ways We Lie (24 page)

Five of us stand in the foyer, watching the ambulance wail away from the house into the night, Juniper's parents following in their Mercedes. Valentine, to my left, shifts his weight from foot to foot as if he's standing on burning sand. By the door, Olivia and Kat Scott argue about something in low voices. Matt Jackson hovers nearby, shooting Olivia looks every so often.

“Okay,” says Olivia, turning to the rest of us. Her sister wears the scowl of the century. “We're going to clean up before we head out. Do any of you think you could stay and help?”

“Sure,” I say, feeling numb. The sight of Juniper getting carried out on a stretcher, her face as blue-white as marble, glares in my mind. I can't be alone right now.

Matt nods. Valentine doesn't reply, just stalks down the hall, as expressionless as always.

“Is he okay?” Olivia asks, nodding after him.

“I think so,” I say. Down the hall, Valentine enters the guest bedroom where Juniper passed out. I jog his way, and the others follow.

Valentine stands at the foot of the bed, staring at the vomit smeared across the floor, disturbed where Juniper fell into it. It's reddish, the color of the punch. The sight of it makes me want to throw up, too. I look away, twisting my watch around and around my wrist.

“I'll clean this up,” Olivia says, waving at the vomit.

“You sure? I can get it,” Matt says, although he looks a hundred times more grossed out than she does.

“Nah, don't worry. Juni's vomit and I have gotten real friendly these last couple of weeks.” Olivia points back into the hall. “Can you get the kitchen, or move the—”

Someone's phone rings. We all check our pockets, but I glimpse a phone that must be Juniper's peeking out from the bedding. I dart around the vomit and grab the phone, frowning when I see the screen. “She doesn't have the number saved,” I say. “Should I pick up?”

“Might be important. Let me,” Olivia says. I palm it to her, and she hits accept. “Hello?”

A male voice bursts out on the other end, audible from feet
away. After a few seconds, Olivia's face goes slack. She lets out the tiniest noise.

After a few more moments, the voice on the other end stops.

“It's n—it's not Juniper,” Olivia says. Her voice is a hoarse whisper. “This is Olivia Scott. Is this . . .?”

Silence. I trade a baffled look with Matt. “What's going on?” I ask.

“Dunno,” he says.

Olivia's voice rises. “Who is this?”

The rest of us flinch, except Valentine. Still staring at the mess of vomit, he has a look of dread on his face.

“Valentine?” I say. He doesn't move.

The voice on the other end comes back to life. Olivia says quietly, “Is this Mr. García?”

The air in the room gets thick and stifling. “Oh my goodness,” I say, realizing exactly what we're witnessing. Kat's and Matt's faces go as blank as Valentine's.

A surge of sound comes from the other end of the phone, but Olivia, turning deathly pale, shakes her head hard. “I can't—I have to go,” she says.

I catch one word as she takes the phone from her ear.
“Wait
—
”

She drops the phone onto the bed, taking a step back from it as if it's about to spit poison. Disbelief washes over me. I hardly believed the rumor was real, let alone that I'd know the culprit. How can it be Juniper Kipling? Claire never stopped talking about how perfect she was, how she had her ten-year plan figured out to the week, how levelheaded and rational she was . . .

“Well. That's that,” Valentine says. He sounds like we've just heard a weather report, not discovered the school scandal of the century.

“Hang on. You knew already?” Matt asks, pointing at Valentine. “You knew! What the fuck?”

Valentine gives him the most withering look of all time. “Of course I knew. Why else would I be here?”

“Jesus, I can't believe it's her,” Kat Scott says.

“Is it that surprising?” Valentine asks.

“Dude, hello,” Kat says. “Megapopular valedictorian girl, God's gift to humanity or whatever? Banging a teacher is kind of breaking the pattern.”

Valentine clears his throat and says, “First of all, she's salutatorian if anything.
I'm
valedictorian.”

Jeez, Valentine
. I nearly laugh.

“Whatever. That is not the point.” Kat tugs a hand through the tangle of her ponytail. “We're turning them in, right?”

I nod, looking around. Olivia nods hard, looking like she'll be sick if she opens her mouth. The others nod, too—except Valentine. Doubt tugs his thin lips downward. “Are you sure we should?” he says.

“I mean, we should turn García in, at least,” Kat says. “He's a friggin' statutory rapist.”

Everybody avoids one another's eyes at the word
rapist
. It sounds like TV-cop-show talk, something for a crime scene, not for five kids trying to clean up after a party. It forces the image of Juniper and García together into my head, and I blink it away.

After a second, Valentine takes his phone out. “How old is Juniper?”

“Seventeen, pretty sure,” Kat says, and Olivia nods.

After a minute of typing, Valentine tucks the phone back into
his pocket. “Then it isn't statutory rape. The age of consent in Kansas is sixteen.”

Olivia speaks up. “That doesn't make it okay,” she says sharply. “Just because there's some arbitrary number they pick for consent doesn't mean he can't be pressuring her.”

“Did he say they'd had sex?” Valentine asks. “Did she? Did anybody describe to you the level of their sexual involvement?”

“I mean, no, but—”

Valentine folds his arms. “Then we need to at least talk to her.”

“Dude,” Matt says, “why are you trying to put this off?”

Valentine shoots back, “And why are you so avid to indict Juniper? Look: telling anybody about this has as much of an impact on her life as on his. We don't know nearly as much as you all seem to think, and if this is happening, I presume it's been happening for a while now. So what difference does a few days make? Not a lot in time, but vast amounts in terms of the information we could learn by, oh, I don't know,
talking
to either of these people.”

Valentine's outburst leaves a heavy silence behind. His face turns red, that complete red that reaches up to the roots of his hair.

“Yeah,” I say. “You're right. We should wait.”

Valentine glances up at me, and I catch a split second of gratitude in his eyes.

“I . . . okay,” Olivia says helplessly. “I'm so worried, though.”

“Well,” Valentine says, “the best course of action is not to ruin her life while she's got a tube up her nose in some hospital bed.”

Always the picture of tact, Valentine
. I raise my hands, aiming for a gentle intervention. “It's going to be okay, Olivia,” I say in my
most reassuring voice. “We're going to figure this out sometime when it's not one in the morning, all right? Once she gets out of the hospital and rests up a bit, you can talk to her, and we can go from there. Sound good?”

She half smiles. “Thanks, Lucas.”

“Great. So let's clean this place up, yeah?” I look around at the others and rub my hands together, offering them the biggest smile I can muster. “Where should we start?”

But in my head, everything is a hundred percent serious. I picture myself walking onto the set of
The Confessor
, this secret locked away, worth the full $50,000. The five of us have been shackled together, forging an imperfect but unbreakable circle.

This bed isn't mine.

These crisp sheets, looking in the light as if they've been frosted with dust. (Is it dust? Is it sugar? Is it ground-up hounds' teeth? Christ, my head,
my head
)—

This sunlight, spotty and broken. Every fragment—

bang

  bang

on the back of my skull.

My rubbery fingers find an IV plugged into my body:

if they yanked it out, would I jerk

slump

shut down?

I am frail, I am fragile, I am flawed,
yes
—and for once, God, for once the world is treating me as such.

I find the clock,

remember how to read
4:00
PM
.

Remember everything and nothing at all.

But David . . 
.

I whip up. Bad night. Last night.

Eyes piece the world together: rubber and tiled floor and thin, brittle blinds . . .

Hospital. Alcohol. Caught
.

Kiss my past future away. (So much for it.)

I'm crying, like I can afford the saline extract.

My mother keeps vigil by my bed.

The newspaper flops, a dead bird in her lap.

She is so confused. It hurts to see.

“Sweetie . . .”

Stop tiptoeing, I want to scream. Stop tiptoeing and storm at me. I deserve it.
Do it
.

This, her feeble tempest:
I hope this won't happen again
.

“You,”
I say,
“have got to be kidding me.”

People have said I have her eyes,

but I hope I don't look that cowardly,

readjusting at the first hint of steel

the first flash of fire.

Where is the hard-faced professionalism she slips on for work each morning?

She should be raging. Don't you dare, she should be saying. Don't you talk back to me.

You know better.

(I do know better.)

“Juniper,”
she says,
“tell me how you're feeling.”

“I can't believe you,”
I mumble.

“Sweetie—why?”

A hell rustles inside my skull and pours out.
“Are you even angry at me? I did everything wrong—why aren't you mad? Aren't you going to ask how I got here? Why don't you stop me?”

I don't realize I'm screaming until a door hinge complains and I

slam back to the bed,

the pillow engulfing my peripheral in a puff.

(When did I sit up?)

They make her get out, and she looks lost.

I'm home three hours later. My mother's eyes are a swaying pendulum that cannot fix on me. Her mouth seems wired shut.

My father will be back this evening. If he so much as raises his voice,

it will signify a radical revolution, shaking me from power.

My mother tucks me into

my bed's warm embrace.

The second she vanishes, I pull out my phone to find

twelve calls, a neat dozen, lined up from last night.

Flashes linger past midnight. The dim memory

of the screen pressed to my cheek, heated as a kiss,

and the static whisper of his sigh. (I picture his narrow shoulder blades

folding in on themselves like origami.)

I tap voice mail. It conjures up the sound of him:

“Juniper. Are you okay? Please call me back. Call me as soon as you get this. If I don't hear from you in three minutes, I'm calling an ambulance. Text, call, anything. Please.”

(a tight pause.)

“June, I need you. To be all right.”

(click.)

I listen to it over, over, and over.

It takes titanic willpower to set the phone down.

“I need you,”
he said. I am alight with it.

David.

I ache to go back to your home—

(I still have the key burning inside my pillowcase—)

just one more time,

to your bare living room where I shrugged my jacket onto your sofa, or the kitchen where we drank coffee and murmured lavender words at 3:45
AM
, or the bathroom where you brushed your teeth bleary-eyed the morning after I dared to stay the night, or the bedroom where you held me, just held me, where I tried to touch you a thousand times and you said,
“No, June, we can't,”

we can't
,

or the rooftop where we froze together and my fingers kissed your wrist, our words kissed each other, there hanging in the air so softly, mingled like breath in the black sky.

David.

I nurse your name like a wound.

How excruciating, how much I command you, how much you command me,

the power we have over each other.

God in heaven, I wonder what a healthy relationship feels like.

We need each other too much.

Or maybe love is never healthy, and we should guard our hearts in hospitals

for preemptive healing.