Seven Ways We Lie (3 page)

Her question turns over and over in my head. I do like sex, and I do like making my own decisions, and I do like Feminist Theory 101. But something else about sleeping with people keeps me at it. Winding up beside someone, resting my head on his shoulder, relaxes me. That part outperforms the sex most of the time—no offense to the dudes involved.

But thinking about it too hard feels like second-guessing myself, and I already get so much shit for “whoring around,” as so many people have kindly put it—I don't want to give my critics the tiniest hint of validation.

As we head across the green, I fold my arms tight against the chill. I try to forget Claire's hurt expression and try to shake off thoughts of my mom. I shouldn't have mentioned her to Juniper. Now she's at the front of my mind, and she won't go.

I always miss Mom more at this time of year. With Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas all in a row, thoughts of her are packed tight on the road to winter. Keeping everything locked away takes more energy than usual. Sometimes I take the memories out, dust them off, and look at them hard, and they glow a little around the edges. I still have the image of Mom's delicate hands scooping pumpkin seeds into a bowl. “Oooh, pumpkin innards,” she'd say in a ghostly moan. “Katrina, Olivia, young mortals, assist me with the pumpkin intestines.”

These days, the house stays bare. Dad doesn't say anything about it, but I get the feeling the empty space is easier for him. And Kat doesn't say anything about it, but then again, Kat never says anything.

Juniper unlocks her car. I slip into the passenger seat, sliding it back to stretch my legs.

Juni presses a button. The engine purrs to life. “Kat doesn't need a ride, does she?”

“Nah, Drama Club today,” I say. “I think she's getting a ride after or something.” My twin sister must have occupied the “talented” half of the womb. Though I've developed quite the talent for sitting in audiences and applauding.

“Oh, hey. Our competition.” As she pulls the car forward, Juni nods to one side of the junior lot, where a tall boy sprawls on top of a black Camry. “Over there.”

I straighten up and almost whack my head on the ceiling. Peering out my window, I spy Matt Jackson, who lies back, texting. I've never looked hard at the guy before. He looks foxlike, with the forward set of his facial features and the fringe of fire-red dye at the tips of his rusty hair.

Juniper's car dips over a speed bump. From his car roof, Matt Jackson turns toward us, and I look away. Not fast enough.

“Ah, shitshitshit,” I say. “He's totally looking at me. He totally saw me creeping.”

“Don't worry,” Juniper says. “He'll never guess we're planning his political assassination.” She lets out a maniacal laugh.

I grin. “Yeah, you've always struck me as a John Wilkes Booth sort of girl.”

“June Wilkes Booth, even.”

I groan, sinking low in my seat. Juniper, looking pleased with herself, turns the radio on. The sound system emits a deep, start-up hum, and one of Paganini's Caprices sings out of the speakers. Juni's left hand, her nails cut short, plays along on the steering wheel.

By the time we pull out of the parking lot and down the street, the day's problems have faded in the distance, left back at Paloma High School with its waxed hallways, defaced bathroom stalls, and all the students who think it's their job to judge me.

BACKSTAGE, THE CURTAINS SMELL LIKE DUST. IT'S
easy to forget myself here, drowned in the dark.

Whispers scurry along the wing from the girls who play my daughters. Whispers that beg for my attention.

Focus, Kat
.

I tuck my hair behind my ears, digesting the lines that pass onstage, beat by beat. It's Emily's monologue out there—her plea for relevance.

Focus . . 
.

The backstage whispers scrape at me again, harder this time. Anger prickles hot in my palms. The others should be listening for their cues. They should be taking this seriously.

“—and I'm tired of waiting,” Emily says. My cue.

I stride onstage and lose myself completely.

Here in the blinding lights, I shed layers of myself like a knight casting off her armor plate by plate. I move with purpose, with want, with drive. Kat Scott is nobody. Nowhere. If she even exists, I'm not concerned with her.

“
You're
tired of waiting?” I demand.

The girl across from me takes half a step back. She's not Emily,
not anymore. Now that I'm standing across from her, she's Natalya Bazhenova: a mathematics professor who made a promise to my character years ago. She promised to sweep me away from my Russian town to an elite school and nurture my mathematical talent. Between acts 1 and 2, I reached thirty-seven years old waiting for her to rescue me from this life, but she never did. She forgot me. And now she dares to come back.

“You're tired of waiting,” I say. “You, Natalya, who left me in this town?” I step closer, snarling my way through the questionable translation, hunting Natalya down with my eyes. “Look at me. Look at what I am now.”

“I am looking at you,” she says.

“Look harder.”

“I see a loving mother, a caring sister. I see—”

“You see nothing,” I whisper. “I am nothing anymore except wasted potential. Nothing!”

My voice echoes back from the far reaches of the auditorium, and silence ricochets afterward like a boomerang. Dead, beautiful silence.

I speak more slowly now, tasting the bitterness in every word. “You were supposed to be my teacher. You said I was brilliant—a prodigy, you said. You were supposed to take me away, teach me everything, but instead you ran the first chance you had. And now you come back and say you're tired of waiting?” My voice hardens to a condemnation: “You hypocrite.”

“I'm sorry, Faina,” she says.

Before it happens, I know our director is going to stop us. “Hold,” calls Mr. García from the front row. I drop character, slouching down to take a seat in the kitchen chair. Everything
that was held tight in my body goes loose, every muscle, every bit of focus.

It's a relief to get out of that headspace. God, the Russians were miserable. This play,
The Hidden Things
, was written by a man called Grigory Veselovsky around the turn of the century, and by the end, exactly zero of the characters are happy. Our pal Grigory must've been a sadist.

Mr. García hops up onto the edge of the stage. Our drama teacher, Mrs. Stilwater, has to plan some regional conference, so García's directing the fall play. He's technically an English person, not a theater person, but he knows what he's doing.

I've heard he's not getting paid for this, though, which is insane. Not that I'm complaining. There wouldn't have been a fall play otherwise, and most days this feels like the only reason to get out of bed.

García jogs over to my scene partner. “Emily, push it more, I think. You can heighten the physicality of being afraid. And cheat a little to the right; we're losing that section of the audience.”

And now the volume problem . . 
.

“Also, I hate to say it, but we're still losing your lines.”

“I'm so sorry,” Emily says, obviously on the verge of tears.

I purse my lips. Damn right, she's sorry. He's given her this note a hundred times already. The show goes up in under three weeks, right before Thanksgiving break, and I'm starting to think she might never get it.

“It's okay,” García says. “Hey. Emily? Don't be upset. We'll do some projection exercises later, all right?” He gives her a thumbs-up. “It's a matter of trusting your voice—a confidence thing. You have this.”

God, García is patient. I would've yelled at half the people in this cast by now, but in five weeks of rehearsing, he hasn't so much as raised his voice.

Emily nods once, her mousy hair falling into her eyes.

“Oh, and that's another thing,” he says, scribbling a note on his omnipresent clipboard. “You've got to tie your hair back or something. It keeps hiding your right eye.”

I sigh, slouching down in my chair. He's told her that note before, too. I don't get why people can't follow simple directions. Sometimes it feels as if García and I are the only ones giving this show everything.

It's not that I think I'm more talented than the rest of the cast—the other kids are all good, in their own way. But . . . I don't know. They don't seem to need the stage, the space to fill, the echo of the voice, and the punch of the words.

“Kat?”

I look up. “What?”

García approaches me. “You're doing great, but there's something missing in the way you're tackling this scene, I think.” He puts his clipboard on the table. “What's your character's objective in this scene? What does she want from Emily's character?”

I figured all this out when I did the script work back in September. I answer without hesitating. “She wants Natalya to apologize.”

García runs a hand through his hair, making it stick straight up. He looks like a hungover college student, with his stubble and thick-rimmed glasses and messy hair. He's a new teacher this year, but he's chill and doesn't give too much homework, so he's doing pretty well by most people's standards. “Yeah,” he
says, “I can see the apology motive. But what else do you think it could be?”

I frown. “I'm pretty sure that's it. Natalya ruined my character's life, so it—”

A fit of giggling bursts out backstage. The frustration that's been burning low in my chest ignites. I twist around in my chair. “Could you shut up?” I snap. The giggles die.

García's eyes glimmer with amusement. “You can let me do that, you know. Believe it or not, I, too, am capable of saying, ‘Quiet backstage.' ”

“Sorry,” I mutter.

“Don't be. Just don't make it a habit.” García checks his watch. “Ah, nuts. Okay.” He hurries back to the lip of the stage, hops off, and retakes his seat in the front row. “All right, one more thing before it's five o'clock. Let's jump ahead to the last scene.”

Emily, who still isn't off-book for this scene, runs to grab her script. We don't have all the props yet, so I mime a chalkboard at center stage.

“Okay,” García says as Emily scurries back into place. “Last little bit of scene 6. Let's take it from ‘What do you think?' Whenever you're ready, Emily.”

A short silence. Then Natalya Bazhenova says to me, “What do you think?”

I look at the blank space in the air, where my fingers hover over an imaginary chalkboard. I scrutinize an imaginary equation. “It's beautiful,” I say. “It's beautiful work.”

“So you see why I had to go? Why I had to resume my research?”

“No, I don't. But it is still beautiful work.” Letting the imaginary chalk drop, I turn around. The lights won't be set for two
weeks, so all the brights are on too high. I squint into them.

Natalya approaches me. “Do you want me to show you the rest?” she asks, making me thirsty with imaginary want. “I could try to find a way,” she says. “I could go back and ask the other professors if you could join us at the university. I could—”

“Mama?” says a voice. I turn stage left. My character's daughter enters. “I did it,” she says. “I made dinner. And—and we are all waiting for you at home.”

I study the sight: the lines of my daughter's face painted a harsh white by the stage light. “Thank you, sweetheart,” I say mechanically. I turn back to Natalya. “No,” I say. “I can't go with you.”

“But—”

“I won't go,” I say, defeat filling the words. After a long second, I follow my daughter off left. Natalya stares after us.

“And lights down,” García calls. “Great. Everyone, onstage.”

We sit on the edge of the stage, the rest of the cast talking and joking. The guy who plays my husband flirts with Emily, who doesn't seem to realize it. I sit off to the side, as far as possible from the girls I yelled at. I shouldn't have snapped—I know it's García's job, telling them to be quiet—but it maddens me, people not having the basic decency to shut up during rehearsals.

García runs over his notes from the scenes we worked today. “Kat,” he says finally, “what do you think the play's ending means?”

The rest of the cast looks at me. I feel the eleven pairs of eyes like spotlights. I shrug, avoiding their gazes. “I lose,” I say. “My character loses. She's been at home waiting fifteen years for her teacher to come back, and by the time it happens, she has this kid to raise, so, like . . . you know. She can't chase her passion. She loses.”

“That's what I thought you'd say,” García says, dashing off a note on the clipboard. “I want you to rethink that. And I want you to rethink the apology thing from earlier. Okay?”

I nod, almost relieved to have notes for once. Usually García spends so long fixing people's blocking, he doesn't get to characterization.