The Girl Who Kissed a Lie (2 page)

If I’m focusing on being normal, the normal thing to do definitely isn’t to go out to the Common and talk to my quasi-boyfriend who I know almost nothing about. But, whatever, it’s what I do.

Ben sees me immediately, finishes up with a few customers, and comes over with lemonade. “What are you reading?” he asks me, looking at the book I’ve brought out with me.

“
How
to
Be
a
Lady
,” I tell him, showing it to him. I found it on the bookshelf this morning, browsing for something “normal.” It’s from 1912 and I thought it would be amusing.

“I didn’t know there was an instruction manual,” Ben says, amused. “Aren’t you already some definition of a lady? Do you feel like you need pointers to be yourself?”

I’ll take any and all pointers I can get,
I think.

“This isn’t about that whole being ‘normal’ thing, is it?” asks Ben. “There really is no such thing.”

“I have decided,” I announce, “that I need…” I falter on saying “a friend.” I don’t know what he would say in response to that and I don’t want to test it. I say, instead, “I need a job.”

“A job?” Ben echoes. “Well, that sounds
very
normal. And
dull
. Doing what?”

“I don’t know. Making lemonade?” I suggest, teasing. “Could you use an assistant?”

He looks blank. “What?”

“At your job,” I prompt.

“An assistant at my job,” he echoes, still sounding like he has no idea what I’m talking about.

“Yes.
Making
lemonade
,” I remind him.

“Oh,” he says. “That job. Do you think I can’t handle
that
job?”

“Do you have another job?” I ask curiously. I really know so little about Ben.

“This job takes up all my time and attention,” says Ben lightly, and I can’t tell if he’s joking or not.

“Well, you’ve got a customer at your time- and attention-demanding job that you don’t need me to assist with,” I point out to him.

Ben groans, but gets to his feet lightly, with all of his usual grace. Ben moves like a classically trained ballet dancer or something. It’s really very annoying, considering that I move very…heavily. It’s the best way I can think of to describe it. I always move like I’m a bull in a china shop; Ben moves like the personification of the china in the china shop.

I watch Ben deal with his customer. He’s probably flirting. She blushes and grins at him, twirling a piece of her hair around her finger. Does Ben flirt with me? I worry that I wouldn’t know he was flirting with me, even if he carried a flashing neon sign that lit up with I’M FLIRTING WITH YOU NOW. He probably doesn’t flirt with me. Ben probably sees me as a kid sister. Maybe Ben even
has
a little sister, for all I know, and I remind him of her or something.

Ben comes back after his customer, with more lemonade, and says, “What’s your plan for today? Are you going to read aloud to me, so that I can learn how to be a lady properly and not stick out abnormally?”

“No,” I say firmly. “Today I’m going to get a job.”

***

Seven little shops and zero applications later, I feel not at all productive or grown-up or better about anything. I’ve darted into every place of business I’ve come across: the fancy ice cream shop (Beacon Hill is the kind of place where even the ice cream is gourmet); the deli; the cozy, romantic restaurant; the raucous sports bar; the coffee shop; the tea shop (yes, those are two different things on Beacon Hill); and the dry cleaner that still has a Christmas display up in its windows. They’ve all told me they’re not hiring. I don’t know if that’s true or if they’re just not hiring
me
.

There is an art gallery next, mostly featuring paintings of sailboats bobbing in front of the Boston skyline, but in the lower corner of the window is a painting that is all dark swirls. I’m not sure what the painting is supposed to be of, but looking at it makes me think of…destruction. Like I can glimpse a Boston in that painting and it’s almost like the Boston I know, only it’s one that’s come and gone years ago, like a painting from a distant, disastrous future. It is a hot summer day, but I stand there and shudder and think that I can’t bring myself to ask if they need summer help at this art gallery. What kind of summer help would an art gallery need anyway?

I should turn away, but I am still standing there staring in the window when someone next to me says, “That’s an unsettling painting, isn’t it?”

I turn, startled, because I didn’t hear anyone approach me. The girl standing next to me is Kelsey Cameron. We know each other from school. Well,
I
know
her
, because everyone knows Kelsey. She’s one of those effortlessly popular girls. She was probably born cheerleading. Kelsey, however, doesn’t know me. We’ve never spoken. And I don’t cheerlead. Or attend football games, really. I went to one and felt out of place and awkward, and decided not to go to any more. Kelsey and I have a few classes together, but I tend not to talk in class.

“Do they really think the tourists are going to buy that?” Kelsey continues frankly. She licks at an ice cream cone and peers at the dark, swirly painting.

I shrug, feeling confused. I don’t know what to say. Why can’t I just have normal conversations with people who aren’t Ben? I blame my gnome-hunting aunts with a sudden burst of fury that I wasn’t brought up having
normal
conversations.

Kelsey looks at me then. She’s got blunt, straightforward blue eyes. I’m blond and blue-eyed like Kelsey, but I don’t think I carry it as well. It’s like I never realized it could look as good as it looks on Kelsey. Kelsey, meanwhile, was born realizing that. And cheerleading.

“What do you think it’s supposed to be?” Kelsey asks me, sounding curious but in a totally normal way.

This
is
how
people
have
normal
conversations
, I tell myself. “I think it’s supposed to be the future of Boston,” I hear myself say.

Kelsey looks blank.

“When it’s all been destroyed,” I continue, and then think that I probably don’t sound anything like normal.

Kelsey looks back at the painting. “Yeah,” she decides after a moment. “I could see that.” She takes a slurp of her ice cream then looks at me and grins.

I don’t really know what to make of her, just…standing there talking to me like this is something people
do
.

She turns completely from the gallery window, clearly with every intention of still talking to me, licking her ice cream cone. “So do you live around here?”

I wave toward Beacon Street. “Over there.”

“I just moved here,” she tells me.

“Oh,” I say stupidly, because I don’t know what else to say.

“We had to move. Our lease was up, and they were going to convert our apartment building into condos. I wanted to stay at school, of course, and my mom said if we were going to move, we were going to move
up
. So we found a place on Beacon Hill. On Garden Street.”

I still don’t know what to say. I think I am struck dumb by the sheer flow of information coming from her. I don’t tell people about me—not this much stuff, not all of it, right away like this.

“I like it so far. There’s a lot to do, always something going on, and I’m a big fan of this ice cream. What street do you live on?”

“Beacon Street,” I answer and hope that I don’t flush with embarrassment. The street Kelsey named is a perfectly respectable street, but it’s on the
renters’
side of Beacon Hill.

But Kelsey just nods, not looking especially interested, and licks her ice cream cone.

I glance around me, wondering if I can escape. When I look back at Kelsey, she’s looking at me curiously.

“We go to the same school,” she says to me.

I blink at her. “I know that.” I can’t believe
she
knows that.

“Okay,” she says. “You look confused about why I should be talking to you.”

I want to say that it’s because I don’t really talk to people this way, but that seems humiliating to say out loud. “No,” I say, as if I wasn’t confused.

“I’m Kelsey,” she offers.

As if I don’t know who she is. “I’m Selkie,” I respond.

“We had Brit lit together last year,” she says. “Do you have Forlio for American literature next year? Period three?”

I nod.

“Great,” she replies brightly, finishing up her cone and balling up the napkin she’d peeled off it. “Then we can struggle our way through the stupid summer-reading together.
The
Scarlet
Letter
, here we come!”

***

Kelsey seems to think we are friends. She talks a lot about events from the past school year and asks me for my thoughts on them, and I am amazed at how
normal
this all seems. Eventually she says, “So what are your plans for the summer?”

Like I should have plans. I consider for a moment, then say, “I’m trying to find a job, actually.”

“Oh,” says Kelsey. “I just got one! And they’re looking for more help! You should apply! It would be so fun to work together!”

“Where are you working?” I ask.

“Bourne’s,” she answers. “It’s this little, like, grocery store type of place. More like an old-fashioned drugstore than a grocery store, I guess. Do you know it? It’s on the corner of Pleasant and Hill.”

I know it. Beacon Hill isn’t very big, and there are only so many places to run in and buy supplies when a snowstorm is bearing down. We don’t go to Bourne’s too often. I feel like my aunts don’t like the place. I’ve never asked why. My aunts frequently have opinions about things that seem to be rooted in ancient feuds, slights performed upon them during the distant past when they were girls. My aunts are actually my great-aunts; they are much older than I am.

“Come on.” Kelsey is practically bouncing in eagerness. “Let’s have you fill out an application.”

I want to say that I’m uncertain my aunts will approve of my working at Bourne’s. But Kelsey is like an overwhelming force. In the face of all her straightforward enthusiasm, I don’t want to be weird and say that I feel like my aunts don’t like that store for reasons that I have never bothered to ask. I plaster a smile on my face and try to act
normal
. Surely I can accomplish this.

It’s only a short walk to Bourne’s, which is an old store in an old building. It even has a couple of the highly coveted lavender windowpanes that dot some of the older buildings on Beacon Hill. When we get there, Kelsey pushes her way into the store eagerly. I’d forgotten how tiny the place is, so crammed to the brim with towering aisles of stuff that you practically have to walk sideways. It would be impossible to have a backpack in here. Looking at it, I experience a bit of a sinking sensation. Most of the shelves are crowded with things that look absolutely useless, that no one would ever want to buy. And it makes me think that I’m not sure working at Bourne’s would be a good thing after all. I am a bit of a, well, packrat I suppose you would say. I am constantly taking items that have no use or value and keeping them…just in case. And this place is full of stuff like that. Dirty mason jars and broken ashtrays and mismatched silverware. It’s not so much a store as a repository for everything that has ever existed in the universe.

As we walk through the door, a bell rings, and the old lady standing behind the cash register looks at us almost suspiciously, as if she doesn’t approve of customers coming in. She reminds me of my aunts actually: the same olive complexion, same dark eyes, same dark hair that is remarkably not gray. I wonder if all ladies of a certain age on Beacon Hill use the same hairdresser.

“Hi, Mrs. Bourne,” says Kelsey confidently. “You know how you were saying you were looking for someone else to man the store? This is my friend Selkie. She’s looking for a job. I can vouch for her.”

Kelsey
can
vouch
for
me?
I think.
Kelsey
barely
knows
me
at
all.

The woman is examining me intently. She looks almost confused by me. I wonder if I’ve suddenly sprouted a second nose or something.

“Hi,” I venture.

“Selkie.” The woman seems to try out my name on her tongue, rolling it all around.

I don’t like the way she says my name. It makes me shudder. For some reason I think of the dark, swirly painting.

Then the woman looks bored and shrugs. She sits back down behind the cash register and takes up the sewing she had abandoned upon our entry. “Yes,” she says. “Fine. If you vouch for her.”

And so, even though I don’t know if this is the best idea I’ve ever had, it doesn’t matter: if normal people go out and get friends and jobs, then I’ve just done it.

I’m home in time for dinner, which turns out to be a stew of some sort. I don’t really want it. It seems too heavy for the heat of the day, and I wish there’d just been a salad instead. I feel, once again, like my aunts have no concept of
summer
.

“How was your day, dear?” Aunt Virtue asks me as we sit down to dinner. She asks it almost absently, sounding distracted, spooning stew into her bowl.

“It was fine,” I reply, and instead of explaining all of the crazy things that had happened to me that day, I take the cowardly path of changing the subject. “How’d it go with the gnomes?”

Aunt True makes a fluttery exclamation of displeasure, and Aunt Virtue raises long-suffering eyes to the heavens.

“Let us not discuss it,” she intones dramatically, and Aunt True nods her head fervently.

Great
, I think.
That
leaves
only
me
to
discuss
. I lick my lips and swallow. “I got a job today.”

Both aunts look up at me. Aunt True looks concerned. Aunt Virtue looks puzzled.

“A job?” Aunt Virtue repeats.

I nod and pretend to be engrossed in my stew.

“Why?” Aunt Virtue presses.

I shrug a bit. “I don’t know. It seemed like it would give me something to do all summer.”

“I
knew
we should have come up with things for you to do!” wails Aunt True. “I
told
you, Virtue.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I say quickly, because I really don’t want to be enlisted in hunting gnomes all summer.

“Where did you get a job?” Aunt Virtue asks.

I take a deep breath. “Bourne’s.”

Aunt Virtue blinks at me.

Aunt True exclaims, “Bourne’s?!”

“It’s not a big deal,” I say again.

“Not a big deal?!” exclaims Aunt True.

Aunt Virtue says, “Don’t you know how dangerous it could be?”

“At Bourne’s?” Bourne’s is the sleepiest store to ever exist. I can’t believe they don’t realize how ridiculous they sound.

“The world is a dangerous place, Selkie,” Aunt Virtue intones at me. “Have the gnomes taught you nothing?”

I lose my temper suddenly. “There aren’t any gnomes,” I snap.

Aunt True gasps.

Aunt Virtue says, “Selkie. You know better than to think that just because you can’t see them, they don’t exist.”

I take a deep breath and tell myself to keep calm. It seems silly to lose my temper about gnomes after all these years of dealing with them. “I’ll make sure I don’t let the gnomes get the better of me. Bourne’s will be fine. I swear. Kelsey works there, and she said they were looking for more help, and Mrs. Bourne said that I could have the job if Kelsey vouched for me, so—”

“Who’s Kelsey?” interrupts Aunt Virtue.

I say, slowly, “My friend.”

“How do you know her?” asks Aunt Virtue.

“From school.”

Aunt True and Aunt Virtue seem to absorb this.

“And she is a nice girl?” Aunt True asks me. “Normal?”

Is there such a thing as normal? If there is, then, “Yes,” I say firmly. “She’s very normal, and very nice.”

Aunt True and Aunt Virtue look at each other.

“I suppose,” Aunt True ventures, “if she’s got a
friend
there, Virtue. A nice,
normal
friend…”

Aunt Virtue narrows her eyes at me, but I think that she isn’t seeing me; she’s seeing all the terrible things that could happen to me, every dire thing her imagination can dream up. She eventually says, “Yes. I suppose. For now.”

***

The next day, I walk out to the Common because I’ve deliberately left time before I have to get to Bourne’s. Ben is there, doing a brisk business in lemonade because it’s another hot day, and I wait patiently for him to take a break.

“You’re looking pleased with yourself,” he says by way of greeting and hands me a lemonade.

“I got a job,” I inform him.

“Ah, that explains it.” He grins at me. “And what is this job of yours?”

“I’m working at a store.”

“Seems plain enough,” remarks Ben.

I cock my head. “What does that mean?”

“I mean that it seems uncomplicated. You don’t want a job with too many twists and turns in it, do you?”

“Is that why you sell lemonade?” I ask.

“
That
is a complicated question,” Ben tells me and winks, and goes back to work.

***

My father is crazy. I don’t mean that in the ha-ha, he’s-so-wacky, he-wears-old-stained-ties-sometimes way that other people mean when they complain about their fathers being crazy. My father is literally insane.

He lost his mind shortly after my birth. By the time I was a year old, my aunts had had him institutionalized. I don’t remember ever seeing my father outside of supervised visits in the hospital where he lives.

I suppose it would make sense to be sad about this, and I
am
, but if I let myself think about how sad I am to have lost my father in this way, then I won’t think of anything but the sadness, and that can’t be my life. I roll it up into a ball and slip it into a closet in my brain, and most of the time, I don’t let myself think about it.

We visit my father once a week. Sometimes we go more frequently, but we definitely visit him once a week without fail. My aunts, who otherwise don’t seem to notice the passage of time, whose grandfather clock is always chiming the wrong hour, unerringly know when it is Sunday afternoon. And then we all walk down to Park Street subway station together.

I never see Ben on these trips. I assume he doesn’t work on Sundays.

My aunts hate the subway. They are always muttering to themselves and eyeing everyone suspiciously. Worried about gnomes, I guess, but sometimes I feel like my aunts just don’t like anyone who isn’t us.

We visit with my father in the room set aside for such things. It’s just us in the room, but I know that people watch from outside: security guards and medical professionals, ready to rush in if something goes wrong. But nothing has ever gone wrong. My father is kind and sweet, and always beams at all of us. He recognizes us, knows who we are, has never been confused about me or forgotten me, and I take a lot of comfort in that.

But my father lives in the past—a past the rest of us don’t seem to be part of. He has no interest in the fact that I am no longer a baby. I tried to tell him about school when I first started going, and his eyes had turned fuzzy and unfocused. He kept the smile on his face, but I knew he wasn’t listening to me at all, and when I was done telling him about school, he said to me, “Your name was etched on a snowflake.” Which is the sort of thing he says.

Today my aunts fuss over the state of my father’s hair—it looks fine—and I sit and watch and drink in the sight of him. I want, desperately, to be able to just hug my father, snuggle into him, and feel safe. I’ve never been able to do that. I’ve never really felt safe in my life. It’s hard to feel safe when your aunts are constantly fighting an unseen foe.

Eventually they stop fussing, and I feel like I can update my father on what’s going on in my life. Not that he really cares, but I still keep doing it because I desperately want for him to care, just once. He loves me—I know he loves me—but it is so hard to speak to a vacuum like this.

So I say, like always, because it’s true and the truest, most worthwhile thing I can tell him, “I love you.”

***

Working at Bourne’s is amazingly boring. I didn’t think it would be. I thought it would be something to keep me busy, to pass the abyss of the summertime, but it’s not. It’s incredibly dull. Ben was right: this is normality. Luckily, there’s Kelsey, and we sit up front by the cash register and take turns reading
The
Scarlet
Letter
out loud, and when it gets too boring—which is often—we stop and just talk. It turns out that Kelsey isn’t a different species; it turns out that Kelsey is
recognizable
. We have things to talk about together, books we read and music we listen to and stores we like. And people at school, of course. I didn’t realize I had so much to say about people at school until I had someone to actually talk about them with.

It seems odd to me that we have this job in the first place. We spend whole afternoons never even seeing a customer. And, a lot of the time, whenever a customer comes in, Mrs. Bourne comes scurrying out from the back room and snatches them up and takes them upstairs “for a chat” before Kelsey or I can do anything.

I bring it up during the second week of this, right after we’ve read about Hester Prynne’s baby, Pearl, growing into a difficult child.

“Don’t you think it’s odd?” I say.

“What?” asks Kelsey. She has a foot propped up on the windowsill, painting her toenails.

I am sorting through the contents of a junk drawer we found, pocketing paper clips and a pin and a couple of buttons. “Why are we working here?”

“Because Mrs. Bourne hired us,” responds Kelsey.

“Right, but we never
do
anything. It’s not a very busy store, is it?”

“No,” Kelsey admits. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. But Mrs. Bourne said she wanted to use this summer to clean out the back room, so she needs someone up front in case—”

“Right, but
two
people?” I say.

“No, I know,” agrees Kelsey.

“And most of the time when someone comes in, she doesn’t even let us help them or check them out or anything. She takes them upstairs right away.”

“I get the impression that they’re all old friends who come in here,” says Kelsey. “I think they come in to have tea together and play cards.”

“Play cards?” I echo.

Kelsey shrugs. “Seems like something old people do. We have had a couple of regular customers come in, and she always lets us deal with those.”

“Yeah,” I say, unconvinced. “A
couple
. How is that enough to keep this store going? Don’t you think the rent must be expensive here?”

“Maybe she owns the building,” suggests Kelsey.

“Then she ought to rent this out to somebody else and actually make some money off of it.”

Kelsey leans forward, drops her voice. “Do you think she’s in the mob?”

I actually hadn’t considered that. I’d thought something strange was going on, but I hadn’t thought to figure out
what
. It occurs to me that it’s possible I take too much at face value, trained by gnome-hunting aunts.

“Maybe,” I muse.

Mrs. Bourne and her latest guest come tramping back downstairs at that moment, and Kelsey and I stop talking. Kelsey concentrates on her toes. I make a big show of opening up
The
Scarlet
Letter
.

“Hawthorne,” scoffs Mrs. Bourne’s friend as she sweeps out of the store. “Can’t trust a word he writes, slippery man.”

***

I mention it to Ben. Because I mention most things to Ben. If those things aren’t going to make me seem crazy.

“I think the lady who owns the store I work in might be in the mob,” I tell him.

The sun is sinking behind the tops of Boston’s skyscrapers, and all around us the air on the Common is a blend of gold and creeping purple, the collision of day and night. Ben is leaned back on the grass, his light jacket unzipped to reveal the turquoise T-shirt underneath, which is basically the most undressed I ever get to see Ben. If I were a daring person, I’d lie down next to Ben and curl a bit close to him and just wait to see what happens. Kelsey would probably do that. Kelsey never has a thought she doesn’t act on—or so it seems to me.

I don’t do anything. I just sit there and look down at him. His eyes are closed.

“The mob?” he repeats lazily.

“Yes. No one ever comes into the store. I mean, one or two people, every once in a while, but not
really
. Not as many people as you’d need to have shop in a store on Beacon Hill to keep paying the rent. Yet not only can this lady afford to pay the rent, but she’s also paying two employees! So maybe she’s paying the rent with money she’s getting from stuff she’s doing for the mob. She spends all her time in the back room doing something, but as soon as somebody walks into the store, she runs out to see who it is and then they disappear together.”

Ben has opened his eyes. He is looking at me with interest. I did not expect this story to actually be
interesting
to him.

“Disappear how?”

“Well, I mean, not
literally
. They just…go upstairs together.”

“What did you say her name was again?” he asks.

“Mrs. Bourne,” I answer. “I have no idea what her first name is.”

“Hmm,” says Ben, and closes his eyes again and turns his face back toward the dying sun.

“Do you think she’s in the mob?” I ask.

“No,” he replies. “Probably she’s just a witch.”

I shake my head and throw grass at him.

***

I bring this up to Kelsey the next day. I’m sure that Ben was just teasing me—Ben is always teasing like that—but I kind of like the idea. Probably because I’m used to thinking about a world where there are gnomes running around.

“Maybe she’s a witch,” I hiss at Kelsey after Mrs. Bourne has disappeared upstairs again with another customer. Or guest. Or client? I have no idea what to call them.

“Hester Prynne?” says Kelsey blankly.

“No,
Mrs. Bourne
.”

Kelsey looks at me then, away from where she’s been carefully lining up paper clips that she’s found in old, dusty places throughout the store. And then she laughs like I’ve told a hilarious joke.

It probably is a joke to people who don’t believe in things like gnomes. And I
don’t
believe in things like gnomes. Do I? I feel so magnificently confused now.

“She’s not a witch,” says Kelsey, going back to her paperclips. “I’ve never seen her with a broom. She doesn’t wear a pointy hat. She doesn’t have a black cat. These are all points against her being a witch.”

“I don’t think witches are so
obvious
,” I retort, as if I am suddenly the foremost expert on witches.