The Lies That Bind (8 page)

By the time Detective Livingston pulled onto my street, the sun was low in the sky, spreading a golden glow over the towering trees lining the street. My house was dark and silent, no downstairs lights on, no smiling parents making Sunday dinner in the kitchen.

I used the spare key hidden behind a fake rock to slip in the side door and found a note waiting for me on the kitchen counter. My parents had been invited to a last-minute work dinner, and I was supposed to reheat leftovers for dinner. Guess I should have had the cops drop me off in my driveway. At least it would have given Mrs. Allen something to gossip about at step aerobics that week.

I dumped my parka and boots in the middle of the hardwood floor in the kitchen solely to piss my mom off. The thing about my parents was that even though I didn’t want them around bugging me and asking me questions, I still sort of wanted them around.

My eyes caught on the chairs lining our counter. They looked exactly like the ones Bethany had at her house, only ours weren’t tipped over. A vase of calla lilies sat in the middle of our kitchen table, but all I could see were the broken stems of the flowers heaped on the floor at Bethany’s house. That’s when I decided it might be a good idea to turn on some lights and set the alarm. You know, just in case.

After the house was blazing and I’d spent ten minutes pushing leftover pad thai around on my plate, I decided I needed a project. Not homework. Something that would take my mind off all of this Bethany crap. Something epic. Something that would somehow reflect the strange combination of fear and excitement that was churning around in my brain.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror that hung next to the kitchen table. At least three inches of brown roots circled my scalp, the most brown I’d seen on my head since Grace died. As much as the roots drove my mom crazy, I could tell she was secretly praying that I’d let the pink go, holding her breath as she delicately suggested making an appointment with a professional to get the ends cleaned up. And for a while I was actually considering her offer.

But that was before.

I threw my dishes in the dishwasher and made my way up to my bathroom. In the tiny closet next to the shower, I pushed aside all of the towels, extra soap, and shampoo that lined the shelf to reveal the rainbow of hair dyes I’d bought following Grace’s death.

We were driving home after her funeral and I thought I was going to throw up, so my parents pulled over at the drugstore so I could get some air. The second I’d left the car, my brain switched to autopilot, guiding me along the same route that it had memorized back when Grace, Maddie, and I used to ride our bikes to that store over the summer. The second we were allowed into town by ourselves, fistfuls of baby-sitting money stuffed into nylon wallets and purses, we’d head straight to the candy aisle, giddy with excitement over yet another sugar-fueled sleepover.

But as we got older, we slowly began bypassing the candy and heading straight for the Wet n Wild. Blue nail polish, silver eye shadow, and bubblegum-pink lip gloss quickly replaced Sour Patch Kids and Skittles. But before we’d leave the store, Maddie and I would always find Grace in the same place. She’d be standing in front of the boxes of hair dye, one hand on her hip, glossy, black hair spilling down her back.

“How much would you pay me?” she’d say, holding up a box featuring a platinum-haired goddess and a cheesy slogan about blonds having more fun.

We’d laugh and each hold up a box of our own. I’d choose brown, barely any different than my natural color, and Maddie the standard caramel highlights. But none of us ever had the guts. We were too afraid of our parents and what everyone at school would think. Instead, we’d shove the boxes haphazardly back on the shelf and grab the latest issue of
US
Weekly
at the register. By the time we left, we’d have blown hours and all of our money on false promises and empty calories.

But the day of Grace’s funeral was different. Instead of just ogling all of the colored dyes, I grabbed one of every color and paid for them. Neither of my parents commented when I returned to the car with a bag, but when I came to the breakfast table with pink hair the next morning they had plenty to say.

Tonight, I prepared my hair for the dye without a second thought, spreading the bleach from root to tip like icing. After rinsing, I grabbed the first box I saw, ripped into it, and slipped my fingers into the plastic gloves. I rushed to prepare the solution and applied the color frantically, as if the faster I worked, the faster this broken, uneasy feeling would go away. Although I should have known better.

The dye stung my eyes and the tears came involuntarily.

I bent my head over the sink and got to work, only briefly wondering what everyone would think. My parents, Maddie, Seth, Taylor. And Liam. Would they know just by looking at me that something else had happened? Would they understand? But then I thought of Grace and now Bethany. Honestly, I wasn’t really sure it mattered.

My fingertips tingled with anticipation as colored water slipped down the drain and my hair darkened. Looking at myself in the mirror with my dark, wet hair, it was impossible to see what the true color was, and for a second, the years slipped away and I looked like the girl I’d been before Grace died. But when I started to blow-dry the strands, they lightened to their new color.

I had felt a satisfying mixture of anger and hope when I’d first combed through the bright pink strands all those months ago, and tonight was no different. But this time I managed to surprise even myself when I swiped the steam off the mirror. Gone was the quick glimpse of the old me, gone was the tired-looking girl with faded pink hair and brown roots.

This girl was bold, powerful.

Icy blue.

Served cold, just like revenge.

To: [email protected]

Sent: Mon 1/12 3:57 AM

From: [email protected]

Subject: Change

Grace,

I’ve gone blue. Something tells me you’d love it. This is one of those nights when I wish I could pick up the phone, touch your name, and see your ridiculous picture as the phone rings. I still call you sometimes, just to pretend. But tonight I can’t bring myself to do it. The out-of-service message might kill me.

I wonder if you were here if you’d be dying your hair too. You always said you wanted orange streaks. Remember when you used to say, “Friends don’t let friends dye their hair alone”? I wish I still had a friend like that.

I’m getting messages in your handwriting, and they’re making me feel crazy, because they can’t be real. I know they can’t be real. But on some level I wish they were. Maybe that’s the craziest part of all.

Do you hate me for helping the Sisterhood? Honestly, I sort of hate myself. But then maybe you understand. Bethany is missing and I see so much of myself in Taylor. I remember exactly how all of this felt, and it’s pretty much impossible for me to just sit back and let them destroy her. It feels like I finally have the chance to make things right, and there’s no way I’m going to mess that up again.

So I’ve been wearing your pearls again. They make me feel strong. Liam doesn’t want me involved. He’ll never understand. It’s not like before. This time I know I can’t bring you back. But I might be able to stop it from happening again. I have to at least try. I know you’d want me to at least try.

After all the drama of the previous day, it was no wonder that when I finally crawled into bed, I fell into the type of sleep where you wake up in the same position you fell asleep in.

When I did wake up, my heart was pounding. I had been in the middle of a dream. Grace and I were on a cliff. We were talking and laughing until Bethany showed up and pushed me off. In retrospect, I guess being startled awake was way better than actually plummeting to my death, but still a crappy way to wake up on a day I already wasn’t quite ready to face.

You would have thought she saw the ghost of Grace herself the way my mom gasped when she took in my streaky blue hair. I could handle the fight, the angry words screamed back and forth, my dad’s failed attempts to calm everyone down and remind my mom that it was only hair, that it would grow out. But what was harder to swallow was her defeat, when she shook her head slowly, her eyes downcast, the wrinkles around her mouth deeper suddenly. I wasn’t immune to the shame of disappointing my parents. I would have given anything to walk downstairs showcasing normal-colored hair like any other girl at Pemberly Brown. But for a reason I couldn’t begin to explain, mine had to be blue.

By the time I made it to school, I felt like I’d already run some sort of messed-up marathon. I was approximately ninety-seven minutes late and hesitating at the front entrance. When I finally forced myself to pull the heavy doors open, warm air crashed over me and I was greeted with the familiar eau de PB. It was a mixture of freshly ground coffee, expensive perfume, and the ancient leather that clung to every surface.

Normal high schools reeked of disinfectant, glue, and a noxious combination of every available Axe body spray. But the hallowed halls of Pemberly Brown were never sullied by scents so common. Pemberly Brown smelled like privilege.

The bell rang and I did my best to melt into the crowds of students pouring into the hallways, but as usual I failed miserably. The whispers began almost immediately, like a little spark. I was used to them by now. They rolled right over me, beading on my skin like raindrops on a windshield. Lucky for me, I was whisper resistant. Well, except when it came to one very important person: Liam.

I still felt guilty about missing our breakfast yesterday and avoiding him for the rest of the day so I wouldn’t have to tell him what was going on with Bethany and Taylor. I wasn’t lying to him. Not exactly. But I was hiding things, and that just felt wrong. Plus I couldn’t really fathom how he’d react to my hair color du jour. So I did what I always did when I was faced with conflicting emotions—I hid. Well, not literally, but avoiding someone was easy when you knew exactly where he’d be between every class.

But I could only avoid him for so long. It was lunchtime and I had fifteen minutes before I had to meet Taylor for our little tête à tête with Alistair. I knew Liam would already be in the cafeteria saving me a seat. I could only hope that by the time I actually found him, the whispers would have made their way to him and would have become so diluted that he’d anticipate a bald head with a giant hand flipping the bird tattooed on my scalp. For once, the gross exaggeration of the Pemberly Brown gossip machine might actually work in my favor. I mean, blue hair was nothing compared to
no
hair.

I made my way into the cafeteria and stood in the lunch line weaving through the entrance. I played with the pearls around my neck with one hand as I balanced my lunch tray with the other. The pearls felt like some sort of life preserver keeping me afloat as I paddled out into uncertain waters again.

I loaded my tray with a slice of pizza (protein), an ice cream bar covered in tiny chocolate and vanilla cake crumbs (dairy), and Tater Tots (vegetable) and journeyed across the cafeteria toward our usual table. I spotted Liam huddled with a group of his music-obsessed friends. They were all talking excitedly about something, probably some new jam band they’d all discovered or a bouncer who barely looked at IDs at Tim’s, the eighteen-and-over club. I watched him, waiting for him to feel my stare. And then he saw me. He stopped talking, and even from a distance, I could see his eyes flicking back and forth, taking in my new look.

I wasn’t patient enough to try to read his mind, so I ignored all of the whispers and all of the looks and marched right up to my boyfriend and kissed him. And not one of those weirdly chaste, closed-mouth kisses. A real, honest-to-goodness, so-hot-it-might-get-me-a-demerit-for-PDA kiss. The moment I felt his lips open to mine, my knees went weak and I leaned even closer to him. But it ended all too soon when he pushed me gently away and gave me a hard look.

I could tell he had a million questions about my hair, where I’d been, and why I was avoiding him, but before he said a word, his lip pulled up on one side. I knew it was only a matter of seconds before the other side followed and we were in full-force cocky, mega-swoon grin territory. He shook his head slowly.

“Blue,” he said, lifting a long strand and smoothing it between his fingers.

“Blue,” I said, looking up into his ridiculously gorgeous eyes. If I looked closely enough, I could pick out flecks of blue and green and gray and brown. They were my favorite part about him, constantly changing so you never knew what you were going to get.

He moved aside the hair covering my ear and leaned in close, his breath warm against my neck but still able to prick goose bumps along my arms and legs. “Hot.”

“I know, right?” Suddenly, I felt like an idiot for avoiding him all morning. Liam didn’t need to know why I’d suddenly dyed my hair. I was under no obligation to tell him anything about the Sisterhood or Bethany’s disappearance. I could keep us separate. Sacred.

“What the…?” A voice squeaked behind me, stopping me mid-thought. I pulled away from Liam and spun to face the other boy who, whether I liked to admit it or not, mattered. A lot. “You’re blue.” Seth’s voice squeaked again.

“Pretty much,” I said, running my fingers through my hair. My mom always tried to threaten that one of these days the strands would just go on strike and fall out after one too many bad dye jobs. But my hair had never felt softer. And I had to admit I was having a particularly fabulous hair day for my big debut.

Seth narrowed his eyes, looking from me to Liam and back, and I could almost hear the gears churning in his brain. Finally he said, “Cool,” and walked off to buy another school lunch.

“Hurry up and eat. I want you to hear this song, but I left my music in the Jeep. We can head out during open period.” Liam’s arm slid around my waist, and he steered me toward our usual table at the back of the cafeteria.

“Actually, I have to—”

“Holla!” And the moment was interrupted. It was Ben, of course. His hair was intentionally messy, all weird, overly gelled, evenly distributed spikes, and his designer khakis (who knew they even made designer khakis?) still had creases from hanging on the rack at the mall. His shirt was a wrinkled mess, probably the kind that had been painstakingly creased with a special iron by some cracked-out designer, but in reality he looked like he’d slept the night in a sketchy van.

Slung across his body was a bright orange man bag, which he adjusted carefully, flexing his biceps. Two very sad realities about that fugly bag struck me in that moment.

1. It probably cost more than my entire wardrobe.

2. In spite of his nonstop workouts and protein shakes, Ben was still probably small enough to fit inside of it.

“You know what they say, blue is the new pink,” I said, predicting the direction of the conversation.

“What? Oh, yeah, I thought I noticed something different about you, but my stylist says orange is really big this season.” Apparently I had predicted incorrectly, and omigod, the boy had a stylist. A really, really bad stylist. Ben barely gave my hair a second glance as he patted his man bag and began looking around for someone more important. The boy had a serious case of wandering-eye syndrome. He was constantly searching the vicinity for popular kids he could somehow latch onto or a conversation he could overhear and weasel his way into.

I rolled my eyes and occupied myself with examining his too-tan-for-an-Ohio-winter skin. He must go tanning. Of course he went tanning. His skin matched his bag.

After he’d exhausted his surrounding options, he turned back to me and flashed his Chemistry textbook. “We still on for open? I gots to get a B on this lab.”

One of the many annoying things about Ben Montrose was his five-year lag time on teen slang. Maybe his parents forced him to watch too much Disney Channel in Cali when he was young or something. That kind of exposure could really warp a young mind.

I noticed Liam watching us. He winked at me as if to give me permission to talk to another guy, which I completely did not need. Especially considering the other guy was Ben.

And then she was next to me.

“It’s 12:05,” Taylor hissed. Before turning to her, I noticed a shadow cross over Liam’s face when he saw us talking. This was not going to end well. Lame boys were one thing; members of a secret society, completely different.

“Sorry, Ben, this will only take a minute.” But Ben just stood there with a strange look of euphoria on his face and immediately went back to not-so-subtly flexing his muscles. That is the impact Taylor Wright had on social-climbing d-bags.

I pulled Taylor by the arm so we were a few feet away. “We still have time. Detention runs for all of open.” Alistair basically spent every free period, as well as mornings and afternoons, rotting in detention. No one knew what he did to land himself in there, but it was as constant as the slapping of hands against the station plaques. “And McAdams sleeps on the job. We’ll be fine.”

“I saw you kissing your boyfriend and I thought you changed your mind. They’re saying Bethany’s on a yoga retreat, Kate.” Taylor’s eyes glimmered with unshed tears, and I could see myself in their reflection. I remembered how it felt to hear the rumors and half-truths about Grace after she died.

“Fine, let’s just go. McAdams is probably already sleeping.”

When I turned back to Ben, he was staring at Taylor with that same dopey expression on his face. Well, at least he wouldn’t give me a hard time about ditching.

“Ben, I gotta run. You’re on your own.”

“Taylor.” His voice was barely above a whisper, and he didn’t even glance in my direction.

“So, um, you’ll finish up the lab, right?”

“Shiny.” He lifted his hand in the air.

I decided to take that as a yes. “I totally owe you one.”

He didn’t bother responding. Now Liam was a different story.

He was by my side within seconds. “What are you doing?” His voice was loud and clear, despite the fact that Taylor was only a few feet away. So much for keeping things separate.

“It’s nothing,” I whispered, hoping he’d match the level. “I just…I forgot that we sort of have this thing to do during open. It’s for Concilium, and if I skip out again, it’ll go on my transcript, and…you know.” I looked straight past him as the lie left my lips, praying he wouldn’t call me out on it. But he didn’t say a word. I met his eyes again, but they were focused on my neck. More specifically, on Grace’s pearls. Crap.

“You haven’t worn those in a while.” He lifted them with one finger as though they might burn.

I didn’t feel like answering to him. It wasn’t his fault that he cared, but it was also none of his business when I chose to wear my dead best friend’s jewelry. I slipped into emotional shutdown mode as easily as into a broken-in pair of jeans.

“Guess I’ll just talk to you later then?” I couldn’t help it. I turned back to Taylor without waiting for a response.

She reached out her hand, a weak smile pulling at her lips, and I realized how much she needed me right now. And although that was hard to understand or even to admit, it felt good. Not good enough to hold hands, though—that was just weird.

But that didn’t stop Taylor. She grabbed my hand and yanked me behind her, her deceptively strong fingers clamped around mine. She dragged me toward the double doors at the entrance to the cafeteria.

When I turned back to look at Liam, he looked stunned, like I’d slapped him across the face.

And that look on his face mattered. But finding Bethany mattered more.