The Secret to Lying (4 page)

“Badass,” she said when my hair was done.

I almost didn’t recognize myself. After Sunny left, I kept glancing at my purple and orange-streaked hair, trying to get used to it.

Dickie seemed impressed by my new do when he saw it later. “Smashing,” he said. “Your parents are going to love that.”

“I aim to please.”

Not to be outdone, he drew a fake eyelash beneath his eye and put on the black bowler hat that looked dumb on everyone else but cool on him. He was the spitting image of Alex DeLarge in
A Clockwork Orange.
“Tonight we freak,” Dickie announced. Then he called Heinous and told him to prepare.

The whole point of freaking was not to fit in. Since ASMA was a three-year program, we’d all served our time as froshbait at some normal high school where kids would either ignore us or stuff us into lockers for being different. But here, among the smart kids, it was cool to be different.

I gelled my purple and orange-streaked hair into classic punk spikes while Heinous went for more of a deranged samurai look, putting his long black hair into a topknot and stuffing a broken broomstick into his belt for a sword. As soon as study hours ended, we grabbed a couple cans of shaving cream for mischief and headed out. The night air simmered with the sound of cicadas enjoying their last bit of summer warmth. People in shorts and T-shirts poured out of the dorms. After nearly three weeks of school, everyone seemed a little stir-crazy.

Heinous, playing samurai, jumped in front of a couple on their way to make out by the pond. “So-san, master of the poison tongue, meet your doom!” he said, moving his lips more than he actually spoke, like a poorly dubbed kung-fu movie.

The couple, a pair of PDA-happy Chess Club geeks, was struck speechless. They edged around Heinous and sped up.

“Your cowardice reflects on your ancestors!” Heinous called. “Many dragons will haunt you!”

Dickie and I headed across the square toward Sunny, who was sitting with Sage and Katy on a bench near the girls’ dorm.

“Put a cream puff up your butt,” Heinous sang, catching up to us. His most recent shtick involved making up lyrics to Eddie Murphy’s classic, “Boogie in Your Butt.”

“Put numchucks up your butt. Put a fluffy duck up your butt. Put an Oompa-Loompa up your butt.”

“The humor in this particular saying,” Dickie replied, mocking the way Mr. Funt, the sophomore class English teacher, spoke, “being that, technically speaking, an Oompa-Loompa would not fit up one’s buttocks, not to mention the fact that Willy Wonka would never permit such egregious treatment of his workers. Thus, the ridiculousness of the claim, which leads to laughter.”

“Put Sunny up your butt,” Heinous said.

“The line, sir, has been crossed.”

“Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?” Heinous asked, imitating one of the characters in a movie of
Romeo and Juliet
that Mr. Funt had made us watch.

“Aye, I bite my thumb.”

“But do you bite your thumb at me?”

Dickie let the gag drop as we approached the bench where the girls had gathered. The orange glow of street lamps illuminated the sidewalk. “Such a pleasure to find you out this evening,” Dickie said, tipping his hat.

“The pleasure’s all mine, sir,” Sunny replied. She was good at playing along.

I said “Hi” to Sage, and she said “Nice hair” to me. After that I didn’t know what to say, so I looked around. Sage and Katy went back to their previous conversation. They giggled and whispered to each other while Dickie and Sunny talked and Heinous threw in a few well-timed jokes.

My eyes drifted over the lamp-lit campus. It seemed like everyone, even the spotted mathletes, had found someone. I studied a few sophomore girls gathered by a concrete slab at the far end of the square. Sarah Parrot, Amber Lane, Jewel Sens, Brandy Morales — all of them were going out with someone. In their center, beside Mark Watson, the golden-crested senior thug, sat the Ice Queen. Mark was talking with some of his friends while Ellie was talking with the sophomore girls. The two of them together were a Hollywood picture of perfection.

I wondered what was wrong with me. Despite my recent rise in popularity, I still felt separated from everyone. It was as if I were staring through a window at all the real people talking and holding hands and laughing on the other side.

A water balloon smashed on the sidewalk near my leg.

“Blast!” Dickie said. “Looks like we might expect a bit of rain.”

“Quite,” I replied, straining for a British accent.

“Rather,” Heinous said.

Two figures popped up from behind some bushes at the edge of the square and launched more balloons at us. One exploded on Sunny. She laughed, ever a good sport.

I recognized our attackers from the way they grunted while giving each other a high five. The Steves, aka Steve Lacone and Steve Dennon — two jeekish sophomores from Boomer wing.

“For your honor!” Dickie said, filling his hand with a snowball-size glop of shaving cream. He launched it at the Steves, but it disintegrated in midair.

“For freedom!” Heinous cried. He ran over the hill, spraying people with shaving cream. The Steves had a whole crew from Boomer wing who chucked water balloons at him.

I joined the fray along with Cheese and a few other Dingo-wingers who came to our aid until we had an all-out battle involving buckets of water from the pond. T-shirts were drenched and hair frothed with shaving cream. The RC on duty halfheartedly tried to get us to settle down, but there was no rule against water and shaving cream fights. Someone even managed to land a glop of cream on the RC’s crotch, at which point he gave up and went inside.

Dickie and I chased Steve Lacone with a bucket full of pond water that we intended to dump on his head. As we rounded a corner, I slipped and skidded into a puddle. Mud splattered from my feet to my cheek. It wouldn’t have been bad, except two girls were standing right there.

One of the girls, with dark hair, silver eyebrow piercings, and a sly smile, stepped toward me while I sat there, dumb as a wet bunny in the lamplight. She wore a tight shirt cut low enough to reveal the black lines of Japanese characters tattooed on her chest, descending into her cleavage. I tried to keep myself from staring as she raised her hand and wiped a glop of mud off my shoulder. Then she touched my forehead with her muddy finger, dragging a line down the center of my nose.

“Cute,” she said, and walked away.

AS SOON AS I GOT BACK
to my dorm, I looked through past yearbooks. It turned out that the girl who’d touched me was Jessica Keen, an incredibly hot junior from Chicago. For days following the water fight, I had this nervous, giddy energy. Except nothing happened. I kept an eye out for Jessica, but she hung with an entirely different crowd. The only time I saw her was when I went to the cafeteria. She sat at a corner table with Rachel Chang and some Goth guys, and she never looked my way.

I began to worry that she might be losing interest in me, if she ever had been interested. Maybe I’d only blipped onto her radar for a moment and now I’d been forgotten. My stomach twisted at the thought that history might keep repeating itself and I’d forever be overlooked. Clearly, I had to do something. This new me couldn’t let Jessica Keen get away.

It was Dickie who came up with an idea. Originally, he pitched Operation Ultimate Freak to Heinous and me as a way to protest the dismal cafeteria food. “Chicks love rebels with a cause,” he said.

The tricky thing about the food service at ASMA was that at the beginning of the week it never seemed that bad. For instance, the pancakes that were served on Monday started off as a tasty breakfast treat. But on Wednesday the leftover pancakes reappeared for lunch as two pieces of bread with ham and cheese in between, forming round grilled sandwiches the menu dubbed “wagon wheels,” and then, with the help of processed cheese and refried beans (that had also been used earlier that week), the “pancake enchilada” was born.

Mealtime outbursts in response to the food service’s less edible choices were something of an ASMA tradition. In my short time there, I’d seen sword duels with stale churros, flying-tortilla battles, and chicken-patty hockey. All we planned was to take the classic notion of the food fight a step further.

“The oppressor always counts on the silence of the oppressed,” Dickie said, trying to psych us up for what we were about to do.

I nodded, going along with him. I knew his justifications were completely bogus, but I didn’t care. I didn’t need any encouragement. Jessica Keen was reason enough for me.

To anyone sitting in the cafeteria that day, Operation Ultimate Freak probably looked something like this:

Trays are clattering and people are chatting, milling about between the round tables. Matt Reis, head of the Juggling Club, is working furiously to keep five stale buns aloft. On the table next to him, engineering geeks are building a tower out of forks, knives, and apples. Seniors are talking among themselves, stressed about test scores and colleges. A few upperclassmen flirt with sophomore girls at the popular table, while Ellie Frost acts uninterested and whispers to a friend. Nearby, Jessica sits at her corner table with Rachel Chang and some Goth guy. Altogether, it’s the usual dinner scene.

Suddenly, a blond kid stands and throws his tray onto the floor. “That’s it!” he yells. “I won’t eat it anymore!”

People put down their silverware and stop tossing buns, wondering what this evening’s entertainment will be. Blond Kid shouts at the top of his lungs, “NO . . . MORE . . . BEANS!” He clenches a fork in his fist like a killer in a horror movie. “DEATH TO THE PANCAKE ENCHILADA!” he cries as he runs across the cafeteria.

But who is he after?

Someone stands at the far end of the cafeteria — that quiet, brooding sophomore with the purple-and-orange punk hair. His fearless gaze meets the charging blond kid’s. “You’ll eat it and you’ll like it,” says Punk Guy, sounding vaguely like Clint Eastwood daring a criminal to make his day.

Whispers spread that they’re roommates, which makes sense — bizarre explosions of rage among roommates are fairly common, yet Punk Guy seems composed. At the last second, he picks up a tray and, with a mighty baseball swing, smashes it against Blond Kid’s face. A resounding thud echoes through the cafeteria as tray meets flesh. (Actually, I smacked Dickie’s raised arm, but from where most people were sitting, they couldn’t see that.)

Blond Kid’s head snaps back, and he crumples to the ground. A hush falls over the cafeteria. He struggles to his feet and spits four bloody teeth onto a nearby table (white stones and a blood capsule). A girl yelps when one of the teeth lands in her corn.

All eyes are on Blond Kid. He wipes the blood off his face and strides toward his roommate. The fork has fallen from his hand, but he doesn’t need a weapon. A circle of onlookers forms around them. Blond Kid shouts, “No more beans!”

The crowd picks up the chant, thumping their trays against the tables. “NO . . . MORE . . . BEANS! NO . . . MORE . . . BEANS!” thunders throughout the cafeteria.

The two sophomores square off. No longer are they mere roommates fighting. The chant transforms them into symbolic heroes of the daily cafeteria struggle — to eat or not to eat. They come together and lock arms. With a mighty twist, Blond Kid rips off Punk Guy’s hand.

Punk Guy falls to his knees, gaping at the stump where his hand once was. Ragged tendons (spaghetti and sauce) drip from the wound while Blond Kid raises the severed hand in victory.

But wait — Punk Guy isn’t done. With his good hand, he pulls a knife from his inside pocket. Blood squirts as he jabs the blade into his gloating roommate’s back. Blond Kid gives a tremendous cry, then collapses, gurgling, to the floor. One-handed Punk Guy is not to be trifled with!

“Nooooo . . . !” yells someone from the far end of the cafeteria. Heads turn. That dark-haired obnoxious sophomore is standing on a cafeteria table. He pulls an old Western six-shooter from his pocket, aims it at Punk Guy, and fires.

Punk Guy stumbles back, grabbing his chest. Spots of blood darken his T-shirt. Obnoxious Guy fires four more shots. Punk Guy lurches with each one. At last he collapses, succumbing beside Jessica Keen’s chair.

The smell of caps permeates the room, and the rest is silence.

I kept my eyes closed and tried to still my breathing to keep from laughing. It was perfect. With each shot, I’d imagined the pain searing through me. The ketchup packets taped to my chest were warm and sticky. Nothing had ever made me feel so alive as playing dead.

A few kids clapped, and more joined in until the cafeteria literally shook with applause. I opened my eyes a crack. Crowds had gathered around Dickie and me, then Jessica gave me a hand up. I got to my feet, and she leaned so close I thought she might kiss me.

“Nice one,” she whispered, “for a soph.”

Hassert, the RC on duty, barged through the crowd, sending students to their seats. “Get over here,” he growled to Dickie and me. He already had Heinous by his shirt collar.

“See you later,” Jessica said.

Hassert clamped his meaty hand onto my shoulder. He led us out, ranting about how we’d crossed the line and were going to face severe disciplinary action.