Liar. Part 20

It never gets any better.

Yet that's not the worst danger of being a liar. Oh no. Much worse than discovery, than their sense of betrayal, is when you start to believe your own lies.

When it all blurs together.

You lose track of what's real and what's not. You start to feel as if you make the world with your words. Your lies get stranger and weirder and denser, get bigger than words, turn into worlds, become real.

You feel powerful, invincible.

"Oh sure," you say, completely believing it. "My family's an old family. Going way way way back. We work curse magic. Me, I can make your hand wither on your arm. I could turn you into a cat."

Once you start believing, you stop being compulsive and morph into pathological.

It happens a lot after something terrible has happened. The brain cracks, can't accept the truth, and makes its own. Invents a bigger and better world that explains the bad thing, makes it possible to keep living. When the world you're seeing doesn't line up with the world that is-you can wind up doing things-terrible things-without knowing it.

Not good.

Because that's when they lock you up and there's no coming back because you're already locked up: inside your own head. Where you're tall and strong and fast and magic and the ruler of all you survey.

I have never gone that far.

But there are moments. Tiny ones when I'm not entirely clear whether it happened or I made it up. Those moments scare me much more than getting caught. I've been caught. I know what that's like. I've never gone crazy. I don't want to know what that's like.

Weaving lies is one thing; having them weave you is another.

That's why I'm writing this. To keep me from going over the edge. I don't want to be a liar anymore. I want to tell my stories true.

But I haven't so far. Not entirely. I've tried. I've really, really tried. I've tried harder than I ever have. But, well, there's so much and it's so hard.

I slipped a little. Just a little.

I'll make it up to you, though.

From now on it's nothing but the truth.

Truly.

LIE NUMBER ONE.

Yayeko Shoji, my biology teacher, did not describe the decomposition of Zach's body.

I made that up.

Yayeko did not tell us about the pooling of Zach's blood, his calcium ions' leak, his rigor mortis, the breakdown of his cells. She did not tell us about bacteria, flies, eggs, or maggots.

I told you what I wished she'd told us. Because I wanted to know. Because I wanted to understand. How Zach could go from living, breathing . . . from how he was to . . . bacteria, flies, eggs, maggots.

Everyone lied.

They talked about him being gone but not what that meant. I heard Princ.i.p.al Paul say that Zach had "pa.s.sed on." He didn't "pa.s.s on." Zach died. Like we all will. Only he went sooner and more violent, with blood pooling inside and outside his body.

So I read about death and decomposition and I try to understand.

But I don't.

The first thing that happens after death is that blood and oxygen stop flowing through the body.

The body falls apart. Slowly.

In the end all that's left is the beating of my heart, the in and out of my breath. Sarah's. Tayshawn's. The rest of us who are left behind.

We still tick. We still tock.

It hurts.

AFTER.

On the day of Zach's funeral I leave Tayshawn and Sarah, I walk south to the park, Central Park, to the place where Zach and I first kissed.

I'm not sure what I think this will achieve. It's more like a compulsion. I want to pay tribute to him. The park seems a better place for that than a church crowded with people who mostly didn't know him. Not the way I did.

A better place than in Sarah and Tayshawn's arms.

I haven't been there since. I've run along the path but I haven't stopped. Haven't stood there under the bridge and thought about that day. That first kiss.

There are no icicles hanging from the bridge now.

It doesn't look the same. There's still green. Leaves, not snow, underfoot. The air isn't sharp to breathe.

Nothing's the same.

I can't think about that.

I slip my mom's shoes off and, holding them in my right hand, I run home, the wide skirt of Mom's dress ballooning and twisting around me. I'm too tired, too jangled, too enc.u.mbered by the dress to play the dodging game. My head is full of thoughts of Zach. And of Sarah and Tayshawn, of the feel of their mouths against mine. It makes my longing for Zach burn in my chest. Breathing starts to hurt. My eyes burn.

Running past Twelfth Street on Third Avenue I smell something rank, then I hear feet pounding lightly behind me. I tense but don't turn. Then the white boy who's like me is running beside me. He smiles. His teeth are more yellowy green than white. He doesn't look very old, yet his skin is lined. Not as old as me even. He must spend a lot of time outside.

I run faster but I'm fighting the dress.

He keeps pace.

This is the fourth time I've seen him. Once on Broadway when I played the dodging game. Once in the park when I ran with Zach. Once on the last day I ever saw Zach.

I can hear his breathing. It's as even as my own.

The white boy dodges the crowd as well as I can. With me in this dress, he's better.

He's fast but his technique is terrible: arms flapping like wings, shoulders too high, no lift in his knees, he thumps down hard on his heels. I wonder if my technique was that bad before Zach taught me. I hope not.

This close he smells worse. He's so filthy I wonder if he's ever washed. I breathe shallow and wrinkle my nose. There's something familiar in his stink. I know it.

"You're a wolf," I say as we run past St. Mark's.

He reeks of it.

But how can that be?

The Greats say our kind mostly avoid cities. Except for boy wolves who don't want to change. Is that what he is? Then why follow me?

He stops in his tracks. I stop, too. But too slow. When I've turned around he's already off again, half a block away. I sprint hard to catch him. Watching his ungainly form weaving along the sidewalk, avoiding other people, elbows sticking out. I should be able to catch him but the half-block lead is opening up to a full block. I am tempted to tear Mom's dress, but she'd kill me. I press harder, das.h.i.+ng across Eleventh, narrowly avoiding being hit by a taxi, who hits his horn and screams abuse.

The boy is even farther ahead, dodging the traffic on Fourteenth.

I pull up short of Union Square. Tonight I don't have the reserves to catch him. They were drained away by the funeral, by Sarah and Tayshawn, by Zach. I'm spent.

I am unnerved. I head home. It's a necessity. As I regain my breath, I find myself wis.h.i.+ng the Greats didn't live so far away. I have a hundred questions. If the white boy is what I think he is, if he did what I think he did, then I need their knowledge, I need them to tell me what to do.

Right now I'm wondering what it would be like to tear open his abdomen, watch the innards fall out.

I wonder what I should tell my parents.

As I pull out my keys and unlock the door to our apartment building I turn. Across the street in front of the supermarket the boy watches me.

LIE NUMBER TWO.

I kissed Sarah first.

In the cave, after the funeral, when me and Sarah and Tayshawn were entwined, it was me who started it, not them.

I don't know why I lied. Does it matter who kissed who first? All three of us kissed. No one pulled away. There was no hesitation.

I guess I wanted it to be that way. For them to start it, not me. As we sat there talking, I could feel my lips getting warmer, along with my skin-the cave, too-the air between us. I knew it wasn't only me. Their mouths were glistening, redder than usual. Their eyes clear. They were as much in heat as I was.

Sarah wanted to kiss me. I'm sure of that. Tayshawn, too. Otherwise why would they have responded? They needed me to set their heat free.

But it does matter. Me making the first move? They'll always be thinking I'm easy.

By kissing them first I confirmed the thousand s.l.u.t calls as I walk by.

When I leaned toward Sarah, she was already leaning toward me.

I should have waited.

AFTER.

Dad is waiting, sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop.

"Hi, Micah," he says, looking up, smiling at me. He's showing his concern, that he knows what day it is, and he cares. There's no reason for me to be annoyed. I am annoyed anyway.

"Hi, Dad," I say, hoping that I can get this over with and be in my room quickly.

"How'd it go?"

I shrug. How does he think the funeral went? Well, probably not how it actually went. I am not going to tell him about walking out, about Sarah and Tayshawn. Nor about the white boy following me home. I'm not going to tell him anything that matters.

"It was weird," I say, because he needs to hear something. "I mean, the funeral was weird. All these people I never saw before and the preacher said stuff that was all wrong. Not like Zach at all. It was like no one had even met him, let alone knew him well. They were all talking about imaginary Zach."

"Funerals are always that way," Dad says, closing his laptop to show that I have his full attention. "Everyone talks about an idealized version of the dearly departed. All their warts are removed and they become someone they're not . . ."

I lean against the fridge, knocking off a magnet and causing one of Jordan's vomits on paper to fall to the floor. I ignore it. "The party after was worse. I only knew his friends from school and none of them like me. And they were all drinking-"

"You didn't-" Dad begins.

"No, Dad. Of course not." I'm not allowed to drink because they're afraid I'll turn wolfish even though the Greats say that's horses.h.i.+t. Well, mostly horses.h.i.+t. Great-Aunt Dorothy remembered that it had happened once with her grandfather, but only once, and she doesn't remember it happening to any other wolf. "I've still never had a sip of alcohol. Even if I wanted to try it, I wouldn't surrounded by those creeps. They think I'm a freak. Which is true, just not the way they think I am. I can't wait till school's done," I finish, hoping I've said enough for Dad to feel as if we've had a talk and he's done his fatherly duty. I'm pretty sure that's how it would have been if I had gone to Will's place.

"I'm sorry," Dad says. "You okay?"

I nod. Even though I'm not. I wonder what he'd say if I told him about the white boy. About what I suspect.

"Your mom wants to talk to you."

"She in bed?" I ask, even though it's obvious. It's not as if there's anywhere else she could be.

"Uh-huh," Dad says, reaching out to pat my shoulder. I don't brush his hand off though I want to. "You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah," I say. "Tired." Confused, guilty, sad, angry, worried, mourning. I am many things. I want to know who that boy is, why he's following me, what he wants. I want to know if he killed Zach. I want to know why.

I want Zach to be alive.

I knock on the door to Mom and Dad's room. "Mom?" I call, not bothering to be quiet for Jordan asleep a thin wall away.

"Come in," Mom says.

I open the door. Mom's in bed, wearing her frilly pajamas that make us both giggle. She pats the bed. I sit. She pulls me into a hug and kisses the top of my head. My throat hurts so much it closes over. For a moment I can't breathe, tears stream out of my eyes. I can't seem to stop. I cry and cry and cry.

"There, there, cherie," she says, stroking my hair. "There, there, my love."

BEFORE.

Me and Zach, we raced each other a lot after that first time in Central Park. The result was never in question. He was fast, I was faster. I knew that. He knew that.

But it was Zach who taught me how to run right.

Running beside him, matching stride for stride, hearing his breath, smelling it. Duplicating it. Teaching myself to run as he did. No one ever taught me, you see. I had no technique. Learning from Zach made me even faster, copying all the things Zach learned from his coach: landing light on my heels, knees higher, longer stride. Fists pumping, elbows in tight by my side.

I even tried to get my heart to beat at the same pace as his.

I could hear his beating when I slept, taste his breath. It was as if he had crawled into my skin. Under it, always there.