Liar. Part 8

"I was cold. He loaned it to me." I wasn't cold. My head was in his lap. He was stroking the tiny curls on my scalp. All I could smell was him. I said I liked his sweater. He took it off, gave it to me. It stank of him. Zach reek. I love that sweater.

"I'm not stupid," Sarah says, and I don't laugh. "You think you're so good at hiding things but I can read you. I know you were together. You can't keep the way you think about him off your face. I know you loved him. You did, didn't you?"

I shrug. Sarah starts to cry again. Quietly, but it doesn't matter. Everyone is staring. They can see. I wish I could cry.

"Why are you so cynical?" It's not an angry question. I think she really wants to know.

"Trying to be like my dad," I tell her, which isn't even close to true. But she's seen my arms-dealing daddy so she probably believes he's all tough and cynical and worldly-wise. Dad isn't cynical at all. Not really. He's chock-full of hope and optimism.

I suspect my cynicism comes from pretending to be what I'm not; covering myself in lies makes me cynical. I know I'm not trustworthy. How likely is it that the world is true if I'm not?

But my dad lies as much as I do and he's not cynical.

"Do you think he loved you?" Sarah asks, wiping her eyes discreetly. I wonder who she thinks she's fooling.

"Who? My dad?" I ask, even though I know exactly who she means. "Of course he does. He's my dad."

"No, Zach. Do you think Zach loved you?"

I have a strong urge to punch Sarah in the face.

She said his name.

Instead, I turn to my cold BLT, peeling away the damp bread, pus.h.i.+ng the wilted lettuce aside. The bacon is burned. I have to chew hard to get it small enough to swallow.

"As much as he loved any of his running partners, I suppose," I say at last, hoping that I never have to speak to Sarah again. But June is so far away.

FAMILY HISTORY.

The family illness isn't just acne and excessive blood. There's more to it than that-yet another reason I take the pill every single day of my life.

Remember the fur I was born with? The light coat of hair all over my body?

It came back.

Along with the usual p.u.b.erty horror, I got hair in all the wrong places.

No, you don't understand. In the wrong places.

Like my face and back and stomach.

My face.

Yeah.

So the pill. It keeps the hair away, as well as my period, and acne, too.

Without it, I'm a freak.

Though, according to the kids at school, even with it my freakishness is not well disguised. But there's no pill for that.

I blame my family for contaminating me with their weirdness and their tainted hairy genes. The family illness, they call it. If I were from a different family-a normal family-I wouldn't have it.

To my grandmother's credit, she did try to dilute the family disease. Instead of marrying her cousin Hilliard, she left the farm to find a father for her baby. Grandmother was convinced that too much cousin-marrying was responsible for the family illness. She was going to have a child whose father was as unrelated to her as she could find.

Grandmother went to San Francisco and got pregnant by a black sailor. She said they spent a week together and that he loved to gamble. He was from Ma.r.s.eille, she said. His English wasn't very good. That was all she could remember. She was relieved that Dad hadn't inherited the gambling love.

Or the family illness.

That was left for me.

BEFORE.

One time I was walking along Broadway playing dodge the crowd. Which is me testing myself, moving as fast as I can, weaving through them all without accelerating into a run, and without touching anyone or having them touch me. Any time I make contact I have to go back to the beginning of the block.

It's a game.

I'm really good at it. When I play it I don't think about anything else. Not Zach, not anyone.

I only ever play it on crowded streets and avenues. Broadway works. But Fifth Avenue's okay as well. Times Square is the best.

This time it was Broadway. A Sunday.

I was weaving, concentrating on the muscles of my body, on the air around me. It was like those few inches of air above my skin were part of me, too. An extra layer. Antennas. Me, stretching into s.p.a.ce.

When I spread like that I can go for miles and miles untouched and clear.

I could feel everyone as they moved through air, feel them and their clothes and their bags, swinging arms, hands clutching cell phones, sodas, other hands, closed umbrellas for the rain that wouldn't come even though my nostrils p.r.i.c.kled with the smell of it.

Then there was someone looking at me as I slid past them. Looking straight at me. A stare more direct than my mother's. Like how the Greats stare.

I twitched and stopped and turned to look back at the person with the staring eyes.

Two people walked into me. They swore. I said sorry.

It was a white boy. Same age as me, I thought. Maybe younger. He was smaller than me, skinny.

He was standing and staring at me standing and staring.

Then he took off the way I would. And there was me, too befuddled to follow. How did he do that? How did he see me first?

AFTER.

I force myself to go to school.

I regret it almost immediately. The first words I hear as I walk up the front steps: "I heard they were killed with an axe."

The school is floating on rumors about what happened to Zach and Erin Moncaster. He's dead, so she must be, too.

An axe murderer did it.

A serial killer.

Her father's religious. He caught Erin and Zach together. If Zach went with that Micah girl he'd go with anyone.

Her boyfriend did it.

This, despite Zach and Erin not knowing each other. Despite no one knowing if she has a boyfriend. Or a religious father.

They were both locked in a bas.e.m.e.nt. The serial killer tortured them and then dumped the bodies in Times Square. Or was it Rockefeller Center? Only Erin hasn't been found yet. And no one at school knows where Zach's body was found.

Maybe she's still in the bas.e.m.e.nt. So are Zach's ears. The killer kept souvenirs.

The worst rumors are the ones about me. Some are saying that I killed him. That I killed them both. Everyone talks about me. Even the teachers. They stare. Some are not talking to me. Cutting past me on line. Averting their eyes, whispering: We know she's a liar. A s.l.u.t. Killing's what comes next.

Liar. s.l.u.t. b.i.t.c.h. Murderer.

Always whispering.

It doesn't matter that there are also whispers about Brandon. (Though not nearly so many.) And Sarah and Tayshawn. Were they sleeping together? Did Zach find out and Tayshawn accidentally kill him? But that doesn't explain Erin. Maybe Brandon killed her? A copycat killing and now he's waiting till he gets someone alone to do it again.

Doesn't matter that none of this stuff is true. The less we know, the more ferocious the talk gets.

All we have is a dead boy, a missing girl, and rumors.

How can they say those things about Sarah and Tayshawn? They're the most popular kids in school. Yet now, while they grieve, they have to deal with these stupid rumors?

The school is nastily off-kilter. Everyone's gone nuts.

Teachers stutter-step their way through their lesson plans. Students keep drifting back to talk of Zach, of Erin. (Of me. Of Tayshawn. Of Sarah. Of Brandon.) They try to talk about school, games, TV, their boyfriend/girlfriend, regular gossip. But they can't stay there. Zach. Erin. They have to talk about it, speculate, imagine, scare themselves so bad that no one's walking or riding the subway home alone anymore. Despite the crazy traffic some parents are sending their children to and from school in cars.

All of them worry about who'll be next. I'm hoping Brandon. But right now they can all go to h.e.l.l as far as I'm concerned. Especially the ones calling me Liar. s.l.u.t. b.i.t.c.h. Killer.

I can't imagine this ever ending.

I will always be at school. Skin tight, head high, acting like I don't care. Avoiding everyone. Avoiding everything. Only when I'm running in the park does my head stop throbbing.

It will be like this for the rest of the year. I bet they'll still be talking next year, too, when there'll be a new set of seniors and we'll all be off to wherever it is we go next.

I'm hoping h.e.l.l for most of them.

I'm not sure where I'm going. I've filled out applications, sent them off, but I'm not optimistic. CUNY is my best chance. Though I'm not sure we can afford even that. Part of me would be happy to wind up somewhere no one's heard of Zach or what happened to him. Somewhere far from the city.

Wherever I go, I doubt I'll be with anyone from here. Sarah will be at some Ivy League school: Harvard or Yale or Princeton. Or at the very least, Va.s.sar. Tayshawn will be at MIT. Brandon will be in jail. I'll never see any of them again.

I'm glad.

I think.

I don't want to talk about Zach. But how will it feel not to be able to?

I try to imagine myself at college. I fail. I want to keep studying biology but I'm not sure why. If all else fails then I guess I can work up on the farm.

A fine way to spend the rest of my life.

AFTER.

At the second group counseling session Jill w.a.n.g asks us to tell her what we think about Zach.

"Are we going to talk about Erin, too?" Kayla asks.

Everyone starts talking at once. I close my eyes and wish I could shut my ears.

"Why would we talk about Erin?" Brandon shouts over the top of everyone else. "She's a freshman. Do you even know who she is?" I dislike agreeing with Brandon, but he's right. Looking around the room, I can see others agree.

"As a matter of fact, yes, I do," Kayla yells back. "Her sister and me have been friends for years. I've known Erin since she was a baby."

"Well, I haven't," Brandon says.

"Just because you-"

"Erin's disappearance," Jill w.a.n.g interrupts, raising her voice, letting us know that she's the boss, "is disturbing. We most definitely can talk about it-"

"Yeah, like, who's next?"

"You really think that?" Tayshawn says. "She could have run away. I heard she was fighting with her mom and dad a lot. Maybe it's got nothing to do with Zach."

"Erin's a good girl," Kayla says.

"Sure," Tayshawn says. "I'm just saying it doesn't seem like the two things are connected. He's Hispanic, she's white. He's a senior, she's a freshman. He was on a scholars.h.i.+p, she's from money. They don't even live in the same part of the city." Tayshawn talks as if he didn't know Zach, as if they weren't best friends.

"He was Hispanic," Brandon says. "He was a senior."

"We know he's dead," Sarah says. "You don't have to go on about it."

"Isn't that what we're here for?" Brandon asks, sneering. "To go on about it?"

Jill w.a.n.g holds her hands up, palms out, rea.s.suring us, but all I can see are the calluses where her fingers join her palm. I wonder how she got them. "We are here," she says loudly and clearly, "to try to cope with what happened. A senior, Zachary Rubin, who you all knew and many of you cared about, is dead. We all have a lot to say and a lot we don't know how to say. That's why I'd like us to do this exercise. What did you think of Zach? What did he mean to you? Sarah?" she asks, lowering her voice. "Do you want to go first?"

"No," Sarah says. "Yes." She pauses to look anywhere but at our faces. "He was gentle," she says, and Brandon snickers so loud it ricochets around the room.

"That's enough, Brandon," Jill w.a.n.g says. She's giving Brandon her evil eye.

"I meant," Sarah says, "that he's-he was-a gentle person. Kind. He never said anything mean about anyone."

That's true, too. He was both kinds of gentle.

"Thank you, Sarah. Brandon, since you're so eager to speak, what did you think of Zachary Rubin?"