Liar Read online

She steps away, leans against the wall again. As though standing is too hard, too much effort. She cries harder. “I want to know what happened to him. His parents won’t even let me see his body. How do I know he’s dead if they won’t let me see?”

  I can’t imagine her wanting to see a dead body. She won’t even cut up rats in biology. “Well, I heard he was shot,” I say, even though I haven’t heard any such thing. “That can’t look good.” I try to imagine. But I can only see the whole Zach. Smiling at me, laughing.

  “I saw my grandma dead,” Sarah says. “She was lying in a coffin, all bundled in white silky fabric. Her hands around this big bunch of white lilies. Open casket, they call it. All I could think of was how much she hated flowers. Cut ones, I mean. Always said they were pointless and a waste. ‘What are they gonna do?’ she’d ask. ‘Rot. That’s what. Best leave ’em growing.’ That’s what happens when you die—you rot.”

  Sarah doesn’t bother to wipe away her tears. “I can’t believe he’s dead. Everyone liked him. Who would kill him? Who would hate him that much? Do you know?”

  I don’t, but I want to know. I never saw Zach hurt anyone. Not on purpose. He preferred things to slide by, for everyone to be easy. He didn’t like to argue or fight or even mildly disagree. He’d shrug and say, “Sure. Whatever.” It wasn’t that he was a pushover. He mostly got things to bend his way, but without any obvious effort.

  His kisses were sure and easy, too. I put my hand to my mouth, remembering what he tasted like.

  “You were with him,” Sarah says, staring at my mouth. “Weren’t you?”

  AFTER

  The day I find out Zach is dead is the longest day of my life. School has always sucked. Now it’s hell.

  Everyone is staring at me. Not just Sarah, not just everyone from the counseling session, but every student in the entire school, even the freshmen, the teachers, the administrative staff, the janitors.

  It’s much worse than when they found out I wasn’t really a boy.

  Zach is dead.

  I cannot make sense of that. How can he be dead? I saw him Friday night. We climbed a tree in Central Park. We kissed. We ran. Principal Paul must have it wrong.

  I wish everyone would stop looking at me. They think they know something about me and Zach, that we were—whatever it is that we were—that somehow they have something on me.

  They don’t.

  I keep my head down. Try to block my ears to the “slut” coughs. Try to focus on my remaining classes. Distract myself studying in the library. Try not to think about Zach. Try not to think about anything other than my studies.

  Brandon mouths a word at me as the final bell rings.

  Killer.

  At least I think that’s what it is.

  I push my way out of class, down the corridor, down the front steps, quick as I can with backpack slung over shoulder, hands gripping the straps tight, away from school, from people I know. When I turn the corner onto West Broadway I take off.

  I run all the way to Central Park and once I get there I run harder and faster, lifting knees high, pumping arms hard. I run distance at a sprint. I pass even the fastest joggers. No one is as fast and fevered as me. I’m going to run all the poison and whispers and grief out of my veins.

  I don’t go home until I’m run into the ground and taking another step would kill me.

  FAMILY HISTORY

  You probably think I’m weird with the mask and the sort-of-but-not-really boyfriend who’s dead and all the lies.

  Past lies, I mean. I haven’t lied to you and I won’t. Saying that Zach was my boyfriend when he was mostly Sarah’s is not a lie. He was mine. Like Brandon said—after hours.

  You want to know why I used to lie?

  Let me tell you about my family:

  My parents are still together. Living in the same house. When they aren’t arguing, they’re doting. I can never decide which is worse.

  My dad’s name is Isaiah Wilkins. He’s black like me. My mom is Maude Bourgault, or was, she’s Maude Wilkins now. She’s white. Though Dad doesn’t believe it. Dad can see the black in anyone even when it isn’t there. He tells the world the way he wishes, not the way it is. Dad says Mom’s hair is near as nappy as his own and doubts that her full lips came from anywhere white. Mom laughs. How would she know? She’s adopted and hated her family. She ran away.

  I’ve never met my mother’s family. Just Dad’s.

  Dad’s dad was black, but his mom is white. Grandmother’s our whole family. She and Great-Aunt Dorothy, and, when he was alive, Great-Uncle Hilliard. The oldest ones left are Grandmother and Great-Aunt. I call them the Greats.

  To say the Wilkins are reclusive would be to understate it. They take keeping to your own a long way past crazy. They stay on their farm. All two hundred acres of it. They are self-sufficient. They don’t understand why everyone doesn’t do the same thing. Grandmother has never been down to the city.

  The Wilkins came to New York State more than a century ago: all the way from Poland or Russia or the Ukraine. One of those. They’re from the Carpathian Mountains. Where they lived for generations, going into town as seldom as possible, living far from other families. Mountain people: long-lived, rail-thin, cranky, and taciturn.

  They brought that mountain chill all the way to America, to upstate New York, where they live and breed, getting older and crankier and skinnier.

  That’s my family. All of them much weirder than me.

  BEFORE

  At the end of the second day of my freshman year, Sarah Washington found me out.

  Nothing dramatic. I didn’t slip up and go into the girls’ room.

  I laughed. Sarah heard me.

  “You’re not a boy,” she said.

  We were in the hall. Brandon Duncan slipped—I am not making this up—on a banana peel. I laughed. Lots of people laughed. But Sarah was walking past me. She heard me laugh, she turned.

  “You’re not a boy,” she said again.

  “Huh?” I repeated, continuing toward the exit.

  “Boys don’t laugh like that,” she said, walking beside me, her voice rising.

  “He what?” Tayshawn said, sliding across to join us, standing in front of me, blocking my escape. “We played hoops yesterday. He—” He was staring at me now, moving in close. I was forced toward the wall. “She?—shoots like a boy. You are a girl, aren’t you? Look at her cheeks. No fluff.”

  “I’m only fourteen,” I squeaked, my voice betraying me.

  Now Lucy O’Hara was staring. Will Daniels, too. And Zach. All of them crowded around me.

  “You’re a girl,” Sarah said. “Admit it.”

  “I’m a boy,” I declared, wanting to push through them, to run.

  “Let’s pull off her clothes,” Will said, laughing. “Know for sure that way.”

  I hugged my schoolbag to my chest.

  “Girl!” Tayshawn shouted. “Boy would’ve guarded his nuts. Hah! You fooled us good, Micah.” He nudged Will. “A girl beat you, man. A girl!”

  Will looked down, saying nothing, and kicked his shoes into the floor.

  I fought an urge to cry. I’d loved playing hoops with them. Tayshawn and Zach were so good. Especially Zach. When you play with the boys and they know you’re a girl they either won’t pass to you or treat you as if you’re too fragile to breathe or they’ll try to beat you down. Whatever way it goes it sucks. Playing as a guy had been so great. They’d passed to me, guarded me, blocked my shots, bodychecked me so hard my teeth rattled. But now Will wouldn’t look at me. Zach had already gone.

  “Freak,” Lucy said, walking away. Sarah stared at me a second longer before walking after her.

  Then there was me, alone, leaning against the wall, bag still clutched tight, as more and more students flooded by. I waited till they were all gone. Looking back, I saw the banana peel, trampled, broken into bits, but still identifiably a banana peel.

  AFTER

  I come into the apartment fast as I can, zooming through
the kitchen without glancing at Dad, who says hi, looking up at me from his work on the kitchen table.

  I lock myself in my room. Collapse on the bed. My eyes are sharp and burning. Without tears.

  Slut.

  Killer.

  Zach is dead.

  Through the wall I can hear the thud thud thud of the stupid girl next door’s music. There’s five of them in there. College students, but the loud-music one never seems to go to classes. Never seems to do anything but stay in the apartment and deafen us.

  I wish she was dead and Zach was alive.

  I hate music. It hurts my ears, my brain. Even the membranes in my nose. Any music. All music. I can’t distinguish between hip-hop and hillbilly ramblings, between symphonies and traffic noise. All of it hurts.

  The best thing about going up to the Greats is that there is no music there. No noises to make me grind my teeth. Only wind through trees. Foxes burrowing. Deer running. Ice cracking. Mockingbirds singing their never-repeated three-note sequences, each note clear as rainwater. Wood thrushes trilling.

  Beautiful sounds.

  Zach loved music. He couldn’t understand my hate.

  Zach is dead.

  I wish I had my dad’s noise-reduction headphones. He wears them on planes. I like to sneak them from his room, put them on, plugged into nothing, dulling the thud through the walls. If I could, I’d wear them all the time, but I can’t afford a set of my own. I’ll ask for my birthday or Christmas or something. Not that my parents have much money. The only reason Dad has the headphones is because he had to review them for a magazine and never gave them back.

  He gets many things that way.

  Someone knocks at the door. Dad probably. Mom’s coat wasn’t hanging by the door.

  “Micah,” Dad calls. “Micah! Are you alright?”

  I have no idea how to answer him.

  Zach is dead.

  AFTER

  The Greats are keener than ever for me to come up to the farm. Dad says they’re worried. They think I need fresh air. They want me to be able to run free. I’m wishing Mom and Dad didn’t know about Zach.

  Ever since Zach went missing the Greats have been calling. This, despite them not even having a phone. They have to ride all the way to the gas station and call from there. Grandmother hates phones. She says they make her ears itch.

  It used to be she would only talk to Dad and keep it as short as possible. Barking calls, Dad said. Now she only wants to talk to me.

  “Micah?” she says loudly. Then she starts telling me what I should do. Go upstate and spend time with my family. I don’t point out that I’m already with my family. Mom and Dad are right here.

  She says coming upstate, staying on the farm, running in the forest is the best cure for a broken heart.

  I tell her I don’t have a broken heart. It’s still beating, the blood still moves around my body; it only aches when I remember to breathe.

  Grandmother isn’t listening. “A broken heart can make you pine away,” she says. “Till there’s hardly anything left to bury.”

  I swallow. Zach will be buried. I can’t imagine him in a box, six feet under.

  “You’ll be much happier up here, Micah,” she said. “The forest is good for you.” I go into my room with the phone against my ear and shut the door.

  “I’ve got Central Park,” I say, holding the phone lightly, too tightly. I’m willing it to fly out of my hands. Central Park is where Zach and me truly met. It’s our place.

  “Too tame for you, my love.”

  I hate it when she calls me that. It doesn’t suit her tongue. My grandmother is not very loving. She orders, she doesn’t cajole. Besides, Zach was not at all tame. Neither is Central Park.

  “There’s so much more for you to learn up here. We miss you, Micah.”

  I didn’t say anything. I never miss them. I miss Zach.

  “I wish your uncle Hilliard was still with us. He’d talk sense into you.”

  The Hilliard I remember was taciturn and gruff. He didn’t spend time talking sense into anyone.

  “Your aunt wants to talk to you now,” she says. I listen to the phone going scratchy. Muffled voices. I put my nose to Zach’s sweater, breathe him in. His scent is fading.

  “Micah?” Great-Aunt Dorothy shouts at the phone. “That you?”

  “Yes.”

  “We want you to come up. Don’t have to stay. Just a week or two. Get away from all the trouble.”

  “I’m not in any trouble,” I say, kicking my desk. The metal clangs.

  “Well, I suppose not. But your father thinks you need time away. Death isn’t easy. Especially not when you’re young.”

  I sigh, making sure she can hear it. “Then why would it be any easier upstate?”

  Zach’s still dead no matter where I am.

  “You know it is, Micah. We’re closer to nature up here. Nature fixes everything.” Great-Aunt Dorothy always says that.

  Nature also breaks things into a million pieces. Storms destroy, winds erode, and everything rots.

  “I have school.”

  “You’re young—that’s not so important. Besides, we can help you study if that’s what you want.”

  I’m a senior! My whole future is being decided. How will two high school dropouts help me study? They’re crazy if they think I’m going to go live with them. How will they help me prepare for college? They call jeans “dungarees.” They don’t know anything.

  They talk as if I’m not going to college. They don’t think I’m smart enough.

  I know I am. My favorite teacher, Yayeko Shoji, says so.

  “You’re much happier up here, Micah.”

  They always say that, too. But it’s not true. They think I am made of country, with forest in my veins. But I’m a city girl: sewers, rats, subways—that’s what’s in my veins.

  SCHOOL HISTORY

  Our school is progressive. We call our teachers by their first names. No mister or missus or miz. They’re Indira and Yayeko and Lisa. The emphasis is on ideas and learning and encouraging the students to reach “their full potential.” Sports are not a big thing. There are teams, but no specialist coaches, just teachers taking it on ’cause they love basketball or football or softball.

  Not all our classes have normal names.

  We’re not channeled toward the SATs.

  But we do get into good colleges. Even if we don’t test well. They like our “depth and breadth.”

  And our integration.

  We’re independent thinkers. We volunteer. We don’t discriminate. We recycle and care and argue about politics.

  In class, anyway.

  Out of class it’s the same as any other school. Except with money. And toilets that work and heating that doesn’t shut off. We have all the textbooks we need. Computers, too. Bars on every window to keep the badness out.

  Real-life forensic scientists come in to talk to our biology class. Real-life writers come to talk to us in English.

  Our school looks after us.

  BEFORE

  The first and second week of my freshman year were bad. Really bad. After Sarah Washington and the banana peel, everyone knew who I was: the girl who pretended to be a boy.

  So much for being invisible.

  I was called into Principal Paul’s office and forced to explain.

  “My English teacher thought I was a boy,” I said. “I thought it would be funny to go along with it.”

  He said it most decidedly wasn’t. Then lectured me about the danger of lies and erosion of trust and blah, blah, blah. I tuned him out, promised to be good, and wrote an essay on Why Lying Is Bad.

  “So why’s your name Micah then?” Tayshawn asked me. He was the only one who agreed that me pretending to be a boy was funny. He even asked me to play ball with him again. Will was less happy. Zach ignored me. I didn’t go. Though I played H-O-R-S-E with Tayshawn a couple of times.

  “It’s a girl’s name, too,” I told him. “Just not as often.”
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br />   “It’s as if your parents knew you was going to look like a boy.”

  “Well.” I paused, feeling the rush I always get when I begin to spin out a lie. “You can’t tell anyone, okay?”

  Tayshawn nodded, bracing himself.

  “When I was born they didn’t know if I was a girl or a boy.”

  Tayshawn looked confused. “How’d you mean?”

  “They couldn’t tell what I was. I was born a hermaphrodite.”

  “A what?”

  “Half boy and half girl. You can look it up.”

  “No way.” His eyes glided down my body, looking for evidence.

  I nodded solemnly, figuring out how to play it. “I was a weird-looking baby.” (Which is true. I like to thread my lies with truth.) “My parents totally freaked.” (Also true.) “You won’t tell anyone, right? You promised.” In my experience those words are guaranteed to spread what you’ve said far and wide. I liked the idea of being a hermaphrodite.

  “Not anyone. You’re safe.”

  Tayshawn never told a soul. I know because days later there still wasn’t a whisper about it. Turned out that he’s good that way. Trustworthy.

  I figure the rumor finally spread all over school because I told Lucy when she was hassling me in the locker room. I went for the sympathy card: “You keep calling me a freak. Well, guess what? I am!”

  She looked more grossed out than sympathetic.

  Or it could have been Brandon Duncan, who overheard me telling Chantal, who wanted to know how I managed to fool everyone on account of she wants to be an actress and thought it would be useful to know. She had me show her how to walk like a boy. I taught her how to spit, too.

  Or maybe it was all three of them. Most likely. Hardly anyone’s as tight-lipped as Tayshawn.

  However it spread, it reached Principal Paul, who contacted my parents, who told him it wasn’t true, and there I was in his office again, explaining how I had no idea how the rumor got started and was hurt and upset that anyone would say anything so mean about me. “I’m a girl. Why would I want anyone to think I was some kind of a freak?”

  Because I wanted them to pay attention to me.

  Something like that.