The Secret to Lying Read online

  “Right-o.” Heinous popped out of the imaginary shrubs. “Carry on!” he shouted. “Pushy the pumpkin!”

  Heinous and Dickie had known each other before ASMA. They both came from southern Illinois and had gone to school together, so they’d had years to polish their routines. In many ways, the two were polar opposites. Where Dickie was a pale-skinned smooth-talker, Heinous was a dark-complexioned, obnoxious spaz. I figured my place in the trio would be to play the quiet, brooding rebel.

  Heinous continued his wildlife expedition as we left the gym to see what else was going on. “The yellow-bellied nerdling,” he said, when we approached a group of skinny gamers in the hall. “Stay back!” he hissed, throwing out his arms. “There’s a peculiar odor to this species.”

  One of the gamers rolled some dice and shouted “Yes!” while pumping his fist.

  “That’s part of their mating dance,” Heinous whispered. “Perhaps, if we’re lucky, they’ll attempt to mount.”

  We wandered past the gamers to the art room, but a large number of “red-spotted mathletes” had gathered there for a Star Wars marathon. Then, in the photography room, Heinous spied a flock of “lesser poseur vampires,” a species with an affinity for black, known to play dead when frightened.

  In the cafeteria, we found a group of “Barbie wannabes” gossiping around a table. At one end sat the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. Students at ASMA weren’t exactly model material, but even at a normal school, she would have stood out. She looked like she’d stepped off a movie poster, with her waifish figure, wide smile, and blades of straight blond hair brushing her cheekbones.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  Dickie raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t you scan your facebook?”

  “No,” I said. “I skipped that assignment.”

  “Well, dear roomie, the supermodel is Ellie Frost.”

  “The Ice Queen,” Heinous added.

  “Definitely the Ice Queen,” Dickie agreed.

  Ellie glanced at us, then looked away. She didn’t seem to be talking with anyone at the table. It was more like the other girls had gathered around her, as though simply being near her might make them popular.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, forget it,” Dickie said. “It seems that the Ice Queen doesn’t date sophomores.”

  “Really?”

  “She’s already going out with Mark Watson.”

  “Ah, yes,” Heinous mused as we left the cafeteria, “one of the golden-crested senior thugs.”

  We made our way back to the auditorium. The main lights were off, but dim strings of orange lights ran along the bottom of each of the aisle steps. A few students huddled like refugees between seat rows, trying to sleep. A few others appeared to be faking sleep so they could make out, sheltered from the prying eyes of RCs policing the lock-in. I envied the couples, amazed by how quickly they’d hooked up. Except for one hurried lip-smooshing during a truth-or-dare game, I’d never even kissed a girl.

  Dickie wove through the scattered bodies in the auditorium, cutting a path to the front. The curtain was open, and three girls sat onstage in a semicircle, the dim light barely illuminating their faces. I recognized one of them as Sunny Burke. Dickie had talked with her the night before at the ice-cream social while I stood silently nearby.

  “The freckled puff,” Heinous said as Dickie strolled toward Sunny. Her hair was tied back in two cute pigtails. “Notice her fine plumage,” Heinous continued. “Watch as the male approaches, attempting to mount.”

  “The lonely wanker,” Dickie replied. “This chattering species can be recognized by his tendency to spank his monkey.”

  The girls stopped talking when we approached. All three of them were barefoot and in pajamas.

  “Ladies,” Dickie said in true lounge-singer form, “what lovely outfits.”

  “Why, thank you,” Sunny replied. “It’s flannel — all the rage in Paris this year.”

  Sunny introduced Sage Fisher, her roommate, and Katy Cameron. They scooted back so we could sit onstage with them. After introductions, Dickie and Heinous launched into a story about how they’d superglued everyone’s locker shut at the end of their freshman year. Sunny, who had the prettiest laugh you ever heard, found the story hilarious. The cinnamon dash of freckles on her nose crinkled when she smiled.

  Heinous’s roommate, Cheese, joined our circle, and pretty soon everyone was sharing stories of where they’d come from and what they’d done before ASMA.

  I sat back, listening, but not part of the group. Already things were starting to seem like they had at my old school. The guys tried to impress the girls, and the girls giggled nervously, egging them on, while I hovered around the outskirts, easily overlooked — the extra hired to form a crowd.

  “What about you?” Sage asked.

  It took a moment before I realized she meant me.

  “What?”

  “Do you miss home?”

  “No.” Everyone looked at me, expecting more of an answer. “Not much to miss. I grew up in a cornfield,” I said. Their attention started to drift, already bored by my lame story. Dickie would have cracked a joke by now.

  “That’s why I used to run away a lot,” I added. It wasn’t true, but it could have been.

  “You did?” Sage’s eyes widened.

  “Yup. I’d steal a car and drive all night trying to get to someplace interesting.”

  “You stole cars?”

  “Well, I didn’t really steal them,” I explained. “It was more like borrowing cars, because I usually returned them.”

  “Hold on,” Cheese said. “You can hot-wire a car?”

  “Nope.” I shrugged, like it was no big deal. “But if you look around on enough cars, you can usually find a spare key stashed somewhere.”

  “That’s true,” Dickie chimed in, saving me. “My parents tuck one inside the front bumper if you want to borrow the BMW.”

  “So where would you go?” Sage asked.

  “North, usually, to Wisconsin,” I said, surprised by how easily everyone seemed to believe me. “And once I tried to go to California, but after driving six hours, I ran out of gas money and had to hitchhike home.”

  “No shit?” Heinous asked.

  “No shit,” I replied. “There wasn’t anything to do in my hometown except fight, and I got sick of that.”

  Sage looked concerned. “You used to get in fights?”

  “Not angry fights,” I said, trying to brush it off, but everyone kept looking at me. All of them were listening now, so I had to keep going — building the story, making it real. “I was part of a full-contact martial arts league.”

  “Like ultimate fighting?” Sage asked.

  “A little. Except sometimes we used weapons.”

  “Dude, you’re so full of crap,” Heinous said. “Fight Club, my ass.”

  I pulled back my sleeve, exposing a thick, white scar on the inside of my forearm from an oven burn. “That’s how I got this.”

  “Bloody hell!” Dickie sounded impressed. “I’ll never take your Pop-Tarts.”

  Sage dragged her finger along the inside of my arm. “Did it hurt?”

  “I don’t fight anymore.” I pulled my sleeve down over the scar. “That was the old me. Now I’m starting over.”

  “Wow,” she said.

  Sage and Sunny kept pressing me for details. The more they listened, the more I lied, laying the groundwork for the new me. James Turner: Reckless fighter. Pyromaniac. Delinquent. Troubled runaway who’d stolen cars and lived on the streets of Madison. If they believed only half the things I said, it would be enough.

  Details poured out of me, sticking to the few lines of truth like snow on a branch. I may not have really run away, but I’d thought about it plenty of times, and I’d been to Madison. So why not rewrite the past? Truth was beauty, and beauty was truth.

  The geeks let me be whatever I imagined.

  THE SECRET TO LYING is this: believe yourself and others will believe you, too.

/>   Rumors about me spread, spilling beyond the sophomore class. I repeated some of the stories I’d told at the lock-in and made up a few new ones, but mostly I acted modest, like my car-stealing, street-fighting past wasn’t something I enjoyed talking about. Instead of bragging, I sounded like the sole survivor of a catastrophe, reluctantly giving an interview.

  When classes started, I played up my bad-boy image by sitting in the back and perfecting a look of unimpressed boredom. Most of the students at ASMA were so used to being the star pupil, raising their hands to answer every question, that being quiet made me seem rebellious.

  The one flaw in my plan was physics. Somehow, I’d scored well enough on the placement exams to be put in the advanced section. Only twelve sophomores were in Advanced Physics, so there was little chance of not participating. The class was populated by hard-core geeks like the Tanada twins (who were so freakishly smart that they’d both been recruited by the government to keep them from hacking into military systems), Jesus John (who wore his bathrobe to class and had hair down to his hips), Muppet (the floppy kid from Dingo wing), Angie Turkle (who announced on the first day that her goal in life was to be a “space surgeon”), Ninety (called such because he spoke at least ninety words a minute), Frank Wood (who actually parted his hair with a comb), and Cheese (the guy who roomed with Heinous, ate Cheetos constantly, and resembled a scruffy koala bear with thick glasses). There were a few other students I didn’t know anything about, and then there was Ellie Frost, the Ice Queen.

  At first, being in Advanced Physics with Ellie made me want to puke in my shoe. It went against every principle of fairness that she could be beautiful and smart to boot, but there she was, sitting at the front of the room, getting the answers right when Dr. Choi called on her. All class long, I’d steal glances at Ellie, and every time I saw her, my pulse would speed up and my head would spin. Then Dr. Choi would call on me, and I’d drop my pen or kick my desk while I stammered out an answer in a shaky voice because I couldn’t stop worrying about what Ellie thought of me.

  In order to function, I had to pretend that she wasn’t there. I started arriving early to class so I could take the back corner desk, farthest from where Ellie sat. She never looked at me when she entered, and I tried not to look at her. Luckily, Frank Wood, the guy with the perfect part in his hair, helped keep me distracted. “Hey, James!” he’d say, practically shouting my name when he saw me. “What’s going on?”

  Frank sounded like an announcer from the 1950s. He usually hung out at my desk before class. We weren’t exactly friends. It was more like he admired me. He’d been homeschooled, believed everything he heard, and seemed to think I was the most daring person he’d ever met. I tried not to disappoint.

  “Is it true?” he asked one day in his booming, all-American voice.

  I raised my head slightly, as if I had far more important things on my mind but I was willing to humor him. “Is what true?”

  “Did you really light a baseball diamond on fire?” Frank’s eyebrows arched.

  I glanced toward the front of the room. Fortunately, Dr. Choi hadn’t arrived yet. Only a couple other students, including the Ice Queen, were around. A lock of Ellie’s hair brushed the corner of her mouth as she pulled her books out of her backpack. She didn’t turn to look at me, but by the way her back stiffened, I suspected she was listening. “Who told you that?” I asked cryptically.

  “Some guys in my wing were talking about it,” Frank said. “Did it burn down?”

  “No. It was beautiful.”

  Frank gave a nervous chuckle. “Beautiful?”

  “Yeah.” I glanced at Ellie again. She opened a folder and tapped her pencil against her cheek, pretending to work.

  Frank kept asking me questions, so I told him about how my friend Dave McEwan and I spent weeks swiping gas and oil cans from open garages, until one night we mixed it all together and poured it over the baseball fence. Then I ran the bases while pouring gas from two five-gallon cans. Only, right as I rounded second, Dave tossed a match.

  “What happened?” Frank asked.

  Ellie stopped tapping her pencil against her cheek.

  “I kept running,” I said. “Dave shouted, ‘Drop the cans!’ but I didn’t — not until I touched home plate. Then I chucked the cans against the backstop and the whole thing exploded into this huge fireball that spread around the outfield. It burned so bright everyone in town must have seen it.”

  “Holy cow!” Frank said. “Did you get caught?”

  I shrugged. “Three cop cars and a fire truck came, but the fence was metal and the baseball diamond was sand, so there was nothing to put out. It was just beautiful.”

  At the end of class, Frank retold some of my story to Cheese. He sounded like a baseball fan recounting a great play. Even though he got some of the details wrong, I didn’t bother correcting him. I was too distracted by Ellie. She gathered her books and headed for the door. Before she left, her eyes flicked over me.

  The look she gave me sent a jolt up my spine. It wasn’t interest, or curiosity, or worry. Instead, it was something more intense, like anger.

  Who was I to be looking at the Ice Queen?

  DICKIE STARTED GOING OUT with Sunny, which meant she was always in our room. The two of them mauled each other constantly. I tried to be happy for them, but seeing them together made me feel more lonely.

  “I think I’ll dye my hair,” I said one day after busting in on them. The blankets on Dickie’s bed were all messed up, yet Sunny insisted that they’d only been doing their homework and I should stick around.

  “Purple,” I mused, figuring I needed to do something drastic. “Or bright green.”

  “Purple,” Sunny said. “Definitely purple.”

  “You think?” Dickie countered, studying me. “It wouldn’t be too . . . Barney?”

  Sunny shook her head. “No way. Dark purple would look hot on him.”

  “Hey, now.” Dickie pretended to be jealous.

  “Yup. You have to go purple,” Sunny decided.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll help you with it,” she offered. “It’ll be fun.”

  I couldn’t think of a way to back out without seeming chicken. “Okay. Dark purple it is,” I said. “But nothing Barneyish.”

  Sunny begged a ride off her RC the next day so we could go to the nearest drugstore and buy supplies. The closest color to dark purple on offer was “Tropical Burgundy.” I wanted to forget it then, but Sunny promised that no one would know the difference.

  We had to get a pass before Sunny could come with me to my room. She showed me how to bleach my hair to make the dye show better. Then she bleached some streaks into her own hair with the leftover paste. Instead of coming out blond, my hair turned bright orange. I left a few clumps that way while coloring the rest. Sunny experimented with using cherry Kool-Aid on a lock of her hair. The color wasn’t great, but it smelled delicious.

  “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 h
air 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.