The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett(10)

I tossed the paper on the table and wondered about the wolf pendant.

“You already read it?” I asked Rush.

“Online.”

“Then you saw the picture.”

“She looks different, huh?”

“What happened to her after high school?” I asked.

“Don’t know. I haven’t seen her since the graduation parties. I don’t think anyone’s seen her.”

“She moved to Layton, not Africa. Certainly, someone has hung out with her.”

“If they have, they didn’t tell me.”

Maybe that’s how it was after high school. Maybe you just left and became someone new. That gave me hope for the future.

I stood up. “Wanna get a breakfast burrito with me before mom tries to feed us soy sausage?”

Rush hesitated, and I had time to imagine that he’d say yes, and we’d leave the house to get drive-through and sit eating greasy burritos in the parking lot, talking and laughing like we used to when he was just Rushford Creely, my big brother, before all the distance in the social hierarchy came between us.

But that didn’t happen, because it was real life, not some feel-good movie. What actually happened was Rush said he wasn’t really hungry, maybe some other time. It wasn’t a big deal. A burrito tastes good even if you’re eating it alone.

? ? ?

The second day of the disappearance, I was prepared for the drama at school, so I wasn’t surprised when I heard Lizzie Lovett’s name roughly ten times before the first bell rang. Everyone seemed to have their own opinion of what had happened to her.

I think she ran away to start a new life somewhere. Like, one day we’ll be watching a movie, and she’ll be the lead actress, only her name won’t be Lizzie Lovett anymore, and she’ll never talk about her past.

I think her boyfriend killed her. Did you see the picture of him? Total creeper.

I heard she was working as a waitress at some dive in Layton. How pathetic. I’d run away too.

My cousin knows a detective working the case, and he said she might have gone into the woods to go the bathroom or something and got ripped to shreds by a wild animal.

I half listened but mostly didn’t care, because the people I go to school with pretty much have no imagination.

I was especially not surprised that Mychelle Adler and the nameless jock were talking about Lizzie in first period. While Mr. Bennett collected our homework, they droned on and on behind me.

“She looks totally different,” Mychelle whispered.

“Still hot,” the jock said.

“If you’re into that kind of thing, I guess. My sister’s boyfriend has a friend who ran into Lizzie at a concert, like, a year ago, and he said Lizzie was saying all this weird stuff about how people need to connect with nature and open their eyes to what’s really important, like she’s some kind of flower child now.”

I knew what was coming next, like it was scripted and we were performing in a play. Exactly on cue, the jock leaned over his desk and said, “Maybe Hawthorn can tell us more about that. Huh, Hawthorn? How’s Sparrow doing?”

Mychelle laughed as if it was the most hilarious thing anyone had ever said, which it clearly was not. I ignored them and hoped Mr. Bennett would hurry up and start class.

It’s not fair that kids get made fun of for the stupid choices their parents make. For example, changing their name from Meredith to Sparrow, which is even more embarrassing than being named Hawthorn. My mom said it’s the name her spirit mentor gave her when she was in college at Kent State, a school she chose because it was “important to the movement” after some hippie kids were shot there while protesting the Vietnam War. My mom is too young to have been a real hippie. She missed out on all the sit-ins and peace marches, which I’m pretty sure is something she’s always resented, even though she claims that resentment is a negative emotion, and she purges negativity from her life.

Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to have a normal mom. A mom who’d tell my friends to call her Mrs. Creely, not Sparrow. A mom who always wore a bra, had pictures of Jesus in the house instead of Buddha statues, and took real classes in college, not Intro to Basket Weaving and How to Ruin Your Child’s Life 101.

It also isn’t fair that Rush never got made fun of for having a hippie mom. That leads me to believe I’m not actually being taunted because my mom made a stupid choice, but because people are looking for any reason to mess with me. Which is much worse.

Mychelle didn’t know when to let a joke die. “Maybe Lizzie and Sparrow are, like, running around the woods naked and communicating with tree spirits at this very moment.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing that,” the jock said.

I wished Mychelle and her stupid jock buddy would win the lottery and lose the ticket. I wished they would only ever be able to take cold showers. I wished every glass of lemonade they drank for the rest of their lives would be just a little too sour.

Before my list of curses could get any longer, Mr. Bennett cleared his throat and started class. Mychelle and the jock leaned back in their seats and forgot about me. For once, I was happy to hear about equations.

? ? ?

Emily was waiting by my car after school, which was weird until I remembered we were supposed to go to the library together. I wasn’t in the mood. I wished I’d walked to school instead of driving. That’s what I got for wanting a burrito.