The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett(34)

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

“About what?” He finally looked at me.

“Anything. Everything. What the past month has been like. Have you had anyone to talk to?”

“Oh, I’ve talked to the police and reporters and Lizzie’s mom.”

“That’s not what I mean. Someone to talk to, you know, the way you would talk to Lizzie.”

The way he’d talked to me earlier, telling me the story about the hikers. Like I was a real person who he wanted to share something with. A friend.

Enzo shrugged. “Lizzie and I wouldn’t talk about this kind of stuff. She’s not really big on analyzing her feelings. Or listening to other people’s for that matter.”

It took me back to my conversation with Lizzie in the locker room, how good it made me feel that she acted like she cared. And how devastated I was when I realized she didn’t. Maybe she wasn’t concerned about feelings, but other people were. What happened when one of her cronies got dumped or didn’t get nominated for prom court and needed someone to pour out her heart to? Did Lizzie just shrug and tell her friend to deal with it?

“That’s really sad,” I said.

“Actually, it’s awesome. She doesn’t overthink anything or let anything bother her. She just lives.”

“It doesn’t sound awesome,” I blurted out. “It sounds like being in a relationship with a robot. How can you date someone you can’t talk to?”

“There’s more to relationships than talking,” Enzo said.

I assumed he meant sex, which made my face heat up, because clearly, he thought I was too much of a kid to know anything about that. Enzo must have read my mind, because he winced, which only made the whole thing a million times more awkward.

“No, I mean…we go out and do things, OK? Go to concerts, poetry readings, whatever. We have experiences. We just don’t have to analyze every single one or talk about what it means to us.”

But weren’t those experiences meant to be analyzed? Weren’t you supposed to share how they made you feel?

“And you like that?” I asked.

Enzo didn’t answer right away. I wasn’t sure if he was figuring out what to say or deciding if I was worth saying it to. Or maybe he was following the Lizzie Lovett school of thought and wasn’t thinking anything at all.

“Sometimes, I feel like I’ll go crazy if I don’t find a way to turn off my thoughts,” Enzo said. “When I’m with Lizzie, I can do that.”

In my head, I said, “What thoughts? Tell me, no matter how weird or depressing they are or how much you want to forget them. Maybe they’re my thoughts too.”

Out loud, I casually said, “I guess I can understand that.”

Considering everything Enzo said about Lizzie, I was hesitant to ask more questions. Hesitant to make him think too much. But there was one more thing I had to know.

“Is she happy?” I asked. “Or was she, before she disappeared?”

“Yeah,” he said, sounding surprised, as if Lizzie’s happiness was a given. “She’s always smiling. Always makes the best of a situation. Like, her car could break down, and she’d just say she finally had a reason to buy a bike.”

“What about you? Are you happy?”

Enzo took a long drag of his cigarette. He watched the smoke drift up to the sky. “I’m a different kind of person.”

I figured I was too.

Maybe that was OK.

As we hiked back to my car, I tried to reconcile the Lizzie I knew with Saint Lizzie, who Enzo had apparently been dating. I couldn’t do it. Was it really possible for someone to change so much in just a few years? Or maybe she hadn’t changed. Maybe I’d read Lizzie wrong from the start.

There was so much to puzzle over, I didn’t even mind that our first werewolf investigation had been unsuccessful.





Chapter 15


Special

I knew what would happen if I ventured into my backyard. But I went out anyway, which made me think maybe, probably, part of me wanted it to happen, which was totally weird.

I hadn’t even been on the back patio for a full minute when Sundog saw me and broke into a grin. There was something childlike about his smile, which was startling to see on such an old face. Getting a genuine smile from an adult was about as rare as seeing multiple suns in the sky.

“Hawthorn,” he said, crossing the yard to meet me. “Join us.”

He put his arm around my shoulders and guided me into his little backyard tent city. He smelled like sweat and campfire and incense. It wasn’t exactly a good smell but not as bad as his unwashed hair and clothes suggested.

“I’ve been hoping you’d spend some time out here.”

“Why?”

“I’d like to know you. Your mom was about your age when we first met. Seeing you is like going back in time.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not, so I didn’t say anything.

Sundog led me to the middle of the yard, which the hippies had turned into their gathering place. They’d set up a fire pit and ringed it with blankets and beat-up lawn chairs. It was where they had their prayer circles every day at dawn and dusk.

One of the men, Journey, I think, was meditating near the smoldering remains of the fire. He was in the lotus position, eyes shut, face turned up to the sky. I briefly wondered if my and Sundog’s intrusion would disturb him but decided probably not. He was only a few feet from us in body, but his mind was on another planet.