The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett(46)

“So it’s all my fault then? Yeah, right. You’ve spent half your life making fun of me because I’m not as cool and popular as you.”

“Yeah, you’re such an outcast. No one understands you. All anyone does is sit around and think about what a loser you are. Grow up, Hawthorn. No one cares.”

As if to punctuate his point, Rush turned on the radio, which I pretty much took to mean the conversation was over.

My headache was getting worse by the minute.

When we got to the Barn, there was no sign there’d been a party there the night before. What happened to the beer bottles and Solo cups? Did someone come out early in the morning to clean all the trash? I thought about asking Rush, but a glance at his face convinced me it would be a bad idea.

“Thanks for the ride.”

Rush nodded but didn’t look at me.

“So…see you later,” I said.

“Yeah.”

He continued to stare straight ahead. I didn’t know what else to say, so I got out of his car and into my own.

? ? ?

I drove toward my house but couldn’t bear the thought of going inside. Not because I was avoiding Rush. He’d gone to coach one of his peewee games after dropping me off. And it wasn’t because I was afraid my parents would ask me questions about last night. If anything, they were probably happy I’d gone out and socialized. Besides, a few nights before, I’d caught my mom passing a joint with Sundog. If she was fine smoking pot in our backyard, she could hardly get on my case for underage drinking.

I didn’t want to go inside because the house was suffocating. I didn’t want to be in my room, alone with my thoughts. All the things I’d accumulated over the past seventeen years trapped me inside of my head, which was the last place I wanted to be. I didn’t want to think of what a fool I’d made of myself the night before or how everything Rush said in the car was probably true.

On a normal day, I would have gone to Emily’s. But it wasn’t a normal day. I couldn’t hang out with Emily and pretend our fight hadn’t happened. And Enzo was the last person I wanted to see because I still felt like he’d abandoned me. That pretty much summed up my list of friends. For a second, I thought maybe I could call Connor, and he’d hang out with me. But then I dismissed that too. He was my brother’s friend, not mine.

With nowhere to go and my head hurting too much to make aimless driving possible, I got out of my car and walked around the side of my house to the backyard. I could at least put off going inside for a while.

Sundog was sitting by his tent, smearing paint on a piece of construction paper with his bare hands.

“Young Hawthorn, how are you on this fine Sunday morning?”

“Hungover.”

I sat down next to him and watched him work. The colors on his palette were running together and turning brown. His canvas didn’t look much better. Sundog dipped his fingers in a glob of paint at the edge of his paper and used it to draw a long line.

“What’s it supposed to be?” I asked.

“It’s not what it is; it’s how the art makes you feel.”

“The painting makes me feel like the artist is confused.”

Sundog laughed and scratched the side of his face, leaving a bluish-gray blotch on his cheek. “Confusion is like curiosity—it reminds us we’re alive. To not feel confused means we no longer care. Not caring is death.”

He reached into the tent behind him, pulled out another large piece of paper, and set it down in front of me. “Try using the paint to express yourself.”

I shrugged and pressed my hand onto his palette, then pressed it on the center of my paper. When I pulled away, my handprint looked small, like a child had made it. It made me think of being a little kid and tracing my hand to make turkeys for Thanksgiving.

“What do you see?” Sundog asked.

“My handprint,” I said.

“And what do you feel?”

“Nothing. Not everything has meaning, you know.”

I got more paint on my hand and ran it across the paper, smearing the handprint and making it into nothing.

“Have you ever felt like you were wrong about everything you thought you knew?” I asked Sundog.

He added some paint to the white parts of my paper. “Growth comes from questioning our own hearts. But unrelenting self-doubt can lead you astray.”

I wasn’t sure that qualified as an answer. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Your perception of the world is your own. No one can take it from you. Don’t let fear overwhelm what you know to be real.”

I thought of Lizzie in the woods, howling at the full moon, learning how to be a werewolf.

“But what if I’m wrong about what I think is real?”

“If you believe it, then it can’t be wrong.”

“Thanks for the advice.” I pushed my piece of paper toward Sundog. “You finish it.”

On my way into the house, I passed Timothy Leary curled up in a patch of sunlight. I patted her on the head, forgetting the paint on my hand. She craned her neck toward me for more affection. She didn’t mind the streaks of color I’d left on her fur. Unlike me, she didn’t see it as a mess.





Chapter 20


Day Thirty-Seven

I was at the sink washing my hands when Mychelle Adler left a bathroom stall, which I thought was pretty awful timing, especially first thing on Monday morning.