Nine Liars (Truly Devious, #5)(9)

Events spun on, toward the inevitable.





2


BACK IN HER ROOM, STEVIE SAT ON HER BED AND GNAWED ON A PIECE of the chocolate cake she had acquired. The first bite revealed a terrible but inevitable fact—it had maple in it. In Vermont, there is maple syrup in it—it doesn’t matter what it is. Cake. Ice cream. Coffee. Soup. Mustard. Concrete. The water supply. This chocolate-maple cake was way too sweet, but it was in her mouth now. There’s no going back with cake. She crinkled her nose from the cloying taste and took another swing at the reading.

Defining Bias: How We Interpret What We Read

When we consider the topic of bias, we must first consider the writer, and to consider the writer we must consider the audience . . .

Stevie sighed and looked at the ceiling, concentrating on the rosette that housed the overhead light. The heat clanged through the radiator. It was so hot. She got up and opened her window a few inches, went over and rearranged some things on her bureau, and picked up the phone she had put there to keep it out of her hands while she was doing homework. No messages. Nothing to distract her.

She set the phone down and looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was getting weird. She’d meant to get it cut over the summer but forgot, so now she had a blond demi-shag. She’d tried to cut it herself earlier in the semester, but Janelle told her it was great. Stevie relied on Janelle for this kind of advice because Janelle understood clothes and hair. This knowledge gene had skipped Stevie. She didn’t get how she was supposed to look. All she knew was the black hoodie that comprised 90 percent of her personal style, and the vintage red vinyl raincoat that made up the other 10 percent. She owned a little makeup—a massive eyeshadow palette Janelle had given her for her birthday, a lip gloss, some kind of highlighter in a tube.

She picked up the latter and began to apply it to the high point of her cheekbones. Her face was round; this highlighter was supposed to do something about that.

It was sticky. And now she had shiny lines under her eyes. She would watch a video. She would learn how to do this.

What if she gave herself bangs? She could give herself bangs. She went over to her desk to look for scissors, then remembered that Janelle had taken her scissors two weeks before because Stevie had said something out loud about maybe giving herself bangs.

Nate was right. She had become the person with the long-distance boyfriend.

There was a David-sized hole in everything. They texted constantly and spoke at least once every day, but that didn’t make up for the fact that he was in England doing his first semester of college in London, and England is far from Vermont. He was five hours ahead, so he tended to talk to Stevie throughout the day and then between six and eight o’clock for their long call of the day. Which meant she had the rest of her night to stare slack-jawed at her friends and not get any work done. She hated being this person, but she didn’t know how to make it stop. Her feelings rolled over her thoughts. Being in love had killed her brain. She needed to focus. She had to read this goddamned thing. She returned to her bed and picked up her computer to try again.

Defining Bias: How We Interpret What We Read . . .

She seemed to be constitutionally unable to read the first paragraph. It was like there was a force field around it. She knew exactly when she would be able to read it—on her phone, on the way to class, in a panic.

Why was she like this? Other people seemed to be able to do stuff in a reasonable fashion. Some had detailed online calendars. Others, like Janelle, kept fancy planners that they marked up with special pens and stickers. Some people simply knew what they were supposed to be doing and did it, and those people were the worst of all. Stevie’s brain had to hit a white-hot pitch of panic before it was willing to do any real work. It would work quickly then. It was a good brain, but it had only two modes—fog and frenzy.

Maybe she could cut her hair with nail clippers. It would be slow, but it could be done.

“Oh my God,” she said out loud.

Defining Bias: How We . . .

Stevie gagged on cake when her laptop unexpectedly made a ringing noise. David’s name and the video call icon popped up on her screen. She had crumbs on her face and her teeth were probably covered in dark brown cake jackets. She rubbed her face and ran her tongue over her teeth before answering.

“You’re calling late,” she said.

“It’s never too late for my princess.”

David was leaning against a fake wood headboard and looked down at the camera, in that angle that was flattering to no one except maybe to adorably jowly dogs and to David.

“Are you drunk?”

“Not drunk,” he said. “Just hanging out with some people. I had two beers. Maybe three. I had four beers. So, those five beers I had . . .”

God, he was handsome. He was sexy. Whatever sexy was, David was that. He was loose curly hair, long-limbed and comfortable in his skin. When Stevie had arrived at Ellingham the year before, David had been the school’s most famous reprobate, rumored to be drunk or high most of the time. His reputation was exaggerated, but still, he was the kind of guy who always had weed somewhere nearby and wasn’t going to turn down a drink. He attended classes on a need-to-know basis—with the criteria being what he felt he needed to know and when he thought he needed to know it, which was not much and maybe later. His greatest performances on campus included sleeping on the roof, five a.m. screaming meditations, sleeping in class in a Pokémon comforter, and releasing several dozen squirrels in the library. After he left—after he was removed from school—he completely cleaned up his act. He finished school remotely with high grades, graduated, and spent the summer working to register voters. He was a model citizen now, and even in England, where you could legally drink when you were eighteen, he never seemed to do so. Most nights when he was on video calls with Stevie, he was stone-cold sober and working.