Seven Ways We Lie(16)

As I turn into the junior lot, the cases of beer make a chorus of metallic clinks in the back of my truck. Then a scuffed-up Camry looms out of nowhere, its horn blaring. My foot jerks toward the brake pedal. Too late.

The Camry smacks into my front bumper, and I lurch forward. The sound isn’t so much a crash as a thump. “Car thump” doesn’t sound as dramatic as “car crash.” I feel sort of gypped.

In the sudden stillness, I take inventory of my body, scribbling a mental list across my mind’s eye:

? Icy skin.

? Pulse in strange places—earlobes, forearms?

? No pain.


I’m in one piece, at least, and I have something to cross off my “Never Have I Ever” list.

The wounded Camry pulls into a spot, and I park beside it, bolting out to check the damage. My truck door squeals as I swing it shut.

The Camry came out unscathed, except for a tiny dent under one headlight. My pickup, on the other hand, looks as if it got into a fight with a Transformer. The Camry must’ve hit the last thing keeping my front bumper attached. Now it dangles askew, a lopsided leer.

My jaw tightens, and I bury one hand in my hair. Look at me, worrying over a broken, mud-encrusted pickup. What would my middle-school friends think?

It takes a minute to shake the thought. First of all, if everything goes according to plan, I’ll have saved up enough for a new car, a nice one, before graduation. Second of all, I’m out of touch with everyone from the Pinnacle School, so their opinions don’t matter.

Still, I can’t get rid of the complex that place gave me.

My middle school was a private academy in Brooklyn’s richest neighborhood. I was a scholarship kid, the poorest person there by a margin so huge, it was humiliating. Everything about me stood out, from my haircut to my clothes to my commute. An hour’s trip separated our apartment in Coney Island from Pinnacle’s cushy spot in Brooklyn Heights, and I did homework on the Q, wedged into a corner of the train car beside my mother.

Pinnacle kids never seemed to think about money, but around them, it was all I saw. Every break, my Instagram and Facebook feeds flooded: photos of spring trips to the Maldives, skiing trips to Aspen, and summer homes in Europe. They wore their wealth effortlessly. The preppier crowd had polo players and Golden Fleece logos on their pastel clothes. The “alternative” kids wore baggy woolen tops and artfully shredded leggings, but it was the same old story of unspeakable amounts of money, just translated into a different language.

I don’t miss that place. I still feel embarrassed about my family because of it. I still worry how we look to people, even here in Paloma, where we’re now comfortably lower-middle class.

“Lucas, you okay?”

I look up from my bumper. The sight of a familiar face floods me with relief—I’ve dealt to Matt Jackson since I started freshman year.

I nod at Matt. “You good?”

“Yeah. You wanna call the cops?”

“Cops.” I glance at my truck bed. “Right.”

Matt eyes the tarp that covers the cases. “We don’t have to. My car’s fine, so if you’re okay driving around with your bumper half off, be my guest.”

“Thanks, dude. Appreciate it.”

Matt’s head bobs. The kid is low-key cool, but getting him to say much is tough. He’s also hot, in a my-type-of-way, but I’ve gotten good at ignoring when guys are hot, since everyone at this school is so aggressively heterosexual.

According to an article I read, three or four percent of people are gay, lesbian, or bi. Wherever they dredged up that statistic, it wasn’t Paloma High School. Twelve hundred kids, and I haven’t met a single other queer person. Definitely no Gay-Straight Alliance Club here.

Sometimes I feel like we should have a club for all minority populations, since this place has all the ethnic diversity of your average mayonnaise jar. The culture shock was real at first, moving here, where everyone’s the same shade of white and the same subgenre of Methodist.

Matt opens his back door and leans into his car, his shoulder blades pitching tents in the back of his hoodie. His voice is muffled as he rummages through the mess in his backseat. “Hey, are you selling today?”

“Yeah, hit me up after school.”

“Sweet.” He shoulders his backpack and shuts the door. “It’s a date.”

Something goes still in the center of my chest. I stay quiet as Matt pulls a beanie over his head. His eyes are light brown and guarded, and I can’t help but wonder.

A date?

An impulse hits me. Maybe it’s the adrenaline still zipping over my skin, or maybe it’s the smell of cold air conjuring the feeling of someone’s hand in mine. Winter of eighth grade was the first time I ever held a guy’s hand, and chilly afternoons remind me of it every so often: Caleb’s warm, uncertain grip.

“Hey, Matt,” I say. “You maybe want to get coffee sometime? Or dinner or something?”

His expression freezes. If it were a computer screen, it would read: 404 error. Unable to process request. “I . . . what?” he says.

Bad guess. Crap. Say something, Lucas.

“Nothing, never mind,” I blurt out. The least convincing three words ever spoken.

Matt, of course, because he is not a moron, doesn’t buy it for a second. He stares at me as if I’m a poisonous snake that’s tried to strike up friendly conversation. “Weren’t you straight, like, six months ago?”