Seven Ways We Lie(18)

Muniz-Alonso steps back, revealing the conjugation charts. Sounds of copying break the air, pencils scratching on notebooks, a few fingertips tapping laptop keys. I take my pencil from behind my ear. I bought myself a new laptop last Christmas, but when it comes to notes, the feel of writing satisfies me more.

“Yo, Mer,” I say quietly, starting to copy. “Anything happening tomorrow night?”

“Not much. I heard some of the team’s doing a surprise birthday party for Layna.”

“Probably at Bailey’s house, huh? You think they’d mind if I showed?”

“I don’t think it’s open, man.” Herman copies a conjugation chart from the board, brushing his hair out of his face.

“So what else’s going on?” I ask.

He lets out a laugh. “You’d know better than me.”

“Okay, so nothing,” I say, scribbling down tendré, tendrás, tendrá. “Know what? I’m gonna get some of the guys together. Nothing worse than a quiet Friday night.”

“Dad, come onnn,” Herman says, pitching his voice up to a whine. “Give the team bonding a rest.”

I chuckle. They can rest when I’m dead. When you move every few years, you live with shallow roots. I’ve been getting ripped up all my life, and I’m done with it. Time’s accelerating. I’m not aiming to end up with nobody and nothing.

Teenage years are the best years of our lives. They keep saying that. I don’t know, though. I keep grasping for people, hunting for them. I take people and I write them down, and I think about the ones I want to keep. And sometimes I find people, and I wonder—I don’t know. I wonder, are these really the best people we’re going to be?





“PUNCTUAL AS ALWAYS, MR. JACKSON,” SAYS MR. GARCíA, opening the door.

Matt Jackson slouches into our English class a full ten minutes late, a new record, looking unapologetic. “Sorry,” he mumbles, the cherry tips of his hair dipping into his eyes. “Got in a car accident.”

“Everyone okay?” Mr. García asks. Matt shrugs and heads past my desk to the back of the room, ignoring everyone who looks at him.

Mr. García sighs, looking weary. Somehow, I’ve never seen him give Matt a late slip, although he’s been on time all of twice this year. “All right,” García says, picking up a piece of chalk. “So, saying good-bye to The Good Earth unit. Next up: we’re supposed to cover some European books as part of international literature. But for the most part, this list is so standard, I’m sure you’ve already read some of them. So I’ve decided to change this unit.”

García passes out a stack of sheets, which we hand back, seat to seat. “I’ve split the eighteen of you into pairs,” he says, “and each pair gets a book. Up until Christmas, we’ll have presentations on these nine works. Until the first presentation, we’ll be reading excerpts in class, so you’ll have a homework break for a bit.”

Appreciative murmurs rise around the room. García leans against his desk, waiting for the rustling to stop. As he folds his arms, it occurs to me that if it weren’t for the jacket and tie, he could pass for a senior. There are actual seniors who look older than he does. I can’t help wondering . . .

No, I scold myself. The idea of García creeping on a student is ridiculous. He doesn’t seem to care about anything besides English. Most teachers at least mention something about their lives outside class, but not García. With him, it’s the text, the text, the text.

Still. Glancing around the room, I see seventeen blank faces, and I bet all of them have wondered the same thing over the last few days.

The guy in front of me lets the paper stack flop onto my desk, and I take a sheet, scanning it. García has paired me with Matt Jackson. I stifle a sigh, remembering Juniper’s diagnosis of their so-called “joint” biology project. Our book? Inferno by Dante Alighieri. At least we didn’t get stuck with Les Misérables—I could spend three hours a day reading that thing and still not be done by July. Despite my love for reading, it takes me ages to digest each sentence. Mom read to me until I was old enough to want to keep it a secret, for my dignity’s sake.

Matt and I have the first presentation date, due to go next Thursday. There goes the next week of my life, sacrificed to the flames of hell.

“All right,” García says. “We’re going to take ten minutes to meet in pairs and figure out which type of presentation you want to do. The options are at the bottom—you can pick a skit, a game, or a PowerPoint. Though if you’re going to do a PowerPoint, you can’t just read the Wiki article off some slides and call it a day.”

People laugh as we stand and shift around, rearranging ourselves into our pairs. I head to the back and slide into the desk in front of Matt. He’s slouched so far down in his seat, his chest brushes the edge of his desk.

“Hey,” I say.

Up close, Matt has a weird face. Almost feral, with narrow eyes and a sharp, asymmetrical mouth tilted in a perpetual smirk. He glances at me before going back to the sheet.

I turn my desk to face him. “So, what do you think you want to do?”

He shrugs.

“. . . right,” I say, clicking my pen. “I’d rather die than do a skit about Inferno, so there’s that.”