Seven Ways We Lie(23)

Ani and Elizabeth trade a glance. Their lips twitch.

“What?” I say, not letting my voice rise. The greenroom’s soundproofing leaves something to be desired.

Ani shrugs. “Just, like, there are things that matter outside this play.”

A response jumps to the front of my mouth—Is that why you still can’t remember your f*cking blocking?—but I manage to keep it from spilling out. Restraining myself to a frosty glare, I stick my earbud back in and return to my game. The looks they give me glow hot on the side of my face. I get those looks all the time: God, what a bitch. What is her problem?

They can think whatever they want. I don’t need them. I don’t need anybody.

It’s sort of hilarious, though, how so many theater kids like to think they’re social outcasts, talking with people who are obviously their friends about “never fitting in.” They have no idea. If they did, they wouldn’t glamorize it. The reality of isolation is unglamorous and unexciting.

Going years without talking to anybody—talking about anything that matters—seems hard in theory, but when you give one-word answers to anyone who approaches you, people piss off pretty fast. The last time I had a legitimate conversation was in eighth grade, before Mom decided we weren’t worth her time and energy.

To be fair, it’s not as if she didn’t have a reason to leave. By the time Liv and I hit seventh grade, our parents got into screaming matches every week, about everything from what we ate for dinner to the clothes Olivia and I wore. It always ended with Dad snapping, “Great,” sinking into a capital-M Mood, and not talking for hours. Mom would run off in an anxious frenzy and lock herself in their room. She was a ball of energy, our mom, and she used to electrify our dad. But year after unhappy year, she grew more unreliable, like a knot of wires fraying through.

I could forgive her wanting to leave. What’s unforgivable is the way she did it.

Mom left our last family vacation early, after an all-night fight. By the time the rest of us got back home, she’d disappeared, leaving zero evidence that she’d ever lived there. Fluttery clothing, sketchbooks, tchotchkes that used to line the shelves—gone, gone, gone. She didn’t leave a note. She didn’t reply to the texts, calls, and emails we sent for weeks afterward.

What gets me the most is that she didn’t have the decency to say good-bye. I knew Mom had her issues, but I never thought she was a coward.

Eventually, Dad tracked down her new number out west. Clear message there: she needed distance. But did she need 1,500 miles of it? If she wanted to start over, couldn’t she have started over in Kansas City and seen me and Olivia on weekends? She chose the most selfish avenue and sprinted down it, right out of our lives. As far as I’m concerned, she can stay out.

I don’t know what Mom said the one time she talked to Dad, but he never called her again. After that, a part of him packed up and left, too. He’s hardly a shadow of himself now, worked to death, silent when we see him. Part of me still hopes my actual dad might come back, the dad who obsessively tracked weird sports like badminton and Ping-Pong and who started getting hyped for Christmas in August. When we put up the tree, he’d stuff tinsel in his beard and puff out his cheeks—Ho, ho, ho! Merry Tinselmas! Back in the day, it wasn’t hard to tell where Olivia got her horrible sense of humor.

I never catch a glimpse of that man anymore. He’s gotten lost in there somewhere, lost inside his own body. And I hate Mom for doing that to him. She had so much power that she ended up breaking him completely.

Nobody will ever do that to me.

· · · · · · ·


AFTER REHEARSAL ENDS, I HEAD BACK TO THE GREENROOM to collect my things. By the time I get my stuff and come back out into the theater, everybody else is gone.

“Shit.” I needed to ask for a ride. My phone says it’s already gone down to thirty-seven degrees. With today’s wind, I’ll be half frostbitten by the time I get home.

“Kat? Everything okay?” asks Mr. García, wheeling the ghost light toward the stage. Supposedly, ghost lights—left out to illuminate deserted stages—are for safety purposes, but I bet they’re mostly for appeasing superstitious theater people.

I squint in the glare of the exposed bulb. “Yeah, everything’s fine. Just realized I have to walk home.”

The ghost light’s sticky wheels squeak forward as García sets it center stage. “But it’s freezing,” he says. “You don’t have a ride?”

“I was going to ask the others. Forgot.”

“Well, I could drop you off.”

“Really?” I stick my hands in my hoodie pockets. “I, uh, that’d be great.”

“Okay, then. This way.” He hops off the side of the stage and heads down the aisle to the faculty lot. I hurry after him, slipping through the door. Outside, the wind grasps at my hair, clutching it. García stops by a tiny white two-door that looks about an inch from collapse. It makes a clunking sound as I slide in. Still, getting out of the wind is an instant relief.

“So, where am I headed?” García asks, reversing out of his spot.

“Left here. And then a right up at the light.” I glance around the car, which smells like Windex. The seats are bare, every inch clean and empty. A long row of CDs, stacked between the driver and passenger seats, are preserved in spotless plastic cases and alphabetized.