Seven Ways We Lie(32)

“Sure,” Olivia says. “I’ll wash up. Don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks, Olly.” He gives her an absent-looking smile before trudging upstairs.

“Shit, he’s quiet,” I say, looking after him. Dad was never loud, but back when we were in elementary school, he and Mom would bounce jokes off each other at dinner until they both teared up from laughter. Mom coaxed a gregarious side out of him. Around her, he acted out. Trying to impress her, maybe—or keep a hold of her. Maybe he knew the whole time that trying to hold on to her was like trying to hold on to ice—a wasted effort that was only going to leave him cold.

Olivia gathers our plates, looking grim. “Yeah, work wears him down so much, there’s not much he can do but crash when he gets home.”

I trace a stain on the table. God knows I understand that feeling, not that I have the right to. A thousand kids at our school do the same thing I do every day, and they still have energy and motivation. I’ve got no excuse. Sick of the feeling of self-pity, I stand. “Night,” I say, and I head for the stairs. My sister gives me a smile, but it hardly registers.





ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, MATT PICKS ME UP, ALONG with my bundle of project supplies. His car smells like he’s growing marijuana plants in the trunk. The space in front of the passenger seat is so filled with paper, bottles, and trash, it’s like a handy cushion for me to prop up my feet.

“Sorry about the mess,” he says, not sounding in any way sorry about the mess.

“All good,” I say, glancing into the backseat, which is even worse. It looks as if somebody mistook it for a landfill.

Matt doesn’t turn the radio down, so I hum along with various bad pop songs all the way to his house. At one point I think I hear him singing along to Avril Lavigne, but when I glance over at him, his mouth is firmly shut.

My eyes linger on him for a second. As if he’s trying to look like as much of a stoner as possible, he’s wearing a maroon beanie pulled low over his forehead, tufts of hair sticking out from beneath. He drives one-handed, relaxed and silent, but his expression gives me the sense that something’s brewing under the surface.

We didn’t talk in English yesterday. Didn’t even look at each other, in spite of our phone conversation Thursday night, or maybe because of it. Sitting two feet from him now, I can’t help imagining his mother, a discontented scientist frustrated by small-town Paloma, and his father, resentful and underappreciated. But as for Matt himself . . . after Thursday night, I don’t know what to think about him. He changed over the phone, showed me a new face.

I look out the window, up at the flat blue sky. The way my sister acted last night at dinner—giving me a glimpse of how she used to be—made me think that maybe she can change, too. I hadn’t heard her laugh in so long. Hearing it pulled up a well of memories, even nostalgia, like hearing a song I might have had on repeat during a bittersweet summer.

“Here’s me,” Matt says, turning down the radio. We pull up outside a small white house with black shutters. He parks at the curb.

I sling my backpack on and follow him up a weed-trimmed path. The porch paint is flaking off, and bugs have gnawed holes in the window screens. I shiver, waiting as he unlocks the door with a stained silver key.

Finally, Matt wedges the door open. We enter his living room, a nest of warmth and color. A squashy-looking couch is upholstered in red, scattered with stitched pillows. Above it, a magnificent painting of the sun stretches across the wall, its orange rays lighting the ridges of a mountain range. A deeply scored mantel holds three different cuckoo clocks and a row of intricate crucifixes, and a television sits on an end table. Quilts and blankets and clutter cover every surface. The Jackson household clearly does not go for the whole minimalism thing.

“We can work in here or the kitchen—whatever,” Matt says, giving the door a firm shove with his shoulder. It slides back into its ill-fitting frame with a muffled bang.

I look around. The coffee table, like the rest of the room, is overflowing, filled with magazines and half-melted candles. “Do you have a kitchen table we could use?”

“Sure.” He heads down the hall. I follow, peering through the doors to the left and right: a whirring laundry room, a tiny bathroom with a stained mirror, and another small hall ending in a staircase. An indistinct smell hangs around—the new air of an unfamiliar house. Different-smelling detergent, maybe, mixed with a few types of scented air fresheners.

His kitchen, bigger than the living room, fits in a long counter, an island, and a fat wooden table with six chairs. Beside the table, three plates hang on the wall, painted dappled blue. Delicate green and orange floral designs blossom out from their center.

“Those are gorgeous.” I wave at the plates, setting the poster materials on the table.

“They’re my grandma’s.” Matt draws out a chair and sits. “They’re, like, sixty years old.”

“Did she make them?”

“Nah. Mom’s side of the family is from Puebla. There’s this special ceramic style, regional, called Talavera, and those are from the city.”

I sit across from him, unzipping my backpack. “Puebla. Is that in . . .”

“Mexico. South-Central Mexico.”

“You still have family there?” I ask.

“Yeah, a few great-aunts, but my grandparents moved to St. Louis in the seventies, so all my closer family is up here. Except my uncle. He’s, like, a stock market guy in London.”