Seven Ways We Lie(46)

An honest-to-God sneer curls her upper lip, an expression I’ve never seen in six years of knowing her. She looks like a different person. “It’s not about you,” she says. “God.”

With that, she strides off, leaving me bewildered and more than a little pissed.





SCIENTIFIC STUDIES HAVE PROVEN THAT FRIDAY during lunch is the best time to smoke outside the gym, because none of the gym teachers wants to eat lunch by the track, so everything is deserted. Burke and I sit under the bleachers, finishing the last bit of a blunt, thin slats of light illuminating the sequined velvet jacket he’s wearing today. As the blunt burns down completely, I stamp it out, searching for another rolling paper in my pocket.

“Well,” Burke says, waving an empty bag, “we’re out,” and I say, “I got some in my car—want me to grab it?” and he says, “How long until lunch ends?” and I check my watch. “Twenty minutes,” I say, and Burke nods solemnly. “Do it.”

I maneuver my way through the maze of bleacher supports and into the open, stroll across the track, and head up the thin, concrete path toward the main building. As I veer past the trailers at the base of the auditorium hill, their white roofs and walls burn with the noon sun, making me squint through a shield of teary water. It reminds me of snow glare, the snow from the banks on Chestnut Peak, where my family went skiing six Januaries ago, where my dad fell and cracked a vertebra but insisted on staying so that my mom and I could have an actual vacation. Probably the last time I can remember him doing anything generous for anyone.

My vision starts blackening and discoloring in the trailer glare, a line of blisters like bruised fruit edging the painful whiteness, and I hold up a hand to block out the light, about to turn away, when I realize there’s a tiny figure on top of one of the trailers: Valentine Simmons, clambering toward the edge of the roof. I slow down at a huge oak tree, wondering for a second if he’s going to fall off, although it wouldn’t do much damage, since the trailers have such low roofs, it’s like taking classes in shoe boxes. For a second, the tree bark in front of my face distracts me: a dotted line of red ants scrolls up along the grain of the trunk, and I feel I could have a whole discussion about what this means in the context of humanity, but I forget it fast, because Valentine breaks my focus by dropping off the roof and turning back to the trailer door with a cocky grin on his face, as if he’s expecting a nice surprise, which turns out to be true enough, because in the next second, someone steps through the threshold and gets so close to him, I could swear they were kissing—

Wait. Are they?

I peer around the tree, trying to get a better angle, but I can’t tell whether they’re spit-swapping or just standing at an inconvenient angle to have some sort of intense conversation.

But when they move away from each other, I can tell that the other person has curly dark hair and a white swimmer’s T-shirt and a strong jaw and a perpetual eager smile, which all adds up to Lucas McCallum, and given what Lucas asked me the other day, I guess they could’ve been making out, but holy shit, Valentine Simmons? Valentine Simmons is gay?

Then Lucas half turns, and I whip behind the tree, staring down the school building as if it’s conspiring against me, and I try to rein in my thoughts. I guess Lucas’s got enough smile for both of them. Maybe opposites do attract.

I keep my head down and hurry back up the path, heading for the parking lot, but as the path meets up with the green, I smack into someone heading from the main building. I back up, lifting my hands, and as I realize who it is, I blurt out, “Olivia,” cursing inwardly because she’s going to ask me what I wanted to say yesterday, and that’s not something I want to deal with when I’m this high.

“Matt,” she says, and I’m like, “Hey, hello.”

We look at each other for a long second, and my eyes brush over the smattering of freckles on the tops of her cheeks and the stubborn point of her chin, and in the breeze, wisps of her hair drift across her face, and she tucks them behind her ears with fingers whose nails are painted bright gold, and I say, “Um,” and she says, “Did . . . yesterday, did—” and I break in with the first thing that comes to mind, trying not to sound too panicked: “Me and Burke are smoking under the bleachers. Do you want to join?” and she says, “I don’t smoke. Thanks, though,” and I’m like, “Right, yeah, you don’t seem like you would,” and she’s like, “Aren’t you worried you’ll get caught out there?” and I’m like, “Nah, it’s a ghost town—only people I saw are, like, Lucas and his boyfriend or whatever,” and the second it comes out of my mouth, I freeze, because he explicitly asked me not to say a word.

And the look on Olivia’s face. Her eyes—those bright, oceanic universes—are wide and disbelieving. “What?” she says. “His—his boyfriend?” and I’m like, “No, it—” and she’s like, “Holy shit,” and I’m like, “No, he told me not to say—don’t tell anyone, Olivia, please?” and she backs up from me. “I have to find Claire,” she says, and I start to call her back, but she’s already disappearing back toward the main building.

“Shit,” I say, “shit, shit,” and I turn, staring back down the path to the trailers. I have to do something. What is there to do? Why am I so f*cking stupid?