Seven Ways We Lie(5)

“Oh, hey. Our competition.” As she pulls the car forward, Juni nods to one side of the junior lot, where a tall boy sprawls on top of a black Camry. “Over there.”

I straighten up and almost whack my head on the ceiling. Peering out my window, I spy Matt Jackson, who lies back, texting. I’ve never looked hard at the guy before. He looks foxlike, with the forward set of his facial features and the fringe of fire-red dye at the tips of his rusty hair.

Juniper’s car dips over a speed bump. From his car roof, Matt Jackson turns toward us, and I look away. Not fast enough.

“Ah, shitshitshit,” I say. “He’s totally looking at me. He totally saw me creeping.”

“Don’t worry,” Juniper says. “He’ll never guess we’re planning his political assassination.” She lets out a maniacal laugh.

I grin. “Yeah, you’ve always struck me as a John Wilkes Booth sort of girl.”

“June Wilkes Booth, even.”

I groan, sinking low in my seat. Juniper, looking pleased with herself, turns the radio on. The sound system emits a deep, start-up hum, and one of Paganini’s Caprices sings out of the speakers. Juni’s left hand, her nails cut short, plays along on the steering wheel.

By the time we pull out of the parking lot and down the street, the day’s problems have faded in the distance, left back at Paloma High School with its waxed hallways, defaced bathroom stalls, and all the students who think it’s their job to judge me.





BACKSTAGE, THE CURTAINS SMELL LIKE DUST. IT’S easy to forget myself here, drowned in the dark.

Whispers scurry along the wing from the girls who play my daughters. Whispers that beg for my attention.

Focus, Kat.

I tuck my hair behind my ears, digesting the lines that pass onstage, beat by beat. It’s Emily’s monologue out there—her plea for relevance.

Focus . . .

The backstage whispers scrape at me again, harder this time. Anger prickles hot in my palms. The others should be listening for their cues. They should be taking this seriously.

“—and I’m tired of waiting,” Emily says. My cue.

I stride onstage and lose myself completely.

Here in the blinding lights, I shed layers of myself like a knight casting off her armor plate by plate. I move with purpose, with want, with drive. Kat Scott is nobody. Nowhere. If she even exists, I’m not concerned with her.

“You’re tired of waiting?” I demand.

The girl across from me takes half a step back. She’s not Emily, not anymore. Now that I’m standing across from her, she’s Natalya Bazhenova: a mathematics professor who made a promise to my character years ago. She promised to sweep me away from my Russian town to an elite school and nurture my mathematical talent. Between acts 1 and 2, I reached thirty-seven years old waiting for her to rescue me from this life, but she never did. She forgot me. And now she dares to come back.

“You’re tired of waiting,” I say. “You, Natalya, who left me in this town?” I step closer, snarling my way through the questionable translation, hunting Natalya down with my eyes. “Look at me. Look at what I am now.”

“I am looking at you,” she says.

“Look harder.”

“I see a loving mother, a caring sister. I see—”

“You see nothing,” I whisper. “I am nothing anymore except wasted potential. Nothing!”

My voice echoes back from the far reaches of the auditorium, and silence ricochets afterward like a boomerang. Dead, beautiful silence.

I speak more slowly now, tasting the bitterness in every word. “You were supposed to be my teacher. You said I was brilliant—a prodigy, you said. You were supposed to take me away, teach me everything, but instead you ran the first chance you had. And now you come back and say you’re tired of waiting?” My voice hardens to a condemnation: “You hypocrite.”

“I’m sorry, Faina,” she says.

Before it happens, I know our director is going to stop us. “Hold,” calls Mr. García from the front row. I drop character, slouching down to take a seat in the kitchen chair. Everything that was held tight in my body goes loose, every muscle, every bit of focus.

It’s a relief to get out of that headspace. God, the Russians were miserable. This play, The Hidden Things, was written by a man called Grigory Veselovsky around the turn of the century, and by the end, exactly zero of the characters are happy. Our pal Grigory must’ve been a sadist.

Mr. García hops up onto the edge of the stage. Our drama teacher, Mrs. Stilwater, has to plan some regional conference, so García’s directing the fall play. He’s technically an English person, not a theater person, but he knows what he’s doing.

I’ve heard he’s not getting paid for this, though, which is insane. Not that I’m complaining. There wouldn’t have been a fall play otherwise, and most days this feels like the only reason to get out of bed.

García jogs over to my scene partner. “Emily, push it more, I think. You can heighten the physicality of being afraid. And cheat a little to the right; we’re losing that section of the audience.”

And now the volume problem . . .

“Also, I hate to say it, but we’re still losing your lines.”

“I’m so sorry,” Emily says, obviously on the verge of tears.