Seven Ways We Lie(56)

(click.)

I listen to it over, over, and over.

It takes titanic willpower to set the phone down.

“I need you,” he said. I am alight with it.


David.

I ache to go back to your home—

(I still have the key burning inside my pillowcase—) just one more time,

to your bare living room where I shrugged my jacket onto your sofa, or the kitchen where we drank coffee and murmured lavender words at 3:45 AM, or the bathroom where you brushed your teeth bleary-eyed the morning after I dared to stay the night, or the bedroom where you held me, just held me, where I tried to touch you a thousand times and you said, “No, June, we can’t,”

we can’t,

or the rooftop where we froze together and my fingers kissed your wrist, our words kissed each other, there hanging in the air so softly, mingled like breath in the black sky.


David.

I nurse your name like a wound.

How excruciating, how much I command you, how much you command me, the power we have over each other.

God in heaven, I wonder what a healthy relationship feels like.

We need each other too much.

Or maybe love is never healthy, and we should guard our hearts in hospitals for preemptive healing.





AS THE SUN SETS ON SUNDAY, I HEAR MY SISTER heading downstairs to set the table. You can always tell when it’s Grace. She limps down the steps patiently. A car accident messed up her foot when she was young, so she wants to be a nurse. She’s selfless like that. Good at turning bad into good.

I sit at my desk and stare out at the sunset for a second. It’s been a strange, quiet weekend without Olivia and Juniper. The solitude doesn’t feel good—it aches—but what does feel good is having told them how I feel. Having laid my insecurities bare for once.

I cap the Sharpie, place it beside my poster, and slide back from my desk to admire my handiwork. I’m not the most artistic person, but I’ve made enough posters for clubs that I’m used to designing them. A MAN WITHOUT A VOTE IS A MAN WITHOUT PROTECTION, this one says. LYNDON B. JOHNSON.

They’ll take the vote on Thursday, and the results will come in on Friday. Mom asked me earlier why I wasn’t running. After all, Claire, if you want something done right . . .

I couldn’t explain it to her. Elections aren’t like a sport, where you practice until you improve. Some people are blessed with innate likability, and let’s be honest: nobody’s winning a high school election without it. Me winning a popularity contest? Laughable.

I was a mess in middle school. More of my face was acne than clear skin. My braces went on in sixth grade and didn’t come off until sophomore year. My clothes clung to awkward places on my body, as if they’d been stretched over a poorly sized mannequin.

Things are better now, but I’m still not class president material. Politicians have to be stately. Not short and tactless and a size ten.

“Dinner,” comes Grace’s voice from the bottom of the stairs.

“Coming!” I yell back, but my phone buzzes. I check it—the number of texts from Olivia has grown since morning. And now four missed calls top the list.

I nearly called her and Juni today, but I chickened out. I kept thinking about that look on their faces, the exasperation. It stings to remember. That’s me: a frustration waiting to happen. They probably wished they’d never told me about Lucas.

Still, that’s a lot of notifications.

“Fine,” I mutter to myself, and I unlock my phone. Olivia’s texts pop up in a long line.

12:38 am: Hey Claire. Juniper’s in the hospital right now. I’m at her house cleaning up with a few people. Her parents are there with her.

Something seizes in my chest. I sit up straight, thumbing downward. God, I leave them alone for one night, and this happens?

2:24 am: Her parents texted me and said it looks like she’s going to be all right.

2:32 am: I’m heading home

11:08 am: Claire? It would be good to hear from you

1:54 pm: So she got discharged. I heard from her mom and J is “drained and irritable” but doing fine, she’s going to sleep it off. Might miss school tomorrow but they’re not sure. I’m going to visit her tonight after dinner if you want to come with.

My mind spins. My first instinct is to jump in the car and drive to Juni’s house. A call is the least I should do.

But a tiny, hidden part of me whispers, Don’t bother. From this text saga, it’s clear she’s all right. This is just another story to tell, just another bad night.

I read and reread Olivia’s texts. In the end, I set down my phone without replying.





WHEN I POKE MY HEAD AROUND JUNIPER’S DOOR, she’s propped up in a mountain of pillows, reading a tattered copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

“Hey,” Juni says, sliding a bookmark between the pages. She looks normal. I don’t know what I expected—for her to look like a disaster, suddenly, now that I know about her and Mr. García? But no. People don’t change because you learn more about them. Even the ones you think you know are brimming over with foreign matter in the end.

“You’re still in bed. You feeling okay?”

“I’m completely fine, but Mom hasn’t let me leave my room.” She flicks her hair out of her eyes. “She’s acting like I’m dying of consumption or something.”