Seven Ways We Lie(7)

The rest of the cast looks at me. I feel the eleven pairs of eyes like spotlights. I shrug, avoiding their gazes. “I lose,” I say. “My character loses. She’s been at home waiting fifteen years for her teacher to come back, and by the time it happens, she has this kid to raise, so, like . . . you know. She can’t chase her passion. She loses.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” García says, dashing off a note on the clipboard. “I want you to rethink that. And I want you to rethink the apology thing from earlier. Okay?”

I nod, almost relieved to have notes for once. Usually García spends so long fixing people’s blocking, he doesn’t get to characterization.

His questions baffle me, though. How could I want anything but an apology from Emily’s character, after a decade and a half? And of course I lose at the end. My character’s dream goes out the window, and she’s saddled with a life she never wanted.

García tucks his clipboard into his satchel. “Kat, thanks for being off-book already. The rest of you, remember to off-book those last few scenes by Thursday. Nice work, everyone.”

I hop off the stage, hurrying out the side door ahead of the others. I jog down the grass of the hill, squinting into the sunset. I’m still not used to the sun setting so early thanks to daylight savings, which doesn’t seem to save much daylight at all. Though maybe that’s because we’re locked in school buildings until sunset.

Crossing the parking lot toward the street, I pass Juniper Kipling’s empty Mercedes, a shimmering foreigner in the crowd of scuffed Jeeps and mud-splattered pickup trucks. Weird—I thought Juniper was driving my sister home today.

As I reach the sidewalk, I stick my hands deep in my pockets, steeling myself for the journey. It’s not a long way home—two miles, maybe—but it’s getting cold these days. Soon I’ll have to start asking people for rides after rehearsal. I dread the awkward car conversations already.

No matter what, when I talk to people, I come off as an *. They should leave me alone, for their sake as much as mine. Whenever someone breaks my privacy, my head fills with panic, panic, panic. I lose my thoughts in white noise and fuzz. A short, sizzling fuse. And what comes out of my mouth is always angry bullshit.

Life is better when it’s scripted.





AN HOUR LATER, I’M STILL THINKING ABOUT HER EYES and her attention, lying back and letting that glance loop in endless repeat.

She looked at me. The thought of it keeps turning, replaying, spinning like a mobile or a galaxy, and it feels even more impossible now that I’m this high.

When you’re high, getting stares usually feels fine, because unless you’re having a bad high and feeling paranoid as hell, the staring person seems like just another citizen of the world, and that’s chill. But even if I weren’t high, I’d be freaking out over Olivia Scott giving me the eye. I sit three rows behind her in English, and I spend about 108 percent of that class staring at the back of her head, wondering how she gets her hair that rich and straight and glossy. Everything I’ve heard her say is hilarious, and when she smiles, it’s so high-voltage, I start a little, every damn time. Olivia Scott is magnificent.

Sometimes I can’t help resenting her raucous laugh and her sexy, poised, confident body and her blaze-blue eyes, because she only notices *s like Dan Silverstein, and I have no idea why. But then I remember that if by some miracle she noticed me instead, I’d feel super-awkward, because we don’t have any friends in common. I don’t even know if we’d get along. From what I’ve seen, she’s one of those semi-geeks who likes school enough to do well but not enough to try. Who even knows how that works? It’s like . . . I don’t know, but if you’re going to not give a shit, at least devote yourself to not giving a shit, right?

But what the hell do I know? I’ve never spoken to her. She could be totally different from what I’ve seen and heard.

Still. She looked at me, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

I pick up the joint from my car roof and play around with the smoke, sniffing it, licking it up, rolling it across my tongue and through my teeth. It’s not sanitary, letting the thing sit on my roof like that, but I’ve done worse, and I know Burke’s done worse. He picked a joint up off the sidewalk one time and took a drag for shits and giggles, and he didn’t get sick, even though I insisted for a week that he was going to get oral herpes or some shit. Then again, Burke has the immune system of a god.

My watch hits five o’clock. The drama geeks pour down the hill from the auditorium, trickle into their scattered cars, and drive off.

I take a hit and stare up at the clouds, those plumes of cotton and Marshmallow Fluff, their underbellies pinkened by the dying sun. It’s crazy that they’re so huge, and crazier that something so colossal is so temporary, that they’ll never be the same as they are now, and as soon as they turn heavy and cry themselves down in sheets of rain, they’ll be gone, as if they were never looming a mile above the crown of my head. This day is lost already. This hour is as good as going, going, gone.

I shut my eyes and flush out the thoughts, and new ones float in like breezes, like the sound of chimes. Minutes swirl around me, and seconds fall across my skin with the tingle, the prickle, the itch of dying sunlight, and Jesus, have I ever been this relaxed in my life?