Lies You Never Told Me(2)

Watching? A sick, slimy feeling runs over my bare skin. I tug the towel more firmly around my shoulders, feeling exposed. “Holy shit.”

She grimaces. “Perverts!” she shouts at the camera. I wonder if there’s an audio feed, or if she’s just hoping her parents can read her lips.

I imagine her parents sitting in a darkened room, the light of the laptop bleaching their faces. Or maybe they’re at her aunt’s kitchen table, drinking red wine and laughing at the two of us. The whiskey churns in my gut.

I walk back to the patio furniture and pick up my shirt. It’s halfway over my head when I feel Sasha tugging at it.

“You don’t have to go,” she says. “They’re three hours away. What are they going to do, drive all the way back just to kick you out?”

I pull the shirt down over my head and raise an eyebrow at her. “Do you want to spend the rest of your junior year grounded?”

She snorts. “They can go ahead and try. It’s not like they can make me stay home.”

Typical Sasha. She’s never been into picking her battles. She prefers conflict so she can show off what a badass she is.

“Yeah, I’m not really feeling this anymore. Let’s just call it a night,” I say. “Look, tomorrow we’ll head out to the Greenbelt—get out of the house, go hiking. Steer clear of cameras.”

She steps closer. “Come on, stay. We’ll go up to my room. I don’t think there’re any cameras in there.” She slides her arms around my neck. “And if there are, fuck it. We’ll give ’em a show.”

I gently disentangle myself from her grip. “Yeah, that’s not really my thing.” I pick up my skateboard from where I had leaned it next to a potted agave. Last summer my best friend Irene painted a winged eyeball across the wood. At the time I thought it looked awesome. Now it makes me think of Mrs. Daley: one more unwanted eye, spying.

“I didn’t know you were such a prude,” she mutters waspishly. I walk toward the gate at the side of the house.

“It’s just not worth getting in trouble over,” I say, reaching out to push it open. She darts in front of me, her spine whip-straight.

“Oh, I’m not worth getting in trouble over?” She’s working herself up—I can see it in the sharp angles of her limbs, the jut of her chin. If she can’t stick it to her parents, she’s going to stick it to me.

I put my hands on her shoulders, but she jerks away. “Sasha . . .”

“No, it’s okay. I guess I’m not worth the effort.”

I glance up to see another camera, under the eaves of the house. Her parents are probably still watching, enjoying the little soap opera that they set off.

“You’re worth sacrificing one stupid night for,” I say. “I’m leaving now so I can still see you later. I mean, you might not care about getting in trouble, but I care if your parents won’t let you see me.”

She opens her mouth to say something, then shuts it abruptly. For a moment she stands there, her breath heavy, her face pale with anger. Then she grabs me by the collar and pulls me down, pressing her lips to mine.

It’s rough and urgent, her tongue pushing forcefully into my mouth. I almost lose my footing but catch myself on the door frame. A part of me recoils deep inside, unnerved. She’s doing this to punish her parents; this is her flipping them off, one more time, for the cameras. The idea that they could be watching still makes my skin crawl. But something about her fierceness pulls me in, too, like it always does.

She finally pulls away. Without another word, she walks back across the patio, toward the house.

Out on the street, leaves catch in eddies of wind, skimming the roadway and then lifting off to fly away. It’s eerily quiet, and then I realize the crickets have gone silent. It’s going to rain.

I throw my skateboard down onto the pavement and kick off. It’s a relief to get away. Sasha’s engaged in a lifelong war with her mom, a former debutante from an old Dallas family, prim and tight-lipped. I don’t like feeling like I’m just a prop in the melodrama.

A sliver of lightning cuts across the clouds just overhead, and a moment later the thunder snarls. I hop up the curb and off it again. I’ll have to hurry if I want to get home before the downpour. I lean into the downward slope of the hill.

It comes out of nowhere: a flash of light, and then impact. I am flying. The wind streams around me, seeming for an impossible moment to buoy me up. It’s in that infinite moment, caught aloft, that I understand: a car. I’ve been hit by a car. The headlights surround me like a nimbus, like the light that surrounds the saints in a religious painting.

Then the second impact comes as my body hits the pavement.

The first heavy raindrops splatter around me. An icy chill unfurls through my body, spreading along my arms and legs and coiling the muscles into shivering knots. I don’t feel any pain—just the force ricocheting through my bones—but there’s something weird about how my arm is twisted. The clouds overhead swirl and glitter, pops of color exploding in their depths now. Or is that just my vision? I try to lift my head, to get a clear glimpse of my arm.

A black shape flutters into view over me, and I struggle to figure out what it is. A bat? A kite? No. An umbrella. The patter of rain on my face ceases as someone holds an umbrella over me. The someone is hard to make out; they keep splitting, dividing, merging back together, all in the strange and shimmery air. I squint up, trying to make out a face.