Strange Lies Read online

  “DAD?” Calvin yelled. “MOM?”

  No answer.

  They were probably at Beau Ideal, where his dad played golf and his mom Zumba’d within an inch of her life every Saturday. He was pretty sure it was illegal to lock your kid in a room and leave the house, but at least his mom had slipped a sandwich under the crack of the door before they’d gone. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do if he had to go to the bathroom.

  “CAMILLAAAA?” he yelled for his sister. But if his parents were at the club, Camilla probably was too. She made no secret that she thought her little brother was weird and difficult and deserved all the maltreatment he got. He’d never counted on her to save him. He jiggled the door handle futilely.

  Think, he commanded himself, looking around the room. How are you going to get out of here?  He was supposedly the smartest kid in the tristate area. That bit of data had been shoved down his throat since the age of seven. He’d aced every test he’d ever been given. Surely he could figure out a way to get out of a locked room. But he felt irritable and short-fused. The pot he’d smoked had worn off hours ago, and he hated being sober. He hated the boring prison of his brain, which was only good for differential calculus and solving stochastic systems.

  Most of his stash of mind-altering substances was gone. His dad had hired a former police detective to search Calvin’s room and trash everything he found. Calvin had known it was coming, so he’d tried to give some of it away at the science expo; he couldn’t bear to see all those stupendous chemicals going to waste. And it had been worth it to see Winn Davis staring into his cheerleader girlfriend’s eyes like they contained the secrets of the universe. And seeing what happened to Trevor had been even more fascinating. . . . There was still some pot and some mescaline hidden in an Academic Decathlon trophy in the living room display case, but that may as well be on Mars if he was trapped down here.

  Calvin examined the doorknob. It was an old house, and the doorknobs were white marble, with iron locks opened by skeleton keys. He looked around the room for some sort of tool he could use to bash the entire lock off the door. It was a barbaric approach but a potentially effective one. Unfortunately, his copy of Moby Dick was a paperback. There was no lamp in the room, only a bare light bulb screwed into the ceiling. The desk chair was large and unwieldy.

  His eyes landed on his laptop. It contained his Moby Dick essay for AP English, plus about two hundred poems he hadn’t backed up yet. If he destroyed the computer, they would all be gone. It made him want to laugh and cry at the same time.

  Fuck. You, Calvin said to the universe. But if this was the sacrifice it required, fine. The universe could have his poems. He would do whatever it took to be free.

  He grabbed the laptop and brought it crashing down on the lock. The computer cracked, but the lock remained. He slammed it down again and again, until his heart began to pound from the exertion.

  Careful, he told himself. He took a breath, waiting for his heart rate to normalize. It was dangerous to overdo physical stuff with his condition. He’d been born with an enlarged aorta that put him at extreme risk for heart failure. The only sport he was allowed to play was golf. Calvin knew his boundaries; he’d spent most of his life testing them. If he pushed too far, it could be deadly. And a second heart transplant was not an option, Calvin had long resolved. The first transplant had saved his life but left him physically weaker. A second would weaken him even further, and not just physically this time—emotionally and psychologically and mentally and spiritually. He could not survive another year spent in beds in and out of hospitals.

  He smashed the laptop again. It was falling apart, battered pieces skittering across the floor. Two hundred poems: gone. But the nails of the lock had begun to come loose. A few more whacks, and it fell to the floor with a clang. The door swayed open.

  He was free.

  The Boarders, 6:30 p.m.

  “What do you mean, there’s no money?” Virginia smashed the clunky eighties-looking cordless phone to her ear, certain she must have misheard.

  On the other end of the line, a crackly voice said, “Your mother hasn’t made a deposit in two months. There’s barely enough to cover your spring tuition right now. I can’t give you anything.”

  “But I need five hundred dollars!” she shouted into the phone.

  “Is it an emergency?”

  “Yes! Well, no. But call my mom and tell her to make a deposit!”

  “I don’t know where she is.”

  “Then call Esteban!”

  “Ginny . . .”

  Virginia paced back and forth across the empty common room. She opened the refrigerator, hoping to miraculously find something worth eating in there. But there was only a can of reduced-fat whipped cream and Mrs. Morehouse’s gross yellow buttermilk. She slammed the door shut, getting more frustrated by the minute. Daniel Wham, her family’s accountant (called Dan-Wam by Virginia since she was ten years old), was being unbelievably annoying. There was no money in the account? Get some! He didn’t know where her mother was? Find her! Life wasn’t that hard!

  “Have you not been getting my e-mails?” Dan asked.

  Virginia thought about all the e-mails from him that she’d sent directly to the trash. Why should she have to pay attention to e-mails from an elderly accountant? She was fifteen years old. Adults needed to get their shit together and leave kids out of it.

  “If your mother doesn’t make a deposit soon . . . Let’s just say . . . the bills are . . . mounting.”

  Virginia hated how Dan couldn’t say a sentence without adding ten dramatic pauses. “Well, where the hell is Esteban?”

  “Ginny . . . you know I can’t tell you that.”

  “If he knew how badly you were treating me right now, he’d kill you.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally Dan said, “If you hear from your mother, please have her contact me. It really is . . . quite urgent.”

  “Okay, okay. Bye, Dan-Wam.”

  “Bye-bye, Ginny.”

  Virginia slammed the phone back on the receiver. This was not good. She actually needed more than five hundred dollars; she needed nine hundred dollars. Five hundred for Benny (Would he actually go through with the dare? Virginia didn’t know, but it would be incredibly embarrassing if he did and she didn’t have the cash), and four hundred to pay back Min-Jun so he couldn’t extort her into working for his gross and scary porn ring. Plus a few twenties for whatever crap they’d be auctioning off at the fundraiser tonight. Money hadn’t exactly been flowing for a while now, but she’d always been able to count on ol’ Dan-Wam when she really needed something. Now what was she supposed to do?

  I’ll think about it later, she decided. Right now she needed to change her clothes. She hadn’t done laundry since the science expo, which meant her go-to sweater still had lobster paste all over it. She put on Zaire’s gold skirt and paired it with a white Polo, which didn’t really work, but whatever. She’d been getting too obsessed with clothes lately anyway. It was important to look like crap every once in a while to make sure your personality was still the best thing about you.

  There was a knock on her door. Virginia opened it. It was Chrissie, wearing a tiny black top that made her boobs pop out, and a pink add-a-pearl necklace around her neck. The idea of Benny losing his virginity to her made Virginia want to laugh for ten hours. Benny would probably lose his virginity to a Tibetan monk while checking his Google alerts.

  “You ready? Corn Flakes is giving us a ride.”

  “No, not Corn Flakes!” Virginia moaned. “We’ll all smell like pizza if we go in his car!”

  Corn Flakes was the Domino’s delivery guy. He was pasty white with blond cornrows, and everyone called him Corn Flakes because he had a dandruff problem. He was in love with Lindsay Bean, and always got her free pizza toppings and drove her friends around, even though he was like twenty years old and should have better things to do. He claimed to be pre-med at Georgia State, but it was pretty obvious
he was just a townie loser who would probably be delivering Domino’s till he died.

  Outside, it was already dark. Autumn had not been particularly impressive that year. Most of the leaves had gone straight from ugly yellow to drab brown. Lindsay Bean was being pushed into the front seat of Corn Flakes’s run-down delivery car, shooting furious looks at Chrissie that clearly said, I can’t believe you’re making me do this. Virginia piled into the back with Chrissie and two other girls from the Boarders, both wearing tight black skirts and spaghetti strap tops. Virginia used to do this all the time before she joined Mystery Club—cram herself into a car with whoever was going anywhere, usually a squealing group of girls heading to the mall or some church youth group’s bowling night. She’d kind of forgotten how fun it was. They pretended Lindsay and Corn Flakes were their mom and dad, and screamed “ARE WE THERE YET?” every two minutes. They made predictions about who would get their butt squeezed by Trevor’s dad, who was a notorious horndog. No one wore seat belts, which felt thrilling, and they laughed at Corn Flakes’s dumb dad jokes (“Don’t make me pull over and spank you!”) and screamed whenever they spotted anyone remotely weird-looking or old in a neighboring car.

  The backseat was a tangle of long legs, arms wrapped around each other, and boobs nearly popping out left and right. Virginia was half sitting on Chrissie’s lap, straddling one of her thighs. Min-Jun would love this, she thought. It made her feel smug, but also sort of gross and self-conscious.

  “Settle down back there, or no dessert!” Lindsay shouted, making them shriek with laughter.

  “I think Mommy and Daddy need a little grown-up time away from the kids,” Corn Flakes said, and they all groaned.

  Cars were lined all the way down Tuxedo Park, the ritziest and most ostentatiously named neighborhood in Atlanta. Girls in black dresses and boys in blue blazers walked from their cars toward Trevor’s house, a white mansion at the center of a sprawling green lawn.

  “Bye, cupcake!” Corn Flakes called to Lindsay as she stepped out of the car, clearly way too into the fantasy of being married.

  “Bye, Dad!” Virginia and Chrissie shouted. They slammed the door shut and waved as Corn Flakes drove away to deliver shitty Domino’s to the people of Atlanta. The girls sniffed each other to make sure they didn’t smell like pizza, and Lindsay spritzed everyone with Clinique Happy perfume. Usually Virginia preferred to go to parties alone like a devastating femme fatale. But it was fun to be with a group for once and feed off everyone’s excitement. She’d almost forgotten the dismal cause of the night, which was that DeAndre was in the hospital and his family couldn’t afford to pay for it.

  Oh well, she thought. You can’t take the fun out of fundraiser!

  From the outside, the Cheeks’ house looked like a palace. Every window was lit, and the driveway was lined with enchanting strings of tiny lights. As they approached the front steps, the door flung open and a trio of girls stumbled out. It was Constance, Yu Yan, and Beth. They looked shaken and slightly hysterical.

  “Oh my god, don’t go in there!” Constance shouted, slamming the door closed behind her.

  Virginia screeched. This night was getting better and better. “Why not? What’s happening? Tell me tell me tell me!”

  “Fuck you, Virginia.”

  Whoa. Virginia felt like she’d been slapped. Constance was one of those prissy girls who never cursed. What the hell was up her ass?

  “Whatever, go in if you want,” Constance was saying. “Actually, you’ll probably love it. Your Highness.” She curtsied mockingly and then clomped down the steps on her ugly tan high heels. Beth and Yu Yan scurried after her.

  Virginia looked at Chrissie. “What is this ‘Your Highness’ thing?”

  Chrissie shrugged but wouldn’t look her in the eyes.

  Inside the house, there was an enormous roar of shouting. Only the door stood between them and whatever was inside.

  Virginia opened it.

  Benny’s house, 7:30 p.m.

  She investigated me. She investigated me. The words played over and over in Benny’s mind. His whole body felt wired.

  Virginia hadn’t called Chrissie at the club. He’d known it the second she’d picked up his phone. It’s not that she hadn’t been smooth—she’d actually been very smooth. If he hadn’t been Benny and she hadn’t been Virginia, he never would have known. But she definitely had not called Chrissie. She’d gone into his Google alerts. She’d investigated him. The weirdest part was that he didn’t even feel angry. He felt . . . impressed.

  Focus, he commanded himself. He was on his laptop trying to fill in a spreadsheet of data from his Google alerts. But he could barely concentrate. His mind was going in five thousand directions. Benny wasn’t normally prone to hyperbole, but it really felt like five thousand equally urgent thoughts were clamoring for his attention. Seventeen Google alerts. The aeronautics plant in Waycross. Was Chrissie’s father Garland White? Was Virginia serious about the five hundred dollars? Should he really wear this outfit or should he change? How much money did he need for the auction? Hundreds? How much were kids expected to spend on some crappy vase or a steak dinner for two? Benny’s mind was chaos, underscored by one incessant thought: She investigated me. She investigated me.

  “Whatcha doin’?” It was his dad’s nurse, Rodrigo. He came to the house every other day to help with Mr. Flax. Benny was so used to his presence that it felt like Rodrigo was almost a member of the household. He pulled up a chair next to Benny at the dining room table. Benny’s mom and grandma were running errands, making it one of the rare evenings where he was alone with his dad and Rodrigo, just the men. Mr. Flax was in the living room messing with a plastic piggy bank Rodrigo had brought for his physical therapy. Benny couldn’t bear to watch. It was too depressing to see his dad’s fingers fumbling with a single coin when once they’d circuited entire aircraft panels.

  “I’m trying to get organized,” Benny answered tersely, not needing another distraction.

  Rodrigo didn’t go away. “You okay, man?”

  “Mm-hm.” The information from the alerts was still in disarray. It seemed that the Waycross plant had actually been slated for closure two years ago, when Mr. Flax was still their principal consultant. But the closure had been delayed, which for some reason had caused the feud between the governor and Garland White to explode. Benny didn’t even know why he was obsessing over this. Just because it was tangentially connected to his dad? This was stupid.

  “I like your hair,” Rodrigo was saying. “Shiny.”

  “Thanks,” Benny said. Then, abruptly, he slammed his laptop shut and dropped his head on the table. “Oh my god,” he moaned.

  “Whoa, whoa,” Rodrigo said. “I think you need to chill a minute.”

  Benny buried his face in his arm. “I have to go to a party in thirty minutes and I don’t know what to wear.”

  “What’s wrong with what you’ve got on? It’s very Ivy League, very Yale Law School.”

  “It’s more complicated than that.” Benny sat up. Was he seriously about to unload his girl problems on his dad’s in-home nurse? “. . . Okay. So there’s this girl. I . . . like her. I don’t know. She hates me. Whatever. She thinks I’m a nerd. I am a nerd. Whatever. I don’t know.”

  “Whoaaaaaa. Here, take a sip of this.” Rodrigo held out his bourbon.

  Benny balked. “That’s illegal. I’m only fifteen.”

  “It’s cool, Ben. Just take a nice sip. I’m not getting you drunk, I promise. I know you’re a responsible kid.”

  Benny eyed the glass, considering. Then he took it. He was so used to the smell of bourbon, he imagined he knew exactly how it would taste. But he hadn’t anticipated the warm burn down his throat. It sent an instant buzz to his head—not unpleasant.

  “Okay, let’s start over,” Rodrigo said. “So there’s a girl.”

  Benny nodded. “So I wore this outfit today, sort of as a costume. And the girl said, ‘I’ll give you five hundred dollars if you wear that for real
to the party tonight.’ She was daring me. And she was serious. I think she was serious.”

  “Well, you should call her bluff! That would be a badass move. Like, James Bond level.”

  “Okay. Okay. But here’s the thing . . .” Benny felt a tad spaced-out from the swig of bourbon—again, not unpleasant. “Earlier in the day, she’d said this little thing about people’s dignity being for sale. And I got the impression that she, like, didn’t respect people who were ‘for sale.’ So maybe she’s . . . testing me.”

  “Hmmm . . . I see your quandary.” Rodrigo tapped his finger on his glass for a minute. Benny glanced at the living room, where his dad appeared to have fallen asleep. It was hard not to feel like this was one of those touching father-son moments from a Folgers commercial, except in a strange casting decision the “father” role was being played by a twenty-eight-year-old Hispanic man.

  “Well, Ben, I guess what you have to decide is, are you for sale?”

  Benny thought about it. “No. No, I am not.”

  “Okay, then. There’s your answer.”

  “Well, maybe I am? Just for tonight?”

  Rodrigo cocked his eyebrow, and Benny knew exactly what he was saying:

  Just for tonight, or just for her?

  Trevor’s house, 8:00 p.m.

  Craig Beaver scanned the room, looking for anything that might be funny to put on his head. It was a skill he had, making ordinary things funny. He even had his own YouTube channel called “U Craig Me Up!” where he comically reviewed everyday objects. “I give ‘the tampon’ one star. Not a good product,” he’d say, pretending to be frustrated while using a tampon to stir coffee. Craig had been a nobody at Winship for years, until one fateful day Trevor Cheek had posted one of his videos on Facebook. Then suddenly everyone was watching them, earning Craig the coveted position of School Funny Guy. At this point, Craig pretty much lived to make Trevor laugh. Trevor dominated the school, especially the guys; if he laughed, all the guys laughed with him.

  The chips bowl sort of resembled a Martian’s helmet. Craig could definitely work with that. But unfortunately, it was full of chips, and it was way too early in the night to be dumping food around and making a scene. He’d wait till Mr. and Mrs. Cheek went to bed for that one. For now, he grabbed Lindsay Bean from behind and nestled his chin on her shoulder.