Strange Lies Read online

  “Hey, Trevor! Take our picture! We’re a two-headed monster! Three-headed, if ya know what I mean. . . .”

  “Ew! Get off me, Craig!” Lindsay screamed, trying to squirm away. But Craig held on to her tightly. Across the room, Trevor shouted back, “Lost my phone, man!”

  Lindsay extricated herself from Craig and elbowed him in the ribs.

  Bitch, Craig thought as he watched her walk away, her amazing ass jiggling in her tight skirt. He looked around. What else could he do that would be funny? And when were the non-bitchy girls going to get there?

  Wait, he thought suddenly. Trevor lost his phone?

  Craig pushed through the crowded room toward the dining room.

  “Trevor,” he said, squeezing into the conversation. Trevor had taken Polaroid pictures of all the girls at the party, and was spreading them out on the immense dining room table. “Trevor. You lost your phone?”

  “Huh? Yeah. You wanna be in charge of this shit? I need a BEEEEER!” The guys around the table cheered. “Beer” was the magic word.

  “Okay, except, well, did you delete the”—Craig leaned in—“you know what?”

  Trevor shrugged. “Fuck if I know.”

  “Trevor, seriously—”

  But Trevor was ignoring him completely now. That was the thing about Trevor: the guy liked to laugh—the guy only liked to laugh. If you tried to get remotely serious with him, he put a wall up and blamed you for being a bummer.

  “Trevor, come on—”

  “Craig, if you don’t get off my dick, I’m gonna take a red pill and kill you.”

  Take a red pill? What the hell did that mean? Sometimes Craig felt like a long-suffering wife, trying to read her husband’s mind so she could kowtow to his moods. He couldn’t afford to be on Trevor’s bad side; Craig was smart enough to know that he lived or died by Trevor’s social patronage.

  Shit, Craig thought. Trevor didn’t give a fuck about his lost phone. Trevor didn’t give a fuck about anything! But Craig gave quite the fuck. His mom and dad plus several lawyers had rammed it down his throat that if anyone ever found out what they’d done on that golf course, his life would be over. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had been spent to assure that the matter would never see the light of day. But all the money in the world meant nothing if Trevor had lost his fucking phone!

  He went to the kitchen and ladled himself a very full cup of Chatham Artillery Punch, the most diabolical and drunk-making alcoholic concoction ever devised by man.

  “Thirsty?” Mrs. Cheek chirped, giggling as she took a tray of hors d’oeuvres out of the oven. Craig considered Trevor’s mom to be one of those amazing Southern women who managed to stay completely fuckable without being fake about it. She wasn’t face-lifted or Pilates-ified or yoga-fied; she was a pink-cheeked, big-chested, natural woman from whom Craig would definitely accept a hand job if the opportunity ever presented itself. That would show Trevor. You think you rule this place? I fucked your mom!

  “Yes ma’am,” he said, downing his cup and filling it again. “Nectar of the gods!”

  “Well, you deserve it, Craigie.” She rubbed the peach fuzz on his shaved head. “You’ve had a bad week.”

  Yeah, and it just got worse, Craig thought. It wasn’t fair that he was getting singled out for what happened. Trevor had been just as much a part of it! The whole team had! But Craig was expected to dutifully fall on his sword for them, like the doomed and barefooted Confederates who sacrificed themselves to the Cause long after they’d known it was lost.

  At first it had felt like an honor, being offered up for the good of the team. But suddenly Craig saw himself for who he really was: a patsy sucker. They would destroy his life, buy him a nice “You’ve been fucked” bottle of Woodford Reserve (which he’d be expected to share with them, of course), and then they’d go on with their lives and never think of him again.

  No, Craig decided right then and there. If he went down, he’d take the team with him. He’d take the entire school! Their futures, their dreams, their comfy, consequence-free lives. He’d take their fucking souls.

  Trevor’s driveway, 8:30 p.m.

  Benny and his mother squinted at the house from the car. It was possibly the biggest house Benny had ever seen in real life. It was obscenely large for a family of four. But it was undeniably beautiful.

  “These people need your Bar Mitzvah money?” Mrs. Flax said, pursing her lips in that way she had that drove Benny insane.

  “Mom, it’s not for them. It’s for DeAndre Bell. He’s a scholarship student.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “It’s different. DeAndre is . . . black.” Benny felt horrendous saying it, especially given that the richest student to ever attend Winship in history was probably Zaire Bollo, also black. But it was the easiest way to get his mother off his case.

  “And he’s the one who got impaled by a deer,” Benny explained further. “It’s for his medical bills.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Flax said. “Well, you’re very generous.” She still sounded slightly suspicious.

  “I’ll call you when it’s over.” Benny got out of the car and smoothed back his hair. Then he walked up the long driveway. He could hear a lot of noise coming from inside the house. The front door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open.

  Oh my god.

  Nothing about the scene before him resembled a fundraiser. Benny had expected banquet chairs arranged in rows, a collection of ugly antiques and gift cards for massages, polite chitchat, and sparkling apple cider. But as soon as he stepped inside, he realized this wasn’t a “fundraiser.” This was . . . a party. Benny Flax was at a real-life, boy-girl underage drinking high school party. He looked around, slightly in shock. Where were the chaperones? Where were Trevor’s parents?

  Mrs. Cheek appeared, as if summoned by Benny’s mind. She fluttered across the room to where a group of boys were drinking beer around a table. She snatched up their bottles, and Benny felt relieved. But then it became clear that she wasn’t taking their drinks away, merely setting them on coasters! First Rodrigo and now Trevor’s mom—what was with these grown-ups aiding and abetting the consumption of alcohol by teenagers?

  “SCOOBY’S HERE!” someone in the living room shouted, and soon everyone was shouting, “SCOOBY-DOO! SCOOBY-DOO! SCOOBY-DOO!”

  Benny froze in the doorway. Never in his life had he so powerfully wished to disappear into a cloud of atomic dust particles. The chanting lasted about ten excruciating seconds, until thankfully, the door opened behind Benny and a new guest’s arrival was raucously heralded. Benny took the opportunity to duck into the hubbub in the dining room. A huge crowd was packed around the table.

  “Need a Scooby Snack, Scooby?” Skylar Jones shouted at him, holding up a chip overflowing with dip. Benny took the chip, not knowing what else to do. “Nice hair!”

  “Thanks.” Benny’s hair was still shiny and straight. The rest of him, however, was back to his regularly programmed self: glasses, maroon sweater, plain brown pants. In the end, he’d decided the preppy outfit was too much of a gamble. What if Virginia thought he was a dweeb for taking her dare seriously? What if she thought he was a sell-out? There were just too many uncertainties.

  He looked around for her fluffy blond head. He was so nervous to see her that his palms were sweating. He’d know instantly whether he’d made the correct choice as soon as he saw her face. Where is she? It took Benny a second to realize that the crowd was made up entirely of boys; there were no girls in the room at all. Benny was startled by a huge cheer as Trevor pushed his way through the group.

  “Last one, dickheads!” Trevor yelled. He slapped a sheet of paper on the table, which was already filled with sheets, each stapled to a Polaroid picture of a Winship girl. All around Benny, guys were pledging their names and amounts of money, sometimes returning to the same Polaroid over and over to outbid someone else. Some of the pictures had elicited only one or two bids. Others had ten or twelve.

  They’re auctioning the g
irls, Benny realized. It felt like the Wall Street trading floor, with numbers being shouted left and right by boys with fistfuls of cash.

  And then he saw it. Virginia’s face on one of the Polaroids. She’d clearly been taken by surprise by the camera—her expression was amused but slightly bewildered. Under her name at least twenty bids had been placed, and the amount had reached $255.

  Jesus. Since when was Virginia so popular? The only other name that had that many bids was Brittany Montague.

  “Do the girls know you’re doing this?” Benny shouted to Skylar over the noisy din. But Skylar wasn’t paying attention. He was in a mock fistfight with Sophat Tiang over Lindsay Bean’s bidding sheet, yelling, “Dude, stab me in the face why don’t you! You know I only brought sixty bucks!”

  Benny scanned Virginia’s sheet. Most of the names were guys Benny barely knew—football players and seniors. Why were they interested in Virginia? One name was written six separate times, each time increasing the bid by at least fifty dollars. Calvin Harker.

  Calvin’s here? Benny looked around, but didn’t see his towering figure in the crowd.

  A pair of seniors pushed themselves to the table, shoving Benny aside. One of them bent over Virginia’s bidding sheet and scrawled his name and raised the amount to $275. Then he high-fived his friend, shouting, “Long live the Queen!”

  “CHICK-FIL-A IN THE HOUSE!” a voice boomed from the front door. Trevor Cheek’s dad entered with an enormous platter of chicken strips, and was met with a cheer so loud it felt like the voices were inside Benny’s own head. Suddenly he felt very overheated. He pulled at the neck of his turtleneck sweater, wishing he could drink a gallon of water. He needed to find Virginia. He needed to escape this den of barbarians.

  He squeezed out of the dining room, not knowing where to go. He wanted some air, but he couldn’t go outside for fear that when he came back in, everyone would chant “SCOOBY-DOO” at him again.

  He went down a wide, dimly lit hallway, peering in the various rooms to see if any were less insane than the living room and dining room. In one room some guys were playing video games on a massive TV. In another, a group of girls were shrieking over photos from the Cheeks’ wedding album. Where was Virginia? She really needed to get a cell phone. He resolved to finally broach the awkward subject with her as soon as he located her. But first he needed to collect himself.

  Finally Benny found a room that seemed empty. It was dark and quiet and filled with masculine furniture. He closed the heavy door behind him, blocking the noise. Benny chose a leather sofa and sat down gratefully, closing his eyes.

  I am calm however and whenever I am attacked. I have no attachment to life or death.

  It was an aikido saying that Benny found relaxing. He opened his eyes. As they adjusted to the dim light, he saw that about twenty pairs of dead eyes were staring at him. Every surface of the wall was covered in taxidermied deer heads. Benny’s body went cold. This wasn’t a room—it was a tomb.

  Then he noticed a languid tendril of smoke curling in the air. Benny followed its trail to a cigarette balanced in an ashtray. He wasn’t alone. A low, growling voice spoke:

  “Do you have the password?”

  The upstairs parlor, 9:20 p.m.

  Every surface in the room was covered in lace doilies and porcelain Cinderella figurines. There had to be at least nine hundred. The story was that Trevor’s mom was obsessed with Cinderella, because she’d grown up in a trailer park and was so poor her family didn’t even have soap. But then she’d met Trevor’s dad at a Hooters, and he’d married her and made her the richest woman in Atlanta. A real-life fairy tale! Except Virginia wasn’t buying it. The story made her think about all the other girls in the trailer park. Was Mrs. Cheek just going to let them rot?

  Virginia pulled out Trevor’s phone from her purse. Did you delete the . . . you know what? She’d been right behind Craig Beaver when he’d said it. She’d been trailing him from the moment she got in the house until all the girls had been herded upstairs. It hadn’t occurred to her to check if any photos had been deleted. She tapped on the camera app. Recently deleted files.

  “Brittany’s up to three hundred dollars!” someone was squealing. In the corner a group of girls were huddled around a phone.

  “Y’all, stop!” Brittany yelled at them. No one was supposed to know how much anyone was going for. The twins had specifically arranged it so that the boys would be downstairs and the girls would be upstairs while the bidding occurred, so that no one would get their feelings hurt by finding out who among them had gotten more bids than others. But Alexis Zeist was making her boyfriend text her photos of the bidding sheets, which she was now showing to everyone.

  Virginia suppressed her curiosity over the bidding sheets. She was the lead on the golf case now. She needed to focus on her investigative duties, not on which Montague twin was racking up more money downstairs.

  Most of the deleted photos were blurry pictures of dogs. Virginia swiped through about twenty of them, which were followed by blurry pictures of gross deer carcasses.

  “Virginia, oh my god. Calvin Harker bid on you like eight million times.”

  Virginia’s face instantly grew hot. Calvin was here? She wanted to know more, but Brittany snatched Alexis’s phone away and threw it in a gold-lacquered bureau. The dozen Cinderella figurines on top quaked as she shoved the drawer shut.

  Virginia barely knew what she was doing there, cooped up in a princessy room with a bunch of idiots, allowing herself to be auctioned off like a cow. It was the twins’ idea to have all the girls do body shots because they were DeAndre’s “favorite thing in the world.” Virginia knew what a body shot was; it was when a girl takes her shirt off and lets a guy drink tequila out of her navel. She’d never done it before, partly because it seemed slutty, and partly because no one had ever asked her to. She wasn’t sure if body shots matched her idea of herself. Did Virginia Leeds—woman of intrigue—do trashy body shots? But surely it wasn’t trashy if it was for charity. And besides, it was her choice and she could do what she wanted. Except Virginia wondered how much that was really true. No one had actually asked her if she wanted to participate. Trevor had just taken her picture and the bidding had started, and now she would look like a prissy loser, like Constance Bouchelle, if she objected. Was it really a choice if you never had the chance to say no?

  Virginia didn’t feel like agonizing over it. She was having fun. She hadn’t been to a decent party in months. She’d forgotten how Lindsay Bean got really mean when she was drunk and made fun of everyone. She’d forgotten how the cheerleaders were obsessed with Madonna, and how at a party even the most boring conversation could seem exciting, like whether pink or red lipstick made your teeth look whiter. And getting to investigate Craig all by herself was the cherry on top.

  “You better be careful with Calvin,” Chrissie slurred. She was sitting next to Virginia on a pink velvet settee. Virginia was tired of Chrissie and was ready to hang out with someone else, but Chrissie was always pathetically clingy at parties until she got wasted enough to be an autonomous person.

  “Excuse me?” Virginia said.

  “His dick won’t fit in you.”

  “Oh my god! Shut up! Ew!”

  Chrissie shrugged. “It’s gigantoid.”

  Virginia gaped at her. How the hell did Chrissie know Calvin’s endowment? Had they hooked up or something? Virginia felt a surge of jealousy and annoyance. Chrissie was the most banal and predictable girl on the planet; why would Calvin hook up with her? Didn’t he have standards?

  Relax, she told herself. Chrissie was probably just guessing. Calvin was seven feet tall and had hands the size of dinner plates. So it followed that his member would be equally . . . gigantoid.

  “Chrissie, you look like a booze hound,” Lindsay Bean said loudly, and Chrissie’s lip twitched like she was about to cry. It was true that Chrissie got the worst drunk eyes and started to resemble a sleepy, droopy-faced dog after about three Jell-O shots. Sh
e was definitely an effective advertisement for sobriety; when the tray of shots came Virginia’s way, she passed.

  “I drink sidecars,” she explained. It wasn’t exactly true. One time she’d had a sidecar, but whatever. Jell-O shots were for children, and she wanted the sidecar to be her signature drink.

  She went back to Trevor’s phone, swiping through more crappy deleted photos. She was starting to get bored, and wished Benny were there to do this part. Then she saw it.

  Oh my god.

  Virginia quickly covered the screen, glancing at Chrissie to make sure she hadn’t seen it. Then she peeked at it again. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She had to tell Benny. Now.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Chrissie whined, grabbing Virginia arm.

  Virginia twisted away. “I’ll be right back.”

  She slipped out of the room, closing the door on the babbling chorus of girlish voices. Downstairs the boys were all shouting. Virginia peered over the banister of the immense staircase, searching for Benny, or for his preppy double. She didn’t know which one to expect, or which one she wanted. If it was regular Benny, he’d be totally lost and square and she’d have to socially navigate him through the whole evening. She hated babysitting people at parties. But she didn’t want to see his double, either, because she didn’t have five hundred dollars, which would make her look like a phony bluffer. And because it was confusing. It’s not like Virginia was gaga for preppy dudes; in fact, she avoided them. She’d dated Skylar Jones, for Christ’s sake. Who had a dreadlock. But she liked Benny better without his mammoth glasses deflecting the twinkle in his eye that Virginia hadn’t realized was there.

  She spotted him. He was sort of wandering around in the hallway below, opening and closing doors like someone’s lost kid. He looked completely out of place. He was wearing maroon.