Strange Lies Read online

  “TAKE IT OFF! TAKE IT OFF!” a group of football players shouted from the doorway.

  Then a pair of hands grabbed her, and Virginia felt herself being dragged away from the twins. She looked down and saw Benny’s maroon-sleeved arms encircling her waist from behind. Her shirt was half-off, hanging around her neck. He had backed against the wall, and was clutching her to his chest. She could feel his heart beating against her back.

  He held his hand up like a traffic cop. “Back away!”

  Angie stumbled and laughed drunkenly. The boys in the doorway yelled, “BOOOOOOO!”

  Virginia twisted around in Benny’s arms. His face was so close, she could see a thin sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead. His breaths were jagged. He looked at her, and the expression on his face was so weird that at first Virginia didn’t know what was going on. Then she realized:

  He’s protecting me.

  What did Benny think, that the twins were ripping off her clothes so the guys could gang-rape her? At a fundraiser? She felt so baffled she didn’t know what to think. Was this annoying or amazing? Virginia was used to taking care of herself. No one had ever tried to save her before.

  “Benny, it’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s a joke.”

  He didn’t seem to believe her. He didn’t let go.

  “Omigod! Scooby-Doo is the cutest!” Brittany was squealing. But it felt like she was a thousand miles away.

  Virginia squirmed to bring her lips closer to Benny’s ear. She didn’t know what to say to calm him down. “Benny, it’s just body shots. It’s for DeAndre. They’re not attacking me. They’re goofing off.”

  It was weird to whisper in a guy’s ear with your shirt half-off while a bunch of guys screamed at you and a pair of topless twins giggled on the floor. It felt strangely intimate, like she and Benny were alone on a raft in the sea of insanity.

  Then she did something really weird. She didn’t think about it before she did it; she just did it. She lifted her chin and kissed his mouth. It wasn’t a real kiss; in a real kiss the other person kissed you back. This was more like, she put a kiss on his lips with her lips. But it still felt like the most weirdly intense thing she could have chosen to do in that moment.

  The crowd around them started to come back into focus. The twins were screaming about how cute Benny was, and more and more people were spilling into the room. Half were guys with red Dixie cups, and the other half were girls with their tops off, showing a variety of pastel-colored bras. Virginia felt a quick hit of satisfaction: she was the only one whose bra was black. She wished Benny would let her go. Everyone would think she was some priss like Constance Bouchelle, traumatized by a body shot and needing to be saved by the biggest nerd in school.

  “Benny, I’m okay,” she whispered, more firmly this time. As if those were the magic words, Benny’s viselike grip on her loosened. His arms went limp.

  “SHOT! SHOT! SHOT!” the guys were chanting. Someone was yelling, “Who won the come queen?”—words Virginia assumed she hadn’t heard correctly.

  Benny stood up, extending his arm to help Virginia off the floor. Her shirt hung around her neck like a scarf. Benny didn’t look in her eyes. He was looking around like he might throw up or something. Virginia could tell he was searching for a way out of the room. The doorway was jammed with people.

  “Benny . . . ,” she said, reaching for his hand. But in a single, unbelievably smooth motion, he darted to the corner, threw open a large window, and leaped out of it.

  “Whoaaa!” all the guys shouted, and the girls cheered.

  For a second, Virginia panicked—was Benny dead?—but then she remembered they were on the first floor.

  “That was awesome!” a guy was shouting.

  “Did you see that? Scooby-Doo just jumped out the window!”

  Virginia ran to the window. It was dark outside, except for a pair of blue and red lights down the street. Is that a police car?

  “Benny! Benny!” she called.

  But he was gone.

  The roof, 11:00 p.m.

  Calvin turned the volume up on his headphones and let the Enya song wash over him. The song was called “Lazy Days,” and it was about balloons. When Calvin was a little kid, he’d been scared of balloons. Not of the balloon itself, but of letting it go. The idea that if he let it go, it would fly higher and higher and higher until it exploded. Good-bye, balloon! He remembered being six years old at a carnival, and holding his balloon so tightly that his fingernails broke the skin of his palm, and he bled. He wished he could go back in time and tell himself, Just let it go.

  Next to him, Craig Beaver was yakking away about something. Calvin and Craig had shared bowls before, but normally Craig would just stay long enough to get moderately high before resuming his life’s purpose of following Trevor around like a tongue-wagging dog. But apparently the two of them were having a lovers’ spat or something, because Craig seemed antsy and irritable and wouldn’t leave.

  Calvin reluctantly lifted his headphones. “Are you talking to me or to yourself?”

  “I’m just saying, if you want to get your body shot from the cum queen, you better do it quick.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Craig gave an artificial shrug, obviously expecting Calvin to beg him to explain himself. Calvin just rolled his eyes and put his headphones back on. Above his head, mauve-colored clouds floated past the moon. The air felt magnificent. He was excited and nervous to see Virginia. He hoped she liked him. If she didn’t, that was okay. But if she did, he wanted to lick tequila off her torso and see what that felt like. He’d already begun writing a poem about it in his mind. He hoped it would feel like an act of carnal worship, a powerful mingling of the debauched and the holy. Basically, he hoped it would feel awesome.

  For a long moment, Calvin thought the pretty blue and red flickering lights he saw were only in his mind. The strain of marijuana he’d smoked was known to have mildly hallucinogenic effects. But then suddenly he realized they were real. Two police cars were coming up the driveway. He yanked off his headphones.

  “Oh my god. Did you call the cops?” he yelled at Craig. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  Craig grinned evilly. “Where’s your red pill now, Trevor?”

  Calvin froze for a second. “What did you just say?”

  On the dark lawn below, a male voice boomed: “EVERYBODY FREEZE. PARTY’S OVER.”

  Within seconds, people were pouring out of the house. Everyone was shouting to each other and running for their cars. Topless girls spilled onto the grass in their bras, not seeming to know where to go. The scene felt like a bust of a teen brothel that catered only to pleasures from the waist up.

  “Bang, you’re dead. Bang, you’re dead.”

  Craig had pointed his finger like a gun, and was pretending to shoot the topless girls one by one. Calvin felt a strong urge to shove him off the roof and watch him die. Craig deserved to die for deliberately ruining such a beautiful moment of peace. For a second, Calvin actually considered it. He quickly calculated Craig’s distance from the edge of the roof, and the degree of force it would require to push him to his doom. But he stopped. He had himself to worry about right now. He couldn’t risk a run-in with the police. The thought of getting caught, and his dad being called . . . Calvin shuddered. It was not an option. He had to get out of there.

  His heart was pounding. Calm down, he commanded himself. He wouldn’t do himself any favors by having a fucking heart attack. He started climbing across the roof like a gangly cat. He heard Craig trying to crawl after him, laughing stupidly, saying, “Whoa, I’m really high. . . . Wait, how do I get down? Hey, come back, man!”

  Good-bye, Craig!

  Calvin slipped around the chimney and located the window that he and Craig had climbed out of. If he could sneak to the second floor, there was a balcony Calvin estimated he could safely dangle from to get to the ground. He was getting better and better at escaping situations. The key was to realize that yo
ur life actually depended on it. Every moment was a pass/fail test:

  Escape or die.

  The driveway, 11:11 p.m.

  “Stop touching me,” Virginia said, swatting Brittany’s hand away. Brittany was trying to braid her hair, and it was annoying.

  “It relaxes me!” Brittany whined.

  “Well, it doesn’t relax me.”

  All around, people were scattering from the police. Underage drinking was tolerated to a point at Winship, but once the police were involved, all bets were off. Everyone was panicking, and somehow Virginia had become responsible for the tipsy and topless Montague twins. Which didn’t make sense because they were older than her, and they had a billion friends, whereas she just had Benny Flax, who had jumped out a window and vanished from the face of the earth. But they were following her around like little sisters, expecting her to take care of them.

  Virginia scanned the lawn for anyone who looked sober enough to drive them out of there. Big Gabe was getting into his Hummer, but he looked so wasted he’d probably immediately drive them into a pole. Then she saw a tall, dark figure dashing toward a black Jaguar.

  “Calvin! Calvin!”

  She grabbed the twins’ hands and dragged them across the street, darting around shirtless girls and drunk boys and a pair of dogs that were barking at everyone.

  Calvin barely paused to look at her. He just flung open the back door and said, “GET IN GET IN GET IN GET IN!”

  Virginia threw herself in the backseat of the car, and the twins tumbled in after her.

  “Fuck,” he hissed. “Craig boxed me in. Put your seat belts on.”

  Virginia scrambled to put hers on, and then Angie’s. Brittany was sprawled across their laps, and Virginia couldn’t get her to sit up.

  SMASH!

  The car lurched forward, engine roaring.

  “Oh my god!” the twins screamed.

  SMASH!

  Calvin rammed the Jaguar into Craig’s car over and over, violently smashing his way out of the tight space. Virginia barely breathed, her heart slamming in her chest. She felt half-terrified, half-exhilarated. Were they going to die?

  SMASH!

  Finally there was enough room to maneuver and the car pivoted into the street.

  “It’s Chrissie!” Angie was yelling, pointing at a stumbling silhouette in a skintight dress outside. “Stop the car! We have to get Chrissie!”

  “Cheerleaders stick together!” Brittany chimed in.

  Calvin accelerated. “I’m not a cheerleader.”

  “Neither am I,” Virginia agreed. “Go!”

  “Chrissieeee!” the twins moaned, as if they would never see her again.

  The car sped away, lurching around a dark corner. Virginia wondered if Calvin always drove this insanely, or if it was just the situation. Either way, she felt so excited she could barely stand it. It felt like the seat belt was cutting off her circulation. She ripped it off, feeling a crazy surge of adrenaline. Calvin was wild and it made her feel wild too.

  She pushed Brittany off her legs and hurled herself into the front seat, landing on Calvin’s lap and straddling him. Approximately a half second later, her tongue was down his throat.

  He slammed the brakes. The tires screeched, and there was a thud as Brittany rolled off the backseat.

  “Virginia, stop.” Calvin pushed her back, pressing one hand to his chest. She dodged him and kissed him again. He grabbed her by the hair. “Stop it! You’re killing me. You’re going to kill me.”

  The next second, there was the sound of breaking glass and metal on metal. Virginia felt a weird sensation in her arm. For a second it was just fuzzy numbness. Then it ruptured into a visceral, hellish pain. It was beyond pain she’d ever experienced, beyond pain she’d ever imagined. She heard a blood-chilling scream. She didn’t realize it was her own voice.

  Then everything went white.

  Then everything went black.

  The garden, 11:30 p.m.

  Why does no one love me?

  Chrissie White was crying. No matter how many times she thought it might be different, this was how it always ended: her phone lost, her makeup ruined, throwing up in a bush and then crying.

  She lay in the grass and looked at the stars. They were spinning. Or maybe the earth was spinning. She wished a flaming comet would come and destroy it all. What was the point of a planet with eight billion people on it, if not a single one of them loved her? She cried even harder, pressing her face into the dirt. She didn’t understand it. Why didn’t anyone see her? Her boobs were bigger than the Montague twins’, and unlike them, she had four-pack abs. She’d given so many blow jobs last year that the football team had given her kneepads for Christmas. Yet no one had asked her to Homecoming, and no one had bid on her for the auction except for that slimeball Craig Beaver, and Gerard the water boy, which didn’t count because he’d bid on everyone.

  “Why . . . Why . . . Why . . . ,” she moaned over and over. She was so drunk she could barely see. She closed her eyes. The only thing she wanted in the world was to be someone’s girlfriend. To be special to someone. Anyone. She didn’t even care who it was.

  Please God, bring me a boyfriend. I’ll be a good person for the rest of my life if you bring me a boyfriend.

  “Chrissie?”

  Chrissie opened her eyes. Someone was standing over her. A boy. She couldn’t believe it. God had listened! God had sent her a boy! She reached out to touch him.

  “Are you okay?” He was sitting down on the grass next to her.

  “I’m finne, I’m finnne,” she said. She sat up dizzily and flopped her arms around his neck. Maybe she really was fine. Maybe this guy was actually the one. He felt skinny but nice. His arms were lean and wiry, and he smelled like bourbon. She liked the smell of bourbon because it reminded her of her grandfather, who had given her a beautiful Tiffany charm bracelet. He was dead now.

  She sighed and looked at the sky again. She wished there were more stars. She could only see one. The rest of the sky was the color of a dirty sock. It made her sad.

  “That . . . ,” she declared, pointing at the star, “. . . is our starm. Star.”

  “That’s a satellite,” the boy said.

  “Then it’s our sat-tuh-lite.” She squeezed him tightly.

  “Chrissie? Can I ask you something?”

  “Anything,” she breathed. Except she hoped not a blow job because she thought she might throw up.

  “Are you related to Garland White?”

  She started crying again. Really crying. She couldn’t remember who she was talking to. Then she remembered it was the boyfriend God sent. And before she knew it, she was telling him everything.

  Sunday

  Piedmont Hospital, 9:10 a.m.

  Virginia felt calm. She felt bored but okay with it. Normally when she was bored, she immediately wanted to fix it by doing something interesting. But right now she was content to just look out the window at the Atlanta skyline and replay kissing Calvin Harker in her mind a thousand times. It felt . . . peaceful. It was probably the painkillers.

  Her arm hurt. She had a compound fracture, which meant the bone had been crushed and ripped her arm open. Virginia had a vague memory of a white stick covered in blood, and her hand flopping grotesquely. Then she’d passed out. What was with this fainting tendency she was developing? It was annoying. She constantly missed out on the best action of her own life.

  She didn’t know exactly what had happened. She knew Big Gabe had crashed into Calvin’s Jaguar trying to escape the party. The car door had crushed her arm, and Brittany had gotten whiplash. She didn’t know what had happened to Calvin. She didn’t know if he knew that she was in the hospital, or if he’d tried to contact her. Her room was bare. There weren’t any flowers or cards, or teddy bears with heart-shaped paw prints, or any indication that anyone in the world gave a shit that she’d been in a car crash. But instead of making her feel forgotten, it actually made her feel mysterious and cool—a daredevil with no ties, a
Jane Doe with a secret past.

  She didn’t understand why people hated hospitals so much. They seemed pretty interesting to her. They were relaxing but exciting at the same time. It was cool to know that all around her, people were fighting for their lives. It wasn’t like everyday life, where people just lay down in the coffin of their office jobs or homework or whatever dumb thing they’d been convinced was important.

  An apple-cheeked nurse stood in the doorway holding a pen. “Virginia? The number you gave me? It’s disconnected. Does your mom have a cell?”

  “That is her cell.”

  “Well . . . Is there someone else we can call? We need a parent to discharge you. Or at least an adult.”

  Virginia looked at her arm. They’d let her choose the color of her cast, and she’d chosen black. She’d thought it would look sophisticated, but actually it looked kind of boring and drab. She sighed. She didn’t want to call Mrs. Morehouse—the idea of that old hag filling a parental role in her life was too depressing. Dan-Wam was useless, and she didn’t have Esteban’s new number in Cuba. Maybe Mrs. Flax would come. Except she couldn’t call Benny after that weird kissing thing. Why had she done that? Hopefully it was like the five-hundred-dollar bet: if she never brought it up again, he wouldn’t either.

  “I dunno. I guess call . . . Mrs. Hope. She’s my English teacher.”

  “Do you know her number?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’ll have to stay until we can contact your school or another adult.” The nurse shrugged sympathetically, then started to leave.

  “Wait,” Virginia said. “Um . . . is a guy named DeAndre Bell here? He got, like, impaled by a deer?”

  The nurse looked surprised. “The antlers kid? You know him? That boy’s in rough shape. I’m not sure he’s up for visitors.”

  Virginia appraised the nurse. Her scrubs had hearts on them. She was wearing lipstick. She probably was in love with some Dr. McDreamy or McSteamy or whatever and fantasized about the day he’d finally notice her and put a baby in her.