Strange Lies Read online

  “Why not?” Virginia said. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a guy in there,” Yu Yan whispered, scandalized.

  Virginia rolled her eyes. Winship was so behind the times. She’d heard of schools that had unisex bathrooms where no one even batted an eye. “So what?” she said, trying to sound like she went into bathrooms with guys in them all the time.

  “He’s giving away drugs!” Constance hissed.

  Virginia felt her heart beat a little faster. “Really?” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. Virginia knew Constance—she loved drama and would dangle this over her all night if she knew how badly Virginia wanted to hear more.

  “Ew, what is that?” Constance asked, pointing to the white smear on Virginia’s sweater.

  “It’s lobster paste.”

  “Well, it’s all over you.”

  “Thanks for noticing.”

  Virginia looked past Constance to Yu Yan and Beth, who were snickering behind their hands. “Hey. Do y’all know who it is? The guy in there? Is it one of Skylar’s friends?”

  “No one knows,” Beth breathed dramatically. Constance shot her a look.

  “No one knows?” Virginia repeated. How had a dude just walked into the girls’ room without anyone noticing?

  “He locked himself in a stall, and he won’t tell anyone his name. But supposedly if you know the secret password, he’ll give you drugs.”

  “What’s the password?” Virginia demanded. “Come on, tell me.”

  “Jesus, we don’t know!” Constance said, stepping in front of Beth. “Do we look like the kind of girls who know secret passwords for free drugs?”

  Virginia smirked. “You wish you did.” She turned and started walking toward the bathroom.

  “What are you doing?” Yu Yan whispered.

  “I’m going in there.”

  Wherever you go, something might happen, she told herself. Don’t just be a detective: be a witness. They were Benny’s words. His number one rule for solving mysteries was to Be There. For Benny, it was about wanting to be his own witness and not rely on anyone else. For Virginia, it was something different. She had her own reasons, though she wasn’t exactly sure what those reasons were anymore. She’d thought it was about wanting to be mysterious, wanting to know secret things. But ever since the insanity with Zaire Bollo, she and Benny had more secrets than anyone—yet she felt the same. Maybe she just needed more.

  She pushed the door open with her foot. Someone had left the water running. That was the only sound. Virginia stepped inside, and the door whooshed closed behind her. She went over to the sink and turned off the faucet. Then it was silent.

  She could see his feet under the stall: a pair of plain black loafers and gray wool slacks, the kind with a neat crease running down the front of each leg. A drug dealer who irons his pants? The thought made Virginia very conscious of her own legs and feet—the small tear in her stockings and her shitty pleather flats from Target. If she could see his feet, he could probably see hers.

  Virginia suddenly couldn’t remember what her plan was. She had a plan, right? Surely she hadn’t just charged into a spooky, ill-lit bathroom containing an anonymous drug dealer with absolutely zero plan. She’d had a vague notion that she would simply stalk up to the occupied stall, stick her head under the door, and demand that the interloper identify and explain himself. Suddenly that idea seemed foolish. And possibly dangerous.

  “Hello?” she said. She’d meant to sound confident, but her voice was barely above a whisper.

  There was a pause, and then she heard a voice come from inside the stall: “Do you know the password?” It was a low voice. Purposely low, Virginia thought, like a subtle disguise. He’s worried about being recognized, she realized. That meant he wasn’t a stranger. He could be someone she actually knew. This possibility didn’t comfort her. It made a chill run down both her arms.

  “Do you know the password?” the voice repeated in the same low, even tone.

  Virginia held her breath. What could it be? Benny could probably guess it, she thought, annoyed at herself for barging in here without getting him first.

  “No,” she finally said. Maybe it was a trick, she figured, and “no” actually was the password. But part of her hoped it wasn’t. It was one thing to be daring, it was another to be accepting unknown substances in the girls’ room at night. She’d be expelled in a second if she got caught.

  “Wrong,” the voice growled.

  Virginia stood motionless for a moment, hovering between disappointment and relief. Then she ran out the door as fast as she could.

  Booth 40, 7:54 p.m.

  “On her sweater. Apparently she’s, like, a secret cum queen.”

  “Omigod. Secret’s out now!”

  Both girls giggled hysterically behind their hands.

  Benny froze, pretending to listen to a ninth grader’s presentation about the ripening process of bananas. It was the second group of girls he’d heard talking about Virginia. The story seemed to be that she’d hooked up with Skylar Jones and he’d . . . released himself all over her, and that she was walking around with it on her sweater for the world to see. He doubted it was true. Was it possibly true? If he thought about it, he didn’t really know Virginia that well. He was aware that she and Skylar had been a thing for like five seconds in ninth grade, but as far as he understood, she basically hated him now. But moments like these always highlighted just how clueless he truly was. Maybe they were back together; maybe they were sexually active. The thought dumbfounded him, forming a wall of white noise between him and the world in front of his face.

  Stop being immature, he told himself. It probably wasn’t true, and even if it was, whatever. Virginia could take care of herself. Except actually that was up for debate. She repeatedly showed poor judgment, doing dumb things like getting into cars with murder suspects. But she’d managed to survive this far. It was her life.

  “Bullets don’t kill; velocity kills.”

  Benny halted, as if the word “kill” had been screamed rather than spoken mildly by junior classman Craig Beaver. Benny looked over. A small group of students and teachers was gathered around his booth. Benny knew Craig a little. He was a scrawny and energetic guy who was usually the first in any situation to make an infantile fart joke. But he was smarter than people realized, despite having an immature sense of humor, which he’d probably developed as a defense mechanism from having such a dumb name.

  “Watch,” Craig was saying. “What happens if I throw this bullet at you?” He held up a small bullet with a gleaming brass shell and threw it at the head of one of his friends, who hammily pretended to have been shot.

  “I’m dead! I’m dead! Tell Brittany Montague I love her!”

  “Shut up, Jake,” Craig said, laughing. “As you can see, Jake will live another day to be rejected by Brittany Montague. But what if I’d shot this bullet at him from a 92 FS Fusion Beretta? Traveling at four hundred and sixty miles per second, this lil bullet would have ripped through his skull and exploded his brain and we’d all be shitting ourselves.” He looked at the parents. “Pardon me. Pooping ourselves.”

  Benny wondered if it was actually legal to throw bullets at people in a school building. The rules were different for private schools. That was the whole point. Winn Davis kept a gun in his car and everyone knew it. Sometimes he even brought it to class. Winn Davis got away with everything; he was the unofficial school mascot, trotted out as a Best-All-Around type because he was handsome yet approachable, played football yet never date-raped, and managed to get B grades while most of the other jocks were flunking. Benny knew more about Winn than most people did; he probably knew more about Winn than Winn knew about himself. The guy was a dim bulb with hidden rage; what was dangerous was that he hid it from himself.

  Just then, as if summoned by Benny’s thoughts, there he was—Winn Davis. Benny caught only a glimpse of him, past the gym entrance, darting between two rows of booths. Benny kept staring at the hall, t
hough it was empty now. There was something weird about Winn coming out of that door, and it took Benny a minute to realize what it was: it was the door to the girls’ bathroom. Maybe it wouldn’t have seemed that weird if Corny Davenport, his girlfriend, had come sneaking out after him, giggling and adjusting her dress. But she hadn’t; Winn was alone. Benny started to get up to follow him, but he had already disappeared, lost in the crowd.

  At that second, Benny felt a hand grab his arm. He almost jumped.

  “Benny. You have to come with me right now.”

  The lobby, 8:08 p.m.

  “He’s right in there,” Virginia said, pointing to the girls’ bathroom door. She waited for Benny’s reaction, but he was just staring at her boob. It was kind of shocking (Benny wasn’t usually the slobbering-over-boobs type) until she remembered the gross white stain on her sweater.

  “Ugh, it’s lobster paste. Whatever. So this guy wouldn’t tell anyone his name, but if you said the password, supposedly he’d give you free drugs. It was scary, I’m telling you. And his pants were ironed. I could see them under the door. Isn’t that weird? A pants-ironing drug dealer?”

  “Hm . . . ,” Benny said, not seeming as excited as Virginia wanted him to be. Benny was so annoying sometimes. It was like he only cared about a mystery if he found it himself.

  “Hello? Why are you spacing out?” Virginia demanded. “Maybe I should be Mystery Club president, and you should be, like, Mystery Club gaping bystander.”

  “Okay, okay, no need to be insulting,” Benny said. “I just saw Winn Davis sneaking out of the girls’ room. Maybe it was him?”

  Virginia shook her head. “No way!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Winn Davis is a football trophy come to life. He doesn’t have weird secret passwords for drugs. And besides, whoever he is, he’s still in there.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I saw him two seconds ago. His feet anyway.”

  “Well . . .” Benny stood there thinking for a second. “I guess . . . you stay here and stake out the bathroom. He can’t stay in there forever. I’m going to find Winn.”

  “What do I do if the guy comes out?”

  “Just . . . observe.”

  Virginia rolled her eyes. Benny’s reaction to everything was to observe it. He’d probably observe a stampede of elephants and get trampled to death rather than move.

  Benny left, and Virginia was alone in the lobby. Constance and her friends were gone, probably to go write in their diaries about the scary man in the bathroom. She frowned at the white splotch on her sweater, which was ruined now. Some of the gunk had even hardened in her hair, making a small blond icicle. Part of her genuinely wanted to cry. Who knew when she’d ever have a sweater this nice again. It was her own fault, she knew, for wearing grown-up clothes around a bunch of high school infants. But it still didn’t seem fair.

  Get over it, she told herself. There was a mysterious drug dealer in the bathroom, and it wasn’t Winn Davis, no matter what Benny said. Winn Davis was a boring lug-head with no imagination. And whoever this guy was, she knew one thing about him: he was interesting.

  Booth 40, 8:15 p.m.

  Lobster paste. Lobster paste. The words repeated themselves in his mind. What the hell was lobster paste? There was no way it could actually be Skylar’s . . . fluid, unless he had a medical condition. There was just too much of it. It was even in her hair!

  He took out his phone and googled “lobster paste.” A paté formed from puréed lobster meat used in cooking. Then he googled “lobster paste, sex.” But as soon as the results loaded, he jabbed the search window closed. Get a grip, he commanded himself, shoving the phone into his pocket.

  He scanned the gym for Winn’s distinct halo of golden hair. In the back of his mind, Benny wasn’t entirely buying the situation. A drug dealer in the girls’ room? At Winship? Winship was a booze school—even Benny knew that. There were outliers like Skylar and Sophat, but for the most part, drugs were not a part of the upper-crust social scene. And Virginia didn’t have the strongest relationship with reality—was this whole scenario one of her flights of fancy?

  Benny walked up and down the rows, trying not to draw attention to himself, as if anyone ever paid attention to him anyway. He passed DeAndre Bell’s booth (a papier-mâché volcano—was this fourth grade?) and heard the loud, jovial voice of Trevor Cheek’s dad.

  “Hail to the chief!” he boomed.

  “Hail to the chief!” DeAndre boomed back. Someone instantly materialized with a camera, and Mr. Cheek slapped his arm around DeAndre’s shoulders to pose for a photo. Benny had witnessed this little bit of theater between them before. DeAndre was the student body president, and Mr. Cheek was the president of the Board of Trustees. Mr. Cheek had a particular fondness for DeAndre, Benny had noticed. Something about it made Benny uncomfortable. Part of it was the twinge of envy he felt that DeAndre had managed to fit in so well at Winship. But it wasn’t just that. Mr. Cheek was a gigantic man, and his thick, hairy hand gripped DeAndre’s slim shoulder proprietarily, sinisterly, as if to say, This black boy is MINE. DeAndre had run against (and defeated) Mr. Cheek’s own son in the school election last spring, making their chumminess even weirder. But if DeAndre was uncomfortable, he didn’t show it. His grin was as wide and beaming as Mr. Cheek’s, and they laughed loudly together for the camera.

  Focus, Benny told himself, looking around for Winn’s golden head. The hum of a gym full of people was starting to feel mind-numbing. He turned the corner and walked down the next row, weaving through the slow-moving clumps of students and parents. He saw the judges oohing and ahhing over the little ninth grader’s presentation of the ripening process of bananas. That dumb banana project was probably going to win, wasn’t it? Normally Benny wasn’t competitive—knowledge was its own reward—but for once he’d hoped to get a little recognition, if only for his mother to see.

  “Trevor, you’re squashing it. Trevor! Give it back.”

  Benny turned and saw Trevor Cheek with a banana in his hand. He was squeezing it, causing the fruit to ooze out like pus. His face looked twitchy and odd. Something about it made Benny want to steer clear of him.

  A flash of blond hair and blue letter jacket appeared and then disappeared amid the crowd. It was Winn. Benny left the banana booth and followed him, but got stalled by a group of people gathered around a project involving taste-testing Coke versus Pepsi. Benny squeezed past them, walking as fast as he could without bumping into people. The blond figure turned the corner. But just as Benny was about to catch up, the lights overhead flickered. There was a brilliant purple streak of light, like neon lightning. It flickered out suddenly, leaving the gym in total blackness. A roar filled Benny’s ears.

  It was the sound of a hundred people screaming.

  The lobby, 8:15 p.m.

  Virginia stared at the bathroom door, trying not to even blink. Whoever was in there had to come out at some point, and she was going to catch him. She tried to remember every detail of his feet. Brown shoes. Or were they black? Boys’ shoes all looked the same. The ironed pants should have been a giveaway, but it seemed like about one in four boys in the gym had ironed pants. All the teachers did—maybe it was a teacher! The thought made her heart race. Maybe it was someone’s dad  ! Or maybe it was a girl, dressed up in boys’ pants and shoes. That would explain the cartoonishly low voice, and the fact that no one had seen a guy entering the girls’ room.

  Oh my god. She wished she’d thought of this back in the bathroom. Benny never asked Virginia what she thought; it was like he viewed her mind as just an empty receptacle for his own thoughts instead of a living brain that actually produced thoughts of its own. Virginia was used to it, but it was still annoying.

  Virginia shifted from one foot to the other. It was starting to get boring, standing there like a statue staring at a bathroom door. She leaned against the wall, wishing the guy would come out already. Then she saw a flash of light in the corner of her eye—a weird p
urple bolt coming from inside the gym. Instinctively, Virginia turned her head. In an instant, the entire building went black.

  Virginia turned around. She couldn’t see anything. Someone elbowed her in the back. There were shouts in the darkness. Then Virginia heard a grunt, and a loud crash, and then a scream like she’d never heard before. It sounded like someone having their guts ripped out. A single wild, gurgling howl of pain. The sound was so horrifying it made Virginia want to tear off her own ears.

  Then the lights flickered on. Virginia looked around. The purple light appeared again for a single second—a neon ladder in the air that quickly evaporated. Near her, a crowd of people were jumping back, as if to avoid a snaking live wire. They were screaming.

  “What’s happening?” she shouted. She crouched down and elbowed through the crowd, shoving herself in the middle of the gym. She heard Benny’s voice in her mind: Be There.

  What she saw made her stagger backward.

  The breath left her chest.

  “DEANDRE!” a girl next to her was howling. “IT’S DEANDRE!”

  Between two tables, amid a circle of horrified, frozen bystanders, DeAndre Bell was sputtering on the floor as blood spurted from his chest. He was pinned down by an enormous pair of antlers. A deer—a gigantic, monstrous stag—was bent over him in a deadly pose.

  Virginia gasped a breath. Deer attack people? For some reason, in the moment, that was the most shocking part. Deer aren’t supposed to attack people. Then DeAndre’s chest convulsed grotesquely, and a fountain of blood spewed out. Virginia jumped, screaming. Everyone around her was screaming too. Parents yanked their children away, covering their eyes. DeAndre moaned loudly.

  “Call 911!” Virginia yelled. She couldn’t believe she was the first to say it. “Jesus Christ, he’s dying!”

  There was a guttural retching sound next to Virginia. Someone’s mom had pulled out a cell phone, but then started throwing up directly on it before managing to dial a single digit. Virginia reached out and grabbed the phone from the tiny woman, trying not to gag. Touching it as little as possible, she wiped the phone on the woman’s back, leaving a brown, repulsive smear on the perfect cream-colored silk blazer. Then she swiped the phone open and dialed 911.