Strange Lies Read online

  The operator, a woman, had a calm and even voice, which made Virginia feel calm. She explained that a boy at Winship Academy had been attacked by a deer and was bleeding to death in the gym. The operator asked if the deer was still on the loose. That’s when Virginia noticed the stag’s feet, which were sticking up stiffly in the air and were attached to a wooden board with wheels.

  “No, it’s dead,” she said. “It’s long dead.”

  The conversation lasted less than a minute. When it was over, Virginia dropped the cell phone and found herself staring at DeAndre, who lay motionless and covered in blood. People were screaming all around her, but the sound of their hysterical voices faded into a dull hum. She felt woozy. Mere feet away, before her eyes, the life was slipping from a human being’s grip. Only DeAndre’s eyes—still blinking—showed that he was hanging on. His line of vision met the dead, sightless eyes of the stag. The two seemed to stare at each other as if in a battle of wills: will to kill versus will to live. Virginia wished everyone would shut up. Let him die in peace, she thought.

  Then everything went black again.

  The lobby, 8:24 p.m.

  There was pandemonium all around. Benny couldn’t figure out what was going on. One second he’d been about to catch up with Winn Davis, and the next it was pitch-black, and then people were yelling and everyone was being herded from the gym out the side and back doors.

  “What’s happening?” he asked the first person he saw. It was Yasmin Astarabadi. Her arms were full of papers and science equipment as if she were fleeing a burning laboratory.

  “I dunno. Some kind of animal attack?” Then she hurried away.

  A group of sobbing girls passed by, and Benny stepped in front of them. “What’s happening?” he asked again. But they just kept crying and ignored him.

  He turned around, searching for someone reasonable-looking to ask. He saw Mr. Rashid trying to gather a group of ninth graders together. “Please be calm, everybody. Remain in one place until your parents can locate you.”

  “What’s going on?” Benny asked him, shouting over the din.

  “Please be calm,” he repeated, not really looking at Benny.

  “I am calm.”

  Across the lobby a girl howled in tears, “WHAT’S GOING ON?” and Mr. Rashid rushed to attend to her. Benny felt a jab of annoyance. He’d asked the exact same question, except in a normal tone of voice instead of freaking out, and Mr. Rashid had completely ignored him. Meanwhile, this hysterical girl was getting fussed over by three teachers, including Mr. Rashid, plus the school nurse. How were they supposed to grow into rational, levelheaded adults if hysterical behavior got validated at every turn?

  “Everyone out of the way! Everyone outside!” a man’s voice shouted.

  What is happening? Benny thought. He ducked behind a column, trying not to get funneled outside with everyone else. He wanted to stay as close to the scene as possible.

  “Out! Everyone out! Everyone on the courtyard, now!”

  Benny watched as the sea of confused students, teachers, and parents poured out of the lobby into the darkness outside. There was the sound of a siren, but it wasn’t getting closer, it was getting farther away. Its tone grew distorted and eerie.

  Within minutes, everything was quiet. His heart pounding, Benny darted across the lobby and peered into the gym, which was now empty and too silent. He saw evidence of some kind of crash. Several of the exhibits were knocked down and stuff was strewn everywhere on the floor. In the center of the disarray, a massive dead animal was lying in a pool of blood. It was a deer. Its antlers had been sawed off. The sight chilled Benny to the core. It wasn’t just the visceral shock of seeing so much blood; it was the animal’s eyes, which were frozen in an expression of utter anguish. Not the anguish of the dead, but of the maimed. Its once-great antlers mutilated into pitiful stubs.

  Benny felt his lip trembling, and he stamped his foot. It was a habit from childhood, stamping his foot in frustration whenever he felt like he was about to cry.

  Then he noticed that the deer was attached to a board with wheels. It’s taxidermied, he realized. It wasn’t the deer’s blood. So whose was it? A person’s? Benny felt slightly sick, imagining that much blood seeping from someone’s body.

  A pair of long, red smears led away from the puddle. Someone had obviously been dragged away from the scene. A small shoe had been left behind, like a grisly Cinderella story. It was ugly fake leather, dotted with sparkling plastic jewels meant to distract from the cheapness of the material. It was covered in blood.

  I know that shoe.

  It was Virginia’s.

  The football field, 8:30 p.m.

  “I love you. I love you.”

  Why had the words been so hard to say before now? He loved her. She was so nice, and so pretty, and she loved him and he loved her. He wanted to say it five thousand times.

  “I love you too!” Corny squealed. The sound of her laugh made Winn feel like he was going insane. He kissed her lips and wished the kiss could last five thousand years.

  “Let me feel your skin. Oh my god.” He reached under her pink sweater. Her skin was so soft it was unbelievable. It was like being five years old and touching a kitten. It was like going back in time, before his hands had grown into the rough hands of a man. He lay down on the grass and pulled Corny down next to him.

  “What’s gotten into you?” Corny giggled. It was dark, and Winn wished he had a flashlight so he could see her smile. He ached to see her smile. To see her face, her eyes, her lips, her breasts.

  “Come here, sugarplum.” Sugarplum. It was a gay word, but it felt good coming out of his mouth. He made a mental note to call her sugarplum for the rest of their lives. He kissed her, pressing himself against her with a pure desire he hadn’t felt since they first started dating in eighth grade, back when Corny could just look at him and he’d have a boner for three days.

  “I love you,” he breathed into her hair.

  “Oh my god. I so totally love you too, Winn.”

  She loves me. She loves me. Nothing else would ever matter again. Why had he been so scared before? Corny had told him she loved him about a million times before, but Winn had never said it back. Corny had never pressured him or made him feel bad about it, but he’d known that the day would come he’d have to say it back, and he’d dreaded that day with a dread that made his stomach hurt. But now that day was here, and it was amazing; there was nothing to dread or fear. A wall had come down between himself and his own heart. This is exactly what I needed, he thought ecstatically, inhaling the peachy scent of Corny’s hair.

  Winn had been feeling stressed for weeks. He didn’t know why. It was like being smothered by a dark, random cloud. He was tired all the time; food tasted like shit; he sucked balls at football practice; Corny irritated him when she was around, but when she wasn’t, he felt so lonely he couldn’t stand it. He could barely even jerk off anymore without wishing he could disappear into oblivion afterward.

  Then tonight Trevor Cheek had told him there was a random guy in the girls’ bathroom, and he had some drugs or whatever, and he was just giving them away for free if you had the secret password. And the password was either “blue pill” or “red pill,” which seemed sort of gay.

  “It’s from The Matrix!” Trevor had said. But it still seemed gay. And besides, Winn wasn’t interested in drugs, and he hadn’t thought Trevor was either. Drugs were for white trash and smelly hippies like Skylar Jones. Couldn’t they just get a beer? But Trevor kept saying they had to do it, and suddenly Winn didn’t care if drugs were trashy. The science expo was suffocating—everyone’s projects made him feel like an underachieving moron. He needed to get out of there. So whatever, he did it.

  Trevor had called “red.” So Winn took “blue.” He didn’t know if there was supposed to be a difference. He’d felt like the hugest idiot standing in the girls’ room saying “blue pill” to a mystery dude who wouldn’t show his face. But it was worth it. For the first tim
e in weeks—in years—he felt like a real person. He felt actually alive, being alone with Corny right now on the empty football field. She was so beautiful. He needed to fuck her immediately.

  “Wait, get a condom!” Corny squealed.

  “No. I want to have a baby.” He surprised himself saying it, but as soon as he did, he knew that he meant it. He wanted to have a baby. He wanted a little baby girl who looked exactly like Corny, and they would call her Little Corny, and they’d live in a cabin in the mountains, and Winn would take care of his little Cornys and protect them till the end of time.

  “Winn! You’re so silly.”

  “I’m serious! Please let me cum in you and have a baby,” Winn begged.

  “Um . . . okay!” Corny giggled, and Winn kissed her ferociously. She belonged to him forever. He wanted to mix his DNA with hers, and create a new tiny life that would glue them together forever.

  “I love you,” he repeated. “I love you.”

  Her body felt like heaven. Love was heaven.

  The middle school basketball court, 8:45 p.m.

  Virginia found herself lying on a rickety gurney with a thick pillow under her head. Some lady handed her an Advil, and Virginia washed it down with a swig of Gatorade. She rubbed her temples, feeling drained and disoriented. A boy was crying softly on the bleachers. A family was sitting together, the mom giving the daughter a back rub and the son playing a game on his phone. Everyone else was either sitting quietly or lying down on yoga mats. Apparently the middle school basketball court had been designated the recuperative area for overwhelmed people. At least it was quiet and the lights were low. She didn’t know how she’d gotten there. Someone must have wheeled her in while she was unconscious.

  Five people had fainted, including Virginia. Five people! The number irritated her. If she was going to faint, she wanted to be the only one. She didn’t want to be one of five people. It made her feel average and lame. And what was Benny going to think? She’d been at the very center of the action and passed out like a dainty maiden in need of smelling salts.

  She sat up, but then the image of blood spewing out of DeAndre’s chest hit her like a baseball bat to the head, and she lay back down on the gurney.

  Get a grip, she ordered herself. She didn’t want to be a wimp. But she couldn’t bring herself to sit up again.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  Virginia turned her head. Someone was sitting in shadow on the bleachers. She couldn’t tell who it was. Then he stood up, his body elongating as if in slow motion, getting taller and taller until he finally reached his full, looming height.

  “Oh, hey, Calvin,” she said. “Sure.”

  He paused, apparently wording the question in his mind. “Did you see it happen?”

  Virginia groaned. “Ugh, yeah. It was horrible. . . . Did you faint too?”

  Calvin shook his head. “Nah. I just needed a place to calm down. It’s a zoo out there.”

  Virginia closed her eyes. She was glad she was in here, then. She lifted her head and took another sip of Gatorade.

  “Is DeAndre dead?” she whispered, not wanting anyone to overhear and start weeping or something.

  Calvin shrugged. “No one knows yet. I think they took him in an ambulance. . . . I like your outfit.”

  “Hm? Oh, thank you.” She pinched her sweater. “It’s cashmere. Too bad it’s ruined.” She scowled at the huge white stain.

  “The stain is my favorite part. It’s like . . . you were too beautiful, so they had to throw garbage at you. To bring you down to their level.”

  Whoa. Virginia gawked at him. Where the hell did that come from? Calvin Harker was someone she could barely remember having ever talked to. They knew each other, but only because everyone in a small school knew each other. She struggled for something to say. She couldn’t say “thank you,” because she’d just said that five seconds ago. And besides, “thank you” wasn’t exactly a sufficient response to the most amazing compliment she’d ever heard in her life. Before she could think of anything, Calvin said, “Can I sit with you?”

  “Um, yeah. Sure.” Virginia scooched over a bit, unsure of how to situate herself. Calvin half sat, half stood at the very edge of the gurney, making a small gesture with his hands to suggest she should stay lying down. Virginia tried to relax. But this was weird. Did Calvin Harker like her? How incredibly random was that? She looked at him, trying to figure out how she felt about it. She couldn’t decide if he was good-looking or not. He was certainly . . . interesting-looking. His features were all slightly distorted, the result of some congenital disease; Virginia couldn’t remember what it was called. Something related to aliens, because in middle school everyone called him Martian Boy. But then he’d gotten a heart transplant and spent a year in the hospital, and people stopped making fun of him after that.

  “Can I show you a poem?”

  Virginia blinked. “Sure. . . .” She liked that Calvin asked her permission before doing anything. It made her feel important. He handed her a folded piece of paper. Virginia took it, almost afraid to open it.

  If the poem is good, I’ll like him. If it’s bad, I won’t.

  She opened it.

  The fountain, 8:55 p.m.

  “Mom, I’m fine. I’m fine.” Yasmin squirmed out of her mother’s death grip of a hug. All around her, mothers were hugging their kids and people were crying and looking for one another and asking what was going on. The splashing water from the fountain, usually so peaceful, seemed overly loud and contributed to the stress of the environment. Yasmin wanted to go home, but a policewoman in a tight ponytail was interviewing everyone and asking what they’d seen. Yasmin barely knew what she’d seen. She knew what she hadn’t seen, which was the freaking judges. She’d been robbed of her fifteen minutes by a deer that had apparently killed DeAndre Bell.

  Supposedly, it was moments like these that made people realize what really mattered in life. What was a science expo prize worth when DeAndre Bell was now dead?

  Everything. To Yasmin, it was still worth everything. People died every single day. It was literally the only thing you could count on in life, which is exactly why you couldn’t waste a single moment being distracted from your goals. Yasmin had to stay focused. Except her brain was reeling—she’d never personally known someone who’d died before, especially not someone young. Even last month when the whole school had thought Brittany was dead for five seconds, it hadn’t hit Yasmin personally. Brittany Montague was so unreal—so perfect, so blond, so far out of Yasmin’s social orbit. But Yasmin had almost all her classes with DeAndre. They were doing a Civics project together! Yasmin felt ill. She thought about her Civics project, and then thought about DeAndre being dead. Then her Civics project, then DeAndre being dead.

  Am I losing my mind? Maybe I’m not processing this, she thought. DeAndre is dead. DeAndre is dead. DeAndre is dead.

  She waited for the reality to hit her. But it was too scary to let her feelings in. It was like her brain had short-circuited and wouldn’t give her emotions any space. She just wanted to go home and take a shower and watch True Blood in her room. Yasmin hardly ever allowed herself to watch TV—it was a waste of time—but this whole day was fucked, and she didn’t have the energy to salvage it. She just wanted to throw it in the garbage and move on.

  Yasmin’s mom was saying something about the dog-faced policewoman wanting to talk to her. She always spoke Persian when she was upset, even though she knew Yasmin only understood about half of it.

  “No one talks to her without Bruce,” her dad said. “He’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

  Bruce Sherazi was the family lawyer, whom Yasmin’s father dragged into everything. Mr. Astarabadi understood America. He understood that rewards weren’t given to the good-hearted; they were given to the mercilessly litigious.

  “There was a purple light,” the policewoman was saying. She had a tight ponytail and a face that indeed resembled a Schnauzer. “That was your project, Yasmin?”

&n
bsp; Yasmin scowled at her. A purple light? People were such morons.

  “We think your project caused the power outage,” the officer said. “You need to answer some questions.”

  “Is this a homicide investigation?” Mr. Astarabadi asked, his Persian accent almost imperceptible.

  “I’m unable to give information at this time.”

  “Daddy, I want to go home,” Yasmin whined. She pouted at her dad, knowing he couldn’t resist her puppy-dog eyes.

  Mr. Astarabadi looked at her, deciding. Then he produced an immaculate, cream-colored business card from his Yves Saint Laurent wallet and handed it to the policewoman.

  “You will not contact my daughter,” he said, hardly making eye contact. It was his signature power move, making people feel like they barely registered with him. “Everything goes through me.”

  Five minutes later the Astarabadi family was cruising down Peachtree Street toward their Italian-inspired manse in Brookhaven. Riding in the Lexus always felt smooth and deluxe. Yasmin rolled down the window and stuck her head out like a little kid. The autumn air was crisp and cool, and made her feel better. She realized she hadn’t been fully breathing for the last twenty minutes, as if avoiding inhaling the fact of DeAndre’s death. She didn’t want to think about it. So she focused on herself, because everything else was too overwhelming. DeAndre was gone, but she was still here.

  She was alive.

  The courtyard, 9:00 p.m.

  Benny asked every adult he could find if they had seen Virginia Leeds. Most of them didn’t know who she was, which made Benny want to throttle them. Virginia Leeds! he wanted to yell. She’s been at this school for five years. But he knew from experience that if you weren’t in their country-club crowd, it was like you didn’t exist. Weaving through the hubbub, he heard DeAndre’s name about a hundred times, but not once did he hear Virginia’s. Finally he found a teacher who said there were some people with the EMTs on the middle school basketball court.