The Darkest Lie (3 page)

Mackenzie's waiting by my locker after school. She sticks out her designer-jeans-clad butt, taking up half the hallway, so that the foot traffic has to diverge around her.

As I approach, her eyes flicker over my gray hoodie and black canvas high-tops, clothes designed to make me disappear. I think about walking past her and out the double-glass doors, but I need to face her sometime. And if I look like the coward I really am? She'll find some way to use it against me.

“Excuse me,” I say. “You're in front of my locker.”

Her eyebrows raise. “Oh, is this yours? I didn't realize.”

She shifts languorously to one side. “How was your first day, CeCe? Make lots of new friends?” Her voice arches like a worm on a hook, daring me to say the wrong thing.

“It was all right.” I spin the dial on the lock, but my fingers fumble and I flub the numbers. I try again. And then again.

Sweat pools at my neck, and the hair sticks to my forehead. This is ridiculous! I've got more important things to worry about—like my meeting with Mr. Willoughby. I can't let a simple conversation bother me.

I try the combination one more time, but the FREAKING LOCK WILL NOT OPEN. It spins and spins, and clearly this isn't the right set of numbers. Clearly, the right combination doesn't exist anywhere, and they've given me the one faulty lock in the ENTIRE school . . .

The dial clicks. Mackenzie smirks.

“Nervous much? You wouldn't have something to hide, would you?”

Um, yeah. The senior class has been buzzing about nothing else all day. But Mackenzie couldn't care less about my self-examination journal. She's got more pressing concerns: herself.

“I saw you getting cozy with the new boy this morning,” she says.

“No, I wasn't. I hadn't even met him yet.”

The “yet” slips out, and her eyes narrow. “Listen, CeCe, you and I, we've always been okay. I would hate to see some guy get in the way of our friendship, wouldn't you?”

This is both truth and lie. Sure, we've never had a problem with each other, but a guy did come between us. Or more precisely, between her and my mother.

Tommy was Mackenzie's boyfriend when the scandal broke, and the school princess has never forgiven me for being my mother's daughter. I don't blame her. I haven't forgiven my mom, either.

“Watch yourself. You don't want to get on my bad side.” Mackenzie looks pointedly at my locker number, as if committing it to memory, and then sashays down the corridor, her ass jabbing the air with every step.

I take a shaky breath. I'm okay. As far as harassment goes, that wasn't bad. Just a warning. I can handle a warning. That's nothing compared to a group of boys walking past me while I'm eating a banana, smirking to one another and whispering, “Suck it, baby.”

I open my locker door, and a folded piece of paper tumbles out.

Oh god. I was wrong. It's not over yet.

With trembling fingers, I unfold the paper. It's a flyer from the crisis hotline, pleading for volunteers to staff the phones. The same flyer the striped-tights girl was hanging up this morning.

Did Mackenzie stick this in my locker? Or is it from another bully, intent on reminding me my mother may be dead, but her memory is still very much alive?

The last time my locker was stuffed, a hundred copies of my mom's faculty photo from the yearbook spilled out, scrawled with one epithet after another. Pedophile. Slut. Predator. The crumbled-up papers filled an entire trash can.

Maybe I should be thankful that this time, there's only one.

I turn the paper over and see handwriting on the back.

I read the message again and then a second and third time. So, not harassment, after all. But what is it, then? A nice gesture?

I'm still staring at the paper a few minutes later when Alisara comes up.

“Are you thinking of volunteering at the hotline?” my old friend asks, her black hair pulled into a long ponytail, a volleyball at her hip.

“What? Oh god, no.” I shove the paper into my pocket, the warmth traveling up my face like mercury in an overheated thermometer. “I'd never do that.”

“Why not?”

“Alisara.” I break her name into four distinct syllables. “My mother died at the hotline. It's where Tommy said they rendezvoused for sex.”

She passes the volleyball from one hand to the other. “It's just a place. Besides, didn't they move the call center, once the police blew the secret location?”

I turn to my locker and begin color-coding my folders, alphabetizing my textbooks. Anything to show Alisara how uninterested I am in this conversation.

“I mean, it's not like the hotline itself is a bad thing,” she persists. I grab my pens and lay them, alternating ball point and clicker, in my plastic case. “No matter what your mom did, the hotline helps people. It always has.”

“Oh, please,” I scoff, glancing over my shoulder. “Does anyone even call?”

“I did. Last year, when my dad died and we almost moved back to Thailand. We didn't, of course, but for a while, things were really tough for me and my mom.” A smile ghosts across her lips. “I used to call the hotline when I knew your mom was working. I had her for sophomore English, and she was one of my favorite teachers. Calling her was a way to continue our bond, even if she didn't know it was me. Up until the day she died, she was so kind to me. I'll never forget that.”

A twinge of guilt stabs my stomach. Alisara lost a parent, too, and I haven't been there for her the way she has for me. I'm a terrible friend. An even worse person. But as always, my mom's death pushes its way to the front, demanding precedence above everything else.

“You talked to my mom that last day?” I ask, hating myself. Hating the self-absorbed person I've become. The selfish girl my mother made me. “When?”

She fiddles with the volleyball. “A few hours before she, um . . . you know.”

My throat closes up. I can't believe this. My mom worked the phone lines that day. Hours before she took her own life, she had enough left in her to counsel other people's children.

But what about her own daughter? I got nothing. No note. No good-bye. No final wisdom about how to live my life. That's what gets me the most about my mom's suicide. She was leaving this world forever. And she didn't even bother to write me a letter.

I throw the plastic case into my locker. It hits the wall with a metallic twang, and I slam the door closed.

“I'm sorry, CeCe, I shouldn't have said anything—”

“It's not your fault.” I look at her, this grown-up version of the girl who used to play at my house. We once baked a coffee cake in a mixing bowl and then wondered why the batter wouldn't cook. If only that were our biggest problem now. “It's not your fault my mother didn't love me.”

I hurry away. That's all I seem to do these days. Run.

At least this time, I have a destination. Mr. Willoughby's office.

* * *

When I arrive, Mr. Willoughby's stretched out on a worn beige sofa, reading a comic book and chuckling to himself.

I hover by the doorway. It's weird seeing him like this. I know he's supposed to be some kind of comic book fiend. Supposedly, he even wrote his college thesis on The Dark Knight. But still, he's a teacher. He belongs in a classroom, pointing things out on the whiteboard. He shouldn't be kicked back, reading a Spider-Man comic, for god's sake.

“Cecilia, come in.” He sits up and waves at a folding chair next to the coffee table, which holds, predictably, yet another photograph of his late wife. There's no desk in sight, and that adds to the weirdness. But it's not like Mr. Willoughby is a traditional guidance counselor. Due to budget cuts, we had to let go of “nonessential” staff. If Mr. Willoughby hadn't volunteered, the student body would be without any career advice whatsoever.

Not that I need much. At least, not anymore.

“We haven't talked much since last spring,” he says as I perch on the chair. “How's your portfolio going for your application to Parsons?”

I won't meet his eyes. “I decided not to apply.”

“Oh?” His eyebrows leap up his forehead, even as his voice remains perfectly calm. Too calm. “When did this happen? It's all you've talked about for the past three years.”

“That was . . . before.” Before my mom died. Before my dad stopped looking at me. Before he would forget to change his clothes unless I place a freshly laundered outfit on his dresser every morning.

Attending Parsons School of Design was always my dream, and even back then, New York seemed like a whole other world. Now, it might as well be in a different galaxy.

“It's across the country,” I mumble. “And I can't leave my dad right now. He . . . he would completely fall apart if he had to fend for himself.”

“I see.” The lines around his eyes soften. “And have you discussed this with him?”

I give a short laugh. “My dad is a man of few words. The only thing we talk about is what I ate for dinner. If it doesn't fall into one of the four food groups, then forget it.”

“May I suggest you submit an application, then? You can always turn them down. No harm done.”

I close my eyes. He's wrong. Deciding not to apply severed the connective tissue around my heart. As it is, that organ's holding on by a few strands. If I have to clutch an acceptance letter in my hand and then say “no”? I think my heart would float away altogether.

“I know you haven't stopped drawing,” he says. “In fact, I'm guessing that's why you won't turn in your self-examination journal. Because it's filled with your sketches?”

“Yeah,” I whisper.

“I understand, Cecilia. I really do. And I wish we could leave it like that. But if you slide by without consequences, then nobody would bother doing the assignment.” He places his hands on his knees. “So let me put it this way: If you don't turn in your journal, I'll have to give you a zero. Do you stand by your decision?”

This is bigger than you think,
a little voice whispers.
The decision you make now could impact your GPA—and, in turn, the rest of your life.

But I can't give him my journal. Once upon a time, I displayed my artwork for everyone to see. The bigger the audience, the better, since that meant my drawings had a life outside the visions in my head. But ever since my mom died, it seems like they all want a piece of me. The reporters who camped out on my lawn. The boys who raked me over with their eyes. Even my girlfriends who pumped me for every bit of gossip. They gobbled me up and spit me back out, and I can't give them any more of myself. I just can't.

So I give Mr. Willoughby the only possible answer: “Yes.”

He sighs. “That's what I was afraid of. But although you're too stubborn for your own good, you've always been a good student. So I'm going to let you do extra credit to bolster your grade. I've spoken with Principal Winters and gotten his approval. You may choose any community service activity you wish to make up for not turning in your journal.”

My eyes widen. He's letting me off easy. A little too easy, given his strict classroom policies. “You mean I just have to work in the outdoor classroom? Or pick up trash by the lake? That's it?”

“Whatever you wish.”

Okay, now I know something is really off. When I had him for freshman English, I once lost a daily homework assignment. He made me write a fifteen-page paper on Jane Austen to make up for it. And now I fail to turn in an entire journal, and all I have to do is clear a few weeds? Doesn't make sense.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” I blurt out. Stupid, stupid. I should leave this golden opportunity alone. If he's giving me a free pass, I should grab it before he changes his mind.

“I know your mom's passing hasn't been easy for you.” He lowers his voice. “But you can't stop living just because she has. You can't give up just because life has gotten too hard.”

His tone is appropriately mournful and wise—but there's something else there, too. Some hard undertone that almost sounds like anger. But that doesn't make any sense. He and my mom were colleagues, but he barely knew her. At least as far as I know.

“I haven't given up,” I say, watching his face. Trying to understand where the harshness is coming from.

But he gives nothing away.

“Good.” He stands and ushers me to the door. Our meeting is over. “Think about what I said. Talk it over with your dad, and you can let me know which activity you pick in the morning.”

I open my mouth, to argue or question or protest, but he doesn't give me the chance. He pushes me the rest of the way into the hall and closes the door.

I'm left where I always am. Alone.

A few hours later, I grip the pencil so tightly my hand begins to cramp. The tension shoots up my neck, but I keep drawing anyway—bold, dramatic slashes that bring my mother to life again.

Today, she is a serpent eating her own tail. I shade the underside of her belly and draw flames flickering up her scales. There. A circle of fire. Passion that quite literally devours her alive.

All my drawings are like this. Half portrait, half cartoon. It's why I want to be a children's book illustrator. Mackenzie Myers has the elongated canines of a saber-toothed cat, while Alisara drops a worm into the wide-open mouth of a baby bird.

Sam, in the quick sketch I did, rides a majestic horse, his eyes piercing straight into me.

And my mother? She's got more faces than a con man. Whatever emotions I've felt in the last six months, she's worn them all.

My pencil snaps between my fingers when I hear the garage door. I have just enough time to shove the black-and-white notebook into my backpack before my dad enters the kitchen.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he says wearily, not looking at me, but I don't take it personally. He never looks at me, and everything about him is weary, from his hair, which turned a shocking white the month after my mom's death, to his faded jeans, splattered with paint and bits of dried concrete from his job as a construction foreman. “How was your first day of school?”

“Fine. Uneventful.” I make a mental note to put the last load of laundry in the dryer, and then I hurry to the oven, where his dinner's been warming. “Gram's at her poker night, so it's just us tonight. Are you hungry? I made lasagna.”

What else? I only have about five dishes in my repertoire, and we've had lasagna for Monday dinner for, oh, the last twenty weeks or so.

He washes up while I transfer a hefty portion onto his plate. The top layer of cheese is crispy and bubbly, and I mixed cayenne pepper into the filling for that satisfying bit of heat. Pure perfection, if you ask me. It's the only thing my father still compliments me on anymore.

But instead of digging in, like he normally does, he sits down and pushes the plate to the side.

My already-tense muscles twist into even bigger knots. Uh-oh. He hasn't looked this serious since the football team spelled out “S-L-U-T” on our front lawn with toilet paper. They didn't specify whether they meant me or my mother. I don't think they really cared.

“I don't think your day was all that uneventful,” my dad says. “Mr. Willoughby called me at work. Apparently, you failed to turn in your summer journal, and you're no longer applying to Parsons?”

I wrap my hands around my tea mug, not answering.

“Your teacher thought you might be acting out to get my attention,” he continues.

I snort. “He doesn't know you very well, does he? I'd have smoked pot and shoplifted weeks ago if I thought it would make a difference.”

He rubs his chin, where there's a layer of fine dust. If Mom were still here, she'd descend on him with a washcloth and a kiss. But she's not, so the dust stays, as much a part of him as the sadness wrapped around his shoulders. “You think I've . . . neglected you? I always make sure you have everything you need, from new clothes to gas money. I ask you every single night—”

“—if I've eaten,” I interrupt. “Yes, I know. Maybe I should leave my dirty dishes in the sink. That would save you the trouble of asking.”

He flinches and averts his eyes, and I immediately regret the snotty comment. He needs me, I remind myself. He's not equipped for this, never wanted to be a single dad to a teenage daughter.

But the thing is, I never wanted to be halfway to orphan, either.

“If you got home a little earlier,” I say, staring at the steam rising from my mug, “we could eat together. At least once in a while.”

“Doesn't Gram eat with you? That's why she moved in with us. So she could help you through your last year of high school.”

Last spring, my dad's mother left her glamorous, high-stakes life as a professional poker player and moved to Lakewood, Kansas. For us, she came to this dead-end town in the middle of nowhere, where the nearest casino is three hours away.

And I appreciate that. I do. But her version of parenting consists of cryptic gambling advice like: “Remember, CeCe. Never show your hand unless you have to.” And then she'll pat me on the head and float off, her perfume of cigarettes and wild flowers drifting behind her.

“Sometimes, I want to eat with
you
.” My voice falters, and I say the rest of the sentence inside my head:
so I can pretend for a few minutes I haven't lost my father, too.

He doesn't answer, and we fall silent. He eats the lasagna, and I fiddle with my mint tea. Once upon a time, my mother used to make me hot chocolate with whipped cream and crushed peppermint. The treat never failed to make me feel safe, cherished. Clearly, whatever magical powers imbued in the mint have long since faded.

“Why aren't you applying to Parsons?” my dad asks.

“New York's too far from Mom's grave.”

He chokes on the lasagna. “You haven't been to the cemetery once!”

He's right. I haven't. I'm still too angry, I guess. Too . . . betrayed. I don't have anything to say to my mother, not when she left me without an explanation. Without even a word.

“You've been to the cemetery enough for us both,” I say. “I swear you'd live there if the caretaker didn't kick you out.”

“The flowers need tending,” he mumbles.

This is exactly why I said she should be cremated and sprinkled on the lake, which she always loved. So both her body and spirit could be free from this earthly world.

More importantly, so
we
could be free. Gram suggested we move to a new town, in order to get a fresh start. I was all for it, if only so I would never have to face Tommy and his pals ever again. But Dad refused. Her body is buried here in Lakewood, and as a result, we'll be tied to this godforsaken town forever.

“So what are you going to do for your community service project?” my dad asks. This has to be some kind of record. I don't think he asked me this many questions all summer.

“Not sure.” I trace my finger around the rim of the mug. “I thought I'd do something easy, like work in the garden in the outdoor classroom.”

“What about the crisis hotline? That's where your mother would've wanted you to work.”

I snap my head up. He never mentions my mother, let alone the hotline. Talking about the flowers or the grave site is the closest he'll come to uttering her name. It's like Tabitha Brooks never lived in this house. Never cooked us pot roast with baby carrots. Never laughed her silvery peal as she sat between us, the glue that held this family together.

If the heavy memory of her didn't seep from every corner of our house, maybe I could believe he'd forgotten her. But every one of my dad's movements radiates her absence; every nuanced expression reveals how much he misses her.

She lives most strongly in the words he cannot—will not—say.

Until now.

“Why would Mom want me to work there?” I ask.

“A few days before she died, she said something strange to me,” he says haltingly. “I didn't think anything of it at the time. It was on the eve of that boy's accusation, and as you know, after that, everything happened so fast. Before I knew it, she was dead.” He looks down at his palms. “Later, I had to wonder if it wasn't a joke, after all.”

I can hardly breathe. “What did she say?”

“She said: ‘Whatever secrets I have, they're at the hotline. If you want answers, look there.'” He shakes his head. “That was it. But she repeated it two or three times, with this forced laugh. I thought she was referring to her callers' secrets. But now, I wonder if she meant her own.”

I frown. “She was talking about Tommy, Dad. The hotline was where they had sex. That's the only secret she had.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” He shrugs, as lost as the day the policeman rang our doorbell to tell us Mom had passed.

Passed. Ha. As far as euphemisms go, this one's the lamest yet. It's like we're playing some twisted game of Life and Monopoly scrambled together. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. Take your game piece and get off the board.

“What exactly are you saying, Dad?”

“Your mother wasn't capable of those things. Having sex with that student. Committing suicide.” His voice is raw and scratchy, as if he kept the words under wraps so long they're painful coming out. “I don't believe she did any of it. And you know why? Because her own mother died right before her senior year of high school. She would get nervous whenever she thought about your seventeenth birthday, like she expected lightning or some other freak accident to strike her down.”

He looks at me, really looks at me, maybe for the first time since last spring. “She swore to me, over and over, that whatever happened, she would see you through to adulthood. Because she didn't want you to grow up like she did. Without a mother.”

My hands shake. My forehead burns. And no matter how hard I try, I cannot swallow the mint tea.

I spit the hot liquid back into the mug. “I don't understand. If you really feel that Mom didn't commit suicide, why didn't you go to the police?”

“I did. I talked to Detective Jensen, the medical examiner, everyone I could. But they had already determined your mother's guilt. To them, I was a paranoid fool, trying to rewrite my pedophile wife's history.” He takes a breath. “After a cursory investigation, the police were more than happy to close the case.”

So many emotions boil inside me, I feel like a geyser about to burst. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you have to choose a community service project.” He drops his eyes, as if he's exceeded his daily quota for looking at his daughter. “And because last night, you had another one of your dreams. The ones where you cry out for your mother.” He swallows. “The ones where you plead with her to come back. And beg her for a final letter.”

I can't breathe. The space inside my lungs turns solid, and gravity shoves down on my shoulders. I've had the same recurring dream for six months. But I never knew I talked in my sleep. Had no idea anyone else knew about my obsession with my mom's last words—or lack thereof.

“Even if you don't believe that your mother had secrets, there's another reason for you to volunteer at the hotline,” he says slowly. “If your mother did write a letter, where else do you think she would hide it? If you volunteered there, you might be able to find it.”

I stare at him, my heart battering against my ears. He's probably delusional. He's probably what everyone else thinks—a pathetic widower still pining for a dead woman who never deserved his affection. This is his way to manipulate me into participating in his conspiracy theories. He wants me to investigate a case that doesn't exist.

I know this. And yet, for the first time since I saw her corpse, something stirs in my heart. Hope. I've spent the last six months wishing I never had a mother. The woman in my memory was nothing but a stranger, her motivations unfathomable, her acts of kindness faked. If my father's right, however, and I do find a letter from her, my mother's actions will finally be explained. I'll finally be able to understand why she did what she did. And maybe Tabitha Brooks can finally go back to being who she always was. Who she's supposed to be. My mother.

Something died in me the day I learned my mother committed suicide. No, not something: someone. The girl who believed her mother would protect her from the hurts of the world. The girl who was sure of one thing, no matter what else—her mother's love.

But maybe that girl isn't dead after all. Maybe a sliver of her remains, and all she needed was a shot of her father's passion to jump-start her heart.

“Okay, you've convinced me,” I say, pushing images of toiling in the outdoor classroom, undisturbed and uninvolved, to the back of my mind. “I'll do it. I'll volunteer at the hotline.”