Even When You Lie to Me (3 page)

“It’s BS, I agree,” Lila said the next morning as I rested my throbbing head against my chair. There was a knot where I’d banged it the night before. “Just freak her out and join the cheerleading squad.”

“Are you kidding? She’d be delighted.” I clutched my backpack to my chest. “What will take the least amount of effort and social interaction?”

“You could work in the school library but I think they’re just as afraid of you as the one in town is,” Lila said. “I’m not saying you should be proud, but…”

“They are
not
af— Just because you’re illiterate, you don’t have to mock people who can read.”

“
Cosmo
comes out once a month; that is more than enough reading material for me,” she said. “But listen, we have to concentrate on my goals for the year. I need something other than worrying about college. And do not tell me that Chatham Valley is always looking for fresh blood.” Chatham Valley was the local community college, a place her parents’ money ensured she’d never go, even if her grades hadn’t been as good as they were. She played down her academic achievements, but she was one of the top students in our class.

“Number one is not getting me killed when you’re searching for a hairbrush while going seventy on the interstate.”

“Realistic goals.” She was tapping in letters now, her fingernails clicking against the glass.

“Who are you texting?” I asked, glancing at the wall clock. Two minutes till the morning bell. I pressed my hand against the bump on my head as if I were trying to stop it from spreading.

“What?” Lila said, looking up. “Oh, just some dudebro I gave my number to at ShopRite.”

This always happened to Lila. We didn’t talk about the fact that it didn’t happen to me.

“Classy. What’s he saying?”

“Ugh, some come-on involving numbers and abbreviations. I’m just blowing him off.” The bell sounded. Lila fell back in her chair and groaned. “Calculus first period. Stanford is not going to be pleased with my grade. Which will be a D.”

“I’ve got Math for Stupids with Gorgon. She already hates me from study hall with
someone
who wouldn’t shut up half the time.”

Lila narrowed her eyes at me. “We’ll discuss my awful influence on you in English, okay? I have things to cosine.”

I got up, steeling myself for the long walk to my classroom. The first day back was risky—I might see people I recognized, or ones I could quickly smile at, but I might also run into people who’d mutter things I couldn’t quite hear or nudge their friends and laugh. I wasn’t one of the worst outcasts—the ones who wore sweatpants to class, the ones who were glazed with religious fervor, the ones who grasped your arm and wouldn’t let go when they talked to you. It was mostly because I had Lila. But there was always a threat bubbling underneath my time at school, that someone might say something cruel and collapse the ordinary day I’d been having. Sometimes I wished I lived in a place where no one would know who I was or care, and I could walk without my head dipped low, always glancing behind me.

Lila opened the door into a burst of noise; she waved and grimaced and then she was gone. Someone bumped me from behind and made a halfhearted gesture of apology. People stopped suddenly and yelled to each other and glanced at me, then looked away again. A couple stuck to some lockers like tree roots twined together. A boy shoved past me and turned, and when he saw me, his eyes lit up. “Hey, Porter,” he said, and I wondered where I knew him from. His smile looked genuine, but his eyes glittered in a way that worried me. My heart sped up and the knot on my head throbbed with it.

Finally I made it up the stairs and into my classroom. I was the third person to arrive; Will van der Hoff was at the front, reading a paperback, and Eric Bastian was off to the side, texting someone. I knew Mrs. Morgan didn’t assign seating, so I had my pick. I chose a desk at the edge of the room with the word
Boobies
etched into the surface next to a peace sign.

A few kids shuffled in as I drew aimlessly in my notebook. I avoided eye contact with most of them; the majority were juniors, so I didn’t know how many would end up being a problem. Mrs. Morgan still hadn’t arrived, which was unusual. I’d had her for Algebra II the year before, and before class she’d always been behind her desk, sitting ruler straight, her milky eyes focused on the distance, her hair pinned into a bun the color of a weathered seashell.

The bell rang and the last stragglers leapt to their seats. A small, slight bird of a woman with bad skin and short black hair came through the door and ignored us as she walked toward the desk. The class quieted briefly, but when she continued to pay us no attention, everyone quickly resumed talking. She shuffled some papers, grabbed a binder, and then stepped out in front of us again.

“Can you all please settle down?” she said in a high, tentative voice. She looked young, and like she was already out of her depth. The noise dipped again, but a girl I didn’t know was still on the phone with someone, and a boy, Stephen Williams, was facing backward, slapping his hands on his chair and laughing. The woman paused, then said again, “Settle down, please, class.”

Class
was her first mistake. They didn’t like being addressed as
class.

“Where’s Morgan?” someone called out. Sean Varniska—he was obviously thrilled at the chance to unsettle her.

“Mrs. Morgan is on extended medical leave. I’m Ms. Anders and I’ll be your trigonometry teacher for the foreseeable future.” She seemed to gain confidence as she spoke, but her eyes darted around the room, never settling on anyone.

“What’s wrong with her?” Sean asked. He was sitting on top of his chair, his legs splayed like his balls needed ventilation.

“That’s not really important, is it?” Ms. Anders still wouldn’t look at Sean. “Let’s just get started with what we have to learn this year. We’ve got a lot to cover.”

“Well, I want to know and I think most of
the class
does too.” Sean looked around at a few other amused faces, silently massing them against her. I kept my head down and drew circles in my notebook. If I made eye contact with her, I’d only confirm her humiliation. I hated her for being so stupid, for not being able to pull herself out of this.

Ms. Anders gripped the binder. “What’s your name?” she asked, finally looking at Sean.

He considered her for a moment, clearly deciding whether to lie. “Sean Varniska,” he said finally, straightening up.

“Sean, if you’re really interested, can I suggest that you ask Principal Crowley in your free time?”

Sean sucked in a breath. A soft “ooh” went up from the class. “Are you saying you don’t care about my teacher’s health? Her health is very important to me and, I think, to the rest of
the class.
”

Ms. Anders looked at the floor, then the wall. She stepped back as if she’d been rocked by a wave and then turned and began writing on the board. “Okay, let’s get started with some fundamentals. Who can explain the Pythagorean theorem?”

But the class was murmuring again, and Sean was laughing now. “Um, Ms. Anders, is there a reason you don’t want to answer my question? Is Mrs. Morgan having private lady problems?”

The dam broke and the class burst into giddy laughter. A few kids still sat looking down at their desks, not meeting Ms. Anders’s suddenly desperate gaze.

“Sean, please settle down and take your seat,” she said, but her voice was shaky again. “We need to move on from this.”

Sean grinned. “I guess I will take this up with the principal.”

“Sean,” she said again, but it was more of a defeated sigh.

He slithered down into his seat, satisfied. The class buzzed with noise again. Ms. Anders went back to the board, but by then it was too late: she’d lost us and she wasn’t going to get us back.

I looked at the wall clock. Only six hours left.

I found Lila in the hallway as we each made our way to our new English class.

“How’d the morning go?” I asked, dodging another entwined couple by the lockers.

“The usual,” she said as she hitched up the books on her arm. “On the plus side, I think I learned a few nuclear codes. What about you?”

“Study hall and history were fine. Trig was terrible. We had a sub. Sean nearly made her cry.”

“Ouch,” Lila said. “What happened?”

We’d reached the door of our classroom; Lila led the way in. It looked different than it had the last time I’d seen it. The walls were bare, and our seats were arranged behind a horseshoe of tables rather than desks. There was a bank of computers against one wall, all of which were grimy and gray with coughs and fingerprints. Lila grabbed a chair in the corner and I slid down next to her.

“General anarchy,” I said. “She lost control a few minutes in and no one paid attention after that. I wanted to tell her to stop arguing with them, but obviously…”

“Obviously,” Lila said. “That’s a shame.”

“It was. On the other hand, I didn’t have to learn any math.”

“Bonus.”

“Yeah. I guess trigonometry was the real loser today,” I said, cocking an eyebrow at her.

“Quite,” she said, stroking her chin.

I heard someone huff and looked toward the battered desk at the front of the room. I’d thought we were the first people to arrive, but the new lit teacher was there already, leaning over a sheaf of papers. He was smiling, clearly listening to us, but he didn’t look up.

I exchanged another raised eyebrow with Lila.

Katie McManus arrived, and Frank Gowser, and—oh, fantastic—Sean from my math class, as well as a couple of new kids we’d been introduced to on our induction day: Asha Madhani and her twin brother, Dev. I smiled at them, and Asha sat down a few seats away and smiled back. The bell rang, and more kids wandered in, and then after a minute our teacher stood up, shut the door, and settled himself on the edge of his desk. A couple of people were still chatting, but they stopped when they realized that everyone else had turned their attention to him.

“Hi, guys,” he said when everyone had gone silent. “I’m Mr. Drummond, and I’m your AP English Lit teacher. First I’m just going to check that everyone’s showed up here and we don’t have a bunch of people desperately attempting to take this class without permission. Let me know if you like being called by your given name or a nickname.” His voice sounded confident, but the paper he was holding vibrated slightly.

When he reached my name, he called out, “Charlotte Porter?”

I raised my hand. Lila poked me in the arm and said, “She goes by Charlie.”

Mr. Drummond looked at me. I smiled, because it was the only thing I could think of doing. “You look more like a Chuck,” he said.

The class laughed, and I felt my face heat up. Why had he singled me out? Was he making fun of me?

When he was finished taking attendance, he reached into his bag and pulled out a thick old book, bloated with age. The spine was so creased it was almost entirely white.

“I’ll pass around a syllabus in a second,” he said, “but first I want to find out what your favorite books are and tell you about mine.”

Lila smirked. Mr. Drummond turned to her and said, “Lila? Did you want to say something?”

Lila looked straight at him and said, “I was just wondering what your pick was.”

“We’ll get to mine,” he said. He leaned back on the desk so his arms were propping him up. “So what’s your favorite book?”

“Um, probably
The Cat in the Hat.
”

A few people laughed and my heart started kicking in my chest. It was happening again: Lila was goading him and in a minute everyone would turn. I silently begged her to stop talking.

“All right,” said Mr. Drummond. “I can’t dispute a classic, especially one written in anapestic tetrameter.”

“Coincidence!” Lila said. “That’s why I picked it.”

“I suspected as much. Any other reasons, besides your appreciation for poetic meter?”

“Um, probably because it’s the last book I actually read for fun.”

“Really? You never read Judy Blume or J. K. Rowling or
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
?”

“Okay, I read some of those,” Lila said, putting her hands up in surrender. “But the general point is that mostly what I read now is for school, not for fun. I can’t remember the last time I read a book because I wanted to.” I understood suddenly that she was flirting with him. I looked at him: was he handsome? Not really, though he was young for a teacher. Was she just bored?