Little Black Lies (8 page)

“I can't wait to go hang out at a big-city mall.”

“There isn't really a mall near me. More like all these little shops.”

“Then we'll hang out by the school and tease the smart boys. It'll make Eddie totally jealous. I just streaked my hair with pink stripes and I'm going to bring my tightest jeans.”

I seriously doubt the new pink stripes in Mandy's overly bleached blonde spikes are going to be a hit with the male Ants. “Kids don't really hang out on street corners like they do in Lundon. It's different here.”

“Then what do they do for fun?”

I don't know. I haven't had any yet. The prospect of Mandy coming in a week and a half should thrill me. It really should.

“Sara?”

Just then I smell smoke. The cigarette has rolled off the windowsill onto the carpet, and a fiery hole is spreading next to my desk. “Gotta go.” I snatch up the burning cigarette and stomp on the smoking carpet with the sturdy sole of my black shoe.

Two bedroom fires in a week. I don't even recognize my life anymore.

The following Monday, I plop down behind Carling in math class. Just as I do, she crosses her legs and I can see the edge of her underwear. They definitely aren't Sunday's; this pair is blue. And I'd bet my mother's sweater they aren't Friday's, since today is Friday and conforming doesn't seem to be Carling Burnack's thing.

Is it pathetic to admit how badly I want to know what day of the week she's chosen today? It's not that I'm pervy. I'm just still baffled by the Sunday-on-Tuesday incident and want to know if she has a system or if her choice is random. Because I would totally have a system.

As I dig for a pen at the bottom of my backpack, there's a commotion to my left. A bunch of kids are huddled over Griff, who is holding up his iPhone for all to see. If I lean forward, I can peek past his shoulder to get a glimpse of Poppy's video for film class, which Griff took the liberty of secretly filming with his phone. I move close enough to see the tiny screen—it's a long shot of a female Ant from behind. She's in uniform, walking around the Store to the ominous music from the movie
Jaws
. Her face is never fully visible, but it's pretty obvious from the floaty hair and skinny calves that it's Isabella, and she's uncharacteristically feeding from a bag of Doritos.

Isabella stuffs a handful of chips in her mouth and the camera zooms in to catch her chewing. The kids in class roar with laughter when the word
Reduce
flashes on the screen and fades.

“Izzers, I've never actually seen you eat,” squeals Carling.

“Give me that!” Pouting, Isabella grabs for the phone but Griff pulls it away, laughing.

“You've got some wicked appetite.” Griff grins wide and I wonder if he has all his adult teeth yet. He wipes his dripping nose with his sleeve. “It's making me hot.”

“Shut up, you sicko perv. You're a miniature freak of nature.”

Poppy walks into the room, sees what's going on, and right away her face crumples. “That film's copyrighted, Hogan! You can't just air my work.”

“I'm
so
gonna be your manager one day,” he says.

Isabella says, “You aren't allowed to just film me without my permission, Poppy! That's not even legal.”

Someone says, “Like that's ever stopped her.”

Poppy drops into the seat beside me, her breath coming in torrid little puffs. “Mr. Curtis is going to confiscate your phone if he sees it.”

Sloane asks, “What day was this filmed, Izz? And why didn't you share?”

Video Isabella continues, picking up textbooks with greasy orange fingers. Everyone groans, deliciously disgusted, when Isabella turns to see if anyone is watching, then wipes her oily digits on the arm of a white shirt hanging on a rack. Seconds later, an unknowing younger girl takes the shirt, holds it up, and admires herself in a mirror. She doesn't notice the orange streaks on the sleeve. The word
Reuse
pops up. Fades.

“That's Griff's big sister!” says a guy. “She's tainted now.”

“Come on,” says Sloane. “She lives with Griff. You think she's not tainted already?”

“Izz, this is so gross!” Carling says, laughing so hard she can barely get the words out.

“I'm going to get you, Poppy,” says Isabella.

Poppy squints at her. “Yeah? I have twenty-five witnesses.”

After stuffing a few more chips in her mouth, video Isabella mashes up the bag and drops it on the floor in front of the dressing rooms. The camera pans down, zooms in on the crumpled bag. The word
Recycle
flashes for a moment before the screen goes black.

Kids crumple over their laps, hysterical with laughter, while Isabella pouts. She swats at her friends, jutting out her lower jaw. It's fairly clear, however, she doesn't mind being the center of attention.

Willa, her hair in its usual slick black ponytail, leans over Griff. “Wait, rewind a bit.”

Griff fiddles with his phone. “What Patel Hotels wants, Patel Hotels gets. Isn't that your family motto?”

“Just to where Isabella inhales that last fistful,” Willa says with a giggle. “Before she drops the bag.”

“Ugh, once was enough,” says Carling. “I'll retch if I see it again.”

Isabella looks crushed by the rebuff.

“No, it's the background,” says Willa. “I saw a flash of something in the dressing rooms behind her.”

I can no longer see the phone—too many kids have swarmed it—but I hear the
Jaws
music again. Whatever. I flip open my binder and write today's date across the top. Then Willa shouts, “There. See? It's Leo Reiser and …”

The class goes silent and, to my horror, everyone turns to stare at me, mouths agape. Carling is the worst. She's so angry she crackles.

Griff shoves his phone close enough for me to see the frozen image on the small screen. I nearly inhale my tongue. There I am entering a dressing room in the yoga pants. In front of me is Leo's bare chest, his scars too tiny to register on the phone screen. “So Poppy does porn after all,” Griff says with a whistle.

“Any particular reason you were in a dressing room with Carling Burnack's boyfriend, London?” asks Isabella.

Heart pounding, I stammer, “It—it was an accident. I was half asleep. I stumbled into the wrong room while he was changing.”

“Yeah, right,” someone mumbles.

Sloane, to my surprise, says, “Chill, people. It's obvious nothing happened.”

“It didn't, I swear.” After shooting a grateful look at Sloane, I look at Carling. “Didn't he tell you about the spazz who walked into his chest? The one who got hit by a bicycle courier the next week?”

Carling looks me over like I'm no better than the crinkled-up Doritos bag left on the floor. She is silent for a moment, then says, smiling, “I guess he didn't think you were worth mentioning.”

I guess he didn't.

“By the way, those yoga pants looked good on you.” She twirls a strand of hair around her finger and tilts her head. “Did you buy them?”

I don't say a word.

The phone disappears when Mr. Curtis breezes in. He holds up a stack of papers. “You'll all be pleased to learn I cancelled my date with Mrs. Honors Math last night in order to finally grade your pop quiz. It's the kind of guy I am. You can all thank me by coughing up better results on the next test. With very few exceptions, your grades are nothing short of abysmal. Only two students scored above ninety-five. The rest of you averaged a B-plus.”

Back at Finmory, such a statement would have been met with a chorus of cheers. Here, the kids whimper and lick themselves in near-silent misery.

Mr. Curtis sets the test on the desk of a tall boy with wiry hair and motions for him to pass them back to us. “This is
Honors
Math and I don't have the reputation of being the toughest prof in the school for nothing,” says Mr. Curtis. “If you do not work your pampered tails off this semester, you will not see the perfect scores your parents believe you to be capable of. This quiz was nothing compared to the next test. Are we all clear?”

No one has the strength to nod.

In the next row, Griff gets his test back. His fist shoots into the air. “Yes!” I take it he was one of the top scorers.

Carling crumples her test in a ball and mutters to Isabella, “Lot of good that did me.”

“Sorry!” Isabella squeaks in self-defense.

My test appears on my desk. “I guess you guys have better schools in England,” says the wiry-haired boy. He nods toward Isabella, who, along with Sloane and Carling, has perked up and is listening. “Latini's been replaced. We have a new Princess of Calculus in our midst.”

It's as if Isabella has just taken a fist to the gut. Her face falls and her shoulders hunch forward. Her chin tilts toward the sky as she gulps in air. Then, when Carling turns to laugh at her, she straightens up and does a spectacular job of feigning nonchalance. The only thing that gives her away, and I'm likely the only one who has noticed, is the way her fingernails are boring into her thighs.

There's a tidy “98.89%” in the upper right-hand corner of my quiz. I flip through the pages to see where I went wrong—I'd been fairly confident about my answers. After a few moments I can feel someone reading over my shoulder and I look up.

Carling is leaning close to me, staring at my test, her eyebrows leaping like dolphins. I brace myself for a bitchy remark, but she says, “Nice work.”

After a grueling fifty minutes of working through brain-bending equations on the chalkboard, the bell rings and we all wander out into the hall in a mathematical daze. As I head toward the door, Poppy sidles up beside me.

“Was that film some kind of punishment for me?” I ask.

“Oh, believe me, I'm not the one who's into punishment. Your good buddy Carling is Ant's resident expert on getting even. She once threw an ex-boyfriend's laptop into the deep end of the pool because he didn't notice she'd had her hair trimmed.”

“She's not my good buddy. I barely know her.”

This makes Poppy smile a little. “I swear it was an accident. I wasn't focused on the background.”

“Whatever,” I say. “Doesn't matter.”

She holds out her hand. “Want another peppermint?”

I don't think I can get mixed up with her. She might be acting normally right now, but who knows what histrionics are around the bend. “I'm actually more of a spearmint kind of girl.”

“Okay. Cool. I'll see you in pre-law, okay?”

“Sure.”

As Poppy wanders off, Carling appears beside me, followed by Isabella, then Sloane, who appears so bored she could be asleep. “You did great on the quiz,” Carling says to me, her voice unusually high-pitched and sunshiny.

“Thanks.” I search her body language for any sign that I should flee.

“Curtis is such an ass,” says Carling. Isabella tugs on her sleeve as if to pull her away, but Carling shrugs her off.

Aware of their stares, I search fruitlessly for something witty to say. “Yeah.”

Carling plunks her books in Sloane's arms, pulls a rubber band from her pocket, and wraps her hair in a messy bun. One thick strand falls away and nudges her cheekbone. “So, where do you hang at lunch?”

Where do I hang? Let's see … there was that bus shelter the first week. And I sat in the girls' locker room with the lights off once last week. Not exactly a pattern I'd like to brag about. I shrug. “I don't know. Wherever.”

“Well, if you're around, come sit with us. We'll save a spot for you at the Petting Pool. Heard of it?”

“Yeah. But I'm not really sure where or what it is.”

Sloane drops Carling's books to the floor and says, “You won't know it from the surface, but it's the tangle of body parts on the second-floor landing.”

“Where? Right there on that big sofa? There's tangling of parts right out in the open?”

“Not as far as the teachers know. They're pretty certain it's an urban legend,” says Isabella. “The good stuff happens down below. The kids on the surface are more of a shield.”

“Yes,” Carling says. “Better not be late or you'll have to sit on the floor. Miss out on all the fun.”

Without waiting for my answer, she floats away with Sloane and Isabella being sucked along in her wake. As they trot up the stairs, I get a flash of Carling's lime green panties. In light pink type, they read
WEDNESDAY I
'
VE GOT JUICY ON MY MIND
.

I nod to myself. Mathematical formulas never fail me.

Before the girls disappear into the crowd, Isabella glances back at me, her face completely devoid of expression.

It's been a while since I've been invited to lunch. And I've learned that lunch dates, once made, are easily broken. Like the time Mom took me shopping for my prom dress. It was the night after the toxic chicken, and her motherly guilt for not having been home to hear my news was peaking. Right after breakfast, she announced it was time for Girls' Day Out.

Dad drove us to the mall in the van and, after a quick stop for an Orange Julius, walked us to the balloon- and prom-dress-filled windows of Wanted, the teen shop on the second floor. Inside, music thumped from speakers and teenage girls and their mothers swarmed the displays. Near the front, two girls argued about which one picked up a tangerine minidress first.

“I'm afraid this is as far as I go,” Dad said. “I will be of no use to anyone in this estrogen-rich emporium.”

“Don't worry, Dad,” I said. “As badly as you don't want to go in, we don't want you even more.”

“Now that hurts,” he said, pointing his straw at me. He ruffled my hair and kissed Mom. “Off you go, then. Call me on my cell if you need me to break up any brawls.”

“We can take these girls, can't we, Sara?” said Mom, guiding me inside. She called back, “Don't buy too many car magazines, Charlie. We're already heading toward an intervention. Two or three more
Road and Track
magazines in that rec room and I'll start calling your long-lost family members.”

“One,” he said. “I'll keep it to one this time, I promise. And don't be too long. I want to work on the VW this afternoon.”

About ten minutes later I was in the changing room. Mom knocked on the door and yanked it open before I could answer. Standing in my bra and underwear, I grabbed my jeans from the floor and covered myself so strangers wouldn't get an unexpected eyeful of my shivery white flesh.
“Mom,”
I whispered. “I'm practically naked.”

“Try this one, sweetie,” she said, holding up a strapless dark green gown. “It'll look terrific with your eyes.”

I snatched it from the hanger and slammed the door.

“It's simple, don't you think?” she called to me. “And elegant. Like something Jennifer Aniston would wear to the Oscars.”