The Thing About the Truth Page 3

Well, if she wants a show, I’ll give her a show.

  “Me too,” I say. “I love to water-ski. Have you ever been water-skiing?”

  “Yeah,” Marina says. “I have, like, the best water-skiing story. I mean, like, ever. For serious.” She stops. Doesn’t say anything else.

  “What is it?” I try.

  “My bikini top fell off,” she says. “And everyone saw my boobs.”

  She smiles, proud of herself. Huh. You’d think this story would be hot—stories about good-looking girls’ breasts usually are—but somehow, this one falls short. I think it’s maybe the way she just blurted it out. Where was the buildup, the story line, the enticing details?

  “That is a good story,” I lie. Then I add, “I wish I’d been there.” That part’s true.

  “Me and my friends are going to the beach this weekend,” she says. “Kind of like a last hurrah before the weather gets cold. You should come.” She wraps a lock of hair around her finger and gives me a flirty look.

  “Aren’t all the beaches around here closed already?” I ask.

  She rolls her eyes like she can’t even take how naive I am. “Yeah, but there are ways around that.”

  I like this girl. Of course, I’m supposed to be staying out of trouble. If my dad found out I had some kind of plan to sneak onto a closed beach, he’d really hate it. In fact, he’d probably start threatening me with boarding school again. Overseas boarding school. Which is bullshit.

  There’s no way I’m going to boarding school overseas. I’m all about the French and the German (accents on chicks are so hot), but I don’t want to live in Europe. No. Fucking. Way.

  “Cool.” I reach into her bag, where I can see the top of her cell phone peeking out. I pull it out and tap in my number. “Text me.”

  “I will.” She pushes her hair back from her face, and it seems like she’s about to say something else.

  But before she can, the gym teacher yells, “Marina Ruiz!”

  She rolls her eyes, takes her cell from me, and puts it back into her bag. “God,” she says, “like I need to get weighed. Doesn’t she know that I’ve been a hundred and fifteen ever since freshman year? What a waste of time. And unless they’re going to really make sure some people lose weight, why do they even care? They need to make up their minds—weigh us once a week, like Weight Watchers, or not at all, you know?”

  From a couple rows in front of us, that girl reading the romance novel snorts.

  Marina turns her gaze on her and gives her a friendly smile. “I’m sorry,” she says, her tone kind of tight, “but who are you?”

  “I’m Kelsey,” the girl says. She puts a big smile on her face and turns around to face us. “Sorry if I was eavesdropping. It’s just that that story about your boobs falling out was reeeeeally compelling.”

  “Thanks,” Marina says, not picking up on the sarcasm. “It might have sounded interesting, but it really was totally humiliating. My dad’s friends were there. And they’re, like, old.” She shudders, probably imagining old dudes putting her in their spank banks.

  “Marina Ruiz!” the gym teacher yells again. “I’m waiting!”

  “Coming!” Marina yells back. But she rolls her eyes and makes no move to get up. “You’re new too, right?” she asks Kelsey.

  “Yup,” Kelsey says. “It’s my first day.”

  “It is?” I ask, surprised. So she was telling the truth when she said she didn’t know where my room was.

  “You should totally come to the beach with us,” Marina says. “Like, for real.” What? Is she crazy? Why would she invite Kelsey to the beach with us? Kelsey’s obviously not the relaxing-at-the-beach type. Marina waves her cell phone in the air. “What’s your number?”

  I see the look of panic that crosses Kelsey’s face. She doesn’t want to go to the beach. She doesn’t want to be friends with this chick. In fact, she doesn’t even want to be talking to her.

  She starts to shake her head, but then she catches my eye. I give her a smirk like, “That’s what you get for trying to spy on my conversation. Now you better figure out a way out of this.” But instead of making up an excuse, Kelsey narrows her eyes at me, and then she says to Marina, “Thanks, that’s really sweet of you to invite me. My number’s 555-0332. And the beach sounds amazing.”

  “Marina Ruiz!” The gym teacher sounds like she’s about to have a coronary.

  “I. Am. Coming.” Marina rolls her eyes. “Check you guys later!” And she makes her way down the bleachers.

  I turn back to Kelsey. Her face is bright red, and she has her eyes back on her book.

  “The beach sounds amazing?” I ask her.

  “Yeah,” she says, and shrugs. “I love the beach.”

  “Really? That’s great. Me too.” I get up and start down the bleachers. “So I guess I’ll see you there.”

  “Yup,” she says, closing her book and putting it back in her bag. “See you there.”

  Before

  Kelsey

  Wow. How completely obvious was that? I mean, Isaac totally wanted me to see him flirting with that Marina girl. Like I even care! Was he trying to prove that some people think he’s God’s gift? Was he trying to imply that there’s something wrong with me for not falling under his spell? Ridiculous!

  Of course, now I have to go to the beach with him and Marina. Which is a horrible plan. I hate the beach. I always end up with sand in my shoes and a sunburn on my nose. Plus it’s way too cold to go to the beach. It’s only September, but the temperature has been in the low sixties all week.

  Oh well. I’ll just have to make up some kind of excuse. How hard can it be? I’ll just happen to have something else planned. Maybe I’ll concoct a fake boyfriend from my old school. Kill two birds with one stone—that way Isaac won’t think he got one over on me, since he’s apparently decided I’m some kind of brokenhearted nut. Which I’m not. At least, not anymore.

  The rest of the day, thank God, goes by without any more drama. No more Isaac spottings. No more crazy girls inviting me to hang out. Of course, it would have been nice to at least meet someone cool. I mean, I don’t talk to anyone. Mostly because no one talks to me. I guess it’s fine, because I do just want to fly under the radar, but flying under the radar with a friend or two wouldn’t be the end of the world.

  When I get home, my mom and dad are sitting at the table, leafing through a catalog. My mom’s a teacher, and my dad’s a computer programmer who works from home, so they’re both around a lot in the afternoons. Which was fine when I was still at Concordia Prep. I’d get home, and we’d go out for an early dinner together, or watch whatever we’d DVR’d on TV the night before. But ever since I got kicked out of school, things have been . . . tense between me and my parents. Especially between me and my dad.

  “Hey, guys,” I say, slapping a smile on my face as I walk into the kitchen. “How were your days?”

  I drop my bag on the counter and move toward the refrigerator to get an after-school snack. I haven’t eaten all day. During lunch I hung out in the library so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the whole “Where am I going to sit?” conundrum. At first it was a little depressing—no one else was in the library except for this weird-looking freshman who was eating an extremely smelly bologna sandwich.

  But the time turned out to actually be really productive, because I made a list of things I could do to get my academic career back on track so that getting kicked out of Concordia Prep doesn’t screw up all my college apps. Of course, the top three things on the list are fairly obvious: get amazing grades, figure out my class rank (apparently they do grade point averages at Concordia Public a little differently, so I’m going to have to work out where I stand—to be valedictorian or salutatorian would be amazing), and start some kind of club or group that becomes very popular but is also very important in a social or environmental capacity (not sure exactly what that could be, but I’m going to try to have a meeting with the principal to figure it out).

  “My day was fine,” my
mom says. She flicks the page of the catalog they’re looking through. My parents are redoing our kitchen soon. At least, that’s what they claim. They’ve been saying for years they’re going to remodel the kitchen. But the closest they’ve actually gotten to doing so is moving most of our food and dishes into the pantry in the dining room. That was a year ago.

  But apparently, they’ve now gotten to the point where they’re actually picking things out, like cabinets and countertops. Supposedly, a guy is coming over soon to take measurements and the contractors are starting next week. I’ll believe it when I see it.

  Everything about my parents is very methodical. They were math majors who met their junior year of college. They dated for two years, and then they mutually (well, according to them it was mutually, but in my limited experience, nothing about relationships is ever really mutual) decided that maybe they should see other people for a while after graduation. They’d read some statistic somewhere that showed that people who marry their college sweetheart without taking time to date other people had a higher divorce rate, so they thought it was a good move.

  They kept in touch, though, and after a year they got back together. If you asked them, they would totally credit the success of their marriage to that year they took off to see other people. If you ask me, the whole thing sounds ridiculously unromantic. Then again, what do I know? My romantic relationships are a complete disaster. Well, my one romantic relationship.

  “Did you pick out some cabinets?” I ask my mom politely. I open a bag of cookies and slide a couple onto a plate.

  “Yes.” She holds up the catalog. “Do you like the cherry?”

  “They look really nice.” Not that I can really tell the difference. A cabinet is a cabinet is a cabinet.

  My dad doesn’t say anything, just keeps his head down, poring over the pages of a brochure. This is how it is with me and my parents now. Polite conversation. Lots of tiptoeing around each other. No one mentioning the elephant in the room. Except for when my dad gets into one of his moods and refuses to talk to me. Which he’s apparently in right now. Then there are just long silences. And except for when the two of them decide to sit me down and have big conversations about my future and how I’m screwing everything up. Then there’s just yelling.

  I pull a glass out of the cabinet and pour myself some juice. “I’m going to go upstairs and study.”

  “That’s a good idea,” my mom says, her eyes already back on the pages of cabinets.

  I sigh, grab my cookies, and then make my way upstairs, where I spend the rest of the night studying and trying not to think about the fact that my parents consider me a total disappointment.

  Before

  Isaac

  Okay, so that girl from yesterday morning, Marina? The one with the whole story about her boobs falling out? I think she might be stalking me. And when I say “I think,” I mean I’m pretty fucking sure. I wouldn’t say I’m positive, though, because if I’m being completely honest, I’m kind of sensitive about that kind of thing. Not to sound like a pompous asshole, but I’ve had girls stalking me before. And it’s not pleasant.

  I’m not talking about the kind of stalking where you have to get a restraining order or call the police or anything psychotic like that. I’m just talking about chicks being overzealous and getting all weird. Calling you all the time. Leaving tons of messages on your Facebook wall. Somehow getting your home phone number when you’ve deliberately only given them your cell. That kind of shit that’s ultimately harmless, but still pretty annoying.

  For example.

  Since I gave Marina my number in gym yesterday, she’s texted me eight times. In less than twenty-four hours. If you take out eight hours for sleeping, that’s like a text every two hours.

  The first time she said, “Hey sexy.”

  Which was actually fine. Because who doesn’t like to be called sexy, especially by a hot girl, even if she does have the uncanny ability to make boob stories boring? I didn’t reply, though, because I was in the middle of biology lab.

  The second time, which came a couple hours later, said, “y u don’t reply? ” That’s when I started getting a weird feeling. So I didn’t write her back, hoping that maybe she’d get the hint and ease off. If she did, I was going to text her back.

  She didn’t ease off, though. She kept texting. And last night at around eleven, she wrote, “That’s it, I will meet you before school tmr.”

  The “that’s it” part definitely wasn’t all that promising. It sounded like she was one second away from coming after me with a meat cleaver.

  So this morning I’m trying to sneak into school without her seeing me.

  Of course, it doesn’t work. As soon as I step off the pavement of the student parking lot and onto the sidewalk, I see her. She’s standing in front of the school waiting for me. She’s wearing a pair of tight black pants and a black shirt. She looks extremely hot.

  For a second I think maybe this could work out after all. I mean, to be fair, she didn’t text me at all this morning, so maybe she’s calming down a little. Maybe she realized she was coming on too strong. Maybe she wants to make it up to me, if you know what I mean. I could definitely use a little stress release.

  “Hey, sexy,” she says. Again with the sexy. So original, this girl. But I forgive her because she’s hot. In fact, I kind of forgot how hot she was when she was texting me yesterday. Would have been better if she’d texted me a picture. If she’d done that, I probably would have gotten over the fact that she seems slightly stalkerish.

  “Hey,” I say. She wraps her arms around my waist and hugs me.

  “Miss me?” she asks.

  In the last nine hours when you weren’t sending me text after text?

  “Of course,” I say, because I’m smart enough to know that this is one of those trick questions that girls are always asking. Of course you don’t really miss them. They’re usually being pains in the ass who want to talk all the time. But you can’t tell them that; otherwise they get all pissy. It’s easier just to lie. Not that I advocate lying. It’s just that in certain situations, it’s a lot easier.

  “I missed you too.” She bounces up and down. “Yay!”

  “Yay!” I say back. Mostly because I don’t know what else to say. She’s bouncing so fast that I think maybe her boobs are going to spill out of her shirt.

  “So what should we do after school today?” she wants to know. She reaches out and runs her finger up and down the front of my shirt. “Maybe we should go shopping. I know they probably had a different, um, sense of style at your old school.”

  “Did we have plans after school today?” I ask, confused. Also, did she just insult my wardrobe? What the hell is wrong with what I’m wearing? It’s a button-down shirt with a pair of khakis. I look around. Huh. I guess everyone’s wearing jeans. Well, whatever. It’s not my fault they all want to look like slobs. This is a Burberry shirt, and my pants are from Ralph Lauren. I left my new sneakers at home, but that’s as far as I’m willing to go.

  “Well, not specific plans,” she says, “but I was thinking that we could get together and hang out. We don’t have to go shopping. We could grab something to eat or hang out at my friend Raya’s house.”

  “I’d love to,” I lie, “but I have plans.” I don’t know why I say it. I just know that I really do not want to hang out with her. In fact, suddenly I want to get far, far away from her. My crazy-girl radar is going off, big time. Going shopping together? Everyone knows that’s, like, the first thing stalkers ask you to do.

  “Plans?” She frowns like she can’t possibly imagine I would be doing something that didn’t involve her. “With who?”

  I rack my brain, trying to remember the name of the kid I met in homeroom yesterday. It was some kind of last name as a first name. Mitchell? Monroe? I look around for him, trying to see if maybe, by some miracle, I’ll see him in the crowd. But of course I don’t.

  Whatever. I shouldn’t be afraid of telling this girl that I don
’t want to hang out with her.

  “I just have plans,” I say firmly, deciding it’s best not to offer any details.

  “With. Who?” Her eyes are narrowing into two slits, and suddenly I’m a little bit . . . frightened. What if she really is dangerous? Isn’t there always weird shit like this going on at public schools? This chick could be totally out of her tree. What if she really starts to stalk me, coming after me not just at school, but other places? My dad’s not going to be happy if I have to get a restraining order. Definitely not good right before an election year.

  “Well, it’s not really . . .” And then I catch sight of that girl from yesterday, Kelsey. She’s stepping off a big yellow bus (who the hell still rides the bus?) and starting to walk up the sidewalk toward school.

  “Kelsey!” I yell like some kind of lunatic, waving my hands in the air. “Kelsey, hey!”

  She looks around, a half smile on her face, trying to figure out who’s calling her name. When she sees it’s me, the smile disappears. Jesus. What the hell is up with this place? I’m already having issues with two girls. And I haven’t even dated either one of them.

  I wave her over.

  She looks toward the school like maybe she’s hoping that somehow she’ll be able to pretend that she doesn’t see me. But she must figure that she can’t, because finally she starts to walk over.

  “What?” she asks.

  “What?” I say playfully, deciding to pretend that she’s kidding. “That’s not very friendly. Haha.”

  “Isaac was just telling me that you and him have plans after school,” Marina says. “Is that true?” Her tone is challenging, and she crosses her arms over her chest.

  Kelsey looks confused. “Um,” she says, “I’m staying after school so that I can work on figuring out an extracurricular activity that I can get involved in.”

  “Yup,” I say, nodding emphatically. “Me too.”

  Kelsey raises her eyebrows. “You? You’re staying after school to figure out your extracurricular activities?”