A Fabrication of the Truth (11 page)

“So, you’re okay, but not okay,” I said to Dalton as the two of us sat on a bench outside of school. We still had a few minutes before the bell rang. The sun was actually out that morning and it felt good on my face.

Dalton shrugged. “Like you said, I’m a walking contradiction.”

“What was your sister talking about when she checked on you in your bedroom?”

Dalton sighed and ran his hand over his face. “I wasn’t feeling right and ended up in the ER and they had to adjust my meds.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, watching cars pull into the school parking lot, the occupants getting out one by one.

“Um…,” Dalton said, scratching behind his ear. “I was showing symptoms of rejection, so they had to increase some of my medication.”

“You were what! That sounds so not good.”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds. It happens from time to time. Just a small war within me. They’ll double check to make sure everything is okay, and I’ve never had it be otherwise. Adjusting my meds usually works.”

I grabbed Dalton in a hug, burying my head in his chest. “I still don’t like the way that sounds, like those names of the boarding schools.”

“Which one did you like worse, the therapeutic boarding school or the one for medically fragile students?”

“I don’t know. I think I know what they mean, but I’m not positive.”

“Okay so, a therapeutic boarding school is for kids with problems. Some mental, some like ADHD, problems with authority, depression – a whole range of things.”

“How do you fit in?” I asked, taking his hand and crossing my legs beneath me. I glanced at a spot of dirt, void of grass from all the feet through the years.

“Because of some things I did, my parents thought I was acting out and a therapist said I had delayed onset PTSD, but I don’t think I do.”

“Why would they say that then?”

“I’ll tell you, but not right now. Okay?”

I wasn’t sure I liked how Dalton wasn’t sharing the whole story with me. Maybe the two of us were more alike than I ever imagined. He was scared to tell the truth. “Okay, and about the medically fragile thing?” I asked.

“Well, as you know, heart transplant – which in itself was awesome because I’m still alive, but it comes with other problems,” Dalton said. “High blood pressure, pre-diabetic,” he started ticking the items off with his fingers, “anemic – being anemic isn’t a big deal for me personally right now, but it is one extra pill I have to take every day, and trust me, I take a lot of life-sustaining drugs – another thing that qualifies me as medically fragile. They have schools just for people like me.”

“And they would seriously send you away?” The thought of him leaving me again made my heart ache. I hoped his parents were only bluffing, trying to scare him straight.

“They say they’ll do anything to protect me, and that’s what they think they’ll be doing.”

“But how? Sending you away, all by yourself, makes no sense to me.”

“They want me to be in a calm environment away from outside influences, but luckily, they didn’t have enough time to come to a conclusion before they left, so now it’s this threat they’ve been using to try to keep me in line while they’re away.”

“Okay. We have to be very careful then, to not get caught – but still, meet me after school. We have to go to the library.”

Dalton nodded.

***

“I’m the one with all the lies, but it turns out I’m not the only one with secrets.”

“Yeah,” Dalton said, sitting across from me at a wooden table. We were tucked away amongst shelves of books at a table we came upon in the adult section of the library, hidden enough so we could talk.

“You need to fill in the blanks. What are you not telling me?” I asked as I plopped my backpack on the table.

Dalton covered his face with both of his hands. “I know,” he said, looking up at me, his eyes wet. “Um…”

“Dalton,” I said softly.

“Um, it’s about the second fight I got into.”

“Okay.”

“I beat the shit out of someone, got arrested, and am now on probation.”

“What!”

Dalton nodded.

“Oh my god, that’s what my grandma must have meant. She knows. She kept saying you were trouble.”

“So that’s the main reason my parents wanted to send me away. But with the fight, the guy’s friend showed up and pushed me off his friend and started punching me, so I…uh…fought back.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me any of this?” I asked quietly. We were trying to keep our voices low, but I don’t think it mattered much because somebody came and sat down in one of the aisles near us, watching a pretty loud Korean soap opera on their laptop.

“It’s one more thing to add to everything else. One less reason for you to like me.”

“Dalton…I….” I wasn’t too sure what to say.

“The actual story is kind of embarrassing.”

“You getting beat up after you beat somebody else up?”

“No, the reason why.” He looked down at the table.

“Tell me, please,” I said softly.

“Somebody at my old school started this rumor that I received my heart from a baboon. They watched some old movie like that, and I guess thought it would be funny if they said that about me. Well, it took off pretty well. Most just thought it was funny, and when they made monkey noises at me, they thought it was harmless.”

“That’s awful.”

Dalton nodded. “So I was at this skate park near my house just watching everybody. I couldn’t skate because my parents were always too worried. Another possible side effect of my meds is osteoporosis, and you usually don’t find out you have it until you break a bone, and that was too much of a risk factor for my parents, so I’d just go and watch everybody skating. Well, this one guy…I didn’t even know him, but he knew me and started making monkey sounds and calling me ape boy, and I snapped, pretty much. Luckily, I didn’t have osteoporosis because otherwise it would have been much worse.

My main response is that I’m okay, but I think you would say, I’m the most un-okay, okay person ever. Everybody in my life always worries so much about me – physically and mentally – that after a while, I just started answering with, ‘Everything is okay.’”

“Even when it wasn’t, like all those kids being jackasses?”

“Yeah, if I complained about the teasing, somebody would have made a big ordeal about it. ‘Stop being mean to the heart transplant kid’ would probably have gone viral on the internet, and I didn’t want any extra attention. I just wanted people to think I was okay, even if I wasn’t.”

“And then you just went off on the guy in the skate park.”

“Yeah, it was scary, too, because I was just so focused on getting out all this pain I had burrowed down. It was the absolute wrong way to deal with my emotions, and I felt like crap afterward for what I did.”

“What happened after his friend jumped in?”

“He got in a good few punches, and I managed to get to my feet just as the cops arrived. Ryan, the guy I beat up, was still lying on the ground with his friend standing near him. I got arrested, and they took Ryan to the hospital.”

“Shouldn’t you have gone to the hospital because of all your stuff?”

“I was bleeding some, but I was scared and not thinking about getting checked out. The cops made a mistake and didn’t stop to look for a medical alert bracelet as they slapped the cuffs on me.” He stuck his hand up his sleeve and pulled down a silver chain bracelet. “So they took me to the station all bloody and stuck me in an interrogation room. My blood doesn’t clot well, so my nose and lip kept bleeding – started dripping all over the table and bruises started popping up everywhere. I bruise real easily, too.” Dalton stopped and rubbed the back of his neck. “A cop came in to start to question me and he was like, ‘What the?’ because I guess I looked pretty out of it.”

“They should have gotten you medical help.”

“Perhaps, but they saw me standing, so I seemed all right. I mean, I was – just my lip and nose bleeding – but they wouldn’t stop bleeding, and having open wounds isn’t the best thing for me, either,” he said, rolling his bracelet between his fingers.

“What happened then?” I asked, realizing the person watching the Korean soap opera had turned down the volume and was leaning in our direction.

“They finally took me to the hospital, and my mom was so pissed – yelling at the cops and the detective that showed up about delaying my medical care, infections, all that kind of stuff. My parents’ lawyer showed up, and I went home several hours later.”

“And so you got probation.”

“Yeah, everybody was mad that Ryan’s friend didn’t get charged, but he was just protecting his friend.”

“But he didn’t have to beat you up in return.”

“Still, I started it. Our lawyer was all like, ‘How do you feel after you beat up a medically fragile boy?’ But I deserved it. It almost made me feel normal. You know how much I’ve despised the term ‘medically fragile.’ It’s only been said a few times around me, but I don’t want to be seen that way.”

“Dalton, god, I’m sorry you went through that. I don’t think you deserved it.”

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t, but it pretty much landed me here.” Dalton forced a small smile. “And I worry that Ryan could be mentally damaged for life. I could have caused him some kind of lasting terror, or who knows.”

“He sounds like kind of a jerk.”

“Even if so, he still didn’t deserve what I did to him.”

“So, you still are the most un-rebellious, rebellious person I know.”

“Hey, I beat somebody up.”

“Something you shouldn’t be proud of, and I can tell you’re not. Just watching you tell the story, I could tell how bad you feel about it. That doesn’t seem very rebel-like to me.”

Dalton sighed. “The aura of my mystique vanishes.”

I smiled at him. “Thanks for telling me.”

“Welcome.”

“So there’s really so much more to you sneaking around, like now I mean.”

“Yeah, most of it goes against my probation.”

“Won’t you get in trouble?”

“Not if I’m not caught,” he said with a crooked smile.

“So could you have gone with your parents if you weren’t on probation?”

“If I wanted, yeah. But now, they basically think I need a babysitter. My parents are so distrusting of me now that they sicced Hailey on me. Well, I say distrusting – they say they just want to make sure I don’t do anything stupid again.”

“So maybe you should stop climbing in my basement window.”

“Not a chance.”

Later that night I let Dalton in, and he dropped down through the window, onto the couch that had the sofa bed pulled out. I looked from it to him.

“There is nothing suggestive about that. Okay? I just wanted to stretch out and watch TV.”

“Okay,” he said with a smile. “I’m kind of tapped out of talking for the day. Can we just lay here? Watch a little TV maybe?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Dalton lay back with his hands behind his head and scooted in, and I lay my head on his chest. The TV was already on to some kind of cutest pet show. As we watched, I could feel the rise and fall of his chest, and he absentmindedly ran his fingers through my hair.

“That little dog is really cute,” he said.

“He really is. I always wanted a little dog. Do you guys have any pets?”

“No, not advised.”

“That stinks.”

“It kind of does, but you get used to it after a while. Also not advised: roller coasters and haunted houses. So if I wanted to take a cat to a haunted amusement park, I am to proceed with caution. Luckily, I’ve never had the desire to do so.”

“Me, neither.”

We watched some more of the cute animals show and then flipped it to a station that happened to be showing
From Rags to Fab
. “My favorite,” I said.

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Okay, introduce me to this
Rags to Fab
.”

“It’s kind of my inspiration.”

“For the clothes you make?”

I sighed before I spoke. “If I tell you, promise you won’t think I’m like a freak or something.”

“I would never.” His expression was genuine, and he rolled on his side so we were face to face.

“So, you know I lie about my life and stuff. I’m not sure you’re aware of the depth of my depravity.”

“You are not depraved, but I got a hint of the lying. You have people believing that you have some sort of a relationship with a prince.”

“It was just tea until your song, but yeah. That all started in seventh grade, but that’s a different story for a different day.” I could feel my face flush. “So, here it goes. People think I get my clothes from an exclusive fashion designer that my mom may or may not work for.”

“Your mom?”

“Yes, only Caroline and now Luiz know that she left when I was five.”

Dalton’s face fell into a frown.

“It’s okay, don’t worry.”

“Now you sound like me.”

I smiled at Dalton and he reached out and took my hand in his. Our fingers felt so perfect laced together. It almost distracted me from what I was going to say. He then reached up and brushed his other hand across my cheek. My stomach flipped and my heart sped up. Just his lightest touches threw me into a fluster.

“What was I saying?”

“Mom, fashion…”

“Oh yeah, so,” I said as he squeezed my hand. I then told him my whole Enzo deal.

“You’re really talented.”

I could feel my face turn pink, yet again.

“And you make the labels for the inside of the clothes, too. That takes dedication.”

“If you’re not dedicated, you can’t sell the lie.”

“But you don’t lie to me?”

“No, like I’ve said, I have no reason. You know my truths.”

Dalton leaned his forehead against mine, putting his hand on the back of my neck. “All this sneaking around we have to do, is it bad for you?”

“No, why would it be?”

“I’m making you lie even more.”

“It’s my field of expertise.”

“I don’t want to…I don’t know how to say it…”

“Be an enabler?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Don’t worry, you’re not. Besides, you’re worth every lie I tell.”

Dalton tilted his head a bit and pressed his lips against mine. I kissed him back, slightly parting my lips, welcoming his tongue. Our kiss deepened – I wrapped my arms around his neck and every inch of my being came alive. His kisses were electric. I rolled over on top of him, my legs straddled to his sides, and his hands were on me, mine pressed into the bed next to his ears.

He moved his kisses under my jaw and down, giving special attention to a spot on my lower neck. His lips brushed over my skin, and I wondered if he could feel the rapid beating of my heart. I felt all kinds of amazing, but wasn’t exactly sure when to take the next step. I didn’t know how long the duration of the bases were supposed to be, or did it even matter? I returned his kisses – under the jaw, below his ear, his neck, and most importantly back to his mouth.

I straightened my back and sucked on my bottom lip. I crossed my arms at my waist and grabbed the sides of my t-shirt. I cocked an eyebrow at him and with a smile, he nodded his head yes. I slowly pulled my shirt off and over my head. I found out that it can be really enjoyable when you take your shirt off around a boy you’re making out with.

***

At school the next day Dalton attempted to smile, but it turned more into a pursing of his lips. “You feel all right?”

“Just a little nauseous.”

I put my hand on his cheek.

“My meds do that sometimes, especially with the higher dose.”

“Are you going home?”

“I’m going to try to stick it out as long as I can.”

“You don’t look so good,” Caroline said, approaching us in the hall.

Dalton slapped one hand over his stomach and the other over his mouth. He nodded at me and darted down the hall.

“Well, I guess that answers that,” Caroline said, clapping her hand on my shoulder.

I looked over at her.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. Man, poor Dalton. I knew he would hate if I said that out loud, but he got a pretty raw deal. “I just wish it could get better for him.”

“I’m sure whatever he has will pass.”

I shook my head.

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Caroline asked, raising a freshly arched eyebrow.

“I don’t know if he wants people to know.”

“He’s dying?” Caroline took my shoulders and spun me toward her.

“No.”

“Then what?” she asked, shaking me a bit as a teacher in a sweater vest eyeballed us.

“Nothing.”

“The girl with the lies dates the boy with the secrets.”

She couldn’t have been more correct.

***

Dalton continued to climb in my basement window and kept showing up in his lola’s spare room doing a random assortment of stuff – a little Dalton show through my bedroom window. At school it was so easy and natural being together. We had nobody to worry about catching us. I was still somewhat worried somebody would find out who Dalton was, learn his backstory which in turn was tied into mine, and I would be the laughing stock of the school, but nobody seemed really interested. It seemed my classmates enjoyed coming up with wild theories on Dalton instead of actually getting to know him.

In my basement, we had to worry about somebody catching us, but it was kind of thrilling and fun – and sometimes he’d show up with his acoustic guitar.

“You brought your guitar,” I said the first time he climbed in my window with it.

“Um, yeah.”

“Don’t worry, my grandma is a heavy sleeper and she leaves the TV on.”

“Okay, cool,” Dalton said, sitting cross-legged on the couch with his guitar. I sat next to him, and we turned toward each other so we were face to face, knee to knee.

“So, are you going to play me something?”

“Um, I was going to, but now…” I could see his cheeks take on some color.

“What changed?”

“I didn’t know if you’d ever hear me play this song. This is so much more personal now.”

“Which is a good thing. I love your voice, Dalton, and whatever you sing.” I put my hand on his plaid-pajama-pant-covered knee.

He nodded and started to slowly strum. He was right – it was personal and intimate. At first, when I saw his guitar, I wasn’t sure how I would react. I was scared he would sing me a song, like he was doing. It was an awful lot of attention, and I wasn’t really used to that. But every minute sitting there was wonderful. I was drawn in by his voice, his eyes glancing up at me, the shadow of a smile creeping across his face.

“That was beautiful,” I said when he finished his song.

“Thanks,” he said, looking down at his guitar, picking at the edge of it. “I usually don’t sing slow songs, or write them for that matter.”

“You should do it more often.”

He looked up at me. “It wasn’t too cheesy?”

“Of course not.” I so loved it. He wrote me a song. A boy wrote me a song!

“I wrote it for you. I’m pretty sure you could tell.”

I smiled at him. “You are so perfect.”

“Hardly.”

“You are, to me. That’s what counts.”

“Okay. You’re pretty perfect yourself.”

“Well, yeah, I know that.”

Dalton reached over our laps and shoved me in the shoulder.

“Hey!” I said.

“Want another song?”

“Of course.”

“You’re a pretty good sounding board. I don’t get to practice with the guys too often. We try it over PeoplePhone sometimes, but it’s best to play in front of somebody.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“You get to see the person’s response. How they react while you play tells you a lot. Their eyes, the way they hold themselves, if they’re falling asleep or not.”

“And watching my response?”

“I think I have a pretty good song on my hands.”

“You really do.”

“And guess what?”

“What?”

“We’re going to play a real, true, live gig – not just somebody’s basement.” Dalton’s whole face lit up and he bit his lip, possibly trying to contain the huge smile slowly spreading across his face. So cute.

“That’s awesome,” I said, throwing my arms around him. “Tell me all about it.”

Dalton drummed his fingers on the side of his guitar. “Nothing like super awesome, but it’s a local band showcase in the city. I guess one of the people who runs it saw our video from Nat Drummond’s party and got a hold of Matt.”

“That is super awesome.”

“You’ll be there?”

“Front row.”

He played some more and eventually took off his guitar. We lay side by side on the couch with our limbs entangled, taking in each other’s essence until he had to go.