A Fabrication of the Truth (2 page)

I took the bus home from school as I did every day. Not the school bus – the suburban bus route that ran past our school and had a stop about two blocks from where I lived. Our house was a small split level made of brick and brown siding, lies and deceit. I cornered my grandma in the kitchen when I got home. The kitchen still had the original 1960s cabinets – short, little, white things complete with contact paper on the shelves.

“Did you know Dalton Reyes was back in town?”

My grandma took a moment before she answered, perhaps thinking if she should lie to me or not, since it was in our genes. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yes,” she said, placing her palms flat on the kitchen table where she sat – a 1970s original, just like most of my grandma’s wardrobe. I was convinced she’d worn the same outfits in rotation for the past several decades.

“How did you know? Did they tell you?” And by
they
, I meant our neighbors—Gloria and Dave Reyes. I was pretty sure they wished death upon my whole family, so the chance of them telling my grandma: unlikely.

“That wench wouldn’t talk to me. No. Marisol, at bingo the other night – she told me.” Marisol was my grandma’s neighborhood gossip buddy who lived on the other side of the Reyes’, but usually sat across from my grandma at our kitchen table.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Bingo was two days ago. You’ve had two days.”

“Because I know how you feel about the boy. I honestly wasn’t sure how you’d react.” I looked at my grandma. She’s not your typical sweet-little–old-lady kind of grandma. She’s five inches taller than me and could probably throw down with an angry trucker in some shady back alley. She wears her dark blond hair pulled in a tight braid and jeans with awesome bell bottoms that took her fierceness down a notch, but without an elastic waist.

“And how is that? How do I feel about this boy? I barely know him.”

“But you love him.” Okay, let me clear this up here. I did not love Dalton Reyes. I lied – a lot – but someone who knew my affinity for making them could easily sniff out my lies: they were usually grandiose. Besides, can you love someone you barely even know?

“Grandma, is your dementia kicking in again?”

“Not this time, baby. Just stay away. It’s for the best.” But seriously, she didn’t have dementia – we messed around with each other a lot.

“For the best,” I said under my breath. That’s what adults always said. “Erg,” I growled.

I went up to my room. What did my grandma even mean? How was staying away from him for the best? Not that I planned on getting close, but still. Would my contact with him cause the earth to start spinning in the opposite direction, ending life as we know on this planet? I wasn’t satisfied, and after about twenty lengths of pacing back and forth in my small room, I went back downstairs.

My grandma watched a game show from her usual seat on the couch. “Seven hundred dollars,” she shouted. She had the recliner kicked out and held a jumbotron-sized mug in her hand.

“Why did you say staying away from him was for the best?”

“Lexie, drop it.”

“No, he goes to my school now. I’m bound to bump into him.”

“I just don’t want trouble.”

“It’s not fair. I was an innocent bystander.”

“I know, baby,” my grandma said, looking at me just out the corner of her eye, torn between me and the show.  Somebody
was
about to win a car.

“Do you know anything else about him being here?” I asked, rubbing my temples with my fingertips.

“Nope.”

“Can you do some recon? Ask Marisol. I know she talks to Gloria.” I sat down on the edge of the couch and dragged my toes across the area rug that covered the hardwood. It was cream and navy with red flowers – blood red. It was soaked in blood red.

“You can ask her, but you have to come to bingo tonight.”

I let out a deep sigh. My grandma always tried to drag me to bingo. When I wasn’t at school, I was a bit of a shut in, and she thought it was unhealthy. Like hanging out with a bunch of oldies would make me want to venture out into the world. But I secretly liked bingo.

“I have to wash the dog.”

“You did that last week.” My grandma was fully aware of my nonsense. We didn’t have a dog.

“Marathon training?”

“Nope, go get ready.”

I dropped my shoulders and dragged myself upstairs. I just wanted to know why Dalton Reyes came back.

***

The church basement was crowded and smelled heavily of a conglomeration of flowers thanks to all the old lady perfume. My grandma found Marisol sitting toward the middle of the room, a spot to her right saved for the two of us. Serious bingo enthusiasts surrounded us, setting up their little weird knickknacks for luck: troll dolls, four-leaf clovers, animal figurines, key chains. Cards upon bingo cards spread out and lined up on the table, bingo markers at the ready. Lots of elderly, some middle-aged overweight men, and a few moms eagerly awaited the first call of a number. God forbid if you sat in the wrong seat – it could start a bingo brawl. I had to get in my questions before the serious bingoing began. My grandma got me six cards. I’d been to bingo before, and six cards was probably too much. All that searching up and down, straining your eyes – too much pressure for me. I generally kept it to three.

“Look who it is,” Marisol said, with a huge smile across her face like it’d been forever since she had seen me last. She was at our house having coffee the day before.

“Hi, Marisol.”

“Lexie, you get more beautiful each and every day.” Much like me, Marisol tended to be full of shit – even her curly wig was the fakest color of red. Clown-chic really, but due to female pattern baldness, she didn’t have much hair of her own, so she relied on three-ring performers for hair advice. Marisol was awful nice though; a bit too gossipy, but nice, so it balanced out her poor wig choice, I guess.

I sat down in my aluminum folding chair and bit the corner of my lip. “I need some dirt.”

I uttered her favorite words. “About?” She raised her eyebrows.

“Dalton Reyes.”

“Oh,” she said, and then said again, with wide eyes, “Oh!”

“Yes.”

“Is that a good idea?” she asked, gnawing the cap to one of her bingo markers. I hoped her teeth wouldn’t fall out – I knew people with dentures had to be careful about what they bit. I hung out with senior citizens way too much.

“I just want to know. He hasn’t been back to his lola’s house since that day, so why is he going to my school?”

“Okay, listen, sweet cheeks. You didn’t hear this from me.” She tipped her head in close to me.

“Hear what?”

“Exactly.” Marisol smiled. “Okay, so they actually don’t live that far away – over in Skopie, I believe – and he’s not staying there forever. They just thought it was best.”

“So he’s staying at his lola’s?”

“Yes, him and his sister, Hailey. His dad was offered a contract position for a few months overseas and I guess it was an offer he couldn’t refuse. Plus I think his mom needed some time away. She went with him.”

“Okay, but he’s sixteen, and Hailey has to be in college by now. And why did his mom need time away?” I asked, a woman with a matching purple track suit squeezing past Marisol and me. I looked up and smiled, and she patted my head and continued down the aisle.

“Hailey is in college. Mary never says excuse me. Have you noticed that?”

“I don’t think so,” I looked down the seats to Mary, who was setting up her bingo spot. “So what’s up?”

“Mary’s always been kind of rude,” Marisol said, doing a quick glance over her cards. “These are good ones.” She nodded and turned back to me.

“No, not about Mary. Why couldn’t they like just go over there and check on the kids, or stay there or something?”

“I guess his parents thought he needed a break from his other school, so it seemed to be the perfect time to make the switch.”

“Why would he need a break?”

“Kept getting into trouble. Parents thought a fresh start might help.” Marisol adjusted her wig with a quick tug and pull.

“Dalton Reyes?”

“Yes, no longer that sweet, little, shy boy we all knew.”

“So why is his college-aged sister staying there, too?”

“She’s been commuting to school, and Gloria and Dave want an extra pair of eyes on him when they’re not around.”

“He’s not five.”

“That’s how they treat him, though. I don’t blame the kid for acting out. They’ve kept the poor kid on the shortest leash since…”

“That day?”

“Yeah, insanely over protective. Never let him go to his friends’ houses – couldn’t even play video games. That’s what I hear at least.”

“That sucks.”

“They do it out of love because they’re so afraid of losing him or something bad happening, but I’m sure it can be a little suffocating.”

“So if his mom is so overprotective, why would she leave him?”

I didn’t get an answer before the rise of a palm shut me up. Bingo had begun.

I needed to know more. Why did they all think I shouldn’t know this? Why should I stay away? And why did Dalton’s mom go with his dad?

I tried to keep up with the bingo – G-1, B-6, so on – but my mind wouldn’t stay in the church basement. My grandma won seventy-five dollars. Marisol only won ten. She was mightily pissed. I won nothing but an ache in my chest.

When I arrived at school, Caroline loitered in the hallway. She’d tried calling the night before, and I texted the word
bingo
. She understood. “So is he living with his grandma, then?” She didn’t even have to say who she was talking about.

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“Word is that he’s not the most sociable person. So is he?” Caroline asked, brushing her hair out of her face and neatly tucking it behind her ear. She leaned against the locker next to mine. A blue locker, against a blue wall. The school must have thought poorly of its students’ intelligence levels and color-coded all the hallways. Guess what they called that hallway? Caroline’s locker was in the yellow hallway.

“Sociable, I couldn’t tell you.”

“No, living with his grandma.”

“Yeah, for a while. Him and his sister.”

“Should we invite him to have lunch with us? You two can catch up.”

“I didn’t know him like that. We only hung out once.”

“Well, maybe you can pick up where you left off.”

“Not happening.”

“Why not?”

“He won’t be interested.”

“Why do you always sell yourself short?”

I shrugged. I didn’t think I sold myself short. I honestly thought because of what happened he wouldn’t want to be near me. I’ve had boyfriends, or more like I’ve dated a few guys. Once we got to what would be the boyfriend/girlfriend stage, I usually broke up with them because keeping up with my lies was just too much for me sometimes.

“Hey, do you know what he is?”

“A teenage boy, I do believe.”

“No, I was talking to Jess and Luiz about his ethnicity. He looks kind of exotic.”

“He’s not a car. You call cars exotic, not people.”

“Okay, but seriously, you know what I mean.”

“I’m going to stop being your friend now.”

Caroline frowned. “He has the sexiest eyes,” she said, her frown turning upside down.

“I’m going to class.”

“But you know,” she said.

“Yeah. Don’t you have to go drink some prune juice?”

Caroline put her hands on her hips. “Don’t hold my acting excellence against me. So…”

“It’s not like some huge secret or something. He’s Filipino and Polish.”

“I think that equals hot.”

“He’s not that hot. He’s pretty average looking.” Lies.

“You’re in denial.”

“Sure, but yeah, now I’m going to class.” I turned, and there he was again. His locker must have been down the hall from mine. His backpack pulled his long-sleeved t-shirt taut. He had a well-defined chest. Dalton Reyes was no longer the tiny, eleven-year-old kid with whom I’d once spent a day. He was…well, he was kind of taking my breath away.

“Oh my god, he is staring straight at you,” Caroline said, squeezing my arm.

What was I to do? I wanted to say something so badly, but that could make a mess of everything. Maybe I could talk to him not in school. We just couldn’t be seen together. No, I just couldn’t talk to him at all. Period. He knew everything about me that nobody else knew. He knew the truth. I watched him walk away, and Caroline shoved me.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing?” I said – which really meant, everything.

It was like when I was seven. I thought everything was wrong with the world, with my life, just because I couldn’t go on the second-grade field trip. Now the circumstances were way different, but everyone dramatizes the most inane things in second grade. My dad never sent in the money with the permission slip, so I had to stay in the school library all day, but I told my fellow classmates a different story. I was in the middle of reading a very advanced chapter book, at least at the fifth-grade level. All was quiet around me, when all of a sudden a squad of adults dressed in dark suits and sunglasses flooded the library, some wearing microphones on their heads, and others with walkie-talkies.

“A fifth-grade chapter book?” A woman, presumably the leader of the pack, asked me.

“I’m quite smart,” I said.

“Exactly why we’re here.”

“Okay…,” I was pretty confused about everything.

“There was a reason you weren’t sent on that field trip.”

“Okay…,” I said again.

“You’re being recruited.”

“What?”

“You’re being recruited. We have a spy mission, and you’re the perfect kid for the job.”

I then went on a spy mission where they shuttled me off in a supersonic jet and I outwitted a villain with my wicked-good, second-grade smarts. Okay, my story wasn’t perfect, but I was only in second grade, so everybody who sat around me at lunch the next day and hung onto my every word as I told the story didn’t seem to mind. They all kind of regretted going on that field trip. I felt great.

***

On the third day of being in school with Dalton Reyes, my goal was to stay as far away from him as I could, but that plan quickly went out the window as I was about to walk out the double doors at the end of the hall to leave school. I felt somebody behind me. Dalton grabbed my hand, ever so gently brushing his thumb across the back of it. My toes involuntarily curled.

“Um, hey,” he whispered as he stepped in close to let somebody out the door, our chests close to smashing together.

I let out a stuttered breath before I managed to say, “Dalton.” He let go of my hand as soon as he got my attention, but his touch still lingered.

“Can we talk real quick?” His voice was so much deeper than I expected.

“That’s probably not the best idea.”

Somebody else pushed past, and Dalton pressed up against me, putting his hand on the wall above my shoulder and bending down to whisper in my ear.

“You’re the only one here who knows,” he said, his warm breath on me.

I had to get out of there before my knees buckled and I collapsed in surrender in his arms. “Outside,” I said, taking in a deep inhale. Oh god, he smelled so good – like clean laundry and some kind of minty apple.

He nodded. “Okay.”

We walked down the steps side by side and stopping to stand under a tree just off the sidewalk. “We have to make this quick,” I said. If people saw me with him, they’d ask too many questions – rumors would start. Things would start to get dug up.

“Were you warned not to talk to me? Is that it?” he asked.

“Amongst other things.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No. God, no. Why would you say that?”

He shrugged. “I never talked to you again after that day.”

“Understandable. I figured you hated me, so I’m quite surprised you’re standing here talking to me now.”

“I would never hate you. You had nothing to do with what happened.”

“I know, but…,” I looked down at the ground.

He placed a finger under my chin and lifted it back up, so we looked eye to eye. His eyes were such a beautiful dark brown. “Nothing to do with it.”

“I’m sorry, Dalton, but this can’t happen. I can’t talk to you.”

“I just wanted to know how you were doing. That’s all.”

“I’m fine, okay?”

He nodded and looked a little wounded. “See you around then.”

“Yeah, see you.”

Dalton walked away with his shoulders drooping, looking at the ground. I leaned back against the tree and closed my eyes. Staying away would be hard.