Even When You Lie to Me (18 page)

Asha had become my default partner for our team activities in gym. She was more athletic than I was, quick and observant, but more importantly, she was kind and she never blamed me when I missed a shot. Lila had always showed off in gym, and while she didn’t laugh at me, she’d sometimes say things like “Get it together, Porter,” or “Eyes on the ball.” I’d been relieved when we’d gotten different schedules.

Asha and I were badminton partners now. We got paired with different boys every week, and that day, Valentine’s Day, we had Mike.

For the first few minutes, he wouldn’t meet my eyes. Dev was his partner, and I worried that Mike would embarrass me in front of him and Asha. But Mike was quiet and didn’t look at me.

Asha sent a shuttlecock into the air. It came to me, and I was so nervous that I missed an easy shot.

“This is not making me trust your opinion on sports, Charlie,” Dev said.

I smiled, afraid to say much in front of Mike.

“You’re one to talk,” Asha said. “You let that air ball go by a couple minutes ago.”

“That was out!” Dev said. “Charlie, come on, back me up here.”

I hesitated. Mike was walking toward the other end of the court. “Not after you insulted my badminton abilities so viciously.”

Dev laughed. “I guess I deserve that.”

Asha scooped up the shuttlecock and served again. Mike dove for it awkwardly and missed. He glanced at me and I looked away.

“You have a valentine tonight, don’t you, Ash?” Dev said.

I would have frozen at the question, but Asha looked at me as if she was used to it.

“You giving me the leftover chocolates you don’t like doesn’t count as a valentine,” she said.

“Mom always gets the ones with nuts,” he said.

“That’s because you’d eat them all otherwise.”

Dev sighed and turned to Mike. “What about you, Mike? You have a date tonight?”

Mike looked startled that Dev had addressed him. “Uh, I’m not sure what I’m doing,” he said.

“Charlie?” Dev asked. “Date?”

“What?” I said.

“Leave her alone, dummy,” Asha said.

“Charlie’s got the same plans I do, I think,” Mike said.

I looked at him. He was smiling. My heart knocked. “I don’t have…I don’t know,” I said.

Dev looked between us and then said, “You think Drummond does?”

“If you count reading Dickens as a date,” Asha said.

Dev laughed. I glanced at Mike again; he was still smiling. I frowned at him, and his smile faltered and he turned away.

“You think he’s been different lately?” Dev said.

“Who?” I asked.

“Drummond.”

“What?” I said. “How so?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Just different.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I said. But he had been. It was subtle, but he was a little more distant, a little distracted. There was a pause before he laughed, a small hesitation before he made a joke. He didn’t meet my eyes quite as often, and when he did, he looked away too quickly. I tried not to think about that night in the classroom, because if I did, I went hot with shame, but I worried that he was different because of me, that he couldn’t think of me the same way anymore. But mostly I tried to pretend things were the same as they’d always been.

Dev batted at the shuttlecock again. “Do you guys think he’s going to grade us for
Truth Bomb
this semester?” he asked. “Considering we haven’t even put an issue out.”

“I think we just get credit for
participating,”
I said. “It’s not our fault it hasn’t come out. Well, except for the fact that only half the people have actually written their articles.”

“I hope we get credit,” Dev said. “Because Asha’s article is terrible.”

Asha threw her racket at him, and he laughed and let it hit him. “Asshole,” she said.

“You’ll be all right, at least, Charlie,” he said. “He loves you.” He said it guilelessly, as if it were indisputable.

I flushed. Mike made a noise and I looked at him. His face was red too.

“Less chatting and more playing, please,” Mrs. Deloit said as she passed by.

“He loves everyone,” I said.

That night as I stuffed my feet into my snow boots and strapped myself into my heaviest coat, my mother appeared in the hall.

“Walking Frida?” she asked.

“Looks like it,” I said.

Frida panted and waved her tail at the word
walk.
She nosed her leash, which was still hanging on the wall.

“Mind if I come with you?” my mother said. She looked shy, like she was a child asking permission, afraid I would say no.

“I thought you were about to go out with Dad,” I said. I stood up and pulled Frida’s leash from its hook. She danced in a joyful little circle, her nails clicking on the tile.

“Change of plans,” my mother said.

I looked up. “Not because of the park project?”

She nodded. “We’re postponing. I thought maybe you and I could take a walk together.”

“I’m backup?” I said.

She looked stung. “If you’d rather be alone, that’s fine.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean…” I fiddled with Frida’s leash. “No. No, it’s okay.”

I always took Frida to the small clearing a few streets over. The snow had been melting into ash-colored rivulets for weeks, and I’d been worried that we were in the dregs of winter, those days when the sun couldn’t push through the flat sky, and the slush was gray with tire tracks, and everything that showed through underneath was rotten and brown. But we’d had a storm the day before, and now the trees were crested with fat caps of snow, and the streetlamps’ lights were soft and hazy.

“Did you have any plans for tonight?” she asked.

Pizza and masturbation,
I thought. “I was just going to read,” I said.

“We didn’t ruin anything by staying home, then,” she said.

I glanced at her. She was looking up at a roof that was heavy with snow.

“Like what?” I said.

“Just curious.”

“No,” I said. “Sorry to disappoint.”

She paused. “You know, I’m aware that you don’t care about makeup and haircuts and stuff. You think it’s shallow. But, Charlie, I really am just trying to help.”

“No, I— When—when have I said that?”

She ignored me. “Honey, why do you think you don’t have a boyfriend?”

“I don’t…what? Why do you want to know?”

“I’m just curious.”

“Is it bad that I don’t?”

“Of course not,” she said. “But I think you could have one if you wanted to.”

I laughed, but something in my stomach constricted.

“I’m serious,” she said. “And I know you don’t want to hear it, but I really think I could help. This is just the way the world works. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but appearances are important, especially to men.”

When I didn’t say anything, she said, “I know you think you shouldn’t have to care about that stuff, that people should just see past it. I wish that were the case, I really do. I know you’d like to have a boyfriend.” She stepped closer. Her voice turned soft. “If you’d let me in, I could—I could help. I want to— I wish you’d…I wish you’d let me help.”

I hesitated. There was a hush over the street. “So you think I’m ugly,” I said.

She stepped back, and her voice got hard again. “No,” she said. “No, not at all. I think you are a beautiful girl who for some reason is determined to keep herself unattractive.”

“Jesus, Mom,” I said. I could feel a sob knotting up in my chest. I tried to say something else but I couldn’t. Maybe she was right. Maybe I just needed to give in.

We’d reached the clearing. The snow was thick enough that the grass was covered, so it stretched out in a swelling plain, broken only by the deer tracks and footprints that littered the ground like little craters. The woods at the edge were dark and quiet.

I let Frida’s leash play out as I tried to get my breath to stop hitching dangerously. I felt a buzz in my pocket. I pulled out my phone: a text from Lila.

Saw Drummond in ShopRite earlier. He was buying lotion & tissues & an issue of Shape magazine. :-(

I gave a sobbing sort of laugh. Frida tugged on the leash and I said, “Can you take her?”

“Of course,” my mother said. As I handed the leash over, she said, “Something important?”

“Kind of,” I said. I texted back:
Liar.

She replied almost immediately.
All right, he wasn’t. He did buy a single eggplant, though. Made me sad. Gotta go, Jason’s here with some gas station carnations. Probably thinks he deserves a blow job for this. UGH.

If that was what having a boyfriend was like, maybe I didn’t want one anyway. I didn’t need anyone. Screw my mom if she thought I did. I felt a tide of defiance rise where the sob had been. I was rereading the text when I heard Frida bark and my mother yell, “Dammit! Frida, come here!”

I looked up. Frida was scrambling across the clearing, kicking up clouds of snow like a stuck van. Toward a deer.

“Frida!” I said in my deepest, sharpest voice. She froze for a second, glanced at me, and then bounded after the deer again.

I turned to my mother and said, “Great.” Then I started wading through the snow.

She kept pace with me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “She startled me.”

“Maybe if you walked her more often, this wouldn’t happen,” I said.

“If you hadn’t been looking at your phone, you would have seen something was wrong,” she said.

“I asked you to watch her for five seconds!” I said. “When I said I didn’t have any plans, I didn’t mean I wanted to be chasing after my dog in the dark.”

“Our dog,” she said.

“My dog,” I said. “And I don’t want a boyfriend, so you can stop trying, okay? Just give up.”

“Okay,” she said. “I give up. Good luck.”

“Frida!” I shouted, and blundered into the woods. I didn’t have to go far; Frida was sniffing frantically at a tree, trying to find the deer’s scent. She whuffed distractedly. I grabbed the trailing end of her leash and pulled. She whined and then came away reluctantly.

“I’m sorry,” my mother said as I walked past her.

“Thanks,” I said, and kept walking.