Liar, Liar (10 page)

Katie took the letter from me in the hall as if she would have preferred I’d handed her a steaming pile of fresh horse manure. But she dropped it into her backpack, not the trash, and I took that as a positive sign. I could only hope she’d read it during her 12.5 minutes a day of downtime, even if she couldn’t resist editing it before returning it to me for corrections and a clean second draft.

Mr. Crosby was at his desk. He looked surprised
to see me. He read my note, glanced up and said one word. One letter. “F.”

I nodded and left. For the first time I could think of, more talking wouldn’t help.

I have to admit that I was relieved that Señora Lucia, Mrs. Steck, Coach Gifford and Mr. Meyers weren’t around when I went looking for them.

But at least I
tried
to find them. I didn’t have time to search all over school; I had to keep plugging along on the Kevin Spencer Apology Tour. And although I wanted to be brave and manly and all those good soldierly things, I was happy to slip their notes into their mailboxes; I didn’t particularly want to face another four failing grades on a Friday. Monday would be soon enough. Only a fool rushes bad news.

I had a plan B. Win back respect and trust. But now was not the time for it. Plan A, A-for-Apologies, this week. Plan B next week.

JonPaul took my letter when I found him near his locker, but as I turned to walk away, he said quietly, “I gave your concert ticket to Greggie.”

I’d expected as much. But inside I screamed:
Nooooooooooo!

I stood outside the girls’ restroom and waited for Connie to come out. I handed her my note and said,
“As you read this, just remember that I am great at oral presentations.” I walked away fast.

I’d heard once that the best apologies don’t make a bad situation worse by further hurting the person you’re apologizing to, so I hadn’t admitted to Connie that I’d used her to try to get to know Tina; that would be cold. I wrote that I’d been trying to get out of classes and had maybe fudged a little on how genuinely excited I was about student government, but she could totally count on me for the debate, and the left is my good side on camera. Maybe a joke could lighten the mood.

It was difficult to write the apologies. But the hardest part was going to be waiting to see if they’d be accepted. A person can’t hurry forgiveness.

The play director, the wrestling coach and the newspaper editor weren’t even aware that I’d screwed them over, but I’d written to them anyway.

I found the drama teacher, whose name I didn’t know, sitting in the lotus position in the middle of the stage. I set my backpack down in the wings, kicked off my shoes, padded over and sat on the floor next to her. It took me a few minutes to get both my feet on top of the opposite thighs, but I managed.

“I don’t mean to interrupt when you’re … 
meditating,” I said quietly and, I hoped, peacefully so that I wouldn’t ruin her calm mood, “but I want to volunteer to work on the musical.”

She didn’t answer or open her eyes, but she’d stopped humming, so I knew she was listening.

“I’m going to leave you this letter I wrote.” I set it on one of her open palms as it rested on top of her knee. “I’ll do whatever you need—manage props, work the lights, sweep the stage. My email address is in the letter. Uh,
namaste
.”

Next I dashed to the assistant gym teacher’s office. He’s also the wrestling coach.

“Speak,” Mini-Coach growled at me from his desk, where he was doing paperwork. He didn’t even turn around.

“Yeah, uh, hi, you don’t know me, but, uh, I’d like to be the student manager of the wrestling team.”

“Uh-huh …”

“So I’m just gonna leave this letter I wrote here on the chair. You can get in touch with me when you’re not so busy.”

“Unh.” He waved a hand.

“Good talk. You take care now.” I backed out of his office. I don’t know how JonPaul does all those sports if this is how coaches communicate.

When I got to the newspaper office, a staff meeting was in progress. I slid to the back of the room and pretended I belonged. Not very well, though.

“You.” I looked up to see the editor pointing at me. “Who are you, what do you want, when did you decide to turn up, where did you come from, and why are you late?”

“I’d like to work for the newspaper. I’ll write copy or deliver the papers to classes or clean the newsroom or change ink cartridges in the printers. I have some writing samples here for you.” I handed him some of my research papers and short stories, which I’d printed out at the library.

By the end of the school day on Friday, I was pretty happy that I hadn’t found the ideal moment to speak to Tina all week. One less person to apologize to. And at the rate I’d been going, I’d have messed things up with her and lost the chance to make her see that I was her perfect guy. When the air had cleared from my disaster, I’d focus on making her know all the wonderful things about me.

While trying to make sure she never heard a single thing about this week, that is.

finally staggered home from a truly craptastic day. I wanted to crawl under my bed with my old stuffed bunny. Maybe take up thumb-sucking, too, because I was going to need some more coping skills. I knew I’d have to face my family sooner or later, but I was beat and hoped I’d have just one more night of closed doors and silence. I’d talk to them in the morning. I had a flash that Auntie Buzz had been showing some solid thinking when she came up with her “I’ll deal with it first thing on Monday.”

But Mom and Dad and Sarah and Daniel were waiting for me when I walked through the door. They were standing in the living room, trying to be casual,
as if we habitually stand around together in the same room and it’s nothing to be alarmed about.

Mom looked like she’d been crying and Dad looked like he might have barfed, but at least they were next to each other.

“Everything is going to be fine,” Mom said right away, and I could tell that they’d been rehearsing because of how quickly and surely she spoke.

“This was a blessing in disguise,” Dad continued, but from Mom’s glance at him, I saw that he had gone off-script and was improvising. Mom jumped back in.

“We’re going to start seeing a marriage counselor and probably try some family therapy, too. It’s going to be a little weird for a while, but things will feel normal again pretty soon.”

Dad took it from there. “I’m going to try to transfer to another division where I won’t travel, and if that doesn’t work out, I’ll look for a job where I’m not gone all the time. But your mother and I believe that everything is going to be fine with us.”

I felt a flicker of hope. That quickly died with Dad’s next words.

“Now—Kevin. We got some calls from your school,” he said. “We
really
need to talk about that.
Buzz called too. I couldn’t understand a word because she was talking faster than normal and that’s really saying something, but she’s upset with you. And Daniel and Sarah have an interesting story about how they came to forfeit their car keys. And your mother and I need to remind you that you do not ask one parent permission when the other has already made the decision.”

If life had a sound track—and sometimes I think that’s a great idea—those
dunh dunh
gavel sounds from that legal show would have sounded then. And if I’d been starting a band right that very minute and needed to give it a true-to-life name, it would be All Hell Raining Down on Kevin.
Buket o’ Puke ’n Snot
didn’t do the situation justice.

“You certainly have been busy,” Mom said. “I’ll give you that.”

“It’s easier than you think to wreck a family,” I said.

“You didn’t wreck anything.”

My eyes stung and my throat closed, tight and burning. I took a few minutes to stare at the floor until I was sure I could speak without squeaking or choking.

“I am so sorry for everything. I spent the whole
day at school writing apologies to everyone, and”—I dropped my bulging backpack on the floor with a thunk—“I’ve got all the work I need to make up from this past week right here.”

“I’m impressed by your initiative,” Mom said, “but that’s not going to get you out of the punishment your father and I have been talking about.”

“You’re going to have to earn the money for your driver’s ed class next year,” Dad said. “We paid for Daniel’s and Sarah’s, but the situation you caused with the car this week …” He trailed off.

“I understand.”

“No allowance for a month, you’re grounded for two weeks and we have a list of jobs around the house and yard with your name on it.”

“Okay.”

“What were you thinking?” Mom asked, holding her temples.

“I had this idea—well, it doesn’t matter what I thought, it was a boneheaded plan and everything turned out horrible. I was trying to help Buzz, really; you’ll see, I made everything better. But I went about it all wrong. I know that asking Dad about the concert was shady, but I never thought it would make you two so mad at each other. And I couldn’t think of any
other way to get Daniel and Sarah to see things from my point of view. They never listen to me and all we do is fight and it’s two against one and the whole thing with the car has been a mess.”

“Things between you three won’t always be this intense,” Mom said. “I have faith that you’ll stop fighting as you get older.”

“You’ll appreciate each other more,” Dad said. “The age difference will matter less and less.”

Sarah and Daniel and I exchanged dubious glances.

“It’s almost,” Dad continued thoughtfully, “like you’re triplets. Think of it: you’ll be in college together, get married at around the same time, and maybe your kids will be close in age.”

Mom snorted, but she was smiling at Dad as she spoke. “I’m pretty sure you only think like that because when you’re on the road you watch those reality television shows about people who have weirdly large families.”

Dad grinned back. “Maybe so.”

Daniel scratched his head. “Wow. Kev. You …” He trailed off.

“Yeah.”

He flopped onto the couch, tipping his head back
and closing his eyes. I knew just how he felt—exhausted to the bone. I glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner and was shocked to discover it was only four-thirty. I’d really packed a lot of revelation into one short day.

Mom and Sarah must have realized how weird we looked standing around in the living room, because they sat down on the love seat together. Dad dropped onto the couch next to my brother and threw his arm around Daniel before tipping his head back too. I shifted from one foot to the other, watching them.

“Kevin.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Come sit next to me.”

I had never been more grateful to sit next to my father.

He put his other arm around me.

I caught Daniel’s eye on the other side of our father; he studied me for a long minute. His eyes were kind, though, and finally he smiled, looking remarkably like Markie.

Even Sarah winked at me from across the room. Of course, she flipped me the bird, too, but for Sarah, that was pretty warm and fuzzy. She leaned her head against Mom’s shoulder and glanced at the book lying
next to Mom on the love seat. “Oh! You’re reading
To Kill a Mockingbird
. I love that book. Read it out loud. Like you did when we were little.”

Mom smiled and opened the book. “ ‘When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem …’ ”

Daniel and I sat with our father’s arms around us for a very long time, listening to Mom read to us.