Four Truths and a Lie (21 page)

At least she didn't hold me in her office long. She pretty much let me go almost immediately. Not that being back in my room by myself is any better. I wish Amber was here, but of course she's still at the game, at
my
game, where I should be. I've tried her cell phone a few times, but she's not answering. I throw myself back down on my bed, the tears making my face hot. After a few minutes, I grab one of my romance novels off the bedside table. I settle in outside of Amber's room, so that I can be there when she gets home. Forty minutes and forty pages later, my butt is starting to hurt. Amber finally comes around the corner.

“Scarlett!” she says. “Where have you been? Are you okay? I was so worried.”

“I went to meet James,” I say, and now that I'm saying the words, I start to cry again. “And I got caught, and now I'm in trouble and it's just a big mess.”

“Scarlett, I have no idea what you're talking about,” she says. “But I think you should know that—”

From around the corner comes the stomping of feet, and another, sort of shuffling noise. Amber's eyes widen, and she tries to pull me into her room. “What are you doing?” I ask. But she's not fast enough, and I get my answer soon enough. “We had to forfeit,” Andrea Rice says, coming around the corner. She's on her crutches, and she's followed by the rest of the team.

“Oh, hi, guys,” I say, swallowing. I never realized how big they are. Tall girls, these five. “I am so, so, so sorry about this. Really, I didn't mean to—”

“You know, we were really starting to think you wanted to be a part of the team,” Andrea says. “We were just talking the other day about how we had you wrong in the beginning, and about how hard you were working, and about how we actually thought we had a chance to win tonight.”

“I'm sorry,” I say, looking down at my hands. I think I'm going to cry again.

“‘Sorry'? That's all you have to say is ‘sorry'? We had to drive all the way out there, just to forfeit.” She shifts her weight to her good leg. Her eyes are flashing, and for a minute, I get nervous that she might try to hit me with her crutch. The rest of the team huddles behind her, shooting daggers at me with
their eyes. “I don't know if you're going to be allowed back on the team, but we just want you to know that honestly, we don't even care.” And then she turns and hobbles down the hall, the rest of the team following behind her.

“Wow,” Amber says.

“I know,” I say miserably, sliding down the wall to the floor.

“I was coming up here to warn you.” Amber slides down the wall next to me. “On the way out of the other team's gym I was behind them, and they were furious. I honestly thought they were going to jump you.”

“Lovely.”

“Scarlett, what happened?”

“I went out to meet James,” I say. “And I got caught.” I look down at my hands and swallow the lump in my throat.

“It's okay,” she says. “Don't worry.” She leads me into her room and sits me down on her bed. She hands me a tissue out of the box on her nightstand, and I blow my nose.

“Everything's a mess,” I say. “I can't go to the dance, I missed my basketball game, I just—”

“Look, it's going to be fine,” she says. She hands me the box of tissues and I take another one. “I'm gonna go get us some snacks from the vending machine, and then we're going to sort this whole thing out. Okay?”

“Okay.” I sniffle. Amber grabs her purse and heads out of the room. It's going to be okay, I tell myself. I'm going to tell Amber everything that's going on, including all the stuff about my dad. And then I'll have my mom set up a meeting with Headmistress O'Neal, and I'll try to explain things.

I put Amber's tissues back on her nightstand, and that's when I see it. Her journal. Just sitting there. And then I start to think that maybe if Amber did lie about her dad, she would have something in her journal about it. But I can't read her journal. That would be a total invasion of her privacy. On the other hand, I
do
plan to tell Amber about my dad, so maybe she'll tell me about hers. And then I'll know anyway.

I reach over and run my finger along the cover of the journal, then lift it up gently and peek under the cover. I see row after row of Amber's neat, straight handwriting, although I'm not close enough to see any actual words.

“What are you doing?” Amber's back in the doorway, her arms filled with cookies, crackers, and chips.

I drop the cover of the journal so fast it bounces off the nightstand and falls onto the floor. “I … I was just …” I take a deep breath. “I just thought …”

“You just thought you'd read my journal?” She drops the snacks into a pile on her desk and whirls around to face me.

“No. I mean … I wasn't really going to read it, I was just. Look, the last thing Crissa wanted me to find out was if your dad was really overseas.”

She looks at me incredulously for a long moment, and when she finally talks, her voice is low and even.

“Look, Scarlett, just because you have some big secret about your dad, doesn't mean I do.” She marches over to her bulletin board and pulls down a picture and shoves it in my face. It shows a smiling man in army fatigues, his arm around Amber. “See now?”

And then I realize there was no lie. Amber was telling the truth, and Crissa set it up so that I would think she was lying. She set up this whole game so that I'd have to do all these horrible things, get caught and almost kicked out of school, and then at the end, have to accuse my friend of being a liar. And if I was thinking straight, if I wasn't so caught up in my own anger and lies, I would have realized that.

“Amber, I'm so sorry, I just—”

“Scarlett,” she says. “Please leave.”

And so I do.

By the time I get to my room, I'm about to explode. Everything is a complete and total mess. And all because of Crissa! Never mind that I was the one who decided
to play along with her little game. Never mind that I was the one who broke into the office. Never mind that I was the one who snuck off campus. If she hadn't made James start writing me those letters, I never would have done any of these things in the first place! Honestly, who does she think she is? She's had it out for me from day one for NO REASON. I've been NOTHING BUT NICE to her this whole time.

When I get to my room, I throw open the door, ready to explode. Crissa's sitting there on her bed, talking to her mom on her cell phone.

“Yes, Mother,” she says. “I will make sure that Mrs. Walker knows that.” She's painting her nails on her nightstand, the phone cradled against her shoulder. She's painting them clear. Who paints their nails clear?

“Can I talk to you for a second?” I ask, tapping my foot. I cross my arms against my chest.

She holds up her finger, like
one minute
. “Yes,” she says into the phone. “I called Saddlecrest about the riding lessons, and they said Saturday mornings at eight are the only available time. But I think if I rearrange a few things, it shouldn't be a problem.”

“It's kind of important,” I say, louder. I don't care that she's talking to her stupid mom about her stupid riding
lessons or about her stupid math grade. I don't care that I'm being completely rude.

“I have to go, Mom,” Crissa says, sighing. “Scarlett's here and she's going on and on about something.” She pushes the end button on her phone and throws it down on the bed. “What is it?”

“Why did you make James do that?” I demand. No more Miss Nice Guy. Who cares if no one likes me when they find out about my dad? It's not like anyone does anyway.

“What do you mean?” She puts an innocent look on her face, but I see the panic that passes across it for a second, and I can tell it's not a real innocent look, but a fake one, carefully constructed to make sure she looks innocent when she really isn't.

“I mean why did you start making me do all those things!” I throw my hands up in the air. “I know you did it. I know you told James to do it, he told me. All about it. How you tricked him into thinking it would be a cool game for him to play, and then how you started making him do it. I've known all along! And I played along with it because I was afraid about the stuff about my dad coming out, BUT I AM NOT AFRAID ANYMORE.” I'm pacing around the room now, throwing my hands in the air like some kind of crazy person.

“Look, Scarlett,” she says, jumping off the bed and
smoothing her hair down with her hand. She checks her reflection in the mirror over her dresser. “What you decided to do with those letters was your own business. It had nothing to do with me.”

“Why would you do that? There's no reason for it! You hardly even know me!”

“You know what?” she says, whirling around. “Have you ever stopped to think that maybe you deserved it, marching in here with your expensive clothes and your stupid makeovers?”

I gasp. “I don't wear expensive clothes anymore, and MY MAKEOVERS ARE NOT STUPID!”

“And thinking you were so mysterious, making everyone think you came here because you were so smart, when really, it was just because of some stupid thing with your dad stealing!”

“So you're admitting it!” I say.

“You know, Scarlett, a lot of people here work hard to be here. They don't just get a free ride.”

“I
have
been working hard,” I say.

“Whatever,” she says. She gets up off the bed and heads to the closet, where she pulls a sweater off a hanger and pulls it over her head. She shoves her feet into her sneakers.

“Oh, no,” I say. “You're not leaving. We're going to talk about this, whether you like it or not.”

“Oh, Scarlett,” she says. “You don't get it, do you? You're lazy and rude and I'm sorry I have to even look at you.”

And then she walks out of the room, and leaves me standing there with my mouth open.

I'm so upset that I don't sleep at all that night. Or for most of the weekend. I spend most of my time in the library, avoiding Crissa and studying. And studying. And studying. Math, science, English reading. I keep my brain moving so that I won't have to think about what happened on Friday, and about how pathetic it was to give up everything I've worked for.

On Tuesday morning in English, I get the following letter:

Dear Scarlett,

I'm so sorry for what happened on Friday. In fact, I'm sorry about this whole thing. I never should have even started it up. It was stupid. I can't believe a lot of the things I'm doing lately.

I hope you can forgive me. Can you? Please circle one. Yes. No. Maybe.

James

I send him back a blank piece of paper.

On Thursday afternoon, I head slowly to the
headmistress's office for the meeting with my mom. When I get there, I can hear them laughing through the door. I take this as a good sign, until I walk into the room and the laughing stops. Well, okay then.

I take a seat and decide that my new plan is to be completely and totally responsible, and to keep my cool. One of our vocab words in English this year was “equanimity,” and that's what I'm going to be: equaniminous. It means very centered and stable.

“Hello, Scarlett,” Headmistress O'Neal says, pointing to the chair in front of her desk. “Take a seat.”

“Hello,” I say. I'm wearing a long gray skirt and a white
blouse, both of which were borrowed from Amber, and look quite conservative if I do say so myself. Of course, I borrowed them before we had our fight, and I have a feeling if she knew I was wearing them, she would not be pleased. Over the past few days, I've tried to talk to her about a bazillion times and she just ignores me. The worst was yesterday, when I approached her while she was coming out of the newspaper office. She pushed right by me without saying anything except “I want my bracelet back.”

“Hi, Mom,” I say.

“Hello,” she says shortly. Not a good sign.

“Now, I was talking with your mother before you got here, and I've filled her in on all the details.” She clears her throat. “My decision as far as disciplinary action is to suspend you for three days, keep you on probation, and let you know that if you break one more school rule, even if it's something very small, you will be asked to leave Brookline. No questions asked. This means
any
school rule.”

I swallow. “Okay.”

“You will be allowed to play basketball for the rest of the year, provided your grades stay high.” She looks down at her papers. “From what I can tell, you're doing fine here academically, so that doesn't seem like it should be a problem.”

“Yes,” I say. Well, until I possibly screwed up my math grade because of this whole thing, but I don't bring that up.

Headmistress O'Neal rises from behind her desk and smoothes down her suit. “Well,” she says. “Now that that's taken care of, I'll give you a moment alone with your mother.”