The Lies About Truth (16 page)

In the early dawn, Max and I whispered back and forth about nothing. Talking about nothing was sometimes better than talking about anything.

“You never told me what your surprise was,” I said, poking him awake.

He yawned and asked, “What surprise?”

Even though he knew exactly which surprise. I dug my chin into his chest for teasing me.

“Okay, okay,” he said, stroking my back. “I was going to ask if you wanted to go to the Fountain of Youth Park on the anniversary. Thought it might help to get out of town, and I know it’s on your list.”

Suddenly, it clicked.

“You’ve been working on my list? Haven’t you?”

His hands paused midtouch. “I read your emails over and over. Memorized the things you wanted. Like the tank top and the park. You want to go; just like I know you’ve been working on driving with Metal Pete.”

“How?”

“I asked him.”

“You asked Metal Pete?” My voice climbed a ladder.

“Shh, we’re going to get caught,” he warned. “Yeah. Of course I did. I’d do anything to help.”

I tested Fletcher’s idea on him.

“What do you think about the four of us going?” I asked.

Silence.

More silence.

“Max?”

“If that’s what you want, let’s do it,” he said.

“You hesitated.”

“Five or so hours in the car with Gray—” he said.

“Ten or so hours,” I corrected, since we had to also drive home. “And I’m not sure I can do it either. I’m not even sure he’ll agree.”

“Well, I’ll bring the paintball gun just in case,” he said. “I’ve heard that works pretty well.”

Neither of us laughed. “That was a mistake. I shouldn’t have shot him.”

“He told you to.”

“That doesn’t make it right. But maybe this will.”

“For your sake, I hope he says yes.”

Later on in the day, long after Max slipped out my window, Gina and Gray agreed to meet Max and me at the Salvage Yard on the morning of the anniversary. Two days from now.

That meant I had work to do.

I showed up at Metal Pete’s with two bags of doughnuts and two choices of coffee, still wearing Max’s T-shirt to channel my brave. Surely caffeine and sugar would woo Metal Pete into submission, and the T-shirt would prove I was serious about change.

I walked toward the office feeling hopeful.

Metal Pete eyed me suspiciously when I set the morning feast on his desk. “You’re . . . up to something,” he said. “Spill the beans.”

“That car you promised me,” I began.

Metal Pete began most expressions with a scrunched nose and raised eyebrows. This one ended up in a smile. “Uh-huh?” he said.

I gave him a prize-winning grin. “Could I maybe borrow that on Thursday?”

“You mean you want to drive it off the lot?”

I nodded.

“Like . . . you’re going to take the car through the gate, hit the gas, and put it on an actual road and . . . ?”

His skepticism wasn’t a refusal. It was a challenge.

“Somehow. Some way,” I said, even though I wasn’t quite sure of that part myself.

“And where might you be taking this borrowed car of mine?”

“St. Augustine.”

“St.
Augustine
?” he practically screamed. “Whoa, kid. You don’t start small, do you?”

“I’m just glad to finally be starting,” I told him.

Metal Pete strolled over to a gray box that hung on his wall and examined rows and rows of keys. He settled on one, and said, “Follow me.”

Together, we walked down the first row of cars. I had never spent much time in this row. The cars here were all in good shape. Good being a relative thing: most people wouldn’t look twice at them, but I wasn’t most people. I eyed an old black Trans-Am and crossed my fingers. It was a car that screamed Road Trip, and it was much bigger than the Yaris.

But Metal Pete walked past the Trans-Am and stopped at a little red S-10 extended cab. His hand caressed the bed as if the old Chevrolet were a woman he loved.

“Not putting you in a car,” he said matter-of-factly. “Rebuilt this engine myself. It’s the best I’ve got. Plus, it’s insured.”

Don’t cry. Don’t cry
, I thought as I considered Pete’s generosity. “Pete . . .”

“Nope,” Pete warned. He took my hand the way my grandfather had when I was a little girl. Squeezing it once, he said, “I won’t have any of that sap. You’re not a tree.”

The keys were in my hand then.

“You’ve got two days to prove to me you can do it,” he told
me, and opened the door with a bow.

“I won’t be going alone,” I promised him.

“Naw, I didn’t figure you were.”

I climbed in and rolled down the window. Moment of truth. Sweat lined the creases of my hands as I turned the key.

The engine didn’t argue.

Quickly, before I changed my mind, I tapped the brake and shifted into reverse. The trucked rolled slowly backward, and I watched everything. The parked row of cars behind me. Metal Pete, smiling under his visor. My own nervous face in the rearview.

Nervous or not, I had the truck in drive.

“That’s it, kid,” Metal Pete yelled as I turned the wheel at the end of the row.

Driving wasn’t all that hard. Everything from my months of training with Mom and Dad came back in that first lap around the row. I could have walked faster than I was driving, but I knew, even at ten miles per hour, that
not
driving was just another one of those things I’d built into a fortress of impossibility. After I took a few loops around the rows, I shifted to neutral, and wrote the original list in the dashboard dust.

1. Wear a tank top in public
(Check-ish)

2. Walk the line at graduation
(Not yet)

3. Forgive Gina
(Check)
and Gray
(Not checked). And
tell them the truth.
(Double check)

4. Stop following. Start leading.
(?—If I pulled this off)

5. Drive a car again
(Bonus points)

6. Kiss someone without flinching
(Hell yeah)

7.
Visit the Fountain of Youth
(Maybe Thursday)

Holy wow, this was serious progress. Feeling slightly confident from my successes, I added one more thing:

8. Confront Gray
and Max
about Big

Number eight needed to be on the list, regardless of the consequences. I finally knew I was strong enough to handle the truth, even if it was Max. I wanted it to be Gray, but I had a gut feeling it wasn’t. This had not been a year of getting what I wanted.

I drove cautiously back to Metal Pete, honking the S-10’s horn as I approached.

When I put the truck in park, Metal Pete leaned through the window, his eyes moist with pride. “You look like an old pro out there.”

“Yeah, a regular NASCAR goddess,” I joked. “I need to do this.”

“You
need
to try it on the real road. The interstate is a far cry from the yard.”

Fear descended on me.

Metal Pete turned his head and whistled. From under one of the old school buses, Headlight appeared. She loped lazily for two steps and then broke into a full gallop toward the truck.

“Take Headlight here over to Ferry Park and let her run around,” Metal Pete said. He gave me the assignment the same way he’d sent me on scavenger hunts in the Yard, with the confidence that I could do anything.

I leaned across the cab and opened the door. Without being told, Headlight hopped onto the bench beside me and lay her head down on my lap. Her foxlike ears pointed at the sky as Pete told her to be good for me.

“I’ll be right back,” I told him.

He nodded. “Call if you get stuck.” He tapped the hood twice, granting permission for me to leave.

I had to call.

I had to call the next day too.

The road and I were not yet friends, but we had more than ten hours on Thursday to get acquainted.

Some Emails to Max in El Salvador

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: May 29

Subject: One year

Max,

One month from today it will be a year.

Love,

Sadie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: May 29

Subject: RE: One year

Max,

No, I think we should do something he’d love.

<3

Sadie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: May 29

Subject: RE: cemetery visit?

Max,

Honestly, I haven’t been back to the cemetery. I haven’t driven by the scene. I haven’t even been out to see the plaque they put up at Coast Memorial. But if you want to go, I will go with you.

Love,

Sadie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: May 29

Subject: Willit Hill

Max,

It’s not the places that scare me. It’s letting him go. That sounds so stupid, because I know he’s already gone. But he isn’t. Not to me.

Love,

Sadie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: May 29

Subject: the music of Trent

Max,

I miss his voice. I wish I didn’t have that “Hold on. Hold on. Hold on” chorus in my head.

Love,

Sadie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: May 29

Subject: <333

Max,

I’m sure your call cost a million dollars, but for tonight, I have
your sweet voice stuck in my head now. This year took away many things, but it was generous, too. I have you, and I’ll never be sorry about that.

<3 <3 <3

Sadie

The morning of the anniversary I woke up with a tank on my chest and shrapnel in my brain.

I’d spent most of the night flipping over and over in bed, unsettled and restless, so tired my eyes wouldn’t close. Four hundred games of phone solitaire later, I’d fallen asleep and awakened with a jolt an hour later. Anticipation and sleep were sworn enemies.

I turned on the light, thinking I might read. With all my tossing and turning, I’d knocked Big out of the bed. When I leaned over to pick him up, a piece of paper fell out.

Gray Garrison is my one true love.

The timing on that one was from early sophomore year.
I remembered how sharp and focused that feeling had been. He’d sent me a whole bunch of YouTube links to
Peter and the Starcatcher
. It wasn’t a huge gift; it was the way he understood me and my passions.

Gray had agreed to go road-tripping with me today for the same reason.

I removed the next piece from Big and then the next and the next until he was empty, and I’d worn memory lane into a dirt path.

These paper memories were a time machine, but they weren’t for a time I wanted to revisit. I’d come through them, and I didn’t want to go back. Because Gray’s vase was a relic from the same time period, I put the papers inside and set Big on my shelf, not quite ready to let an old friend go. It felt wrong to keep the vase in my room, so I padded down the hallway to the closet and put it inside.

That wasn’t far enough away. I wanted the papers gone-gone, and I knew the perfect place to put them.

Even though it was four in the morning, I walked outside in my bare feet, clutching the vase, and started the scooter. The drive to the foot of Willit Hill took me ten minutes.

No one had ever put up a cross or a sign that said what happened here, but the pine trees bore the evidence. Even the trees had scars. I froze on the side of the road, realizing I hadn’t been back here in a year.

Mom had avoided this road.

Dad had avoided this road.

I had avoided this road.

I wasn’t avoiding it anymore. I left the scooter by the rumble strip and hiked down to the site of the accident, the ground punishing my feet. Balancing myself against the tree, I kneeled down as if I were in a cemetery, and I talked to Trent.

“It’s been a year. It’s been a really hard year without you. Losing you felt like jumping off the bridge and forgetting which way was up. I don’t think I’ll ever be over it, but I’m starting to find my way through it. Mom said when a person dies, you don’t get over it by forgetting; you get through it by remembering. I’ve been remembering everything lately.

“I told Max and Gray and Gina about you. They’re dealing. And you know, I think they would have dealt if you’d told them. You were worried about that, but they love you. Same as me. Max even spent some time with Chris. I thought you’d want to hear that. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find myself. Exploring. You were supposed to be with me for searches like that. Sometimes I can’t handle the injustice that you’re not. Sometimes, I stand still while the world moves. You’d hate it. You’d hate this version of me.

“So I want you to know . . . today, I’m starting over. Without you.

“I’m going to leave something to keep you company. You were the first one to stuff a fortune inside Big. And practically everything in him is what you loved about me and our friends.
I’m going to leave them here, with you.”

I dug down into the pile of pine needles and made a place for the vase.

I covered it up with needles.

I covered it up with tears.

And I told my friend good-bye.

When I listened for his voice, for that chorus of last words, there was only silence.

I guess he’d finally said good-bye too.

The stars were still out as I climbed the ditch to the Spree. I gazed up at the constellations, allowing myself a moment of observation and, perhaps, hesitation. I remembered a conversation Trent and I had when we were kids.

He’d just come back from space camp in Huntsville, and we were lying on the dock for an hour of Star Time.

“Sadie, did you know we can see nineteen trillion miles with our eyes? Nineteen trillion miles.”

This clearly impressed him. He went on about it, pointing out the stars and telling how far they were from Earth. One week at space camp hardly made him an expert, but he didn’t know that.

Space camp or no, I wanted to show him it mattered to me. That I’d done my own space camp that week with Google and books from the library.

“Cool. Watch this,” I told him.

I lifted my thumb into the air, closed my left eye, and made Orion
disappear. “Did you know Neil Armstrong did this after he got into space?”

“Did what? Gave Earth a thumbs-up?” he asked, interested.

I loved that I knew something he didn’t.

“Yeah, so Armstrong said he realized that from where he was in space he could lift his thumb into the air and make all of Earth disappear. He said he didn’t feel like a giant, though. I read it in a book while you were gone.”

Trent lifted his thumb into the air, closed one eye, and blocked out the Big Dipper.

“Crazy,” he said. “Sometimes a small thing is bigger than a big thing.”

The wisdom of Neil Armstrong, Star Time, and a thirteen-year-old came back to me as I stared up at a perfect sky, balanced with equal parts light and dark.

I held my thumb out to the past until I couldn’t see it anymore, and then I drove home.

Sometimes a small thing is bigger than a big thing.

I’d just done a small thing.