The Lies About Truth (8 page)

My head moved up and down; the scar at my mouth twisted as I bit my lip. “Sometime.” Thinking about the list, I threw her a bone. “Maybe for Pirates and Paintball.”

“I’m sorry about the . . . you know.” Max finger-puppeted her tackling the attendant.

“No, I’m sorry.” Color rose in her cheeks. “Pirates and Paintball,” she repeated. “Let’s make it a plan.”

Max massaged his neck. “If Sadie wants to,” he rasped.

“I’ve been doing everything I can to get her out of that shell she lives in. Max, please remind her that she used to do stuff with us. Stuff like riding motorcycles—”

Sonia, who was listening, interrupted with an answer of her own. “And skipping school and going to the water park.”

I wanted a sinkhole to open up and suck me into the bowels of the earth. Even Sonia McCall was trying to get me out of the house by suggesting something that had gotten me grounded for a month. I was pathetic.

Sonia touched my shoulder warmly and added, “The kids have a point. You really should have some fun this summer.”

Well, on that note, it was time to end the conversation. I held up my jeans, walked straight into the dressing room, and collapsed onto the bench with my pile of denim.

“I love your bangs,” Gina called over the wall.

In my head, I heard Trent. This time,
Hold on. Hold on. Hold on
came out like
Forgive her, Sadie May; you’ll get her back.

“I don’t want to,” I told him.

The voice in my head, whether it was Trent or my own conscience, knew the same Latin phrase I knew.
A posse ad esse
.

“Shut up,” I whispered.

The voice wandered away, and I felt like I’d kicked a dog.

Some Emails to Max in El Salvador

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: September 13

Subject: Prayers

Max,

I know you’re the praying sort, so if you don’t mind, would you say one for me and Gray? For the first time, I am starting to believe we won’t make it.

He came over yesterday and . . . I think he wanted to break up with me and couldn’t figure out how. I just sat there. I honestly don’t know whether to hold on or let go.

Sadie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: September 15

Subject: Bad News

Max,

I went for a walk on Monday night and caught Gray and Gina on the beach together. She said he was drunk. He swore it didn’t mean anything. She pleaded with me to understand it was an accident. (WTF? Is there such a thing as accidental groping?) He said he was sorry. She cried. They promised they never meant for anything to happen.

There wasn’t much to say after that.

Sadie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: September 18

Subject: No

Max,

I don’t want you to beat him up. I just have to figure out what to do.

Sadie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: September 20

Subject: Done-Done

Max,

I broke up with him.

Sadie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: September 24

Subject: Theory

Max,

I can’t believe you overnighted that card. It was the first time I smiled in three days. Thank you.

I have a theory on what happened.

Step one: Change happens. (The wreck.)

Step two: Pretend the change doesn’t exist. (What wreck?)

Step three: Get angry the other person can’t be who they used to be. (You’re a wreck.)

Step four: Create change. (Wreck this.)

I wish I could hate them and mean it.

Sadie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: September 30

Subject: RE: Theory

Max,

No, the worst part isn’t that it was with Gina. That’s awful. Sure. The worst part is this feels like it’s my fault.

My dad’s mom, Pazie, has this formal dining room, and it’s so formal no one is allowed to use it. Some people have hearts like that, and I’m worried I’m becoming one of them. I feel myself shutting down, closing off, like I should tell people, “No, we don’t use this heart anymore. It’s too fragile.”

It started with the crash. I held on to all these emotions and truths that I should have expressed, but I didn’t know how to say what I needed to say. I thought that would ruin us. Well, silence ruined us too.

I’m not saying Gray and Gina are off the hook, but maybe some part of what happened between Gray and Gina happened because I put my heart in the formal dining room and told him (and her) he couldn’t go in there.

I don’t want this thing in my chest to beat me to death, but I also don’t want to protect it so much that I never use it again.

Sadie

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: October 2

Subject: Pinkie swears

Max,

Yes, I’m a little bit better today. And I promise I will try to never put our friendship in the formal dining room. I can’t lose you, too. I won’t have anyone left.

Sadie

Mom banged on the fitting room door. “Sadie.”

I opened it, and she slipped inside. She was always slipping behind my barriers.

“Oh, honey,” she said when she saw me.

Oh, honey
opened a floodgate. I’d changed many behaviors over the last year, but I rarely purged emotions for anyone. She sat, and I lay my head in her lap. “I’m sorry I made you do this,” she said.

Sorry
slid nicely into my broken places until I was able to sit up again. Mom held my face in her hands, thumbed away my rogue tears.

“I don’t know why I’m crying,” I said. “Why this is all so hard for me. Why everyone has to be my intervention. Jesus, even Sonia thinks I’m broken.”

“I don’t know either, baby doll.”

“Mom . . . I don’t want to be mad at them anymore. I know it was an accident, but when I see them, Gray or Gina, something tightens right here.” I shoved my fingers into the place at the bottom of my rib cage. “Will that ever go away?”

My mother stroked my hair and gave me an honest answer. “I don’t know.”

“I hate hate.”

“Me too, Sadie. Me too.”

She didn’t try to fix the hurt or offer trite expressions. My mother spoke with her arms, tightening them around my body, until my breathing returned to normal. I lingered there in her safety until my stomach settled enough so I could stand.

“What do you say we call it a day?” she said. Then she gathered up the jeans I never tried on and slipped out of the room.

I followed her example. She was at the counter, buying all four pair of jeans, so I darted toward the door and escaped. Max’s hand found mine again, and he walked us away from the crowds. Back at the van, he opened my door for me and handed me a sack.

“You won’t want it yet, but I want to be there when you do.” Then he kissed my temple, a tiny peck, and walked around to the other side of the van.

I touched the place where his lips had been and looked at the sack. It was from a store where I used to shop. I peeked inside and saw Max’s purchase.

A tank top.

Across the front was the popular “You Only Live Once” saying. Bold lines marked through all the words except
Live
. Cutting my eyes to the back row, I mouthed a polite thank-you.

“That baby blue will look awesome with your eyes,” he said.

“Thank you.”

Wear a tank top in public.
It was first on my list.

Max’s optimism concerned me. What if this thing that had grown between us was based on who he thought I might be someday rather than who I was? Even though he’d lost his brother, his progress looked like an ascent rather than a plateau. So far, I hadn’t figured out how to accept the new story of my life. Should I shut down this hand-holding, heart-holding kindness before it heaped more heartache on us both?

I didn’t want to.

I wanted to put on a tank top and walk in the sunshine with Max. All the way home, I imagined a world where I could.

When we pulled into the driveway, I surprised everyone by following Max into his house instead of mine. I didn’t want to try on jeans or put away clothes or see my traitorous bird. I wanted company.

That was a good change.

We sat in each other’s space, close enough that we shared a couch cushion. After a year apart, happiness was the comfort of being able to hug each other anytime we wanted. Sonia popped kettle corn and put on an old version of
Peter Pan.
We didn’t watch much of the movie, but we did discuss all the
films and television shows he’d missed over the past year. Everything from Woody Allen to Christopher Nolan to Wes Anderson to Aaron Sorkin. Max made a “Must Watch These Together” list. It would take ten years to get through all the titles he wanted to see with me. I liked that idea.

“You know my favorite show of all time—”

“Is
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
,” he said.

“Did I tell you that before?” I asked, thinking about Big.

“No. I’m just observant.”

Or was he covering up a little slip?

That thought made me switch the topic to his life in El Salvador. “Speaking of observant, I want to see all your El Salvador pictures.”

After scrolling through a thousand photos, we
ate BLTs at the kitchen counter and talked until his voice was gone and I didn’t have much to say.

By six o’clock, a heaviness made our twosome a threesome. Without a word, Max led me into Trent’s room, and we both curled up in his bed. Him on one side. Me against the wall. I was in a bed with my boyfriend, and we were both thinking about his brother. It wasn’t romantic; it was exactly what I needed.

“I’ve been sleeping in here,” Max said.

“I took a nap in here once while you were gone.”

We tried to hold each other, but we were both stiff, unyielding. “You know why I sleep in here?” Max asked.

“No.”

“This room is full of mysteries.”

I rolled over and watched him. Max was flat on his back, hands squeezed into fists, eyes locked on the ceiling. He didn’t blink. Didn’t move.

“What do you mean?” I asked, and flopped on my back. Above me, a pattern of glow-in-the-dark star stickers shone. I focused in on them and listened.

Anger, and maybe . . . guilt, crept into Max’s tone. “Like, there are pieces of him I didn’t know or understand. We shared a frickin’ bedroom wall. How did I miss . . .” He exhaled, but it was a beginning rather than an end. “When did he build that Lego temple-thing on the desk? Who gave him the card he kept between his mattress and box spring? Gina? Was it her? Was it you? Someone else? They loved him, whoever it was.”

I didn’t dare interrupt, but I inched my hand closer to him.

He continued. “What happened to his YOLO paddle? Where did he get that black leather jacket? We live in Florida, for God’s sake. When would he need a leather jacket? And those damn tennis shoes with the toes in them, when did he stop wearing Scotts? Did you know he kept a journal? And did you know he ripped out more than half of it? Why? What was in there? God, I shouldn’t have even looked at it.”

Max had so many questions that his voice dissolved into scratching sounds rather than words. He rarely spoke in paragraphs, opting for clipped answers that saved his voice. I pieced together the last thing he said before he went silent. “He would bust my ass if he knew I went through his stuff.”

I nodded a yes at the last comment, but really, I nodded at all of the questions. I knew some of the answers, but letting Max know I knew, when he didn’t know, felt cruel. Still, I offered him the only truth I understood.

“I think maybe everyone is a mystery. Even the people we know really well. If I died”—he turned toward me, fear splashed across his reddened face, and latched our pinkies together—“and you went through my stuff, you’d have the same type of questions. Why I kept one thing but not another. What I was hiding and telling and hoping and believing. We all have that stuff, and it’ll drive you crazy if you fixate on it. I know. In a different way, I’ve been doing the same thing with Gina and Gray. Acting as if answers will change feelings. I’m not sure it works that way.”

“Sadie?”

“Yeah.”

His face relaxed into a near-smile. “Tell me something you’ve never told me.”

I laced my hands behind my head and relaxed.

“I made Trent that Lego temple-thing as a thank-you for helping me study for the SAT. It’s supposed to be Machu Picchu. We were planning a trip someday.”

Max nodded. “Yeah, he loved explorers. Even the brutal ones like Ponce.”

“He didn’t love Ponce for Ponce. He loved Ponce because he loved the Fountain of Youth. And he loved the Fountain of Youth because”—my eyes swelled with tears and I ground my
teeth into my final words—“he was scared of dying.”

Max pulled me to his chest and found the strength for a few more words. “I’ll tell you something I’ve never told you. In the end, he wasn’t scared.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I was there.”

We took a long nap and I woke up around ten. When I opened my eyes, I gave Max a lazy look and he threw a thumb toward the window, toward our dock. “You . . . want to sit out—”

I wondered how long he’d been awake.

“Yeah. Let me check in with Mom and Dad first. They’ll be worried,” I said, thinking I really wanted to brush the nap-fur off my teeth.

Max’s cheek quivered. An almost-smile that I almost missed. For all the hard stuff we’d talked about today, that smile was like an eraser. I loved it. We walked to my deck together, and he took a seat on the edge of an Adirondack chair as if to say,
I’ll wait right here.

I waved. My attempt at a wordless
I’ll be right back
.

He nodded.

After all those emails, we could speak without words.

The door was unlocked and lights were on in the kitchen. I stopped by and found Mom and Dad in some sort of hug.

Teasingly, I shielded my eyes. “I’m home. I’m home.”

Dad kissed Mom on the tip of her nose. I should have been fifty shades of grossed out by my parents, but they’d always been this way. It was sweet when you considered that many of my classmates’ parents stayed married because they had children and expensive mortgages. My mom and dad liked each other. From what I could tell, happiness was getting stuck with someone and never feeling stuck.

Are you okay?
Mom asked with her eyes.

Better
, I said, also without words. I was pretty decent at nonverbals tonight.

“I’m going down to the dock,” I announced.

“No run?” Mom asked.

“Not tonight,” I answered. No run. No list. No Latin phrases. No worries about Big. I’d had enough of those today.

Mom licked some frosting off a spreader, acted casual, too casual, and said, “Max still with you?”

“Yeah.”

My parents
wanted
to ask: Do you swear you’re okay? Should we call Dr. Glasson? You know you can talk to us if you need to? They didn’t ask or say any of those things; instead, they psychoanalyzed me from three feet away. Their eyes were piercing.

So I smiled at them.

And it worked.

The atmosphere lightened considerably. Mom offered me icing off a fingertip—buttercream heaven—and trusted my silence. No more
Oh, honey
s tonight.

After a full sixty seconds with my toothbrush, I darted toward the back door. Dad called at me, “Family movie sometime soon.”

“Sure,” I agreed as always.

“Tell Max to join us.”

I smiled again. “I will.”

“Honey . . .”

“I know, Mom. Love you too.”

“Stay out late,” Dad suggested.

The Social Experiments were finally working to my advantage.

Back on the deck, I apologized to Max for taking so long inside. “I interrupted my parents having sex.”

“Seriously?”

“No, but they were up to something.”

“My parents were like that too,” he said.

“Were?” I asked, thinking they’d moved around the world to fix crap like that.

“Sometimes they’re fine. Sometimes they’re not.”

I couldn’t imagine the McCalls in separate houses or lives, but I still asked, “You’re not worried about them, are you?”

“No. I think they grieve differently. Dad needs to move. Mom needs to sit and cry.”

“What do you need?” I asked.

“To be able to remember him.”

“Me too. Sometimes I still talk to him,” I said, thinking if anyone understood, it would be Max.

“I do that.” Max hooked an arm around me. “Did I ever tell you that he used to wake me up in the middle of the night?”

“No.”

But he’d done that to me, too.
Peck. Peck. Peck
. On my window.
Sadie May
. . .

“We’d walk to Waffle House. He’d eat pancakes and play the jukebox. That’s how we learned all those old songs.”

“He never told me that.”

“It was our thing.”

“We always biked to the jetty on my birthday,” I told him.

“Yeah, I know.”

“You can remember him anytime you want with me,” I offered.

He kissed my forehead and thanked me.

Down at the dock, we hung our feet over the bay and listened to the inky water lap against the posts beneath us. There was salt in the wind and moonlight on the water. Usually, when I breathed in this view, I was not small. I was part of something that covered two-thirds of the world.

Not tonight. I was a dust mote on a universe-size stage.

I realized, sitting there next to Max, that I didn’t want to shrink the world so it would fit me better; I wanted to expand. That really, that’s what Fletcher and I had been working on all
year. Even though I was so damn slow about it.

“Star Time?” Max asked.

“Please,” I answered.

Star Time was a Trent original. We’d all be hanging out, chatty as blue-haired ladies in a beauty shop, and he’d yell, “Star Time!”

That meant we should give ourselves to nature and shut up. Trent went balls-to-the-wall all day, but he was a big believer in listening to the world’s little moments at night. Wherever we were on his parents’ boat, we’d lie back, quiet as little shadows, and look for poetry in the night sky.

I thought I’d already found some. Now, if I could only find the strength to hold on to it.

In unison, Max and I reclined on the wooden planks. They were splintery and full of uneven places and raised screws, but so cozy and familiar, I could have taken another nap. I laced my hands over my belly button, and Max did the same.

“I like that one.” Max pointed at the space above the Big Dipper.

“Cassiopeia?”

“Sure,” he said.

He didn’t care which constellation I picked. Picking out stars was like picking out snowflakes. It was difficult to tell if we’d chosen the same ones, but they were all good choices.

“Cassiopeia was a queen,” I said.

He took his eyes off the sky. “Like you.”

“Um, not exactly, Romeo, since she went around boasting
about her unrivaled beauty.”

He laughed. “That
does
sound like you, but . . .” He turned back to the sky. “You should boast about your beauty.”

“Max.” I didn’t mean to sound so condescending, but it came out that way before I could correct my tone.

“I’m not joking,” he said.

“I don’t even know how you can look at me when I look like this, much less bring beauty into it.”

His mouth opened in an O, surprised. “Look like what? Sadie, you look just like you always have to me.”

“Except with these.” I pointed to Idaho and Nameless.

“That’s not what I see.”

“It feels like that’s what everyone’s looking at.”

He huffed. “God, I’d like to kick Gray Garrison in the nads.” He sat up and forced me to do the same. His hands cupped my face and he locked eyes with me. “Look at me.”

We were inches apart. There was nowhere else to look.

“Your face is beautiful, but I’m not some shallow asshole who falls in love with a face. You hear me?”

That rasp in his voice was perfect.

I braved an answer. “Yes.”

“Sadie, you could go through a million windows and nothing would change.”

He leaned forward.

Our noses touched.

I thought about his lips.

I imagined he’d close his eyes soon, but he didn’t.

His head tilted—a clear invitation—lingering just far enough away that I still had a choice. Then, he moved his hand to my hip and part of me that had been asleep for a long time woke up. I made my choice.

A kiss can be a kiss or it can be an event.

I have cared about Max McCall all my life. Never like
this
, but since we were three and nine and twelve and fifteen and this past year and everywhere in between. Friends had become friends who became more than friends.

“I couldn’t see you when we were kids,” I said when there was finally room to speak.

He tucked a tangle of blond hair behind my ear. “We were kids.” Max sat up, pulling me with him.

“Yeah, but you were also Trent’s little brother.”

“I still am, Sadie.” Hesitation appeared, and I leaned back as he said, “I look like him.”

“You also look like you,” I told him.

He kissed me again.

When we were done and watching the stars again, Max scratched out a few words. “The stars are noisy tonight.”

They were. A long time went by in comfortable silence. I counted a hundred stars more than once, and looked for patterns in the darkness rather than in the light.

Peace hid from me this year, and I’d searched for it at Metal Pete’s, in therapy sessions, in long runs on the beach, and hours of Star Time. I hadn’t found it hiding among that dark, black sea of sparkles or anywhere else. But tonight, in the gentleness
of my friend stretched out next to me, breathing in and out so rhythmically that he sounded like breaking waves, it felt within reach again.

After a lifetime of life-by-group, followed by a time of isolation, it was nice to have someone to be quiet with.

I stole a look, and because he was so focused on the sky, I stole a few more.

Max. Long, tan, a tiny bit of skin showing at his hips from the way he’d stretched back out. He wore a glazed look of wonder that was childlike and sweet and handsome, and he went a long time without blinking. Just like he’d done in Trent’s bed. I liked that about him. The intensity he gave to life.

How did you end up being the guy lying next to me?

We’d been silent for so long, I couldn’t tell the difference between a question I asked in my head and one I asked aloud. I was mortified when he responded.

“Gray doesn’t speak star.”

I begged the darkness to have mercy and beam me up; my face felt hot as a fever.

Max made nothing of my comment or his; he didn’t even roll his eyes to the side to check on me. I let his ease become mine. I’d been doing that a lot lately.

“What are the stars telling you?” I asked.

Max pushed up on his elbows and pretended to strain his ear toward the sky. “They say . . . They say . . . you’re allowed to forgive yourself.”

I rolled sideways . . . and he did the same.

“For what?” I asked.

“Living.”

“I’m not very good at that,” I admitted.

“Well, you just kissed someone without flinching. Maybe you’re getting better.”

“Maybe it’s just you.”

He didn’t argue.