The Secret Identity of Devon Delaney (20 page)

“That’s what Jared said?”

“Yeah, he said that’s what Kim does. That she tries to turn things around on people.” Lexi sighs. “But don’t worry, Devi, there’s nothing going on with Jared and me, I swear. We’ve just been talking a lot on IM, because he knows Kim and Matt really well.” She sniffs again. “He’s really a lot nicer than I thought. I can see why you liked him so much.”

Oh, God. Can things get any worse? Now I’m apparently keeping Lexi away from her true love, when in actuality, I really couldn’t care less if she dated Jared. Jared and his
Star Wars
book covers and weird hair-gel routines. I wish I had gotten to know him last year. I
never would have liked him as much, and this whole mess could have been avoided.

“I just don’t know what I’m going to do,” Lexi says.

Kim comes walking down the hall then, holding Matt O’Connor’s hand. She’s wearing the shortest skirt I’ve ever seen someone wear when it’s fifty degrees out. She looks like she just got her hair cut.

“What’s up, Lexi?” she says, stopping to say hi like they’re not fighting. I move closer to Lexi just in case Kim tries to start something. I’ve never been in a fight before, but I figure if I can channel my stress into fighting, I might have a good chance of winning.

“Nothing,” Lexi says, her eyes narrowing. Matt looks at Lexi uncomfortably, kisses Kim’s cheek, and then walks away down the hall.

“So, listen, I was thinking we could hang out after school,” Kim says. “Matt has soccer practice with Jared”—she flicks her eyes toward me—“so maybe you can come over.”

“Are you kidding?” Lexi says. She laughs. “You stole my boyfriend and you think you can just come over here and pretend like NOTHING’S WRONG?”

“Oh, please,” Kim says, laughing. She tosses her hair over her shoulder. “He wasn’t your boyfriend.”

“Close enough,” I say, feeling like I have to defend
my friend. Although Lexi doesn’t seem like she needs any defending right now. She’s not all sniffly and crying anymore. In fact, she looks really, really mad.

“Yeah, I guess according to you, that
would
be close enough, wouldn’t it?” Kim scoffs. She rolls her eyes and tosses her hair behind her shoulder.

“Leave her out of this,” Lexi says, too mad to even ask what Kim means by that. Thank God. “This is between me and you.” Lexi’s fists are clenched by her side. Wow. She’s really mad. Instead of having Lexi’s back, am I going to have to pull her off Kim? Are they going to fight?

“This is so ridiculous,” Kim says. “You weren’t even going out with him. He wasn’t even yours.” She studies her nails. “You’re going to have to get a thicker skin than that, Lexi. Now can we please get over this whole little thing and talk about hanging out after school? Like I said, Matt has practice, but I’m sure we could get Luke and Jared to hang out.”

I swallow. Lexi takes a step closer to Kim, and I put my hand out. “Lexi,” I say. “Don’t. She’s not worth it.”

“I’ll decide if it’s worth it or not,” Lexi says. She takes another step toward Kim, and Kim moves back.

“You’re not even serious,” Kim says, starting to look a little scared. Not that I blame her. Lexi looks
super mad, and she’s at least twenty pounds heavier than Kim. I’m not even sure I could stop her if it came to that.

“Oh, I am serious,” Lexi says. “Serious as a heart attack.” Which is definitely not the coolest or scariest thing she could say in this situation, but I’m sure she’s not thinking straight. With her impending fight and all.

“Lexi,” I say, “Come on.”

“Devi, stay out of it,” Lexi instructs.

“Yeah, Devi,” Kim says sweetly. “Stay out of it. Although …” she says slowly, raising her eyebrows. She grins. A horrible feeling starts in my stomach and moves through my body. “If you want to be mad at anyone, Lexi, you should be mad at Devi. Or Devon. Whatever.”

“What do you mean?” Lexi asks, looking confused. “Why would I be mad at Devon?”

“Well,” Kim says. “You seem to be super mad at me for going out with a guy who wasn’t even yours in the first place, and yet Devon’s the one who’s been lying to you since you guys met.”

“What do you mean?” Lexi asks, her voice sounding small. Some of the fire has definitely gone out of her. Her fists unclench, and she glances between Kim and me uncertainly.

“Kim … ,” I start, trying to get my voice back.

“Hmm, where should I start?” Kim asks. She puts her finger on her chin and tilts her head to the side, like she really is considering. “Let’s see …”

“Lexi,” I say frantically. I grab her arm. “Come on, you don’t have to listen to this. Let’s get out of here.” She shakes me off.

“Well, we should start with the fact that Devon said her name is Devi, which I’ve never heard anyone call her.” She frowns and crinkles her eyes as if she’s considering again. “Although, I wouldn’t really know if that was true, since I never even knew her until you got here.”

“What do you mean?” Lexi asks, frowning. She looks at me. “Devi, what does she mean?”

“Um, I dunno,” I say brilliantly. DONOTPANIC, DONOTPANIC, DONOTPANIC. “I think she’s just trying to cause trouble. Now, come on,” I say to Lexi. “We don’t have to listen to this.” I’m totally in denial. I’m like one of those women on soap operas who finds the phone number of another woman in her husband’s pocket and yet still doesn’t think her husband is cheating.

“Not to mention the fact that she was never even dating Jared,” Kim says.

“Devi?” Lexi says, looking at me. The look on her face is a mixture of confusion and awe.

“I have no idea what she’s talking about,” I say, laughing. “Ha-ha, good one, Kim.” I look at Lexi, desperate. “She’s just trying to cause trouble.”

Kim rolls her eyes. “Devon, give it up.” She looks down the hall to where Jared is standing with Luke, in front of Luke’s locker.

“Hey, Jared,” she calls. “Have you ever dated Devi?”

“No,” Jared says. “Why?”

“See?” Kim says, ignoring him and turning back around.

“But … but she didn’t tell anyone because Melissa likes him,” Lexi says. But even as she’s saying it, I can tell she knows the truth.

“That’s just what she said so you wouldn’t tell anyone,” Kim says. “Now can we please talk about hanging out tonight?”

“No,” Lexi says, taking a step back. She looks at me, and now she looks really upset. “We can’t.”

The rest of the day is a nightmare. I huddle in the library during lunch, pretending to be engrossed in a book that I’ve plucked randomly off the shelf. But
all I can think about is the fact that everyone hates me. I consider pretending to be sick and going to the nurse’s office, but then I figure if Kim notices I’m not in English, it might just be worse. When I do get to English, Kim and Jared ignore me. Which leaves me grateful, as there’s no way I wanted to deal with anyone taunting me. In social studies, Luke ignores me too.

When I get home from school, my mom’s in the living room, having a cup of tea and watching
Oprah.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.” I plop myself down on the couch. I’m so emotionally exhausted that I think I might have to sleep for a year.

“There are chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen if you want some,” she says. “I finished a huge project today, so I had some time on my hands.”

I burst into tears.

“Oh my goodness, Devon, what’s wrong?” My mom sits up in the chair she’s in and sets her mug down on the coffee table.

“Everything,” I say. And everything is wrong. Even my mom, who I’ve obviously disappointed by lying to her and being the worst daughter ever, is making me cookies. Cookies that I don’t deserve.

“Tell me,” she says. And so I do. The whole thing.
From the beginning. How I lied this summer about Jared being my boyfriend. How Lexi showed up at school. How I started to like Luke. How I never told Mel about the problems my parents were having. How Jared and Lexi like each other, but aren’t together because of me. How Kim told everyone. How I feel horrible for lying to her and sneaking out while I was grounded.

“And the thing is,” I say, when I finish, “is that I don’t know how to fix any of it. It’s like things just keep getting worse and worse. And the most horrible part is that it’s all my fault.” My mom hands me a tissue. I blow my nose. “I’m a horrible person, and I deserve everything I get.”

“Oh, Devon,” my mom says. “You’re not a horrible person. You just got caught up in a bad situation.”

“A bad situation that I started,” I say, sniffling.

“People make mistakes,” my mom says, shrugging. “I don’t think you did any of this knowing you were going to hurt people, did you?”

“No,” I say. “But the point is that I did hurt people. I hurt everyone. Everyone I cared about, or who trusted me.”

“So fix it,” my mom says. “It’s not about if you screwed up or not. Everyone screws up. It’s how you fix it that counts.”

“But how?” I say. “How do I fix it?”

“You have to tell the truth,” my mom says.

“But they already all know the truth.”

“No, they don’t,” my mom points out. “And the truth they do know, they heard from someone else. They need to hear it from you. They have to hear you take responsibility for what you did.”

She heads to the kitchen and comes back with two steaming mugs of tea and a plateful of cookies. Why is it that the hardest thing and the right thing are always the same?

On Saturday I’m supposed to go to Jared’s to finish filming our project, which means I can’t avoid the inevitable anymore. I haven’t talked to Luke or anyone about the plan, so I call him on Saturday morning to make sure we’re still on.

“Um, hi,” I say when he answers the phone. “It’s Devon.”

“Yeah?” he says. He sounds like he could care less it’s me, which scares me a little bit. At least if he’s mad at me, it means he cares a little, right? I take a deep breath.

“Uh, I was just calling to make sure we’re still on for today,” I say. Great. The way I said that makes it out like we’re going out on a date or something. “I
mean, is everyone still going to film the project?”

“Yes,” he says. Silence. I almost want to ask him if I’m still invited, but that’s crazy, right? I mean, it’s MY project too. They couldn’t disinvite me even if they wanted to. “Is that all?”

“Oh, okay,” I say, trying to sound breezy. There’s a lump in my throat, though, so my words come out kind of strangled.

Silence again on the phone. It goes on so long that I’m not sure Luke is still even there. Should I just hang up? Say bye? “Um, are you still there?” I ask. Silence. “Hello?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” he says.

“Oh. You weren’t saying anything.”

“I said ‘Is that all?’”

“That was like five minutes ago.” Silence again. I don’t want him to hang up the phone. “Listen, I don’t want things to be weird between us,” I say.

“Okay.”

“Luke—”

“I don’t want things to be weird either.” He sighs.

“Good, because with the project and everything—”

“I know you like Jared, enough to make up the fact that he was your boyfriend. Kim told me.”

“Luke, I—”

“No, it’s not a big deal. I just wanted you to know that you could have told me you weren’t interested in hanging out, that you liked someone else. You didn’t have to lie, Devon.” He pauses. “But I guess that’s what you do. Lie, I mean.”

“No!” I say. “I mean, yes, I do lie. I mean, I did lie, but I don’t like Jared, Luke. I never liked Jared. Well, I mean, I did like Jared, but I don’t know, it was just—”

“Whatever,” he says, cutting me off. “I said what I wanted to say. We still have a little bit of work to do on our project, and I don’t want our grade to suffer just because things are weird between you and me.”

And then he really does hang up, because there’s a dial tone in my ear, and I set the receiver back down.

I feel the burning start behind my eyes, hot pinpricks that will turn into tears.

“What’s wrong, Devon?” Katie asks. She comes into the kitchen from the living room, wearing a pair of footie pajamas. Her hair is in a messy ponytail.

“I’m sad,” I say.

“How come?” I sit down at the table, and she crawls up onto my lap and rests her head on my shoulder.

“Because a lot of people are mad at me,” I say.

“Did you do something bad?” Katie asks knowingly.

“Yes,” I say. “I did.”

“Then say you’re sorry,” Katie says. “And they will forgive you.” She wraps a strand of my hair around her finger.

“But what if they don’t?” I say.

“Of course they will,” Katie says, rolling her eyes. “If you did something bad to me, and then you said sorry, I would forgive you.”

“You would?”

“Of course.” She hops down from my lap. “Wanna make Rice Krispies Treats?”

“Sure,” I say, wiping my tears with a napkin on the table. And so we do.

Three hours and three batches of Rice Krispies Treats later (we were trying to get the marshmallow-to-Rice Krispies ratio just right, which involved sending my dad to the grocery store for more marshmallows at one point, since we were using bags upon bags), I’m standing at Jared’s front door.

I’ve decided to look at this like I’m a soldier going off to battle, just something that I need to get through in order to get on with my life. I ring the doorbell.

Jared answers the door. “Whaddup?” he says when he sees me standing there.

“Um, nothing,” I say.

“We’re downstairs.” He turns around, and I follow him through his living room and to the basement door. He doesn’t seem mad at me, which is a good sign. But I’ve spoken too soon, because once I’m downstairs, it becomes apparent that this is going to be a lot harder than I thought.

No one says hi to me. For the first ten minutes, while Matt’s setting up the camera and everyone else is talking and eating snacks, I sit on the couch, saying and doing nothing.

Finally Lexi comes up to me, holding a black robe and white wig. “Here,” she says. “This is your costume.”

“Thanks,” I say, taking it. “Uh, where should I change?”

“You can just put it on over your clothes,” she says, taking in my blue sweater and jeans. I slip the robe on and put the white wig over my hair. There are no mirrors in Jared’s basement, and I hope I don’t look too goofy.