Lie to Me Page 5

  We grab a bag of potato chips and some soda from the kitchen on our way out. The fall air is crisp and cool in my lungs. October is beautiful in New England, with the riot of color on the trees and temperatures that are cool but still bearable without wearing a ton of layers. We rake leaves from the lawn into a huge pile and take turns jumping into it. Well, I avoid the jumping part. No one presses the issue, and I’m relieved. I’m still frustrated that jogging was too much, and I don’t want any more questions about my head or any other part of me.

  When everyone’s sufficiently coated in crumbling leaves and detritus, we cram together in the porch swing that hangs from a thick tree branch and pass the bag of chips back and forth. I’m sandwiched between Tera and Grace. Grace’s arm rests half on my leg because there’s really nowhere else to put it. She doesn’t seem to mind my nearness, which bothers me, and I’m not sure why. It’s not her fault I developed a crush on her, and I want our friendship to get back to normal, but.

  Nothing’s satisfying me lately. Everything has felt different since my accident, and I just want it to be like it was before. I want to be regular, and I don’t want to be afraid. My world used to be so small and safe. And I’m happy to be learning and growing, to figure out more about who I am and who I want to be, but I just feel so restless. So itchy to get through the awkward phase where I confess crushes to people who don’t like me back and on to the confident phase where I know exactly how to get what I want. And on to feeling safe enough to go after it.

  As if on cue, Liam arrives.

  His house is less than a mile up the road, and he rode his bike here. He leans it carefully against a tree and does that thing where he wipes his face with his shirt even though it doesn’t look like he’s sweating. It’s fine. I’m not going to complain about a glimpse of his toned stomach.

  “Just tell me,” I say quickly to Roman, before Liam gets close enough to hear. “He likes me, right?”

  Roman hesitates for a long moment. I think he’s watching me watch Liam, feeling out what I’m going to do with the information. “Right.”

  Next to me, Grace shifts her weight. Her arm moves away from my leg. I don’t know if it means something or if it means nothing, but I don’t have to worry about that now, do I? I know Liam likes me, and I might as well admit that I’m not uninterested. It’s all pretty simple. And simple is what I need.

  “You’re looking a little outnumbered,” says Liam to Roman.

  Roman grins. “Can’t complain, though.”

  “Want a turn destroying our leaf pile?” I ask innocently, knowing full well that with Liam’s feelings about dirt and germs, there’s no way he’ll jump into those leaves.

  “Looks like you’re all done,” he says smoothly, narrowing his eyes at me. I smile so he knows I was teasing.

  The five of us can’t all fit on this swing, so we decide to go for a walk instead. Down by the river, at Tera’s suggestion. I swallow the objections that push at my throat. It’s good for me to go near the water, and to do it with a group of friends I trust. No one will hurt me. I repeat that to myself over and over as we cross the railroad tracks behind Roman’s house and head down the hill. It’s not that steep. No one is going to push me. I am going to be fine. I am fine.

  Liam walks close to me, so close. Every time I sneak a glance at his face, he’s got his eyes on my broken wrist. It makes me self-conscious. That cast should not be the most interesting thing about me.

  After my fourth furtive glance, he catches me.

  “When do you get that thing off?” he asks.

  “Couple of weeks.” I run my fingers over the bumpy surface. “Assuming it continues to heal right.”

  “Bizarre, isn’t it?” he says. “How the human body can put itself back together like that?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it that much, but I guess it is.” We’ve gotten kind of separated from the others, so I pick up my pace a little as we near the bottom of the slope. “I’m glad, though. Until they come up with robot bodies, we’re stuck with what we’ve got, and I don’t want what I’ve got to include a misshapen wrist.”

  “A robot body would definitely be preferred.” Liam’s pace is casual, like he doesn’t really want to catch up with the others. “I’m getting out of this flesh suit the moment I can.”

  I laugh. “I bet robot bodies are expensive, so you’ll have to save up. And we’re falling behind; you’d better pick up the pace. I’ve seen you play soccer. I know you can move faster than this.”

  Liam’s gaze flickers to the other three, who’ve stopped next to the river to wait for us. “I’m not sure they like me,” he says.

  “Oh come on. You’ve been friends with Roman forever.”

  “Not him, the girls.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. They barely know you. What’s not to like?”

  It’s such an embarrassing thing to say, I can’t look him in the eye any longer, and I hurry over to the others.

  “About time,” says Grace, hooking her arm around mine. “We thought we might have to send out a search party.”

  I laugh again and brave a glance at Liam, who smiles when I do.

  “It’s my fault,” he says. “I kept distracting her.”

  We all move forward again, as a group, and Grace’s arm slips free of mine as we do. I find myself, once again, walking next to Liam, but this time we’re not so far behind.

  “So … what are we doing for Halloween?” Grace asks. “Please tell me there’s something to do. I’ve been preparing my costume for months.”

  “Has there ever been something to do?” Tera asks with a sigh. She’s walking on the skinny trunk of a fallen tree, holding on to Roman’s shoulder for balance.

  Tera’s not wrong. At our age, there aren’t a lot of Halloween options. There are definitely parties, but not the kind I can go to if I want to keep my parents’ trust, which I do. But this year … “Isn’t one of the guys on the soccer team having a thing?” I glance to Liam for confirmation.

  “Yeah, Alec. Well, his parents are having the party, technically.” Liam shoves his hands in his pockets. “I wasn’t planning to go, but … if you’re all going, maybe I will.”

  “Aren’t all your friends on the soccer team?” Grace asks. “Why wouldn’t you go?”

  Liam shrugs. “I’m not really that friendly with anyone on the team. And Alec, he’s … We don’t get along, that’s all. I don’t have to get along with everyone who plays soccer, do I?” All of us laugh, and he smiles sheepishly. “For the record, Hunter hates me way more than I hate him.”

  “Do you actually hate him?” I ask, because I can’t help myself. Other than their former rivalry, Hunter can never cite a valid reason that the two of them don’t get along, but he definitely full-on despises Liam. I’ve always assumed that something happened between them that Hunter hasn’t seen fit to share.

  “I don’t hate him. We’re just not friends.”

  I don’t ask anything else about it, because it feels like I’m putting him on the spot in a way I don’t mean to. I watch water striders skim across the surface of the river’s edge. The water is calm here, below the reservoir. I’ve always loved the hot summer days I’ve spent at the river with my friends and family. I hate that it’s making me so stressed to be near it now. This river valley feels like a trap. Like a tomb. When am I going to get over this? What will it take?

  “Hey, are you okay?” Grace asks, gripping my wrist loosely.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just a little weird around rivers and reservoirs right now, that’s all.”

  “Understandable,” says Tera. “You should have told us!”

  “No, I need to get over it.”

  “You don’t need to get over anything until you’re ready to get over it,” says Liam.

  Surprised, I meet his gaze. He strikes me more as a “walk it off” kind of guy. Mainly because that’s how he is on the soccer field.

  “I feel fine with all of you here,” I tell them. “But I had a h
ard time crossing the bridge on the way over.”

  “Oh, I’ll drive you home when you’re ready,” says Roman. “Or we can all walk with you across the bridge. Whatever you want to do.”

  I fight against the feeling that I don’t want them to be extra nice to me. The way Roman looks at me right now, it’s almost desperate. Like he’s begging me to let him do this. It hits me how maybe it isn’t that they suddenly think I’m weak or delicate but that my accident scared them and they need to channel that helpless feeling into something productive.

  “That would be great,” I say. “Thank you.”

  We keep walking along the river, and the farther I go, the calmer I feel. The embankment is steep enough that it feels like a whole separate world down here. Sounds of traffic are muted, homes barely visible behind tree-lined banks. I find myself falling back a little from my friends again, alone with Liam. I suspect from Tera’s frequent casual glances that it’s intentional this time. Grace doesn’t look back once.

  “How’s your investigation?” Liam asks.

  “Oh, I planned to use today to try to rule out a person from my list, but … I’m here instead.”

  “You’re still working on it, though? Or planning to?”

  “Yeah.” I stop walking. Look up at him. He hasn’t asked me who’s on the list, but he has to be curious. “Why? You think I shouldn’t?”

  “No, I think you should.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “If it were me, I wouldn’t be able to stop digging till I found something. And I … like that you’re that way, too.”

  I don’t know how to react to that. Is it flirting? It feels like flirting.

  “I think you should go to that Halloween party,” I tell him.

  And with a smile, I turn away from him and start walking again.

  * * *

  Hunter’s back when I get home. When I ask him how his soccer workout went, he says it was fine. I don’t mention Liam. I’ll keep that little tidbit and pull it out if and when I decide I need to know exactly what he was up to today. I do, however, make a mental note to add him to my Suspicious People list. If they lie to me, they’re on there. I can’t afford to be sentimental about this. Even if Hunter’s never given me a real reason not to trust him.

  “Mom and Dad went to do game night at Aunt Jenna’s,” Hunter tells me. “You wanna get pizza? I can go pick it up.”

  “I don’t know. There’s not any leftovers?” One of the downsides of where we live is that literally no one delivers here. And other than a brick oven pizza food truck sometimes during the summer, our closest pizza option is in St. Elm. It’s kind of annoying.

  “There’s the salmon from last night.”

  I make a disgusted face. “Pizza it is. I’ll order it; you throw out the salmon and make it look like we ate it.”

  When I pull out my phone, I notice I’ve got an unread text. I figure it’s from Sky since I haven’t heard from her all day, but it isn’t. It’s a number I don’t recognize—one that my phone flags as suspected spam.

  The message chills my blood: Just let it go, Amelia.

  “What’s up?” Hunter asks, seeing my puzzled expression.

  I show him the text. “I think it’s not meant for me. I mean, it’s not even an 802 or a 603 number. What state does 583 belong to?”

  “I don’t know. But the message is clearly meant for you. It has your name.”

  My heart beats faster. “Maybe it’s, like, a prank or something?”

  Hunter’s lips thin. “We should just have cereal for dinner. And maybe we should call Mom and Dad, have them come home.”

  “I don’t want to call Mom and Dad. Please don’t call them. You know they’ll get all worked up, and I don’t want that.”

  “Then what do you want? Amelia, this text message is not a joke; it’s a threat.”

  “Or it’s advice.” I feel backed into a corner. It’s one thing to believe someone hurt me and another thing to have proof of it. I don’t want this to be proof. “I mean, Sky’s always telling me I should let my life get back to normal, and she doesn’t even know I’m thinking any of this. Maybe someone else feels that way, too.”

  “So one of your friends got a burner phone and sent you this threatening text instead of just saying that to your face?” Hunter folds his arms and gazes levelly at me. “In that case, get new friends. And I’m asking again: If you don’t want to tell Mom and Dad about this, what do you want to do?”

  “I want … I want to forget about all of it. I want to be a normal person again.”

  “So you’re going to … let it go, as the message advises? Like that girl in Frozen?”

  I nod, even though I’m pretty sure I’m lying. I don’t think I can let it go. “I’m not sure the girl in Frozen and I are quite the same. But as long as you promise not to sing the song, then … yeah. That’s what I’m going to do.”

  “Okay. Then I won’t say anything to Mom and Dad. But keep me in the loop if you get more weird messages, all right? And I don’t want— Please let’s just have cereal for dinner.”

  “Cereal sounds great. I’m starving, anyway.”

  Hunter visibly relaxes when I don’t fight him on this, and I know he’s not the one who tried to kill me, not the one who sent the threatening text, but even still … where was he today? And why did he lie? What if my brother is involved somehow and I can’t trust him after all? I don’t know what I’d do. Some days I hate my brother more than I love him. Some days I’m so annoyed that I can’t stand for him to even breathe in my direction. He’s my worst enemy as often as he’s my closest friend. But no matter what, I’ve always trusted him, and I hate that he’s lying to me about something. Even if what he’s lying about is probably nothing of consequence. I don’t want any doubts. Not about Hunter, of all people.

  I eat my cereal so fast I barely taste it, then excuse myself to my room so I can be alone with my thoughts. I do want to forget about it, and I should forget about it, but I can’t. I need to figure out who sent me this text message. I try calling the phone number. No one answers, of course. The voicemail’s generic. It just tells me to leave a message for the number in a digitized voice. I type the number into a search engine, and it spits out the name of some random town in Nebraska. I don’t know anyone from Nebraska, and the town’s got a couple thousand residents. Not much bigger than here. I even pay a semi-sketchy website for more details, but it’s a waste of money. The only added detail it provides is that it’s a cell phone number—which seems obvious—and that it’s associated with some pay-by-the-month service I’ve never heard of. When I look that up, I discover that it’s one where you can basically pick your entire phone number. Which means this call could have come from anyone. Even if they’ve never visited Nebraska in their life.

  So I’ve learned something, but I’ve also learned nothing. I add the phone number to the evidence page Liam started in my notebook and then reluctantly add Hunter’s name to my Suspicious People list. It’s discouraging to add a name without removing any. I move to cross off Clarissa but realize that maybe I shouldn’t. She’s always hated me, and she sure didn’t have much good to say about Maria.

  Feeling a little melancholy now, I fold myself into the chair next to my bedroom window and peer out. My room faces the road. It doesn’t really matter because we only get traffic from people who live on our road or who have been led astray by their GPS systems or who are taking ATVs up onto the mountain. My brother’s room has a more serene view, though, facing the field behind our house, with the trees off to one side and the back of the development visible from afar. That’s where Sky lives, and even though we’re on completely separate roads, I still think of her as my neighbor. She can be at my house in about two minutes when she crosses that field.

  But I can see woods, too, if I look past Mr. Omerton’s house. And the mountain. I lean my head against the window frame and try to focus on that, on the peacefulness of the outdoors and the trees and our quiet little world. But all I can think about
is the strange number and Hunter’s lie and why Sky hasn’t texted me all day, and now there’s a curtain moving in one of the upstairs rooms of Mr. Omerton’s house, and his face appears. He’s watching me. Again.

  I haven’t told my parents how creepy he’s been lately. I’ve started keeping my blinds closed more often than not so I don’t have to deal with it. The feel of his eyes on me makes my skin crawl, but now I’m paranoid about everything, so I don’t move away from the window immediately. I try to look natural by first holding up my phone like I’ve just received a message, and then I get up and move to the corner, where he can’t see me.

  Maybe I should have let Hunter say something to Mom and Dad about the weird text message. It was true, what I said: I do want to forget about all this and be a normal person again. But it’s never not on my mind, and I’m starting to feel completely paranoid.

  What are u up to? Come hang out. I text Sky, even though it’s the fourth message I’ve sent her today and she has yet to reply to any of them.

  OMG so sorry I ignored u all day!! Her reply is surprisingly immediate, followed by: I can’t come over rn but we need to do something soon.

  Yeah ok just tell me when you’re free?? You’ve been so busy lately.

  I feel like my text sounds needy and whiny, but honestly, what is up with her?

  I know, I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better.

  I don’t know what response I was looking for, but I do know this wasn’t it.

  Pyrrharctia isabella. That’s the Latin name for the woolly bear caterpillar, which becomes an isabella tiger moth. It’s one of my favorite insects, in both moth and caterpillar form, and right now I’m watching one such fuzzy caterpillar trek across my driveway. The orange band that circles the middle of its body is wide, which supposedly means we’ll have a mild winter, but the other day I saw one with an extremely narrow orange band, so I’m not sure how reliable these things are as weather predictors.

  They are, however, extremely resilient. During the winter, woolly bear caterpillars freeze solid, and when the weather warms up, they thaw out and go about their business. This is an insect fact people seem to find interesting rather than repulsive. Most of the insect facts I share have the opposite effect, which is by choice—I have a tiny bit of a mean streak and enjoy grossing people out sometimes. It’s funny, anyway, which insects people find disgusting and which ones they don’t. Caterpillars are larvae just like maggots, but maggots have associations with rotting things, and sometimes caterpillars are fuzzy and colorful. There’s a metaphor in that, probably.