Liar. Part 2

I come into the apartment fast as I can, zooming through the kitchen without glancing at Dad, who says hi, looking up at me from his work on the kitchen table.

I lock myself in my room. Collapse on the bed. My eyes are sharp and burning. Without tears.

s.l.u.t.

Killer.

Zach is dead.

Through the wall I can hear the thud thud thud of the stupid girl next door's music. There's five of them in there. College students, but the loud-music one never seems to go to cla.s.ses. Never seems to do anything but stay in the apartment and deafen us.

I wish she was dead and Zach was alive.

I hate music. It hurts my ears, my brain. Even the membranes in my nose. Any music. All music. I can't distinguish between hip-hop and hillbilly ramblings, between symphonies and traffic noise. All of it hurts.

The best thing about going up to the Greats is that there is no music there. No noises to make me grind my teeth. Only wind through trees. Foxes burrowing. Deer running. Ice cracking. Mockingbirds singing their never-repeated three-note sequences, each note clear as rainwater. Wood thrushes trilling.

Beautiful sounds.

Zach loved music. He couldn't understand my hate.

Zach is dead.

I wish I had my dad's noise-reduction headphones. He wears them on planes. I like to sneak them from his room, put them on, plugged into nothing, dulling the thud through the walls. If I could, I'd wear them all the time, but I can't afford a set of my own. I'll ask for my birthday or Christmas or something. Not that my parents have much money. The only reason Dad has the headphones is because he had to review them for a magazine and never gave them back.

He gets many things that way.

Someone knocks at the door. Dad probably. Mom's coat wasn't hanging by the door.

"Micah," Dad calls. "Micah! Are you alright?"

I have no idea how to answer him.

Zach is dead.

AFTER.

The Greats are keener than ever for me to come up to the farm. Dad says they're worried. They think I need fresh air. They want me to be able to run free. I'm wishing Mom and Dad didn't know about Zach.

Ever since Zach went missing the Greats have been calling. This, despite them not even having a phone. They have to ride all the way to the gas station and call from there. Grandmother hates phones. She says they make her ears itch.

It used to be she would only talk to Dad and keep it as short as possible. Barking calls, Dad said. Now she only wants to talk to me.

"Micah?" she says loudly. Then she starts telling me what I should do. Go upstate and spend time with my family. I don't point out that I'm already with my family. Mom and Dad are right here.

She says coming upstate, staying on the farm, running in the forest is the best cure for a broken heart.

I tell her I don't have a broken heart. It's still beating, the blood still moves around my body; it only aches when I remember to breathe.

Grandmother isn't listening. "A broken heart can make you pine away," she says. "Till there's hardly anything left to bury."

I swallow. Zach will be buried. I can't imagine him in a box, six feet under.

"You'll be much happier up here, Micah," she said. "The forest is good for you." I go into my room with the phone against my ear and shut the door.

"I've got Central Park," I say, holding the phone lightly, too tightly. I'm willing it to fly out of my hands. Central Park is where Zach and me truly met. It's our place.

"Too tame for you, my love."

I hate it when she calls me that. It doesn't suit her tongue. My grandmother is not very loving. She orders, she doesn't cajole. Besides, Zach was not at all tame. Neither is Central Park.

"There's so much more for you to learn up here. We miss you, Micah."

I didn't say anything. I never miss them. I miss Zach.

"I wish your uncle Hilliard was still with us. He'd talk sense into you."

The Hilliard I remember was taciturn and gruff. He didn't spend time talking sense into anyone.

"Your aunt wants to talk to you now," she says. I listen to the phone going scratchy. m.u.f.fled voices. I put my nose to Zach's sweater, breathe him in. His scent is fading.

"Micah?" Great-Aunt Dorothy shouts at the phone. "That you?"

"Yes."

"We want you to come up. Don't have to stay. Just a week or two. Get away from all the trouble."

"I'm not in any trouble," I say, kicking my desk. The metal clangs.

"Well, I suppose not. But your father thinks you need time away. Death isn't easy. Especially not when you're young."

I sigh, making sure she can hear it. "Then why would it be any easier upstate?"

Zach's still dead no matter where I am.

"You know it is, Micah. We're closer to nature up here. Nature fixes everything." Great-Aunt Dorothy always says that.

Nature also breaks things into a million pieces. Storms destroy, winds erode, and everything rots.

"I have school."

"You're young-that's not so important. Besides, we can help you study if that's what you want."

I'm a senior! My whole future is being decided. How will two high school dropouts help me study? They're crazy if they think I'm going to go live with them. How will they help me prepare for college? They call jeans "dungarees." They don't know anything.

They talk as if I'm not going to college. They don't think I'm smart enough.

I know I am. My favorite teacher, Yayeko Shoji, says so.

"You're much happier up here, Micah."

They always say that, too. But it's not true. They think I am made of country, with forest in my veins. But I'm a city girl: sewers, rats, subways-that's what's in my veins.

SCHOOL HISTORY.

Our school is progressive. We call our teachers by their first names. No mister or missus or miz. They're Indira and Yayeko and Lisa. The emphasis is on ideas and learning and encouraging the students to reach "their full potential." Sports are not a big thing. There are teams, but no specialist coaches, just teachers taking it on 'cause they love basketball or football or softball.

Not all our cla.s.ses have normal names.

We're not channeled toward the SATs.

But we do get into good colleges. Even if we don't test well. They like our "depth and breadth."

And our integration.

We're independent thinkers. We volunteer. We don't discriminate. We recycle and care and argue about politics.

In cla.s.s, anyway.

Out of cla.s.s it's the same as any other school. Except with money. And toilets that work and heating that doesn't shut off. We have all the textbooks we need. Computers, too. Bars on every window to keep the badness out.

Real-life forensic scientists come in to talk to our biology cla.s.s. Real-life writers come to talk to us in English.

Our school looks after us.

BEFORE.

The first and second week of my freshman year were bad. Really bad. After Sarah Washington and the banana peel, everyone knew who I was: the girl who pretended to be a boy.

So much for being invisible.

I was called into Princ.i.p.al Paul's office and forced to explain.

"My English teacher thought I was a boy," I said. "I thought it would be funny to go along with it."

He said it most decidedly wasn't. Then lectured me about the danger of lies and erosion of trust and blah, blah, blah. I tuned him out, promised to be good, and wrote an essay on Why Lying Is Bad.

"So why's your name Micah then?" Tayshawn asked me. He was the only one who agreed that me pretending to be a boy was funny. He even asked me to play ball with him again. Will was less happy. Zach ignored me. I didn't go. Though I played H-O-R-S-E with Tayshawn a couple of times.

"It's a girl's name, too," I told him. "Just not as often."

"It's as if your parents knew you was going to look like a boy."

"Well." I paused, feeling the rush I always get when I begin to spin out a lie. "You can't tell anyone, okay?"

Tayshawn nodded, bracing himself.

"When I was born they didn't know if I was a girl or a boy."

Tayshawn looked confused. "How'd you mean?"

"They couldn't tell what I was. I was born a hermaphrodite."

"A what?"

"Half boy and half girl. You can look it up."

"No way." His eyes glided down my body, looking for evidence.

I nodded solemnly, figuring out how to play it. "I was a weird-looking baby." (Which is true. I like to thread my lies with truth.) "My parents totally freaked." (Also true.) "You won't tell anyone, right? You promised." In my experience those words are guaranteed to spread what you've said far and wide. I liked the idea of being a hermaphrodite.

"Not anyone. You're safe."

Tayshawn never told a soul. I know because days later there still wasn't a whisper about it. Turned out that he's good that way. Trustworthy.

I figure the rumor finally spread all over school because I told Lucy when she was ha.s.sling me in the locker room. I went for the sympathy card: "You keep calling me a freak. Well, guess what? I am!"

She looked more grossed out than sympathetic.

Or it could have been Brandon Duncan, who overheard me telling Chantal, who wanted to know how I managed to fool everyone on account of she wants to be an actress and thought it would be useful to know. She had me show her how to walk like a boy. I taught her how to spit, too.

Or maybe it was all three of them. Most likely. Hardly anyone's as tight-lipped as Tayshawn.

However it spread, it reached Princ.i.p.al Paul, who contacted my parents, who told him it wasn't true, and there I was in his office again, explaining how I had no idea how the rumor got started and was hurt and upset that anyone would say anything so mean about me. "I'm a girl. Why would I want anyone to think I was some kind of a freak?"

Because I wanted them to pay attention to me.

Something like that.

Mostly it's the joy of convincing people that something that ain't so, is. It's hard to explain. But like I said at the beginning, I've quit the lying game now.

But that's now, back then it was: "Why did you want everyone to think you were a boy, Micah Wilkins?" Princ.i.p.al Paul looked at me without blinking. I returned the favor.

"You don't know?" He sounded unsurprised. "Perhaps you will find out when you visit the school counselor."

I didn't let him see how much I hated that idea. There have been way too many counselors and shrinks and psychologists in my life. I mean, I know lying is bad, that's why I'm giving it up, but I've never understood why I had to see shrinks about it.

"You've been at this school less than two weeks, Micah Wilkins, and already you have a reputation for telling falsehoods and making mischief. My eye is on you."

I didn't ask him how that affected him seeing anything else.

My second essay for the princ.i.p.al was on the virtues of honesty. I ran out of things to say on the first page.

AFTER.

At school the word "murder" has seeped into everything. We look at each other differently. People stare at me. At Sarah. At Tayshawn. At Brandon. At all the guys on Zach's team. At anyone who has ever hated, or loved, or hung out with him.

We are all made of broken gla.s.s. The school grinds along on grief and anger.