We Told Six Lies Read online

  I cram salty fries into my mouth and search the bag for ketchup.

  Stop when I remember what Molly said about the stuff.

  Stop when I remember Molly.

  “I’m Detective Tehrani, by the way. Didn’t know if you remembered.”

  So, no Italian food, then.

  I don’t respond. He knows my name.

  There’s a second knock on the door, and a woman sticks her head inside. Her black hair is cut close to the scalp, and she has bright red lipstick on. “Ferris wants you two.”

  Detectives Hernandez and Tehrani stand to follow her out.

  “One minute,” Detective Hernandez says to me, and offers an apologetic smile.

  I’m about to tell them I’m not waiting around. That they need to be questioning anyone other than myself, but then Detective Tehrani grabs the door and says, “Hernandez, you tell him we found her car?” He doesn’t wait for her to answer before turning back to me and saying, “We found Molly’s car outside a strip mall in Leesport. Do you know what she was doing there?”

  My ears ring, and the food stills in my mouth.

  A strip mall?

  What was she doing there?

  Questions fire through my mind as the dude says to someone outside, “What’s that? All right, coming.” He looks at me, and even though I’m clambering to my feet, he says, “Be right back. Eat, kid.”

  My heart pounds inside my chest, and I lean against the back of a chair to calm myself down.

  Molly was never supposed to be at a strip mall.

  We were supposed to meet at a gas station.

  But she was gone when I got there. Or maybe she never showed up in the first place.

  I pick up the McDonald’s bag and throw it against the wall. I know they’re watching, and I don’t care. Molly is gone, and they’re in here talking to me when they should be combing the streets, the woods, the mountains. There should be search parties and helicopters and dogs that can smell a single drop of blood from a half mile away.

  But instead, they’re looking at me.

  Why are they looking at me?

  I hate myself for doing it, but I grab the fast food bag from the floor and shove my hand inside, finish eating the fries, the cold nuggets. I open the barbeque sauce and slurp some into my mouth. Then I suck down the Coke. I pace the floor—back and forth, back and forth—and then go for the door.

  I take a step outside the room.

  Phones ring, and someone—an officer—walks right past me with a folder. We almost touch, and yet he doesn’t even look in my direction. Should I run for the exit? No, that’ll make me look guilty.

  Then it hits me—why do I care what it looks like?

  I have to find Molly!

  “Hey, there.” Detective Tehrani strides toward me, holding a drink of his own. “One of the officers said you might be upset. Everything okay? You need to go home for a while? Take a breather?”

  “Molly’s car. You said you found it. Did you find her, too?”

  Detective Tehrani motions back inside the room, inviting me to take a seat. I go in, jerk a chair away from the table.

  “No, she wasn’t there,” he says. “Did you think she would be?”

  “I…I don’t know. How would I know?”

  He looks confused. “You two were dating, right? I figured if anyone would know you would.”

  “Were her things in the car?” I ask. “The things she took from her house?”

  Detective Tehrani hesitates, seemingly deciding whether to provide this piece of information. “No, they weren’t.”

  “Well, that’s good. If someone had taken her, they wouldn’t have taken her things, right?”

  The man leans back. Clasps his hands on the table, his drink forgotten. “You think someone might have taken her?”

  “What? No…well, I don’t know…the other officer said—”

  Detective Hernandez sweeps into the room. “Sorry about that. Was the food okay? I hate it when the fries go cold on you and—”

  I pound my fist on the table. “I don’t give two fucks about fries. Tell me about Molly’s car. Did it seem okay? Was there any sign of a…I don’t know…a struggle, or whatever?” I watch them watching me. “Why are you two just staring at me?”

  Detective Hernandez is looking, specifically, at my hand. The one I hit against the table. My fingers are still clenched, my knuckles white.

  She sits down slowly, and her brown eyes meet mine. She pulls in a long, patient breath. There is pity in her gaze, and I feel a surge of guilt for my outburst. “Talking to you, talking to everyone, Cobain…that’s how we are going to find Molly. That’s what you want, right?”

  I nod, remembering we’re on the same side, even if it doesn’t feel that way.

  “Now, if you don’t mind staying a bit longer,” Detective Hernandez ventures, “Tell me about more Molly. Did you two share the same friends? Did she ever meet your parents?”

  The fight I experienced only a moment ago leaves my body.

  I think about Molly driving her mother’s car, heart-shaped sunglasses on her face, window down, hair whipping around her head, fingers tapping on the steering wheel.

  A bag on her empty passenger seat.

  A seat I was supposed to fill.

  THEN

  I’d never been one to bounce from bed in the morning. I’d rise, sloth-like, to flip off the day. But that morning, in particular, I had trouble getting up. You’d invaded my mind, a welcome parasite. I wanted to lie in bed forever, let the thought of you keep me in a dreamlike state.

  But my mom had turned on the radio. She turned it progressively louder the longer I stayed in bed in a passive-aggressive maneuver to get me up. I knew she’d already have breakfast on the table. Pancakes maybe, or French toast. She wasn’t a Pop-Tarts kind of mom, though sometimes I wished she were.

  I wondered what you were eating for breakfast, Molly.

  I liked to think it was strawberries.

  Is that weird?

  I pressed my pillow over my head and groaned. Counted to ten and then threw the thing across the room and got up, because Foreigner was growing unbearably loud. I stretched, feeling my muscles ache in a good way, and thought about what Coach Miller said. How I should really consider joining the team. How it would do me good to hang out with some of the other guys.

  I’d rather bathe my dick in honey and lie on a bed of fire ants, I’d replied.

  And the dude had laughed.

  That’s why I liked him. Anyone who could take a joke was gold in my book.

  I pulled on some clothes and padded down the hallway. My dad turned from the table, a newspaper held stiff between his hands. “Welcome to the land of the living.”

  “Welcome to the twenty-first century,” I replied, and nudged the laptop on the table toward him.

  My dad looked at my mom with amusement. “He speaks.”

  “And to make fun of those stinky newspapers,” Mom added. “I like it.”

  “The smell of newspaper ink is invigorating,” he said and took a sip of his coffee.

  “That’s one word for it.” Mom dropped a plate of fried doughnuts dusted with powdered sugar in front of me.

  I sighed.

  “Don’t sigh at me, child. A couple of doughnuts aren’t going to hurt you.”

  She kissed the top of my head, and I popped the first doughnut into my mouth.

  “Says here this seventeen-year-old just got a scholarship to Duke for shot put. You could get something like that with your weight lifting, I bet,” my dad pressed, though I hadn’t been awake fifteen minutes. “If you joined that team, you could—”

  “Bruno,” Mom warned, though she already had her nose buried in her phone. “I have to leave early this morning. They need someone to cover the early shift.”

 
Mom worked at a center that supported social workers. She couldn’t stomach working with foster kids directly, but she did all she could to support the people who did. Sometimes I thought she did too much, especially when she had two sons of her own that hardly saw her.

  She quit her paying job when I was a kid. When I got sick.

  So I guess it was kind of my fault.

  She kissed my dad on the crown of his head. “Go easy on him. Actions speak louder…”

  Dad stared at her.

  She stared back.

  “I’m not finishing that,” he said.

  “I’ll remember that.” Mom gave Dad a flirtatious look that made me want to vomit doughnuts everywhere.

  Mom grabbed her purse and looked at me. Stared in my direction for a moment too long.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” She shook her head. “Just miss you.”

  “You could stay,” I mumbled.

  Mom’s smile faltered. “I can’t. They really need—”

  I waved my hand and grabbed the second doughnut from the plate.

  As she walked toward the door, I made my way toward my bedroom.

  “Cobain?” my dad called, but I kept walking.

  I pushed the door to my room open then jumped when I spotted movement. When I realized it was only my brother digging through my closet, I grinned and kicked my discarded pillow at him.

  “Oh, go on and help yourself to my crap,” I said.

  Holt abandoned his search and fell back on my bed and, after flicking a pair of my boxers away with a disgusted face, smiled. “Miss me?”

  I went to my closet to rummage for my bag. “It’s been a while.” I glanced at him sideways. “When did you get in?”

  Holt shoved his hands behind his head. “Somewhere between last class and last call.”

  I rubbed my foot into a pink stain on the carpet, wishing, once again, that I were more like Holt. Smart enough to go to college. Thin, because he’s not compensating for being socially awkward. He’s twenty-one to my eighteen, only three years older, but it feels like more than that. Always has.

  “Hey,” Holt said, pushing up on his elbows. “Remember when Dad took us to that amusement park when you were like, I don’t know, eight, and we dug those wristbands out of the trash? I was thinking about that mess the other day.”

  I grinned. “We rode almost every ride until that lady ratted us out.”

  “I’ll never understand how she knew we’d snuck in,” Holt said.

  I thought about all the times my dad brought me with him to repair rides. We didn’t have the money to go on the Zipper and Tilt-a-Whirl and Gravitron, and we had to eat crap from home instead of the sticky, fluffy, overpriced snacks offered there. As Dad worked, I could only listen as kids passed by, laughing and linking their arms and running ahead when they saw a ride they’d been looking for.

  But one day, instead of hanging out with his friends like he always did, Holt came along. And I said, I wish I could ride the stupid rides. Just once.

  And Holt looked at me and said, Then, why don’t you?

  As if it were the easiest thing in the world.

  I thought about that park, then, and how I’d love to bring you there, Molly, with your white-blond hair and green eyes and mouth that said, There you are.

  I’d thought about it for days but hadn’t yet summoned the courage to ask you out. But I would. I just needed to figure out where I would take you since I didn’t have more than five bucks to my name, or the words to keep a conversation going. What did a guy like me have to offer?

  That’s what I had to figure out.

  “What’s going on there?” Holt said, drawing a circle in the air, referencing my face. And damn it all, I grinned, because Holt always knew exactly what was in my head. “You grow a third nut? Or a third nipple?” he asked. “God, which would be worse? Nipple, for sure. A third nut would be like a magic source. You think anyone has one?” Holt pulled his phone out of his pocket, probably to check.

  “I met this girl,” I said, maybe to surprise him. Maybe so he wasn’t the only one with something interesting to talk about.

  “Hot?”

  I laughed. “She’s weird as shit.”

  “Weird and hot. That’s a good combo. Honestly, little brother, weird outweighs hot. I’ve dated pretty girls, but if they don’t come a little crazy, I get bored.”

  “Cobain?” Dad’s voice echoed down the hallway.

  Holt stood up. “I’ll go. I should tell them I’m here. Is Mom going to shove food into my mouth hole the second I get out there?”

  “She’s already gone,” I said. “And I’ve got to get going, too.”

  “In that case…” He flops back on the bed and gives an exaggerated smile.

  I didn’t want to ask him, but I had to.

  I had to.

  “Will you be here when I get back?”

  I sounded so hopeful that it made me sick.

  Holt sighed. “I don’t know, man. I was just hanging out with some buddies for a night. And seeing what was up with you. I got class tonight, though, so I’ll probably drive back soon.”

  I shrugged like I didn’t care, but I wanted to hug my brother. That’s all I wanted right then. A goddamned hug, and so what?

  “K. See you next time.”

  “Don’t wear a condom,” Holt called as I walked away. “I’m ready to be an uncle.”

  “Idiot,” I muttered.

  “Who were you talking to?” Dad asked.

  “Holt is here.”

  Dad glanced down the hallway, but Holt was probably already halfway asleep on my bed. That’s what he used to do when he came home—partied with old friends and used our house as hangover headquarters. I doubted anything had changed.

  Dad’s eyes slid to mine. “Did you need a ride to school?”

  I shook my head and made for the door.

  “Cobain,” he said.

  I walked faster, but when he called my name again, I turned around.

  He looked at me for a long time, like he wanted to tell me something important. But then he just shook his head and said, “Have a good day, all right?”

  I nodded and left, gritting my teeth. Despising the hopeful look on my father’s face, like maybe when I came home from school today, I’d do so with a load of friends, a B plus on my chem test, and an application for the wrestling team.

  I didn’t know why I was the way I was. Why my brain ticked a little differently. But it hurt to feel the dreams my father harbored, day after day, as if he were holding his breath, waiting for the moment when I’d be the son he always hoped I’d be.

  THEN

  For five days, I’d tried to make my way to you, Molly.

  I’d tried to cut through your pack of friends and single you out. But they formed a wall around you, leaning their heads forward, searching for an answer to the question even I had to ask—

  Were you beautiful?

  Or just odd?

  Looking at you was like watching a sphynx cross the street. It’s not that you’re surprised to see a cat in the neighborhood, it’s that you didn’t expect to see a hairless cat. A pink, wrinkled, wide-eyed cat that’s so strange looking that at first you think, That thing just isn’t right. But then you can’t take your eyes off it. And you find yourself following it, and smiling at it, and pretending to hold a bit of food to see if it’ll come closer.

  You were like a hairless cat.

  No way would I tell you that.

  It was Friday, two days and one full school week after you’d touched my face. I couldn’t go into another weekend without talking to you, but I needed a plan. I was still working through what to say to you when I spotted you standing outside the glass doors. You had your phone to your ear, and your face was pinched.

  You turn
ed, briefly, and our eyes connected.

  There were tears in them.

  I wanted to kill whoever put them there. Finding the words to talk to you was like having my molars ripped from my jaw, but fighting? That’s something I understood well.

  You lowered the phone and put it in your pocket. Hugged your arms around your stomach.

  I pushed through the doors. Your eyes locked with mine, and you held my gaze like a challenge.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  You smiled and raised your chin. “I’m right as rain.”

  I didn’t understand what you meant.

  You sighed. “It’s just my mom. She’s being difficult. This move has been hard on her.”

  “But not for you,” I said.

  You frowned. “Yes, for me, too.” You hugged yourself tighter, and I noticed how painfully thin you were. You’d look better with more weight, I decided, and something told me you could easily gain it if you allowed yourself to eat.

  “Who are you?” you asked.

  You asked this like you’d forgotten me—like you’d never grabbed my face and looked at me like you were the only person in the entire world who saw me. Your dismissive words stung more than my mom’s constant preoccupation. More than my dad’s hope.

  I realized then that I’d been making up a relationship with you in my head. That I had pretended all weekend that you’d thought of me. I’d pretended you’d lain in bed and wondered what the rest of me felt like.

  I’d committed every detail of you to memory.

  Even a few I’m not sure you wanted people to see.

  My brain had skipped a hundred steps and fast-forwarded to the point where we could lie down beside each other, hold hands, and not say a single word as the clouds crept across the sky.

  You weren’t there yet, but I wanted you to be.

  “Wanna go somewhere?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  That quick.

  Yes.

  I nodded toward the fence that surrounded the school, and you and I jogged toward it. I started to crawl up so I could help you from the other side, but you were right there beside me, scaling that chain-link fence and throwing your leg over.

  You were wearing a skirt.