Three Truths and a Lie Page 8

  Neither of us said anything for a long time. We watched the fire, how the flames flickered unpredictably, and listened to the patter of rain on the roof.

  “This is so fucked,” she said at last.

  “I know,” I said. “But who expects stuff like this?”

  “You want a beer?” She was already drinking one.

  “It’ll make me have to pee, and I’m not going outside,” I said.

  “Just use the bucket.” No one was supposed to be alone tonight, so Galen had left a plastic bucket over by the door. I knew Mia wouldn’t have any problem using the bucket in front of anyone, but I wasn’t so sure about me.

  “That doesn’t make me any more willing to have a beer,” I said.

  She laughed.

  “I want cereal,” she said, standing and walking to the kitchen.

  “Now?”

  “Cornflakes and shit. My comfort food.” She poured herself a bowl, then added milk from the cooler. “And if there was ever a time I needed comfort, it’s now, damn it.”

  I smiled.

  She brought the bowl back to the sofa and ate it in front of the fire. She slurped something bad. It was kind of annoying.

  “So,” I said. “Galen.”

  “Oh, don’t start,” Mia said.

  “What?”

  “You’re gonna say something bad.”

  “No, I like him. I do.”

  She brightened. “Really?”

  I nodded.

  “You just think he’s hot,” she said, still slurping.

  I blushed. Why in the world had I brought up Galen?

  “You do,” she said. “I knew it! Been lusting after him all weekend.”

  “It’s not like that,” I lied.

  “Oh please. And why not? He’s fucking hot. You saw him when we were out skinny-dipping.”

  I wasn’t sure whether to smile or roll my eyes. So I said, “Uh, let’s just move on.”

  “Okay, but first you have to admit he’s got a great ass.”

  “Mia.” This time I did smile a little.

  “Just admit it! Then we can talk about something else.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said reluctantly.

  “Okay what?”

  “What you said.”

  “What did I say?”

  “He has a great ass,” I said, almost a whisper.

  From the bedroom, Galen piped up, “You guys know I can hear everything you’re saying, right?”

  Now I was beyond embarrassed.

  Mia called out, “You know you love it!”

  “I’m flattered and humbled,” Galen admitted.

  Mia laughed, but I squirmed in my seat, beyond mortified.

  After that Mia went to get more cornflakes, and I added wood to the fire and stirred up the embers, hoping I could restart this conversation the way I’d rekindled the fire.

  A few minutes later, Mia checked on Galen.

  “He’s out,” she said, quietly closing the door behind her. “Now we can say whatever the fuck we want.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “Great.”

  This time she sat right next to me on the sofa.

  “Which is good,” she said, “because there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

  I tensed. I was certain she was going to ask me more about Galen—tell me she’d heard Liam and me up in the loft, and knew we were both lusting after him while having sex.

  “Yeah?” I said quickly. “Because there’s something I wanted to ask you too.”

  “Oh yeah?” she said casually. “About what?”

  “That game we played last night.” It was the only thing I could think of that would truly change the subject.

  “What about it?” she said.

  I hesitated. Did I really want to go through with this? Once I asked the question, I had to listen to whatever the answer was.

  “You were telling the truth,” I said. “Weren’t you?”

  “About what?” But I knew she was only pretending not to know what I was talking about. I guess I really had learned some lessons about lying.

  I glared at her.

  “You think I really killed someone?” she said.

  “Well, it didn’t sound like a lie when you said it. That’s all.”

  “What did it sound like?”

  I thought back. “A confession.”

  She finished the last of her cereal and set the bowl aside, then picked up her beer and sank into her corner of the couch. But she looked crammed in, stiff. Was that Mia’s tell?

  “Isn’t that the whole point of the game?” she said. “To sound like you’re telling the truth?”

  “But your lie wasn’t a lie at all. You weren’t wearing underwear. Were you?”

  She looked at me like she was seeing me for the very first time, like I had suddenly just materialized right before her eyes.

  “Maybe I play the game differently than most people,” she said. “Maybe I tell three lies and a truth. Maybe that’s how I win the game.”

  “That would be cheating. Besides,” I reminded her, “we weren’t keeping score.”

  Mia’s face was a mixture of smirks and grimaces. “Sounds like someone was.” She looked around the cabin, and her expression turned wistful. “It’s so weird being up here again. Everything is so familiar, but the last time I was up here, I was still a kid. The cabin is the same—well, it’s more run-down, but it’s mostly the same. But I’m completely different.”

  “I bet,” I said, even as I realized she was changing the subject. I hadn’t really wanted to talk about Mia’s lie, but the more she resisted, the more I wanted to know the truth.

  “But it’s strange being here without my parents and my brother.”

  “Mia,” I said, interrupting. “Did you kill someone or not?” I couldn’t believe how blunt I was being.

  Mia wouldn’t look me in the eye. She took another swig of beer, then sat there, twisting the bottle in her hand. She stared into my newly kindled fire.

  “I’m not sure,” she said at last.

  She wasn’t sure if she’d killed someone?

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “My parents were gone and I was bored, so I decided to take the car out. I didn’t have anywhere to be or anything, but I’d done it before, and it was dark and I figured no one would recognize me.” Mia had been driving at thirteen? At first this surprised me, but Mia had done a lot of things when she was younger, including having sex with Liam. “Everything was fine—I stayed off the main roads. But side streets are really dark, and as I turned a corner, I heard these sounds. A thump. And this squeak. Metal bending. It wasn’t from my car. I’d hit a guy on a bike.”

  “Did you stop?” I said.

  “Right away. The bike was a mess, and the rider had been thrown to one side. But the car was fine, not even any marks on the fender. I realized that if my parents found out what I’d done—that I was driving, not even that I’d hit someone—they’d never forgive me. So I got back in the car and drove off.” She took a breath, held it, and let it go. “I’ve never told anyone that before. Anyone.”

  Not even Liam? I thought.

  “You just left him there? Why didn’t you call nine-one-one?” I tried to keep the shock out of my voice, but it didn’t really work.

  “Didn’t have a phone.”

  “What makes you think he was dead?”

  “I saw him. In the bushes along the road. It was dark, but he wasn’t moving. Later, I overheard some people at school talking about a hit and run, about this man who’d died. I was just a dumb, scared kid, but that’s no excuse. Maybe if I’d stayed, shouted for help, I could’ve helped him, and he wouldn’t have died. I screwed up bad, and I know I’m going to pay for it after I die. I’ve spent the last five years trying to forget that night. I think it might be part of the reason why I am the way I am. If I’m already damned, I might as well have fun before I go, right?”

  She’s telling the truth. That was my very first thought. I was ninety
-nine percent sure it was the truth. Mia had been absolutely right when she’d said that the best way to know if someone is telling the truth was to really listen.

  If it was the truth, what did it mean? That Mia was a murderer? Or was she just another stupid kid? I honestly wasn’t sure.

  “Why’d you mention it last night?” I asked her. “And why are you telling me all this now?”

  Outside the cabin, something clacked, like two pieces of bamboo knocking together.

  Mia and I looked at each other. Either Mia had just confessed the crime of her life, or she’d tried to dump some major bullshit on me, but all that was forgotten now.

  Together, we crept to the window. There weren’t any shutters or drapes, but it was too dark outside to see anything anyway. Rain lashed the window, like they always say in books.

  “Should we open the door?” Mia said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  She cracked it open, and together we peered outside. Only then did it occur to me that we should go wake the others, especially Galen, but now it was too late. The torrents of rain sounded like a low-pitched groan. I suddenly became aware of how tense I was, how my shoulders were as stiff as a scarecrow’s.

  “See anything?” I said.

  Mia shook her head.

  As she did, something moved in the darkness, shooting across the yard.

  “There’s someone out there!” I said. I didn’t even need to point, Mia had seen it too. We were both staring at the same spot now. In the light from our doorway, I could make out the pump and maybe the trunk of some trees beyond that, but that’s all. A moon would have helped, but it had never risen, or maybe it was hidden behind the clouds.

  The rain was coming down in buckets. If this was what it was like when the rain sounded like squirrels on the roof, how bad had it been when it sounded like deer?

  “I can’t believe there’s anyone out in that downpour,” I said. But we’d definitely seen something.

  Without warning, Mia shouted out at the rain. “Get the hell out of here! Leave us the fuck alone!”

  It was surprising how the water absorbed the noise. How quiet her voice sounded despite how loud she’d been.

  We kept staring out as the rain washed the night. Everything was moving and nothing was moving, all at the same time.

  “Water is getting in,” I said. “Close the door.” The rain was falling so hard it was landing on the stoop and spattering inside. A trail of silver water already oozed across the uneven floor like a snake.

  Something darted across the yard again—an elk. That must’ve been what we’d heard before, the clatter of its hooves on the ground, and what we’d seen streak across in the dark.

  That’s all it was, all it had ever been. An animal.

  But we didn’t laugh, not like we might have earlier in the day. Everything was still way too serious.

  Mia closed the door and locked it again.

  We stood there a minute, and I tried to untwist the pretzel in my shoulders. I took a step forward, right into the puddle on the floor that I’d noticed only seconds before.

  I felt Mia staring at me and I looked up into her eyes.

  “You know, you’re not who I thought you were,” she said, a smile locked on her lips.

  “What?”

  “When I first met you. I thought you were someone different.”

  So it seemed that I had some mystery after all. I considered asking what kind of person she’d thought I was, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “What were you going to ask me earlier?” I said.

  “Huh?” she said. She scratched her tattoo.

  “Before, after Galen fell asleep. You said there was something you wanted to ask me.” I didn’t even care if she asked me if Liam and I had been thinking about Galen while having sex. In a way, I wanted her to.

  It was weird. I actually felt close to Mia now. It was like she was an actual friend, not just the best friend of my boyfriend. It was even better than what I’d been feeling before, about finally being part of the group. As for what she’d done to that man on the bike, I didn’t feel qualified to judge.

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, it’s about Galen.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Liam . . .”

  What about him? I thought.

  “Well, I know there’s been some weirdness,” Mia said.

  So Mia had sensed it too, what was going on between Galen and Liam. It was strange how Liam was having the exact opposite reaction to this weekend that I was. I felt myself drawing closer to everyone, but he was drifting away, from Galen at least, and maybe even from Mia too. After all, Galen and Mia were boyfriend and girlfriend.

  Maybe friendship is about more than tattoos, I thought. But that made me feel guilty, like I was stealing Liam’s friends.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “It’ll all work out.”

  “It will?” Mia said.

  “I promise.” Liam was a really good guy, and he wasn’t a child. Yeah, Galen had teased him a bit, but it hadn’t been anything unforgiveable. Liam would get over it in the end, if only for Mia’s sake.

  She relaxed right before my eyes. It was like an actual weight had been lifted off her shoulders.

  “Thanks,” she said. “That really means a lot to me.”

  She put a hand on my arm and squeezed.

  I’d surprised Mia this weekend, but she’d surprised me more. Weirdly, the fact that she’d killed someone when she was thirteen was the least of it.

  “But don’t tell him we talked about it, okay?” I said. “That would be weird.”

  She smiled and turned for the fire. “I’ll keep your secret,” she said over her shoulder, “if you promise to keep mine.”

  12

  We didn’t make pancakes the next morning. We hardly ate anything at all. Being stranded without transportation or a phone at a remote cabin with an unknown assailant lurking in the woods has a way of killing your appetite.

  That’s the right word, right? Assailant?

  And of course it was still raining. We could hear it coming down outside, thumping squirrel-like on the roof of the cabin.

  “There’s no way they spent the night out here,” Liam said. “Not in that rain. Not even in a car.”

  “They might have,” Galen said, and Liam bristled a little. “All we know for sure is that they’re crazy. We don’t know how crazy. They’re definitely crazy enough to follow us all the way out here and spend a whole day jerking us around, but are they also crazy enough to spend a whole weekend? In the rain?”

  “Let’s just go,” Mia said. The plan was to start the long walk to the highway at first light, and it was now way past that.

  I looked at the four of us, with no real rain gear whatsoever. Not a single one of us had even packed boots.

  We set out on the dirt road. We’d packed a few supplies in backpacks—water, some food, some dry clothing—but left most of our stuff in the cabin. Someone would have to come back for the car anyway. As we passed the car, I could still smell the spilled gasoline—it hadn’t been washed away, even in all the rain. No one said anything, but it felt strange to leave the vehicle behind. Don’t they always say that if you’re ever in an accident to never leave your car? But that advice obviously didn’t make any sense here.

  The road was muddy. Really muddy. So muddy that I was thirty-five percent sure we’d have gotten stuck somewhere along this road even if the car was running, especially on that first steep hill.

  By the time we reached the top of the hill, my feet were already soaked. The mud had also somehow gotten into my socks, and the wet dirt felt like sandpaper, scraping my ankles and heels with every step.

  Most of the mud was in the tire ruts, so we all quickly gravitated to the rocky bulge in the middle of the road. That meant walking single file. And the bulge was narrow, so it was a little like walking on a balance beam. How fast does a person normally walk? Two miles an hour? Between the mud and the rain and walking on that rocky balan
ce beam, we were probably going half that. And how far was it to the highway? Mia had said it could be fifteen miles.

  That meant it was going to be a long walk. That we might not even be there by nightfall.

  “We don’t necessarily need to walk all the way to the main road,” Mia said. “We only need to walk far enough that there’s a signal.” She meant for our cell phones, and that reminded her to check hers right then, shielding it from the rain with her hand. But there wasn’t a signal, just like I knew there wouldn’t be. In fact, there was no guarantee there was going to be a signal even out on the highway. But if we did make it to the main road, we could at least flag down a passing car.

  Before long, the rain forest fell away, and the muddy road stretched out into a clear-cut. Little streams washed down over the landscape, all of the water brown with dirt. The runoff cut trenches in the road itself, sometimes even through the bulge in the middle.

  In a way, the clear-cut was kind of a relief. If it really was the Brummits stalking us, who’s to say they weren’t hiding in the lush rain forest, watching us? We knew for a fact the family had a crossbow, probably more than one, and lots of guns too. But here in the clear-cut, the piles of stripped branches had mostly rotted away, and the seedlings barely came up past our ankles, so there was no place for anyone to hide.

  We slogged forward, stepping over little canyons in the road. No one said anything, but I kept thinking how stupid it was, the whole idea of chopping a forest up into parcels. It was like trying to slice a balloon—impossible. It was all or nothing. Or maybe it was like a person: you couldn’t cut someone up into pieces and expect him to live.

  We’d only been walking fifteen minutes, and we were already drenched. My feet were blistering from the mud.

  At the head of the line, Galen stopped. We all stopped behind him.

  “What is it?” Mia said.

  Up ahead of us, the clear-cut ended and the forest started again. In the rain, the trees looked like a big black wall. There was another cave-like opening where the road disappeared into the rain forest, and somehow this was even blacker than everything else.

  Galen took it all in. He fiddled with the strings on his hoodie.

  “This is a mistake,” he said at last.