Every Single Lie

  To my sixteen-year-old self, and to every teenage girl who needs to hear this: Better times are ahead

  ONE

  I drive onto the Clifford High School campus at the end of sixth period, armed with a slim jim and an ironclad hunch. Jake always parks near the gym, so I bypass the main student lot, then the staff lot, and I continue into the one on the far side of the school, which is reserved for athletes and band members.

  Jake Mercer is a baseball player, a liar, and a cheater. As of last night, he’s also my ex-boyfriend.

  His ancient Camry is in its usual spot at the back of the lot, so I pull into a space in the next row, then I get out of the car and grab my backpack, rolling my eyes at the reindeer antlers clipped onto his front windows. There’s also a puffy red “nose” wired to his front grill. Last week, he lost a bet with my brother, so he has to keep his car dressed up like Rudolph until New Year’s Eve.

  Two and a half weeks to go. Not that it matters to me. I don’t have to ride in it anymore.

  Shivering in spite of my jacket, I take the small cardboard box from my back seat, along with my slim jim, a flat strip of metal used to pop the lock on a car door.

  Jake’s Camry is old enough that the rubber window seal is already dry and cracked, which makes it easy to slide the slim jim into his door, hook end first. It takes me a second to feel around in there, but then I snag the latch and give the thin strip of metal a sharp tug.

  The lock disengages with a satisfying thunk. I withdraw my tool and pull his front passenger’s side door open, but before I can get in, a black-and-white pulls into the lot and stops behind Jake’s car. Clifford is too small a town to be able to afford a full-time police presence at the high school, so the patrol officers take turns keeping the peace. I roll my eyes when I see who’s in charge of campus security today.

  Doug Chalmers gets out of the patrol car and walks around the hood, one hand propped on his duty belt. “Beckett Bergen. Getting a head start on a life of crime?”

  “Hey, Doug.” I give him an innocent smile. “How’s your mom?”

  Doug grew up across the street from me. He graduated when I was in middle school and made it through a semester and a half of Clifford County Community College before deciding that higher education—higher than high school, anyway—wasn’t for him. So my mom got him a job with the Clifford PD. He’s been patrolling our three square miles of small-town glory ever since.

  “That’s Officer Chalmers to you, Beckett.”

  He doesn’t answer my question about his mother, but that’s okay. I already know she took a turn for the worse last week.

  “Sorry, Officer Chalmers.”

  “Isn’t this Jake Mercer’s car?” he asks, but he knows damn well it is.

  A few weeks ago, Doug moved back home to help take care of his mother, who has stage three lung cancer—the inevitable yet tragic consequence of a three-packs-a-day habit. Which means he’s seen this Camry, reindeer antlers and all, parked in front of my house on countless occasions.

  “You tryin’ to steal Jake’s car?”

  I can’t see his eyes through his dark sunglasses, but his arched brows practically dare me to deny it.

  “I wasn’t trying to steal Jake’s car.”

  Doug pulls off his sunglasses and tucks them into his shirt pocket as his gaze finds the slim jim dangling from my right hand. “You are aware that you’re still holding the evidence, right?”

  “I’m holding a slim jim, yes. But you’d have to have superpowers to leap from there to ‘grand theft auto’ in a single bound. For all you know, I always carry a slim jim, in case I lock my keys in my car.”

  “I just saw you pop Jake’s lock.”

  Okay, that part’s harder to defend.

  “What’s going on?” an achingly familiar voice asks from behind me.

  I close my eyes and exhale slowly, taking a second to compose myself before I respond.

  “Hey, Jake,” Doug says, and I spin around to find my brand new ex frowning at me, waiting for an explanation.

  His backpack is slung over one shoulder, his crimson and white Clifford High hoodie stretched taut across his broad shoulders. He looks good. Not at all like he’s upset about our breakup.

  “I just caught Beckett breaking into your car.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  Jake’s focus drops to the tool in my hand, and I give up on my denial. “How do you even know how to do that?”

  I shrug. “My mom’s a cop.”

  Fact-Check Rating: True, but misleading.

  My mother is a cop, but she refused to teach me how to break into a car when I decided I needed that bit of knowledge a few years ago. Fortunately, unlike parents, YouTube has never once disappointed a mischievous seventh grader.

  Doug crosses his arms over the front of his uniform. “In the state of Tennessee, entering a passenger vehicle without permission from the owner constitutes burglary.”

  “But, Officer, I haven’t entered his car.” I spread my arms to emphasize that I’m still standing in the parking lot. Outside of Jake’s beat-up old Camry.

  Jake snorts. “Looks like your slim jim entered my car.”

  Doug nods. “That counts.”

  “Actually, it doesn’t, unless I entered the vehicle with intent to commit a felony, theft, or assault. And since I had no such intent”—I shrug, and my tool bobs with the motion, drawing their attention again—“no crime has been committed.”

  Jake groans. “Tell me she’s wrong.”

  “Well, technically . . .” Doug scowls at me. “What the hell were you doing breaking into his car, if you weren’t going to take something?”

  “I was going to leave something.”

  “You were gonna—?”

  “Here, hold this.”

  I hand my slim jim to the nice police officer, and he accepts it out of misplaced courtesy a second before it occurs to him that he’s now holding the tool of my criminal trade. I’m pretty sure that counts as tampering with evidence. He really should have known better.

  Before he can object, I pick up my cardboard box. “Jake and I broke up last night—”

  “She dumped me.”

  “—and I was just returning the things he left at my house.”

  I hand the box to Jake, who takes it because it’s evidently human nature to take whatever someone hands you, before you think better of it.

  Doug glances into the box and coughs to disguise a laugh. “Is that . . . ?”

  “Jake’s copy of Sex for Dummies? Yes.”

  It was a Dirty Santa gift he stole from his cousin. We spent hours leafing through it, highlighting and laughing at the instructions, tips, and suggestions. Secretly vowing to try them.

  Jake’s face flames, and I realize this may be the shittiest thing I’ve ever done to someone, exposing a vulnerable, intimate moment from our private relationship to the light of day. And to Officer Doug Chalmers.

  But I can’t feel too bad about that, because what Jake did to me was way worse.

  It wasn’t anything sudden or explosive. I didn’t catch him in the act. In fact, I’d been ignoring the signs for a couple of weeks, because I just couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. But then last night, we were cuddled up on my bed, streaming a cheesy holiday movie, when he got another text that made him tense up and swipe the notification away before I could read it.

  I’m not one of those girls who demands to see every message her boyfriend gets. But the pattern was unmistakable, and when I asked who the text was from, he got flustered and refused to answer.

  He acted guilty.

  People will show you who they are, if you pay attention. Ignore them at your own peril.

  I can’t be with someone I can’t trust. S
omeone I can’t believe. Even if—hypothetically—I still love him. I watched my mom go through that, and it almost destroyed her.

  Doug clears his throat and barges through the awkward pause, gesturing with my slim jim. Which I find highly amusing.

  “You can’t just go around breaking into people’s cars, Beckett. You and your lawyer can argue intent until you’re blue in the face—down at the station.”

  He knows I don’t have a lawyer. There are only three of them in town. One’s a divorce attorney, one’s a public defender, whose time is mostly spent on meth-head repeat offenders, and the third specializes in probate, because there are far more people dying in Clifford than committing actual crimes. Not that many of them leave wills.

  “Oh, come on, Officer Chalmers . . . ​There was no damage or theft. Can’t we just call this strike one?”

  I cannot be chauffeured to the police station in the back of a cop car. My mom works too much to notice when I miss curfew or forget to load the dishwasher, but this she’d notice.

  Doug considers that for a second. Then he turns to Jake. “I’ll leave that up to you. You wanna press charges?”

  “No.” Jake doesn’t even hesitate, and my gratitude is . . . ​ confusing.

  I dumped him and broke into his car. Why is he being nice to me?

  “Fine, then.” Doug’s focus narrows on me. “Assuming you’re not inclined to repeat this particular mistake.”

  “Cross my heart, Officer.” I lay one hand over my heart and give him a completely unconvincing wide-eyed, innocent look. “Next time it will definitely be an all-new mistake.”

  Doug scowls at me as he puts his sunglasses on and rounds the front of his patrol car. “Shouldn’t you two be in class?”

  “I have study hall,” Jake says.

  “I took a college day.”

  As a junior, I get two of them, and seniors get four. We’re supposed to use those days to take tours of prospective universities, but the local community college isn’t really worth the trip, so the CCCC college day basically functions as a mental health day that doesn’t count against your attendance record.

  “Well, then, stay out of trouble.” With that, Doug gets back into his car with my slim jim and drives off, leaving Jake and me mired in an uncomfortable silence.

  “You really broke into my car to embarrass me?” he says at last, holding up the sex manual.

  No, the box full of his things was just my cover. “I was looking for something.”

  “For what?”

  I consider an evasive response, but I’m already caught, so . . . “Proof that you’re cheating.”

  A misplaced earring. Empty condom wrappers. A bra kept as a souvenir. Anything that will confirm for my head what I know in my heart. That he cheated. That I wasn’t imagining the signs. That I wasn’t out of my mind when I broke up with him last night. Because I don’t know how to reconcile my suspicions of betrayal with the guy who just opted not to press charges against me, when I damn well deserved it.

  “Beckett.” Suddenly Jake looks very, very tired. “For the thousandth time, I’m not cheating on you. But if you have to look, just look.” He gestures at his open passenger’s side door.

  “No.”

  He’s right. Whether or not he cheated, I went too far this time. “I’m sorry.”

  Maybe I can get out of here with a sliver of my dignity intact.

  “It was important enough to you that you broke into my car. So just look.”

  He’s practically daring me. Which means that even if he was cheating, I won’t find evidence in his car. So I shake my head and pull my backpack higher on my shoulder.

  “Beck.”

  He reaches for me, and I let him pull me close, because my body doesn’t care about what my head knows. My body cares about this. The familiar fit of his hands at my hips. The comfort that his smile brings. The memory of hundreds of hours spent curled up on my bed, sharing a set of earbuds while we watch movies on my hand-me-down, second-gen iPad.

  “What can I do to convince you that I’m not lying?” he whispers, his breath on my earlobe, his chin grazing my cheek.

  “You could show me the texts.”

  “I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. I deleted them.” Jake exhales, clearly frustrated. “Beck, they have nothing to do with you. With us. Why can’t you just trust me?”

  “I don’t know.” I wish I did know.

  “We could just start over.” He lets me go, but I can still feel the ghost of his hands on my hips. “Pretend last night never happened.”

  We could. We really could. If I could just move past the unnerving certainty that something has changed between us. If I could just trust him without proof, one way or another. But I can’t. Because what if I’m right? What if he cheated on me and everyone knows it? What if they’re all talking about me behind my back? Again?

  I have to know.

  “I can’t.”

  I can’t trust that he’s telling me the truth, but I can’t trust that I’ll be able to resist him either. Not while he’s standing so close.

  “I’m sorry about your car. Really.” Then I turn and run for the building, my backpack bouncing against my spine, because as much fun as breaking into Jake’s car and almost getting arrested has been, this is the end of my semiofficial skip day.

  While today’s seventh period French test is open-dictionary, the makeup exam will not be. So I don’t dare miss it.

  I head into the gym through the double doors and pass the closed snack bar in the lobby on my way onto the basketball court, which is deserted, because the PE classes have been given a week-long reprieve in study hall to accommodate the “update” of the girls’ locker room. I’m halfway across the gym when a group of guys comes in from the other direction, headed for the boys’ locker room.

  Basketball players. Jake’s friends. They’re laughing, and I wonder if they know we broke up. That I took most of the day off so I wouldn’t have to see anyone.

  I still don’t want to see anyone, so I veer to the right and duck into the girls’ locker room, hoping they haven’t spotted me.

  The heavy door squeals as it swings shut behind me, the rusty hinges having obviously been overlooked in the renovation. I haven’t been in here since freshman year, when I took my mandatory PE class, and the sweaty, mildewy odor I remember has been temporarily overshadowed by the sharp scent of fresh paint—a caustic smell that swells my sinuses shut and triggers a pounding deep in my head.

  No one’s supposed to be in here for another two days, while the paint fumes dissipate, but I’m not going back out there until I’m sure Jake isn’t in the gym telling his friends that I broke into his car. That I almost got arrested.

  That I’ve lost my mind.

  I sink onto the nearest bench and set my backpack on the floor, prepared to wait out the rest of sixth period. My gaze lands on the freshly painted red wall—Cougar Crimson!—then slides down to the white metal lockers in front of me. Huh. These are the same dented, beat-up lockers we used when I was a freshman. Beneath my feet, the concrete floor is still cracked and chipped in places.

  Some renovation.

  Over the summer, the boys’ locker room was updated with new lockers and benches, upgraded showerheads, and a slip-resistant floor treatment. Jake talked about it for weeks. But it looks like all the girls’ facilities got was a new coat of paint.

  Oh. And shower curtains. Three stalls stand at the end of the main aisle of lockers, and their new white vinyl curtains are notably missing the greenish mottling of mildew at the bottom that kept everyone out of the showers when I was a freshman. So at least there’s that.

  A smear of red catches my eye on the floor of the left-hand shower. Paint dripped on the tile.

  No, wait. It’s thin and watery, and entirely the wrong shade of red.

  I head down the aisle, and when I squat in front of the empty shower stall, I realize the paint isn’t paint at all. It looks like blood, diluted when someone tried to wash i
t down the drain. Which is still dripping . . .

  What the hell?

  Another red drop catches my eye, to the left of the shower. Then another. I follow the trail until I round the end of the bank of lockers to find a duffel bag lying abandoned on the grimy concrete floor, in the aisle not visible from the locker room door.

  The main cylinder of the bag is crimson, with “Cougars” written in blocky white letters along both sides. The ends are white, and they each have the school’s emblem screen printed in crimson in the center: the silhouette of a cougar’s head, its maw open in a roar, with the words “Clifford High School” forming a ring around it.

  There’s something sticking up out of the open duffel. I step closer, then I stumble to a shocked halt.

  It’s a hand. A tiny, tiny little red hand.

  And it isn’t moving.

  TWO

  The locker room door squeals when I shove it open. My shoes squeak on the gym floor.

  The basketball guys are still standing there, right outside the guys’ locker room, and now Jake is with them, but my gaze skips right over them this time.

  “Coach Killebrew!” I shout at the only other person in the gym.

  The guys all turn, startled. The girls’ basketball coach looks up from her clipboard, and there must be something on my face—something in the stunned echo of my voice across the empty space—because she takes one look at me, then she follows me into the locker room at a run.

  “Back there.” I point.

  She rushes around the end of the bank of lockers, clearly aware that whatever she’s going to find will be bad. But she can’t possibly know how bad. If she did, she wouldn’t be in such a hurry to see it.

  She gasps, and I hear a thunk that can only be her knees hitting the concrete floor.

  I head down the aisle again until I can see around the end of the lockers, where Coach Killebrew is hunched over the duffel bag. She turns to me, and she looks . . . broken.

  “It isn’t breathing.”

  I know.

  “We’re too late.”

  I know that too.

  “Beckett?”

  Jake bursts into the locker room, but he stops in the threshold, his right palm holding the door open. Behind him, several other guys are on their toes, peering over his shoulders.