Liar, Liar (8 page)

“About twelve minutes ago,” I said. “But I also realized, about eleven minutes, fifty-five seconds ago, that I am beyond dense.”

Sarah and Daniel nodded.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

Sarah glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Oh, god, Kevin, you look horrible. Put your head between your legs and take deep, slow breaths. And don’t barf in my car.”

“Our car!”
Daniel and I roared together at her.

She looked startled. Then mad. Then she started to laugh. Pretty soon she was laughing so hard I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying.

Then I realized she was laughing
and
crying.

Daniel and I were too.

I didn’t understand what had just happened. Everything had been going so well. I mean, I guess not, but …

he next day, I just didn’t feel like myself. Sure, I watched Tina during class and at lunch and in the hall and on the way to the bus, and she was still so pretty that she made my heart twist.

I met with Connie and we discussed whatever it was she was talking about; it’s easy to be a good listener and make people think you’re part of the conversation if you just say “What did you do then?” a lot, because that way they think you’re paying attention, impressed with them. I think I said yes to something she had planned for next Monday at six-thirty in the evening, but I’m not sure what it was.

I even let Katie corner me in the hallway after
school and go over her outline again because she’d changed seven words since the last time she’d shown it to me and she wanted to make sure I approved. And I agreed with her that apathy was going to ruin this society. Or something.

JonPaul and I walked home together. He’d been wearing a motion-sickness band around his wrist because, he said, he was queasy all the time. He had a portable, disposable heating pad wrapped around his midsection because he thought his lower back was going into spasms. He lifted a pants leg so I could see the Ace bandage he’d wrapped around the ankle he swore was strained. And he carried a packet of wet wipes to scrub down his desk chairs and locker handle. He showed me a face mask in his backpack. “I’m just glad it’s not cold and flu season,” he whispered, “or I’d have to wear it. I’m just carrying it for security.”

It was only Thursday and I’d only been ditching class for four days, but I was getting homesick for my regular routine.

I’d somehow staggered through a long and weird day, but when I saw Auntie Buzz through the kitchen window as I got home, I headed straight over to Markie’s house for my babysitting gig without even dropping my stuff off in my room first. I wasn’t up
for watching Buzz’s demo reel or hearing about the friendly-faced Buddha she needed for the Tibetan prayer room she was designing.

The now EpiPen-free Markie is a sheer terror.

I never feel right about trying to get out of babysitting, though, because his parents always seem so worried I’ll say no and sound so grateful when I say yes. I usually dread it, but the day after the Kitchen Scene, I was glad. And I hoped his folks would stay out really late. Because I didn’t want to run the risk of seeing my folks. For the first time, Markie looked good by comparison.

His parents call him precocious; I looked it up, and it does not mean the personification of an ear-splitting, nerve-jangling, head-pounding, exasperating plague that makes you long for deportation from your own country.

Little kids smell funny—like blue cheese and day-old socks and dog butt. Markie smells like all that, plus he’s so freaking hyper and chatty that I know why his parents make such a fuss about “date night” just to get away from him once a week.

Sarah thinks they go out to romantic dinners and take ballroom dance lessons or see black-and-white foreign movies with subtitles and deep
meanings. I’m pretty sure they park their car in the empty lot behind the bank and just sit there enjoying the silence. As well as checking off the boxes on their countdown to when Markie turns eighteen and leaves home.

The only good thing about spending the afternoon and evening with Markie was that I wouldn’t have to think about what was going on with my folks.

On top of having a weird smell and the attention span of a fruit fly, that day Markie rushed me at the front door with a buttload of disgusting questions. Like he does every single time I come over. He must save them up for me.

“Dutchdeefuddy, where do farts come from? What are boogers made of? Have you ever tasted pus?”

Oh yeah, and he has this habit of beginning every sentence with the word
dutchdeefuddy
. Which does not mean anything. In any language I can find on the Internet. I finally decided that it must be like
shalom
or
aloha
and has as many meanings as necessary.

I always have to fight the urge to put Markie in a cardboard box in back of the furnace in the basement, securely closed with duct tape. Tied with stout rope. And swaddled with some sort of soundproofing material.

But that kind of babysitting doesn’t get a guy paid. So I sighed and answered his questions. Like I always do.

“Farts are made of methane produced during the digestion of food in the small and large intestines. Boogers are the thickened or dried mucus that the cells in the nasal cavity need to function. And don’t taste pus. Ever. It’s a terrible idea. Kind of like the time I told you not to shove baby carrots up your nose and then eat them.”

Then, grossed out by my efforts to educate a young mind, I sent him outside to play with the kids next door. When I looked out the window a few minutes later, Markie had seemingly cloned himself and there were fifty, sixty, I don’t know,
hundreds
of him running around the yard. I shook my head to clear my vision and made a careful head count.

Three. Three small children plus Markie. They were just moving so blazing fast that they looked like a crowd. Sounded like one too. I bet Hell sounds a lot like a bunch of little kids shrieking.

The only solution was storytime. Little kids are suckers for stuff like that. And it quiets them down like a tranquilizer gun.

I rounded them up, dumped some dry cereal in a bowl—because you can always get on top of the situation with little kids by offering treats—and put my creative powers to work.

“Well,” I began, “once upon a time, there was this guy. He was a … pirate-magician-dragonslayer-quarterback-sailer-musher-trapper who owned a carnival. He lived in suburban hedges waiting to find tiny soldiers for his army of puppy-sitters, who don’t have bedtime and can eat pizza for breakfast with potato chips and chocolate milk. He recognized them by the balloons they tied to their clothes.”

I was just getting into the story and wondering how it was going to play out, because I’m such a good storyteller that I’d fascinated myself, when the four kids jumped up, squealing for balloons. I blew up balloons until my cheeks ached and I was light-headed from oxygen deprivation. I tied the balloons to the kids’ arms and sent them outside. Thing 1, Thing 2 and Thing 3, along with Markie, sat quietly under the lilac bush, and I congratulated myself. Mary Poppins, eat your heart out.

Then I read the World section of the newspaper to see if there were any international military developments I needed to catch up with that would inspire
me in my plan to make Tina think I would be a terrific boyfriend.

Eventually, though, Markie’s friends got called home for supper and I was looking down at one grubby kid with a limp balloon trailing behind him.

“Dutchdeefuddy, play with me.”

“Why don’t you watch a video?”

“Bo-wing.”

“How about getting out some of your toys?”

“Bo-wing.”

“All of them?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, you could—”

“Dutchdeefuddy?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s a ’vorce?”

“A what?”

“Mommy’s getting one. What is it?”

It was like looking at a tiny me.

What the sweet screaming monkeys was in the water in this neighborhood?

“Is it bad?” Markie asked.

I sighed and wondered what to say and if anything was going to go right for me that day.

“Well, Markie, it’s not good.”

His little face looked so miserable I wanted to kick myself. See? This is why I lie. When I lie, everyone always looks happy.

I thought of all the things I could tell him: ’Vorce is just another way to say his dad’s a superhero—the very one I’d told the story about earlier—going off to save puppies and kittens; his parents will probably patch things up; or ’vorces aren’t that bad, everyone’s having them, don’t be a baby and let it get to you.

I squatted down and looked him in the eye.

“A divorce means, well, that your mom and dad aren’t going to be married anymore. But … you’ll still be a family. Just different.”

“Daddy’s leaving again, isn’t he?” he asked.

“Yeah, probably.”

“Oh.”

Yeah, oh; that’s about the only response there is to news like that. Smart kid.

Then Markie said something that completely blew me away.

“Dutchdeefuddy, I want to be just like you when I grow up.”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause when I asked everyone else about the ’vorce, they didn’t tell me the truth. But you did.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“Uh-huh, ’cause now I know.”

Well, sure, every kid should have a full working knowledge of ’vorces, I thought.

Then Markie said the second most astonishing thing ever.

“You’re my dutchdeefuddy.”

“What does that mean, anyway?”

“Best, most favorite buddy. In the world forever.” He slipped his little paw into my hand and looked up at me with the sweetest smile I have ever seen in the world forever.

All those times, I’d thought he was babbling, and here the kid had been telling me how much he liked me.

“Thanks, Markie, you’re my dutchdeefuddy too.”

Maybe the truth, in small, preschool-sized doses, wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.

Markie, holding my hand and swinging his feet as he sat on a kitchen chair, looked pretty calm.

The opposite of how I felt.

Maybe Dutchdeefuddy was on to something.

’d gotten home late from babysitting the night before. I hadn’t told Dutchdeefuddy’s parents about our talk. I was feeling about as wiped out as they looked. Romantic dates, right. My guess was that they’d been in a lawyer’s office.