Liar (35 page)

She shakes her head and tuts, sounding for a second like Grandmother. I don't tell her so.

“You are sure you killed Zachary?” she asks, sitting opposite him at the table and giving him her warmest smile.

The boy pauses briefly in his eating, nods. “Was me,” he says almost cheerfully. A little bit of cereal flies out of his mouth.

Mom discreetly wipes the fleck of cereal from her cheek. I can see she's struggling to comprehend. “Where were you born, Pete?”

“Dunno.”

“Where are your parents from?”

“Dunno.”

“What happened to them?”

He shrugs.

Mom sighs. “Why are you not in an orphanage? With a foster family?”

“Dunno.”

“You live on the streets?”

“Parks, too. Benches. Stoops. Slept in sewers. I can sleep anywhere.” He sounds proud of his sleeping skills.

“
Mon dieu.
Does anyone know how you live?”

He looks up. The cereal's all gone. “How'd you mean?”

“Do you have any friends? Anyone who looks after you?”

“Nope. Just me.” He's not sad or upset. It's how things are, that's all.

“I cannot believe you live like this!” Mom says, her voice rising. She's plenty upset on the boy's behalf. “With no help or support? Pete, it is so wrong.”

The boy shrugs.

Mom takes his plate, ducks her head to avoid the bikes, and washes it in the sink. Her eyes are red.

“When do we go to the farm?” Pete asks.

“As soon as we get a car,” she tells him, putting the plate to drain in the rack above the sink.

He nods. At least he doesn't smell so bad now. There's still a funk to him, though. You'd have to take all the layers of his skin off to get rid of it. He may never smell okay, let alone good.

Not that it will matter for much longer.

“Got a car,” Dad announces. “I'll be back in half an hour. Be downstairs and ready. I'll call when I'm close.”

“Good,” Mom says. “Hurry.”

Light is streaming in through the windows. I go into my bedroom and take my pill.

BEFORE

Sometimes I don't think Zach felt the same way about me that I felt about him. Okay, not sometimes, often. Often I felt like that. We didn't have that long together. That one winter, a little bit of spring. Then I was away for the summer. Then early in the fall he was dead.

He didn't try to contact me once during the summer. Admittedly that was hard. No internet, no phone. I gave him an address for letters—the gas station. But who writes letters anymore?

I wrote him exactly one:

Dear Zach,

I run every day. I'm not sure how many miles. It's not like we have a real track or anything. I do the dynamic stretching. Knees to my face and that. It's not too hard. I think I'm faster.

See you in the fall.

Micah

I didn't send him kisses or love or tell him I missed him. But I did.

That was the longest summer of my life. I wish I could have been a wolf the whole three months. Wolf time was golden. Human time stretched out long and aching and not a word from Zach.

I wish we'd had longer.

I can measure our time together in minutes. Sometimes a week—two even—would go by without seeing him. Glimpses at school, his scent. Nothing real.

He didn't miss me the way I missed him.

He didn't love me the way I loved him.

There was nothing constant about his heart. Not like mine.

LIE NUMBER NINE

I do have a brother.

I
did
have a brother.

If only I'd made Jordan up.

He died.

I was twelve. He was ten. It was an accident.

We don't talk about it.

I
can't
think about it.

AFTER

It takes Dad considerably longer than half an hour to show up. He's borrowed a car from one of his journalist friends. It's battered and has a top speed of about forty miles. Dad drives. Mom sits beside him. I'm in back with the white boy. I'm along because my parents want me to keep an eye on him. I said no, but Mom and Dad insisted, and as soon as they did the white boy declared that he wouldn't leave without me.

Here I am in a car so small I can hear my parents breathing in the front seat. The windows are down despite the chill because the boy's still a bit too rank. No one's talking. The boy's peering out the window. He's been stuck that way since we left the city and there started to be real countryside.

He's definitely not playing with a full deck.

The farther we are from the city the more fall announces itself. Trees on the side of the highway have turned to flame—gold, red, purple as far as I can see. In the city, trees are still mostly green and lush. Fall's come late. I'm glad. I haven't been looking forward to my first winter without Zach.

“Cows!” the boy announces. “And another one! And another! And another! Five cows!”

At least he can count.

“Seven cows!”

This is going to be the most fun drive ever. Slow and cold with the cow-counting savant to entertain us. Kill me now.

“Eleven cows! Two horses!”

Please don't let him count and name every animal we pass.

“You've never seen a cow before?” Dad says.

“No,” the boy replies.

Mom turns from the front seat to look at him. “You have been outside the city before?”

The boy doesn't move from staring out the window. “Don't think so,” he says. “Never been in a car before.”

That can't be true. “What about a bus?” I ask.

“Nope.”

“What about the subway?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Used to sleep there. Don't see cows or horses out subway windows.”

“No,” I say.

“I like cows,” he says.

“There are cows on the farm. Four of them.”

He turns to look at me, making sure I'm telling the truth. “Really?”

“Yes, really. Cows, horses, pigs, geese, chickens.”

He's impressed. “Horses? Can I play with them?” I revise my estimate of his age further downward.

“I don't know about
playing
with them but you can help feed them,” I say. Maybe there'll be time before they kill him.

“Cool,” he says, turning back to the window. He's reminding me of a puppy. A puppy we are taking to be put down.

AFTER

We arrive at the road to the farm well before sunset, which is a first. But then, we don't usually leave before noon or come up on a weekday. We're against traffic the whole way. It's the densest leaf coverage since we left the city. The trees are close to the side of the dirt road, they lean in over it, obscuring the sun. Golds, reds, browns, and purples surround us. The light shining through the leaves sets them ablaze. It is beautiful.

The boy is openmouthed.

If I'm going to tell my parents about what the Greats have planned for the white boy—for Pete—now's the time. We're only about ten minutes from the house, even driving as slow as Dad is. What do I say to them? What do I say to Pete?

What would Zach want me to do? Get vengeance on his killer? Or forgive him?

“Is that a house?” the boy asks. “It's covered in trees.” You can see part of the porch and two of the windows. The rest is lost in the foliage.

Dad stops the car. “It is,” he says. “My mother's house. I grew up here. I'm sure you'll like it.” Because Dad sure didn't.

We all get out as Grandmother and Great-Aunt Dorothy walk down the front steps to meet us. Too late for me to say anything. I am a coward as well as a liar. But the boy's a killer. Zach's dead because of him.

“This is him, then?” my grandmother says, looking at the boy.

My cousins come crowding around. Pete cowers, ready to be struck. The wolfish ones stand back a bit, still scratched up. Yesterday they were wolves. But I can tell they're curious. More even than their human brothers and sisters and cousins.

“How old are you, boy?” Grandmother asks.

“Dunno.”

“He told me thirteen or fourteen,” I say, “but I think he's younger.”

“Could be. He
is
scrawny,” Grandmother says. “Come into the house,” she says to my parents. “Micah, show the boy around.”

“Okay,” I say. I'm relieved the Greats will explain what's going to happen to the boy. Better them than me. My mother will try to save him. I'm not sure whether I want her to succeed or not.

“Get back to your chores and lessons,” Great-Aunt tells the cousins. They melt away from the boy. He peers back at them, eyes wide. One of the youngest girls waves. He smiles at her.

This is not going to be easy.

“What's her name?” he asks.

“Um,” I say, “not sure. I can never keep them all straight.”

“I thought you said they were your family?”

“They are. They're my cousins, second cousins, like that. The old ladies are my grandmother and great-aunt.”

“Then why don't you know who's who?”

“I don't spend much time here and there's a lot of them.” Also, I don't want to know. I've always kept myself as separate as I can. I belong in the city. I am only ever here temporarily. “And she's not a wolf.”

I never wanted to belong on the farm. That's why I hardly talk to my cousins. I don't want to know them.

But I can't avoid knowing the wolves. When we change, we're a pack.

I do not want to be part of a pack with Pete.

“They're really your family?” he asks.

“Yes, they're really my family.”

“But they're all white.”

I roll my eyes. “You may have noticed that my grandmother's white and my dad's black. It's not that tricky to figure out.”

“But none of your cousins are black?”

“No.”

“So wolfs aren't all black?”

“Wolves. No. How could they be? You're a wolf. You're white.”

“I thought they'd be black like you.”

“I'm the only black werewolf I know.”