“The cookies taste better than the tea,” she says.
“No, the tea’s great,” I lie.
Little lies are fine—aren’t they? Ones that make her feel good?
But what about the big lies? The ones that protect her? Aren’t those okay, too?
She gulps the rest of her tea and takes my cup. “I’ll finish yours. Have a cookie.”
The cookie is bad in a very good way—like her. Packed with chocolate chips. Walnuts. So much butter my father would have a panic attack. Watch out, arteries.
“You made these?” I ask.
“All by myself.” She flutters her eyelashes.
Nia’s domestic. I never knew that.
And I love it. Maybe that makes me a typical pig guy. But who wouldn’t love a girl who feeds him chocolate—especially when his typical dessert is half a banana?
“Have more,” she says.
I take two.
“Don’t get used to this girlfriend-baking-you-cookies thing,” she says. “I quit baking a long time ago.”
Which is kind of a relief. My Nia is still inside the baking goddess.
“I can make you rye toast,” I tell her.
“Pass.” She grabs another cookie.
“What else did you do when you were eight?” I ask.
“All good things. Being eight was the best,” she says.
I nod. “When I was eight, I had a brother. And a mother.” Everything would change in two years. But I didn’t know it then.
What changes are coming now? What don’t I know about?
Nothing can be as bad as losing Mom and Winston.
“When I was eight, I hadn’t screwed anything up yet,” Nia says slowly.
“I was a Boy Scout. Big shock, huh?”
She answers me with a long kiss. I run my hands down her bare arms. Shoulders to elbows to wrists. She has goose bumps, even in the muggy Florida night.
Maybe that’s because of me.
Sometimes I forget she likes me the same way I like her. When we stop, Nia is smiling. “I was in Girl Scouts.”
“Sure you were. Was it a special troop with black uniforms?” She gives me a little shove. “No! And I earned a ton of badges.”
“For what?” I picture what she’d get them for now. Cutting class. Kissing with tongue. Making beautiful art.
“I got them for all kinds of things—camping, running a lemonade stand, helping old people.” Nia runs her finger across and down her front, like she’s touching a sash. “My favorite was the pet-care one, because it had a cat on it.”
“Did you have a pet?”
“Just the fish Mom bought me, so I could do the badge. It died. But they let me have the badge anyway.”
“Killing a fish sounds like a pretty major screwup,” I tease.
She’s staring off into space. Answers slowly. “No. I was a really good Girl Scout.”
“I can’t picture it.” All I can imagine is a miniature Nia. Long wild hair and ripped jeans, with baby army boots. And, I guess, a green sash.
“Then I started to change.” Nia lifts the container of tea. “More?”
Bravely, I nod.
She laughs. Dumps the rest outside of the lean-to.
“Why’d you stop being good?” I ask.
She’s told me what she’s done. But she never explains why it happened.
“Being good got less interesting.” She shrugs.
“I know what you mean.” I eye her tank top.
“But now …” Her voice trails off. I meet her eyes.
She looks down at the ground. Shy, suddenly.
“What?” I ask.
When she doesn’t answer, I take her hand. Gentle. But firm enough to let her know I’m there. Listening.
“You make me feel like I’m eight,” she says. “Like I want to be good again.”
What do I say? Do I tell her it’s not me? It’s the Messages?
Would she love me less?
Maybe even hate my guts?
“If someone like you loves me …” Her tongue stumbles a little over the L-word.
“Which I do.”
“Then I might be worth something. Even after all the stupid things I’ve done.” She lets out a shaky laugh. Uses her other hand to brush tears from her eyes.
How can she not see how amazing she is?
“You’re worth something. You’re worth everything,” I tell her. “I’d do anything for you.”
“Me, too.”
I’m holding both her hands now. Like we’re making vows to each other.
Now is the time to tell her everything.
Convince her the Messages are real—even though my own Messages have been telling her differently.
Confess to feeding her my own words. Helping her to fight. But not giving her a chance to do it herself.
We lean closer. Closer. Her lips move down my neck. Her tongue flicks, teases.
I could push her away. Tell her we have to talk.
“I love you,” I say weakly.
“I love you, too,” she whispers.
Now her mouth is hovering over mine. If I don’t say something now, the moment will be gone. We’ll be too busy doing other things.
Things I’m not going to stop until she does.
She closes the gap. I don’t stop her. I don’t say anything.
Instead I pull her closer, and we fall on the blanket, on top of the wood cups. There’s a small cracking sound.
“They broke,” Nia says.
“We’ll make more,” I tell her.
“It doesn’t matter.”
We go back to kissing. And touching. We stay in the woods a long time.
It’s a perfect night. Or it would be, if I didn’t feel guilty.
But if that’s the price to pay for keeping her, I’ll live with it.
HER TOES ARE on my ankle. Traveling up my leg. Under my pants. Soft, tickling toes. Naked naughty toes.
“Stop that.” I say it over the noise of the Messages warning me. They’re louder when we’re not in the woods. “I mean—please stop that.”
Nia drops her foot like she’s wearing a lead boot. “I thought you were my boyfriend.”
“Not here. Don’t do that here.”
We’re in the rocking chairs at Pondside Park, studying. Which means Nia’s distracting me, and I’m trying to keep her from blowing my cover.
Sort of. The distractions aren’t so bad.
But there are people everywhere. They all know the rules. I don’t want them seeing me—me, Campbell Banks’s kid—breaking them.
“You weren’t so boring last night.” Nia tucks both feet under her. The pianos from my custom Message mix get louder, for a second. I have the player in my backpack feeding us the good stuff.
“We were safe then,” I tell her. “But we should have studied in the dining room today.”
She doesn’t meet my eyes. Her pencil is roaming over her sketchbook, leaving curved gray trails behind it.
“Things are different in public,” I say. “We’re not safe.”
Nia snorts and flips to a fresh page. “Are you still trying to sell me on those secret … M … M …” Her mouth looks like it’s glued shut.
The boosters I keep giving her are working. They undo my big mistakes. I never should have told her the truth. What if she’d believed me? What if she’d told?
Worse—what if Dad had gotten ahold of her and “fixed” things?
We’re meant to be together.
An older man with a Red Sox cap sits in the chair closest to Nia. He nods his head at me and I roll out my flawless good-kid smile.
“Don’t you have math homework? I could help.” I say it loud enough for the man to hear.
“Screw math.” Nia looks at me, finally. Gives me an empty-eyed smile like a good Candor girl. She can play at it when she wants.
She just doesn’t want to very often. But I guess she doesn’t really understand how important it is to hide.
If I explaine
d that, I’d have to explain other things. The things I want to keep a secret.
“Screw math, huh? I’ve heard of that. They use it for construction, right?” I ask.
“I better learn it, then. I won’t be going to college at this rate,” Nia says.
“Every student should aim for college.” The Message crowds out what I really wanted to say. That it doesn’t matter. That her art is more beautiful than anything I’ll ever do.
Nia rolls her eyes. “Is it hard being so good?” she asks.
I wish I could tell her the truth. That it’s like scratching an itch—with a knife. But the man is sitting there. Besides, I don’t tell her everything. If I did, would she still want to be with me?
The man gets up and walks away. I give my rocker a push. It makes a gritty noise against the cement.
“You make it hard to be good,” I tell Nia.
She keeps her eyes steady on her drawing. Her hand doesn’t stop moving. But the corner of her mouth twitches. I’m forgiven, I think.
Maybe this won’t be so hard. She draws. I stare at her. Fit in some extra-credit calc.
I can handle this. I can control it.
The fall sun feels perfect: warm, without the punishment of summer. I slide off my shoes and pull off my socks. Stick my feet out of the shade.
“Wild man,” Nia murmurs.
There are kids all over today—getting frozen yogurt, walking to the library, running errands for their parents. A normal day. We fit inside it.
But then I see a blonde head bobbing down the sidewalk. She’s stopping at every street pole, leaving a piece of paper hanging on each one.
Mandi has a familiar-looking helper, too: Sherman.
I don’t need to see either of them today. It’s not that I’m ashamed of being with Nia. And I don’t care how it makes Mandi feel.
It’s just that Mandi knows me better than most people. She knows the perfect part of me, at least. That means I can’t be the real me around her—the person I am with Nia.
It would make Mandi too suspicious.
“I should go.” I shove my notebook into my backpack. The music inside stops. It must have hit the off button.
“But there’s still daylight. Isn’t it against your religion to stop studying before dinner?”
“We didn’t study yesterday,” I remind her. We went to the woods again. Our playground now. Nobody else’s.
“There’s not enough of yesterday.” Nia pulls my notebook out of the bag. “Do this now so we can do something better tomorrow.”
“How come you get to skip your homework?” I ask.
“Because I am the definition of a lost cause.” She says it casually. But it has to eat at her. Even with my help—when she’ll let me do it—her grades have been bad.
“You’re smart, you know,” I tell her.
She just stares down at her sketch pad, pencil moving. I’m not sure she even hears me when she’s drawing.
Mandi is closer now. I can read the top of her posters: TAG, in big letters across the top.
And then there’s Sherman. He follows her to each post. Pulls pieces of tape from a brown roll and hands them to her when she gestures.
He never takes his eyes off her.
I can’t leave when she’s so close. She’d see, for sure. Besides, I want to know what Sherman is doing to her. With her, I mean. Is it really what it looks like?
Mandi holds out her hand without looking. Sherman puts tape in it. She tosses her head, ponytail swinging. Says something. Probably telling him he makes the tape balls in the wrong shape.
Both hands drop to his side. He doesn’t stop staring at her, but his whole body sags.
Sherman looks different these days. Pressed khakis. Polo shirts. A buzz cut. If the outside means anything, he’s changed completely.
But he avoids me. Crashes through the hall like a scared hippo when I see him at school. I thought he was embarrassed or scared.
But now I wonder if he was avoiding me because of Mandi.
Another pole—the closest one to us, now. He gives her another tape ball.
Then she rewards him. Turns around and gives him that bright shiny smile. The one she used to save for me.
Sherman’s cheeks turn pink. He licks his lips.
“Oscar?” Mandi switches off the laser-beam smile.
Nia turns to look.
“It’s Mandi,” I say. Like she doesn’t know.
“Is it too late for the dining room?” Nia mutters.
Sherman is whispering something to Mandi. She shakes her head. Then she cocks her finger to him—come—and strides over to us.
“They’re coming over,” I say. Like I’m the voice-over guy. Not the poor sucker living this moment.
“Does she taste like bubble gum? Or just look like it?” Nia asks. She rests one elbow on the chair arm and drops her chin in her hand.
Finally I think of something right to say. “You taste like SweeTarts.”
A slow smile curves Nia’s lips. It’s still there when they reach our chairs.
“It’s good that you’re here.” Mandi holds out one of the posters.
Sherman tries to give her a piece of tape.
“It’s for them,” Mandi says through clenched teeth. “Drop the tape. Please.”
The whole roll of tape thunks to the ground. But Sherman doesn’t look hurt. He’s staring at her like she’s a brand-new jumbo pack of Tasty Kakes. So delicious she must be a hallucination.
Mandi rattles the poster. “Our first meeting is Tuesday.”
Nia takes it. “I needed some scrap paper.”
Mandi’s eyes wince, like she’s been pinched. “It’s important to keep our community beautiful.”
Sherman nods. “That’s right. Graffiti is wrong.”
Nia lets out a low laugh. “Oscar worries all the time about graffiti.”
Not funny, I want to tell her. She knows all the ways to torture me. Sometimes it doesn’t feel good.
“Right, Oscar?” Nia asks. I ignore her and all the Messages fighting to flood my mouth.
“How are you feeling, Sherman?” I ask. “You seem different.”
His eyes shoot to Mandi. “She likes me and it’s okay. I’m just lucky, is all.”
“Is he high or something?” Nia asks.
Sherman is horrified. “Drugs are wrong. Always treat your body with respect.”
“Maybe you should try getting high.” Nia winks.
“You’re rude.” Mandi straightens even taller. Then she looks at me. “She’s rude.”
Nia’s looking at me, too. Expecting something, like Mandi. Both of them expecting me to be the Oscar they know.
I remember the day when Nia drew me on the lawn. It felt like Mandi won then. But things are different now.
“Nia’s my girlfriend,” I say.
Mandi grabs Sherman’s elbow. “Sherman Golub is my boyfriend. Sherman Golub makes me happy.”
Sherman swallows hard. His eyes meet mine for just a second. He looks guilty, or maybe just nervous. But then he’s back to looking at Mandi like he just found her under the Christmas tree.
“I guess we’re all big winners.” Nia crumples the poster and tosses it on the ground.
I go for it without even thinking. It’s in my hand a split second before Mandi’s nails scrape the pavement. Reaching for the same thing.
Mandi’s fingers brush mine. She pulls back like I’m oozing acid. “Everyone wins when things are tidy.”
Nia’s look tells me I screwed up.
But in my head, I hear the Message Mandi said. Part of me thinks she’s right. I can’t help it.
Even if it makes Nia love me less.
IT’S BEEN RAINING for days. The woods are filled with puddles. The puddles are filled with slimy slithering things.
The woods are off-limits, for now.
But neither of us wants to wait for things to dry out. So tonight we’ll meet at the shed.
It’s late. Time for good boys and girls t
o brush their teeth and put on their jammies. I take the usual precautions and sneak out.
Her taste is already in my mouth. I want her to touch me. Press her body into mine and trail her fingers down my back.
But it’s not just that. I want to be with someone who knows who I really am. And still loves me.
When I get close, I can tell something is wrong. Light shows through the gaps in the picket fence, where it should be dark. Rock music is playing. I know the song. It’s from my secret stash.
Not even Nia has the key. Someone broke in.
I close the gate silently and creep close. The door to the shed is wide open. It’s easy to slide behind it and listen.
There’s a loud belch.
“You’re a disgusting slob.” A girl’s voice, laughing. Slurred.
Is it Nia? I’m not sure. Why would she be here with someone else?
Did she forget it’s our night? Isn’t every night our night?
“I’m a big fat evil slob. No way she’d ever want me for real. Not like she wanted Oscar.” It’s a familiar whine. Sherman.
I wish the pigs had got him.
“Maybe she just likes tall boys. You’re almost as tall as Oscar,” the girl says. Yes, Nia. It’s her. But I can’t believe it. Did she invite him here? Or find him here?
Either way she’s with him now. It makes me sick to my stomach.
“I’m not exactly an upgrade,” Sherman says. “Nobody’s as good as Oscar. It’s impossible.”
I risk a peek through the crack between the door hinges.
There’s Sherman, sitting with his back against the potting sink, legs spread wide. He’s holding a bottle of my best stuff. And Nia. Sitting far away. Holding a red cup in her long, beautiful fingers. Betrayer fingers.
“Oscar’s better than perfect.” Sherman taps his finger against his temple. “He’s in control, unlike everybody else around here. Buncha brainwashed babies.”
“Enough with the brainwashing talk.” Nia’s voice is loud. She jumps to her feet.
I pull back. I don’t want her seeing me, not yet.
Heavy walking noise—she must be wearing her boots. “Let me tell you something,” she says. “There’s no such thing as secret M-M-Messages. Nobody is being brainwashed.”