I swear she just came through here… I think, my eyes straining to find the person I’m looking for through the array of students in the area.
I make my way through clusters of people absorbed in hushed conversation before I catch a glimpse of the individual I think is Cara. From the back of her head, I can see the hair color is the same shade of dirty blonde.
She is off to the side of the gym, near a set of dumpsters. She’s just leaning up against the wall when a white car pulls up at the curb. I would think this is her ride, but her parents never drive her and I don’t think she’s dating anyone… We’re not extremely close, but we do talk in AP physics.
I pause in my pursuit, rubbing my hands together rapidly, trying to generate some heat. It is too cold for this.
When I look up I see Cara press a handful of rolled bills into the palm of a man that climbed out of the car. He appears to be around thirty and is clad in a dark suit of expensive fabric.
The man’s features are hard, sharp lines. He is more than a little intimidating as he stands before Cara, but if she notices, she doesn’t show it. I keep myself successfully hidden behind the brick of the gymnasium building.
The cold wind burns my skin. This is not good. What is she thinking? Something like this? On school grounds?
The exchange between Cara and the man is finished quickly. I approach Cara when it’s over. We may not be close friends, but I don’t feel right about going to the principal with this without giving her some kind of warning.
I’d heard rumors, but dismissed them. I figured she was just the newest target of gossip, after making the basketball team. I didn’t think it was true.
Not hiding my presence, I move closer. “You know I just saw that, right? I hope you can explain that. If you can’t”—Cara watches me with round blue eyes—“I hope you can explain that.”
Shocked and scared, Cara stumbles on her words. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do, though.” She’s not going to lie to me.
Cara is visibly uncomfortable with the situation. She wrings her hands around one another twisting her thin fingers together and then untangling them again. She has every right to be uneasy. First thing tomorrow I am going to tell administration. I have to. I am not a liar.
“The money?” I prod. “Why did you just give Mr. Business a wad of cash?” Yes, the whole school knows Cara has more money than most, but really? The scene I just witnessed screams suspicious.
Is she trying to draw attention to herself? Really, how cliché is it to be doing something like this in an alley?
“It was nothing. I’m trying to… reinvent myself. That was my last transaction, I swear.” There is honesty on her face, real despair. The kind you only see when someone is pleading with you for something. When they are totally at your mercy, asking you for help.
“What were you purchasing?”
“Nothing!” She denies vehemently. “I was paying off debt.”
“I don’t believe you.” It’s too good a story. Like the ones my father gives my mother when he’s out all night and comes home smelling like some other woman’s cheap perfume.
“I’m done with that.”
Again, there’s truth in her words. Her voice is clear and bright and certain, but I still feel weary.
“What, specifically?”
“Selling.”
This is worse than I thought. She was selling whatever drugs she purchased from that man.
“Like I said, I’m redeeming myself. Cleaning up my act. I have a makeover scheduled tonight and everything. A new year, a whole new me.”
Apparently that is her new year’s resolution. It’s a good one, but just the mention of the recently passed holiday reminds me of the weather. A sharp chill reminds me of my frozen yet burning hands, and I curse myself for not trying to find her in the main school building.
“Well… it’s none of my business.” Though I do feel like it is my job to make sure she doesn’t continue doing this. “I’m just here-”
“Oh!” She exclaims, looking utterly delighted. Her face is alight with joy, her rosy cheeks flush, and her blonde locks shining even in the shadows of the alley under the cloudy sky. She lights up the darkness of the space with her presence. “The newspaper interview, for basketball…” The delight is gone now, and she puts the nail of her index finger between her perfect teeth. “I’m trying to turn a new leaf right now and I don’t really have the time so…”
“So no interview for me?” I guess.
“Sorry.” She wraps her hands around her backpack straps and then her signature smile is back, warm and comforting. “Will I see you tomorrow? In the lunchroom?”
“Sure…?” It comes out as more of a question because we’ve never sat together. Ever since the beginning of the year, Cara has sat with a few of her friends, all basketball girls. Maybe she really is trying something new. Maybe she just needs me to be her friend right now.
“Okay. I’ll see you then!” She turns and flounces away, her blonde locks bouncing with each step. As she disappears into the groups of students I realize I believe her. About all of it.
As I turn and walk away from her, there is the added weight of her secret on my chest. I feel like my father.
My newspaper teacher asks me why the interview went so fast.
I tell him the story has to be scrapped, at the request of the subject.
Because those words never actually left her mouth, it is the first lie I tell.

It takes two weeks of sitting together at lunch, and finding her in the mornings before school, but soon I am Cara’s best friend. We spend time at each other’s houses, occasionally we carpool to school or the mall, and from time to time we study together for our AP chem class.
I am closer to her than anyone. She came back to school the day after the alley-incident, her hair a dark brunette, like mine, and her face free of exaggerated make up. A makeover, just like she’d assured me. Now, people occasionally mistake us for the same person. Along with the hair we’re almost the exact same height, and we have similar builds. Cara has become partial to stealing, well “borrowing”, things from my closet.
Aside from the fact that my clothes keep mysteriously disappearing for spells of a few days, I haven’t noticed anything suspicious about her. Even the rumors have stopped. I believe her when she tells me that she’s done with “that stuff”.
My mom doesn’t. She doesn’t know everything I know, but something about Cara makes her uneasy. Strange, because she never suspects my dad of a thing.
Mom decides to confront me about it when Cara leaves the Saturday morning after she first spends the night.
“That girl is trouble.”
“Cara’s done nothing wrong.” This is the second lie I tell. It would be more accurate had I said “she’s not doing anything wrong” as in, currently, but even I, the girl who never lies, can tell that that would sound suspicious.
“I don’t know. I get this feeling when she’s around. She’s just too outgoing.”
I roll my eyes. “Please, mom. She’s nice, maybe a little too friendly but she just wants you to like her. Besides we’re juniors. It’s in our nature to be overdramatic.”
My mother dismisses my opinion like it’s nothing. The same way she dismissed it when I was ten and I told her I thought daddy was up to no good at night. She ruffled my hair and assured me it was nothing.
“Just a feeling about her.” Then on one of her erratic tangents she changes the subject. “You two do look alike, though. It’s almost scary.
I laugh, and though the noise comes out of my mouth, it sounds like Cara’s laugh. “I know. We’re like sisters.”

About three weeks after the alley-incident, my mother and father have another one of their non-fights. I am at the counter bent over several textbooks, when it happens.
Dad comes in, either not knowing or not caring that he is being obscenely loud and it’s close to midnight.
He is about as quiet as a tractor on a good day, and today he’s is as loud as a demolition crew. Not a good day.
He takes too long to enter and leaves the door open allowing frozen air to rush in. The kitchen loses its homey, comforting feeling instantly. I shiver in my seat and pull my coat around my shoulders, waiting for the heat to pick up the slack.
He shuts the door with excess force and drops his car keys on the counter rudely. Unfortunately he released them from about a foot above the counter, so they clatter on the granite then bounce to the floor. He stumbles over them, not picking them up. The keys settle under his feet and an accidental kick sends them skidding across the hard wood.
I make a mental note to put the keys on the counter before I go up to bed. If I don’t, at four thirty tomorrow morning he’ll be pawing through drawers, slamming cabinets looking for his car keys. When he doesn’t find them I’ll hear, “Marie! Where did you hide my keys?” Followed by several muttered complaints ranging from what a terrible wife mom is, to why she shouldn’t even be allowed to drive in the first place. When the day starts out like that it isn’t bound to be a good one.
He moves slow, deliberate, as though he has to think long and hard about each individual action. Even from my spot halfway across the kitchen I can tell he reeks of alcohol and some floral scent.
Welcome home dad, so good to have you back.
Mother, having heard the commotion, comes downstairs. Her feet move almost soundlessly across the oak floors. She is wrapped up, snug in her pink plush bath robe. Mom looks to me, her eyes glassy, with a dazed expression.
“Everything okay?” she yawns.
My poor mother. She looks so worn, and small. That robe almost swallows her whole. The lines around her eyes are more noticeable now. Even her skin seems a few shades paler than usual.
“Um…” I mean, dad’s home. Is that okay?
At this precise moment he decides to go poking around in the fridge, looking for something to eat. He yanks the fridge open and the ketchup bottle bounces out of the door. He mutters a curse while scratching at his partially bald head.
Really, father, so good to have you home
He doesn’t acknowledge my mom and me. He doesn’t make a move to pick up the ketchup, either.
My mother’s eyes lazily travel up to him, taking her eyes off the ketchup that has become the center of attention. She doesn’t even seem surprised by father anymore.
“Brian,” she says her voice still thick with sleep. “You’re home.”
He straightens up to his full height; a lazy smile crawls onto his face. His smiles lost their effect on me long ago. They are addictive, like eating potato chips. It’s too easy to believe he cares about you, even though he’s never around. In the second he pays attention to you, you feel like the luckiest person in the world. Unless you’re immune. I am. My mother is not.
“Why were you out so late?” My mother’s question, I know, has no hidden meaning. She curls her hands around a half-empty cup of cold coffee from after dinner and just watches him with her accepting blue eyes.
He puts a square of leftover lasagna that looks like a wrinkled piece of cardboard on a plate, punching in the microwave numbers as he ignores her. When he does acknowledge her, it is his usual response, “Had some work at the office.”
It is none of my business, how they choose to conduct themselves around one another. While this feels awkward to me, it has become married life for them.
There is one thing I do know though, I will never become my mother who watches, passively letting my father do as he pleases, without even bothering to call him out on it. Mom can’t be bothered to see the truth.
I wonder if, at one point, she cared enough to fight with him. Fight for their marriage. Cared enough to verify his stories, check his alibis. Or was it always just this, and nothing more?
I know I’ll never get answers.
Without drinking the coffee mom puts the mug in the sink. She and her pink robe disappear up the stairs. This time her footfalls are audible. Maybe accepting his lies weighs her down.

Lying doesn’t get any easier-there’s still a weight on my chest, but it seems… lighter somehow. Less heavy because of the way Cara’s smiles make me feel like I’ve made her day.
It seems to me, lying is an art form I can’t master.
“I think I failed that,” Cara says, referring to the test we just took. “How’d you do?”
Her question is odd because I know I did fine and she was copying my answers. “I probably did too.” This is a small lie; it doesn’t weigh as much.
“I’ll see you in a bit. I have to swing by the gym.”
She is just going after her basketball practice clothes… But I don’t believe it. I am not my mother. I care, I tell myself, I care if she’s lying.
Instead of letting her go, I follow. I stay just out of sight. Making sure she’s telling me the truth is important to me.
When I peek around the corner she is there. And she’s talking to the man in the dull gray business suit.
It’s nothing… pure coincidence.
As I examine him more closely, I find that he distinctly resembles the man I saw all those days ago. Similar height, same dark hair, broad shoulders, disturbing eyes.
Then he greets her, and she returns the sentiment. I feel like something is stopping my breathing, pressing on my throat.
He hands her something palm-sized, she presses another wad of money into his hand, flashing her mega-watt smile. Anger rips through me. I have to clutch at the brick building to keep myself from charging at her.

The man climbs into a black car with tinted windows.
I feel the hot whips of betrayal coursing through my veins. There are tears burning, hot and salty, in my eyes. They make everything just a little blurry.
I have to wait a moment before I get to the root of why I’m so upset. I had put so much trust in her, so much faith. I’m no longer sure if being forced to lie for her bothers me, or if I’m mad that, as her friend, she lied to me all this time.
It shouldn’t be a question; I’m not my father. I’m not a liar.
She is.
I come to my senses suddenly realizing I should confront her. My joints all seem locked in their positions and I have to pitch myself forward so I can move. Even then, my hands are still clenched in stiff, tight fists at my sides.
I come storming around the corner, my footsteps unnaturally loud against the pavement, anger building up inside me, pouring out my mouth. “Paying off debt? Reinventing yourself? Liar!”
Cara looks stricken, but more importantly stunned. She can’t believe I didn’t trust her. I can’t believe I did. “I did reinvent myself,” she explains. “I didn’t lie to you.”
The icy air cuts through my layers of clothes and if I weren’t smoldering with anger I’d be cold. Wind kicks up the sour smell of trash in the dumpsters, sending it toward us. The repulsive odor only serves to make my stomach churn more.
Maybe she did change, but she didn’t change this. She assured me she would.
“How could you?” I demand, selfishly. I want to know how she could justify betraying me, when I was supposed to be her friend. She doesn’t respond; I raise my voice. It comes out as more of a screech, and I’m surprised people aren’t coming to gawk at us. “You’ve been lying to me all this time!” I know I shouldn’t be yelling, but what’s the point? She betrayed me. Isn’t it my turn?
I raise a shaking hand to my head, squeezing the bridge of my nose to hold back my tears. I am not going to cry, not now. I won’t give her the satisfaction. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time.”
She rears back as if I’ve physically hit her. The flush on her cheeks tells me that she is just as angry as I am, just as suddenly. Anger is contagious this way.
She glares at me, but beneath the rage I see real discomfort. The kind that you can’t fake. She looks like she’s in pain.
The hurt in her eyes makes me rethink my words. I’m no longer fuming mad; I’m just worried about her. She will get into trouble if she keeps doing this. Cops are always cracking down on drugs at school. And I’ve seen too many homicide shows-I know that drugs get people hurt.
I have to tell the principal. I might as well end our friendship now, after all it is built on a growing mountain of lies.
Again the icy winter air slices through the seams on my jacket. This time, with my anger dissipating, I feel the cold. The sun peeks out from behind its cloud, and while this would make me happy any other time, I feel like it’s mocking my misfortune today.
“Cara… I can’t,” keep telling lies for you. Unshed tears choke off my words. “I don’t think I want-” to be your friend anymore.
But I know that last part isn’t true. It’s yet another lie. I still want to be her friend. I want to be the person she gossips with, the person she can steal Oreos from at lunch, the person who can be counted on to offer a ride home. I just can’t.
She doesn’t even let me get the sentence out. She glares at me like I’m the one who did something wrong and leaves.
Her anger is concentrated, directed at me. Her glare makes me want to shrink back, to disappear into the brick wall of the gymnasium behind me. Instead, I twist my hair tie around my wrist, pulling at it, a nervous habit. It might be hers, something I borrowed.
Cara is too calm, and I know I would feel better if she stomped off, or slammed the door when she entered the building without me.
She doesn’t; I feel strangely forgotten.
It’s the only fight we ever have.

When I come to school the next day I feel pounds lighter. I know that if I don’t want to be my mother, or my father, this is something I have to do. For Cara, and for her future. I throw open the door and march into the principal’s office. I ask to speak to Mr. Teroc.
The secretary sees the urgency on my face and immediately allows me in to see our principal.
As soon as I’m in his office the words start tumbling out. “I have something I need to confess. I-” was keeping a secret. Cara Penfield is selling drugs to students.
Our principal is a hulking man, but he isn’t as intimidating as the man in the alley. He has a condescending air to him, in the way he walks, the way he speaks. But somehow you get the sense that he really is looking out for you, in a patronizing way that adults sometimes do. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel like I am betraying Cara as much now.
“We know, Natalie,” he says, smiling proudly. He must be glad I’ve confessed to this, to knowing about Cara. “Thank you for coming to us with this.”
“You… you know?”
“Yes, Ms. Penfield came to us earlier this morning. She explained what happened, your argument. She is only worried about your future.”
Now I’m confused.
“I’m sorry, what are we talking about?”
“The police will be here in a few minutes, Natalie. We know what you’ve been up to.”
What? “I’m not…” the guilty one. “I don’t…” think you understand. Cara is the one that’s up to no good.
“Natalie, we have several student witnesses that say they saw a girl your size, with your hair color, dropping off packages and picking up money. Not to mention a few that saw someone matching your description having meetings with strange men on the side of the gym.”
What? How, how did this get so bad so fast?
“Ms. Penfield is a good friend. She is looking out for your best interests.”
But he’s wrong. She isn’t looking out for me.
“She isn’t…” my friend. She’s just someone l I kept a secret for.
This time the words I can’t say are bittersweet. The taste of the truth.