Liar & Spy

  He’s getting his keys out. I stand in front of the Koffers’ door. Whoever they are.

  He’s watching me. “Everything okay over there?” He’s got his door open and he’s pushing his suitcase in ahead of him. I’m imagining Safer somewhere inside, having the realization that Mr. X has come home. That he’s trapped in there.

  “Um, no,” I say. “I—forgot the key. I’ll have to go home and get it.” I’m listening hard for Safer. What is he thinking right now? Will he come running out of the apartment? Will he hide under the bed? Whatever he’s doing, I figure I must be buying him some time, at least.

  “Oh, don’t bother,” Mr. X says. “I have a set of their keys inside. Wait right here.”

  “No,” I call after him, “it’s okay. Anyway, I have this, um, plant food downstairs. Special plant food. I forgot that, too.”

  He smiles. “Plant food? Is this for that little spider plant they have in the kitchen? I never realized they were so serious about that thing.”

  “Um, it’s sick. It’s got a disease. I have the medicine and stuff. For it.”

  “Oh.” Now he’s just staring at me, and it’s obvious he thinks I’m weird, like he’s not so sure he wants me feeding his dog after all.

  Safer’s had plenty of time to hide by now. He hasn’t made a run for the door, so I figure he must be planning to wait until Mr. X goes into the bathroom or something, and then he’ll come out from under the bed and make his escape. I might as well let him get on with it.

  “So, bye!” I say.

  And I run back downstairs.

  The phone is ringing when I fling my door open. I’m sweating and my head is pounding.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, we must have gotten cut off.” It’s Safer. “You still on the cam?”

  “Safer, are you okay? Where are you?”

  “At you-know-who’s. I’m right by the front door, ready to leave. Just checking in for the all-clear.”

  “For the all clear? Safer, are you still—upstairs? At Mr. X’s?”

  “Yup, ready to go when you say when. You won’t believe what I found, Georges. I have a lot to tell you.”

  And that’s when I figure it out.

  It’s like Sir Ott—all those little dots coming together to make a picture.

  “Just a second, Safer. I think one of the Koffers is coming in. You better sit tight for a minute.”

  “Really? Okay. I’ll wait for your word.”

  “Don’t move.” I put the phone receiver down very gently on the kitchen counter, and then I run up to Safer’s apartment.

  I don’t ring the bell. I knock, very quietly.

  Candy answers the door. “What’s wrong with the bell?”

  “Nothing. Is Safer here?”

  “Of course,” she says. “Safer is always here.” And she lets the door swing open. I rush past her and down the hall to the living room. Quietly.

  His back is to me. He’s standing at the window in his socks, holding Pigeon’s cell phone up to his ear with one hand. In his other hand are the binoculars. He’s looking through the window. At the parrots.

  “Georges?” I hear him say into the phone, “I’m ready to make my move. All clear?”

  “All clear,” I say loudly. “Make your move, Safer.”

  Safer spins around. There’s a look on his face that I’ve never seen before.

  “You’re a liar,” I say. “You lied about everything.”

  Safer says nothing, just keeps giving me that look and standing there with the binoculars in one hand and Pigeon’s cell phone in the other.

  “You never left your apartment,” I say. “You never went anywhere.”

  “I couldn’t go anywhere this time,” Safer says. “Mom asked me to babysit.”

  “There is no Mr. X. He’s just some guy whose dog you walk, right? He’s been away this whole week. You’ve been lying to me since the day I met you. What was the point, Safer? Just your sick sense of humor? Was it that much fun to watch me get all worked up about nothing?”

  He shakes his head. “Of course not. It was a game, Georges.”

  “I’m sick of games! I’m so, so sick of games, and all the stupid—”

  “Why are you so upset? This is what friends do, Georges.”

  “Friends? You tricked me. That’s what friends do? You give me the creeps, you know that?”

  Safer doesn’t say anything. What he does is turn back to the window and hold up his binoculars.

  “I’m getting out of here,” I say. And I stomp down the hallway.

  Candy sticks her head out of her room. “What’s going on?”

  I slam their front door.

  Rules of the Game

  I call Dad on his cell.

  “Just leaving,” he says. “Want to meet somewhere for lunch?”

  I tell him I’ll cook.

  He makes me promise no actual flames until he gets home. I spend half an hour shredding up string-cheese sticks and cracking eggs. I peel two cucumbers, cut them up, and put them in a bowl. I stack four pieces of bread next to the toaster.

  Dad comes in while I’m setting the table. I make us scrambled eggs with cheese, making sure the cheese is nice and melted before I turn off the heat.

  “Can I help?” Dad asks.

  “You could salt the cucumbers,” I tell him. “And put ice in our glasses.”

  We eat. “I love scrambled eggs!” Dad announces. “How could I have forgotten how much I love scrambled eggs?”

  I sit there thinking the secret to good scrambled eggs was probably the one true thing Safer ever told me.

  “So?” Dad says. “Tell me things!”

  I pour my heart out. I tell him everything about what happened with Safer and Mr. X, all of it.

  “I can’t be friends with someone like that,” I tell Dad.

  “Someone like what?”

  “Someone who lies.”

  “Was it a lie? Or was it a game?”

  “I hate games. I hate people who play games.”

  Dad nods. “Maybe you’re right to be mad. But isn’t playing games a way of being friends?”

  “Not if you don’t know it’s a game!”

  “What if he didn’t know you didn’t know?”

  “He knew.”

  “Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t.”

  “He did.”

  “How did all this get started?”

  I think. “The Spy Club.”

  “And did you go down there thinking you would find real spies?”

  “No. Obviously.”

  “So weren’t you kind of on notice from the beginning that it was a game?”

  “He acted serious. Like he believed it.”

  “Some games are played that way.”

  “I hate games,” I say.

  And then I pour my heart out for the second time in ten minutes, this time about Dallas Llewellyn and Carter Dixon. And the taste test.

  Dad looks miserable. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have done something, a long time ago.”

  I shrug. “It’s just dumb stuff. You know, kids being kids. I know none of it will matter in a few years.”

  He stares at me. “Who told you that?”

  “Mom. She always says to look at the big picture. How all of the little things don’t matter in the long run.”

  He blinks. “But they matter now, Georges. They matter a lot. What were you planning to do, just hold your breath all the way through middle school?”

  “No. No one can hold their breath that long.”

  “Look, I know Mom talks about the big picture. She wants you to remember that you’ll find new friends, that life is always changing, sometimes in really good ways. But life is also what’s happening now, Georges. What Dallas and Carter are doing is happening now, and you can’t just wait for it to be over. We have to do something about it. Now.”

  It’s weird, because I know Mom is right about the big picture. But Dad is right too: Life is really just a bunch of nows, one
after the other.

  The dots matter.

  “First thing in the morning,” Dad says, “I’m going down to school with you and we’re airing this whole thing out. There are rules about this kind of thing, Georges. Important ones.”

  And I feel so good when he says that. I’m about to say yes, let’s go to Everybody’s Favorite Diner and get egg sandwiches and then walk to school together and all this can be over. But then I hear myself telling him no. Because I have an idea.

  There are all kinds of rules. There are written-down school rules like Dad is talking about, and there are rules we just live with without even asking ourselves why. Candy is right. Why shouldn’t her table be the cool table? Who says I have to try to steal the other team’s flag? Why does Bob have to spell dumb with a B?

  What if you decided to make your own rules?

  “But you’ll tell me if you need me?” Dad says after I explain. “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  “I’m so sorry, Georges. I should have been around more lately. I should have … been here, cooked for you,” he says. “Yum Li is right. It hasn’t been easy because Mom hasn’t wanted to force you to—”

  I stop him. “So cook something,” I say.

  He looks at me a second, then stands up and starts going through the fridge. “I know,” he says. “I know exactly what to cook.”

  Dad cooks milk shakes. In the blender. Then we kick back with Sir Ott for some baseball. I don’t think about Safer, and I don’t think about Dallas, or the taste test, or my big idea that may or may not work. I just drink my milk shake, sit next to Dad, and think about how this now is the best one I’ve had in a while.

  Before bed that night, I spell Mom a note:

  MISS U MIS U MIS U

  There’s a shortage of S’s and only two M’s, so the last one is an upside-down W. I fall asleep to the sound of Dad murmuring into the phone behind his bedroom door.

  In the morning there’s a message from Mom:

  ME TOO PICKLE

  Blu Teem

  “I’ve been thinking,” I tell Bob English on Monday morning.

  “Yeah? About what?”

  “About the taste test. About the rules.”

  He leans his head on his hand. “Which ones?”

  “All of them.” And I tell him my plan.

  “I like it,” he says. “I like it a lot.” He reaches for his bag of Sharpies, fishes around in it, and pulls out a blue one. “Give me your hand.”

  The former members of the Blue Team are scattered all over the cafeteria at lunchtime—twelve bodies orbiting the white-hot sun of the cool table. There are a few loners like me and Bob, a few twos like Carl and Karl, and one group of three: Chad, Anita, and Paul. We’re like Seurat’s orange dots hidden in the bright green grass, the ones you don’t even see unless you know to look for them.

  We talk to half of them at lunch and catch the other five after gym. I explain my plan while Bob stands behind me and flips his blue Sharpie. They all listen carefully and agree right away, but I make each person stop for a second, and I ask, “Are you sure?”

  And every one of them says yes, and then holds out one hand, to Bob.

  After school, Bob walks me to Bennie’s, flipping his Sharpie into the air and catching it. His eyes never leave his blue pen. He doesn’t even look for cars at the corner.

  “You should really look for cars,” I tell him.

  “We’re a team now,” he says. “You were looking for both of us.” And then he waves and walks off.

  Dad is home when I walk in, sitting on the couch with his laptop. The apartment smells like chicken and garlic.

  Safer doesn’t call.

  There’s no note under the door.

  I check under my pillow before bed. Nothing.

  Taste Test

  When we file into the science room on Tuesday, Mr. Landau is leaning back against his desk with his arms crossed.

  “PROP,” he starts, “is a chemical compound that ten to twenty percent of the human population can’t—”

  Someone squeals in excitement. There’s no other word for it. It’s a squeal.

  Mr. Landau glares. “—can’t taste at all. The other eighty to ninety percent of us can taste PROP. Some will be more sensitive to it than others. It isn’t a pleasant taste. Very bitter, in fact.”

  “Taste-test. Taste-test,” someone starts chanting. It’s Carter.

  “G-test, G-test,” Dallas says, pointing at me.

  Mr. Landau’s eyes follow Dallas’s finger right to the middle of my chest, and he growls, “One more sound and you’re both out of here.” I wonder if he even knows what “G-test” stands for, or that his class is now just another way for Dallas to pick his next victim. Or, even better, an excuse to keep picking on me.

  Mr. Landau starts talking about chemical compounds and genetic differences, and everyone is bouncing in their seats.

  Bob English is messing with his bag of Sharpies. He huddles over his notebook. And then he tears off a sheet of paper, folds it once, and slides it over to me. “Just a reminder,” he whispers. “Pass it on.”

  I open the note and read:

  Reemembur: Blu Teem stiks togethur.

  Smial no madder whut.

  No wadder.

  I refold the paper, locate the nearest Blue Team member, who is Natasha Khan at Table Five, and I pass it to her. As she reaches for it, I get a glimpse of the blue dot on her palm.

  I watch Natasha read it. Her expression doesn’t change. She passes it to Eliza Donan.

  Mr. Landau holds up a skinny roll of paper. It looks like a roll of white ribbon. He walks around the room, tearing off strips of paper and handing them out. Mandy stares at hers like it holds the secret of the universe.

  Meanwhile, Bob’s note is making its way around the room.

  Eliza to Kevin.

  Kevin to Anita.

  Anita to Chad.

  Palm to palm.

  Dot to dot.

  Mr. Landau gets to our table, tears off two slips of magic paper, and hands one to Bob English. Then he hands me mine. It reminds me of a fortune from Yum Li’s. A blank one.

  “Do you think everyone saw the note?” I ask Bob.

  “Think so,” he says, tapping his pen cap against his teeth.

  “All right,” Mr. Landau says finally. “There are twenty-four students in the class. Statistically, at least two of you should not be able to taste the compound on the paper.”

  I can see Mandy’s hands shaking.

  “When I give you the signal, place the strips of paper on your tongues,” Mr. Landau says. “If you do taste the compound, it will be strong and unpleasantly bitter, so you may line up—calmly, please—at the fountain for water.”

  I see Dallas’s mouth moving—I realize he’s mouthing “G-test, G-test,” staying silent so that Mr. Landau doesn’t kick him out. Carter is rocking in his seat, keeping time with Dallas.

  I look over at Jason, but he’s paying no attention to them. I see him tap the hand of David Rosen, the last Blue Team member to read Bob’s note. David glances at Bob, who shrugs and looks at me.

  Who is Jason now, I wonder? If he reads that note and passes it to Dallas or Carter, everything will be ruined.

  I nod, and David slides the note over to Jason. I watch him read it, and wonder if he knows about Ben Franklin’s spelling reform movement. I doubt it.

  “All right,” Mr. Landau says. “Let’s get this over with.”

  When I put my paper on my tongue, a bitter taste fills my mouth and nose. It turns out that I am a PROP taster, like 80 or 90 percent of the world. And what I’m tasting right now is pretty awful.

  But I pretend otherwise. I take a deep breath, smile, and look around the room. Bob English is next to me, doing the same. I can see his eyes watering.

  Mandy is screeching and running for the water fountain, waving both hands in front of her mouth. She looks accusingly at Gabe, who’s just sitting there looking surprised that nothing
has happened. His eyes aren’t watering. He really doesn’t taste it.

  A few kids are already lined up in front of Mandy for water—Dallas and Carter are there, of course.

  Natasha Khan stays in her seat.

  Eliza Donan.

  Carl and Karl.

  David Rosen.

  Chad Levine.

  Paul Kim.

  Anita Wu.

  Joanna Washington.

  Kevin Anderson.

  All in their seats. All smiling.

  Jason is still in his seat, too. He gives David Rosen a thumbs-up.

  And then it is over. The taste in my mouth starts to go away. Jason, Gabe, Teresa Conchetti, and every member of the Blue Team are still in their seats.

  “Fifteen nontasters,” Mr. Landau says. “Not at all what I expected. What an interesting group of people you have turned out to be.”

  Dallas lifts his head from the water fountain and looks at the fifteen kids sitting in their seats. I can see his eyes bouncing from me to Jason to Teresa to Gabe to everyone else. He wipes his mouth and mutters one word: “Idiotic.”

  At lunch, Dallas and Carter and Jason sit together with Teresa, Mandy, Gabe, and the others. They all have bagels. Nothing has changed, but I feel different.

  I eat my lasagna and do my homework. Bob English draws next to me, eating a sandwich from home. We don’t talk much, but it’s nice to have him there. I’m about to get up to dump my tray when Bob looks up and barks out a laugh.

  “What?”

  “You know what that was? This morning? Sitting there smiling with that gross taste in my mouth? Watching Dallas’s lamosity get totally frustrated?”

  Lamosity is not technically a word. But who am I to say that Bob shouldn’t use it?

  “No,” I say. “What was it?”

  “It was sweet. And it was bitter. Get it?” He raises his eyebrows. “It was bittersweet.”

  Which cracks us up.

  Chad, Anita, and Paul are coming toward us.

  “Hey, Chad needs his dot touched up,” Anita tells Bob. “His got partly rubbed off.” Chad opens his hand to reveal a blue smudge.