Claudia and the Little Liar

  “All right,” Vanessa replied sulkily. “I’d better go, Haley. I wouldn’t want her to get you in trouble again. ’Bye.”

  I hung up but kept my eye on the phone’s red light. In less than a minute, it went off.

  As I headed down the stairs, I met Haley, who was walking up. “I’m going to do my homework now,” she said in a snippy, irritated voice.

  “Okay, call me if you need any help,” I replied, ignoring her tone.

  “Not likely,” she muttered as she disappeared into her room.

  While Haley worked (or so I hoped), I ate my supper, then played Go Fish with Matt. I was glad we’d found an activity that didn’t involved the TV. Turning it on might have seemed as if we were tormenting Haley for not being able to watch.

  After an hour or so, Haley came downstairs with several sheets of paper and a notebook. “This is a math fill-in sheet. And that paper is my written response to a story we read in class today. And in my notebook are some questions about the Antarctic I had to answer.” She handed me another paper with her homework assignment typed on it. “My teacher sends this home now so my parents know exactly what homework I have,” she explained coolly. “You can see it’s all done.”

  Glancing at the assignment sheet, I saw that it was all there. “Terrific,” I said, smiling. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “It was bad enough,” she muttered.

  “Aw, come on,” I coaxed. “I hate doing my homework too, but everyone has to do it. I know it doesn’t seem very important, but it must have a purpose or they wouldn’t give it to you.”

  “Its purpose is to wreck our evenings and weekends,” Haley stated flatly.

  There were times I’d thought that myself, but it didn’t seem helpful to admit it just then. Like it or not, homework is given to you and it has to be done. There isn’t much point in not doing it because that creates more problems than it’s worth. In the end, it’s easier just to do it and get it over with.

  “Now can I call Vanessa?” Haley asked.

  “Sure. Go ahead,” I told her. She went into the kitchen and phoned Vanessa.

  Matt picked up TV Guide and pointed to a show he wanted to watch. I turned on the TV and we watched together. The Braddocks have closed-captioned TV. Any spoken words are written on the screen. That way Matt can read them and know what’s being said. I bet it helps him be a good reader. I read along — just to see what it was like — and sometimes I had to read pretty fast.

  In about fifteen minutes, I decided to get us each a soda. As I approached the kitchen, I could hear Haley, still on the phone.

  “Yeah, Matt and the traitor are watching something on TV now,” she was saying. “No, she can’t hear me with the television on.”

  The traitor? That hurt. Was that how she thought of me now?

  Obviously it was.

  “The little tattletale made me do every drop of homework and then she checked it against the assignment sheet,” Haley went on. “Can you believe that? Claudia used to be so cool. Now she’s changed.”

  Had I changed? I didn’t think so. It was Haley who had changed. The little tattletale. That was cold.

  I changed my mind about the soda and returned to the living room. I was stunned. I couldn’t remember a sitting charge ever being so hostile toward me. For an hour or two, sure. But not for days. It was especially bizarre coming from Haley, whom I’d known for so long. Vanessa seemed to be angry with me too. I’d known her just as long and as well as I’d known Haley.

  I tried to brush the incident off. Haley was just having some problems at school and it was easier to blame me than to look at the real issues. Vanessa was her best friend, so naturally she’d side with Haley. Logically, it was nothing to be upset about. I couldn’t help it, though. The plain fact was that my feelings had been hurt.

  Still … I reminded myself that I was the older and more mature person here. I’d rise above it and pretend I hadn’t heard what I’d heard. If I ignored it, the problem would probably just go away on its own.

  With that in mind, I acted cheerful and positive when I saw Haley again, even though she ignored me and spent most of the time in her room. When Mrs. Braddock returned around 8:30 Matt jumped up to greet her. She kissed him and told him to start getting ready for bed.

  “Haley did every bit of her homework,” I reported as Matt went up the stairs.

  “Good,” Mrs. Braddock said. “Haley,” she called up the stairs. Haley came right down to the living room. “Claudia says your homework is done,” her mother began.

  “Yes, no thanks to her,” Haley said.

  My jaw dropped. “Excuse me?” I said.

  “You kept blabbing on the phone to Vanessa, interrupting while I was trying to go over the math with her,” she said.

  I thought I was stunned before. Now I was out-and-out astounded. How could she say this?

  “Haley, you know I just got on the line to get you off the phone,” I said.

  “Yeah, right,” Haley scoffed. “That’s not too believable since you told me you don’t even think homework is important.”

  I looked at Mrs. Braddock, desperately hoping she wouldn’t believe this. “I told her that sometimes homework doesn’t seem important, but it has to be done,” I said.

  “That’s not what I heard,” Haley insisted.

  “Enough, Haley,” said Mrs. Braddock.

  Haley glared at me. Then she stomped out of the living room and up the stairs.

  “I’m sorry about Haley,” Mrs. Braddock apologized as she took money from her wallet. “Suddenly she’s become a handful. Her father and I aren’t sure what to do.”

  Mr. Braddock came in then and offered to drive me home. I said I could walk, but since it was dark, he insisted.

  In minutes, I was back at my own doorstep, happy to be away from Haley. She was certainly becoming quite a little liar. She’d lied about Matt’s having homework. And she’d lied about me to her mother — in front of my face!

  For some reason, she’d singled me out to be the object of her lies. And I didn’t like it one bit.

  “This is serious,” Kristy said the next day at lunch. As usual, all the older BSC members were sitting at the same table. I’d just finished telling my friends what had happened the night before at the Braddocks’.

  “What if all the kids we sit for start telling lies about us?” Kristy went on.

  “That’s not going to happen,” Stacey said. “Our kids wouldn’t do that.”

  “Haley has,” Kristy insisted.

  “That’s Haley,” Abby argued. “The rest of the kids aren’t like that.”

  “She’s already gotten to Vanessa,” Kristy reminded us. “I saw Haley and Vanessa talking to Becca and some of the other girls at practice last Saturday. Even if they don’t all start lying, they could spread the lies Haley has been telling. Suppose Becca goes home and says Claudia told Haley homework isn’t important. Mrs. Ramsey might think twice about asking us to sit for Becca and Squirt.” (Squirt is Jessi’s little brother.)

  “Mrs. Ramsey would know better than to believe something like that,” said Mary Anne.

  “Okay, maybe she would, since her daughter is a BSC member, but other parents might not,” Kristy said. “They were talking to Sara Hill too. Her parents don’t know us as well as some of our other clients.”

  Kristy has a way of worrying about things the rest of us don’t even think about. She insists on punctuality partly because we’re only at meetings for a half hour, but also because she frets that if we start coming late to meetings, we’ll also show up late for jobs, and then customers will get fed up and stop calling. It’s just how her mind works.

  In a way, I thought that she was making too big a deal over the Haley situation. Then again she might be right. Lies do have a way of spreading and causing even bigger problems. “What do you think we should do about it?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know,” she said, sitting back in her chair with a serious, thoughtful expression on he
r face. “But I’m going to watch Haley closely at basketball practice this afternoon.”

  * * *

  Josh and I had made plans to hang out together after school that Tuesday. Since he’d been complaining that he didn’t see enough of me, I felt I should make some time for him. We had no exact plan — only to be together.

  “Ready?” he asked, coming to my locker at dismissal.

  “Yup,” I replied as I pulled my backpack over one shoulder. We strolled down the hall together, not talking. It was odd, as if we’d run out of things to say.

  I began searching my brain for something to talk about. I didn’t really want to tell him about Haley. I wanted to take a break from thinking about her for a while. But I couldn’t come up with anything else. “You won’t believe what happened while I was sitting yesterday,” I began.

  He listened as I told him the story. Just talking about it made me feel upset all over again. Something else was bothering me too.

  Josh.

  I didn’t feel that I had his undivided attention. He appeared to be listening, but it was as if he were thinking about something other than what I was saying. There was a faraway look in his eye, and he didn’t comment at all.

  “Are you listening to me?” I demanded as we walked out of the school building.

  “Yes,” he replied. He looked surprised that I’d asked.

  “You’re not saying anything,” I pointed out.

  “That’s because I’m listening.”

  That made sense, I supposed, so I continued my story. But I couldn’t figure out Josh’s reaction. Normally he’d be making comments, jokes, observations. He wasn’t the type to listen without jumping in at certain points in the conversation.

  I remembered a science fiction movie I’d seen called Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Giant pods from outer space took over people’s bodies while they slept. You could tell when a pod had gotten someone because the person’s behavior changed.

  Between Haley and Josh, I was beginning to suspect we’d had a pod invasion recently.

  “So, what do you suggest?” I asked him when I had finished my story. “Do you have any idea why she’s changed so much?”

  “Who knows?” he said with a shrug.

  This was definitely not Josh. Normal Josh would have come up with a million possibilities and theories.

  “Did you even hear what I said?”

  “Yeah, some bratty little kid is driving you nuts because she’s lying her head off.”

  “Well, sort of,” I agreed. “But it’s more than that. This is a girl I know and used to get along with. It upsets me that she’s acting this way.”

  “Forget about her,” he suggested.

  “I can’t. She’s ruining my reputation with some of the other kids, and Kristy’s even worried that the things she’s saying might hurt the entire BSC.”

  He shook his head, disbelieving. “No way. I think you’re making too much out of this. Blow it off.”

  “I could try to, I guess,” I said quietly. It seemed to me that Josh just couldn’t be bothered thinking about this problem. Maybe something bigger was on his mind. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Is everything all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” he answered.

  We decided to walk to Brenner Field and sit on the big rock at its edge. There was no real reason to go there, but at least it was a destination.

  It was one of those super-windy March days that I really love. The trees were bending in the wind, and stuff from the streets was blowing around us. Josh tugged down on his baseball cap as the wind nearly lifted it from his head.

  As we walked, my mind raced, searching for an answer to the question of what was wrong with Josh. I didn’t believe that he was fine.

  By the time we were near the field, I had come to the conclusion that the problem had to be me. What else could it have been? If it had been something else, he would have told me about it.

  In the field, out on the baseball diamond, some kids were flying kites. One was in the shape of a dragon with a long tail that danced in the air. “That’s so cool, isn’t it?” I commented as we climbed the rock together up to the flat part where we could sit comfortably.

  “Yeah, it is,” he agreed. “Hey, do you want to try to make a kite together?”

  “Sure. I’ve never done it, have you?”

  “Once. It didn’t fly too well. I think I know what I did wrong, though. I put all this fancy junk on it to make it look cool, and it got too heavy.”

  “Want to work on it this Saturday?” I asked.

  For the first time that afternoon, Josh gave me a real, true Josh Rocker smile. “Sounds good,” he replied.

  I suddenly felt much more relaxed. Things between us now seemed normal. Maybe he’d just been in a mood. Everyone is entitled to a mood once in awhile.

  Without talking, we watched the kites fly. There’s something hypnotic about the way they sail in the sky, dipping and circling. At one point, the wind got hold of Josh’s cap and he had to scramble down the rock to recover it.

  As he climbed back up, cap in hand, I noticed a questioning expression in his eyes. He seemed about to say something. And then he did. “Claudia, do you think things between us are working out?”

  “Sure,” I replied quickly — maybe too quickly. The moment the words left my lips, I was hit with the unpleasant feeling that I’d just told a lie.

  I hadn’t meant to lie.

  I didn’t want to lie.

  But that was how it felt — like a lie.

  Josh smiled and seemed to accept my answer. But now I was upset over the question. I knew I loved Josh. He was so wonderful, how could I not love him?

  But was I in love with him? Or did I love him as a friend? That was what I wasn’t sure about.

  Abby wasn’t the only one who couldn’t believe it. But she was the first to hear it when she arrived at the GSBA basketball practice at the elementary school that afternoon.

  She’d stepped into the supply closet to get the basketball. Some of the girls, including Haley, didn’t see her there by the open door as they gathered just outside.

  “It’s true,” Abby heard Haley say to the others. “She tells my parents everything. And guess what I found out. All of them do. They’re spies for our parents.”

  “What do you mean?” Charlotte Johanssen asked.

  “Just what I said,” Haley went on knowingly. “If you tell them anything, they report it to our parents. If you do anything, they tell. I wouldn’t even be surprised if they look through our things after we’re asleep.”

  “That’s a lie,” Karen Brewer spoke up. “Kristy would never search through someone’s private stuff.”

  “Neither would Jessi,” Becca Ramsey said.

  “All right, maybe they don’t do that,” Haley conceded. “But I know they tell on us. Look at what happened to me. That’s proof.”

  “Hey, hey,” Abby said, walking out of the supply closet. “Did I hear someone say the BSC is a bunch of spies?” Leave it to Abby to get right to the point. She’s like that.

  Haley went pale. The others looked guilty too.

  But Haley quickly recovered. “Oh, no,” she said with a phony little laugh. “I didn’t say the BSC members were spies. I said, ‘Did you see the spies?’ There was a TV special on spies last night. It was very cool. Did you see it?”

  Haley wasn’t fooling Abby. “Are you sure that’s what you said?” she challenged her.

  Haley was a cool customer. “I know what I said,” she replied.

  Abby looked to the other girls to help her out, but they were all busy staring down at their feet or up at the ceiling. Even Karen examined her fingernails and wouldn’t provide any assistance.

  Becca was the only one who met her eyes. For a moment, Abby thought she might say something — maybe tell the truth about what Haley had said — but she kept her mouth closed.

  Abby couldn’t really blame her. No one wants to snitch on a friend.

  She tossed t
he ball to Haley. “Come on, let’s play basketball,” she said, ending the awkward moment.

  As they played, Abby stood on the sideline with Kristy and told her what she’d heard Haley say.

  “That’s crazy. The other girls didn’t believe it, did they?” Kristy asked with a scornful laugh.

  “Karen and Becca tried to defend us,” Abby replied. “But I couldn’t tell about the others. They might have believed it.”

  “No way!” Kristy cried. “They know we’re not spies. Just last week I patched up a big fight between Sara Hill and her brother, Norman. She was teasing him about his weight and he tripped her. I could have gotten them both in trouble but I didn’t say a word about it.”

  Abby chuckled. “I suppose it didn’t look too good — me bursting out of a closet and knowing every word they’d just said. It’s the sort of thing a spy would do.”

  “You were getting the basketball!” Kristy cried. “You couldn’t help overhearing! What are we supposed to do — pretend we don’t have ears?”

  Before Abby could reply, Kristy was blasting her whistle. She’d spotted Haley traveling with the ball.

  “I did not travel!” Haley objected. “You’re seeing things.”

  “Haley, if you back-talk a ref during a real game, you’re going to be sidelined and the team will be penalized,” Kristy warned her sternly.

  “Well, this isn’t a real game. It’s a practice, if you didn’t notice,” Haley shot back.

  Abby watched red splotches of anger form on Kristy’s face.

  With a quick blast on her whistle, Kristy called a time-out. Then she walked back to Abby.

  “Wow! I give you credit for not totally blowing your top,” Abby commended her.

  For a moment, Kristy looked as if she was almost too furious to speak. But when she did, it was in a remarkably calm voice. “If I hadn’t walked away, I would have lost it for sure. What is with Haley these days?” she wondered out loud.

  Abby shrugged and shook her head. “It’s as if she thinks she can control everything by lying.”

  “If this keeps up,” Kristy said, “I’m going to have to talk to Mrs. Braddock about Haley’s behavior.”