Lies I Told

  “It’s silly, especially since we know she’s living a new life somewhere.”

  “Yeah, but for a while, you thought she disappeared here,” I said.

  “I hardly remember what it was like to have her around,” she admitted. “I think I just miss the idea of her, you know?”

  I nodded. It was exactly how the concept of normal was for me: a vague notion, an almost memory of the way things were supposed to be.

  She stopped walking and turned to me. “Anyway, I want to give you something.” She held out her hand. Two silver bracelets sat in her palm, each with half an interconnecting heart dangling from the chain. “She bought these when I was fourteen. One for her and one for me. She . . .” Selena took a deep, shaky breath. “She sent hers back with her letter.”

  I looked down at the bracelets, trying to think of something to say that would ease Selena’s pain. My mom and I might not be biologically related, but she would never, ever do to me what Selena’s mother had done to her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You deserve so much better. But I . . . I can’t accept it. It’s too much.”

  “I hope you will. Because for a long time, I felt alone, and now . . . well, not so much. Because of you.” She smiled. “And I kind of miss wearing mine.” She slipped one of the bracelets onto her wrist and held the other one out to me. “Think of it as a friendship bracelet.”

  I took it from her hand, torn between gratitude and guilt. “Thank you.”

  I didn’t deserve it. Didn’t deserve such an important symbol of Selena’s friendship. But not taking it would hurt her, and that was something I wasn’t willing to do. Plus, I wanted it. Wanted the tangible reminder that I was connected to something—to someone—real.

  We put the bracelets on, holding our wrists out to admire them. She grabbed my arm as we headed back to the cliffs. By the time we got there, it was almost entirely dark.

  “I don’t know about you,” Selena said as we huffed our way up the trail toward the parking lot, “but I feel like I’ve earned some cheese fries.”

  I laughed. “Totally.”

  Thirty-One

  Mike’s was packed, and we stood at the front, scanning the crowd for an open table. It was the first time I’d been there, but it could have been any burger joint in any city in the country, complete with pleather booths, scuffed linoleum floor, and an old Space Invaders game against the wall.

  Selena pointed to a couple of tables at the back. “Everyone’s here.”

  I followed her gaze. Logan was taking a drink from his soda glass while Liam laughed next to him. Raj and Olivia scribbled on the back of one of the paper menus, and Rachel was deep in conversation with Harper and David. They looked completely at ease, like it was a scene they’d played out a hundred times before. It made me feel my apartness all over again. I was just a guest star, a walk-on in the television show of their lives. They got to really live it.

  Logan glanced around the room and caught my eye. A grin lit up his face, and he immediately stood and headed toward me.

  “Hey, you!” He leaned in and kissed me on the lips, right in front of everyone. “Your face is cold.” He rubbed my shoulders. “Did you get my text?”

  I shook my head, pulling my phone from my bag. “When did you send it?”

  “About a half hour ago,” he said. “I wanted to see if you were up for hanging with us tonight.”

  I looked at my phone, seeing the unread text. “We were at the beach. I don’t think I get a signal down there.”

  He put his arm around me. The smell of his cologne, light and a little spicy, caused something to stir in my stomach. Something warm and familiar but exciting, too.

  “You’re here now,” he said. “Come on. We’ll make room.” He led us back to the table, making small talk with Selena as we went. I liked that about him: the way he never left anyone out. The way he seemed to like everyone.

  “Hey, hey! The gang’s all here!” David said when he spotted us. He grabbed a chair and pulled it next to him, gesturing to Selena that she should take it.

  She smiled shyly and sat down. “Thanks.”

  Everyone shuffled a little, and Raj moved to the other side of Logan so that I could take his seat.

  “You look a little windblown,” Rachel said. “What have you two been up to?”

  “We went for a walk at the Cove.”

  She nodded, the lift of her eyebrows making it seem like there was something shady about taking a walk on the beach.

  “Where’s Parker?”

  It occurred to me that it wasn’t the first time she’d asked me the question. In fact, it seemed she was always asking, always noticing that Parker wasn’t around. I was surprised she still cared after the way he’d blown her off. Then again, I didn’t know everything Parker did. Maybe he hadn’t blown her off after all.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “He doesn’t exactly keep me up to date on his schedule.”

  She nodded and went back to her conversation with Harper, but I was unsettled. Not by her question. I was used to those by now. But part of me had assumed Parker was with Logan and the guys, especially since he’d left the Saab parked in front of the house on Camino Jardin. If he wasn’t here, and he wasn’t at home . . . where was he?

  I sent him a quick text and pushed my worry aside. He was probably working whatever angle my dad had him on at Allied. He’d be home when I got there.

  Selena and I added two orders of cheese fries and two Cokes to the check, and we spent the next hour and a half talking and laughing with the group, arguing over which eighties songs to play from the kitschy jukeboxes at every table. I was filled with an unfamiliar brand of contentment. Surrounded by Logan and the others in the cocoon that was Mike’s, the rest of the world was far away. It almost seemed possible to continue being friends with Harper and Olivia, with Raj and Liam and David. Continue getting closer to Logan, the con some far-off end in the distance, a little blurry and a lot less real than what was right in front of me.

  By the time I got home, it was after eleven. I was surprised to find my dad sitting at the kitchen table, a glass of what looked like his favorite Scotch in front of him.

  He looked up when I came in. “Hey. How was it?”

  I put my bag down and sat across from him. “Fine. Selena and I took a walk and then we met up with the others at Mike’s.”

  There were questions in his eyes, but I knew he wouldn’t ask them outside the War Room. He glanced behind me.

  “Where’s Parker?”

  My stomach lurched. “I thought he was here.”

  “Haven’t seen him all night.” He took a drink from his glass. “Maybe he’s out with Rachel Mercer.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Yeah, maybe.” Standing, I leaned down and kissed his cheek. “I’m going to bed. Good night.”

  “Night, Gracie.”

  I trudged up the stairs and got ready for bed. Then I turned out the light and slid between the sheets, my mind churning. Parker wasn’t with Rachel, he wasn’t with the guys, and he hadn’t taken the Saab. If he’d been working on Allied, my dad would have known about it.

  So where was he? Panic bubbled up inside me. Could he have left? Abandoned our parents—and me—like he’d been planning?

  I shook my head in the dark. Parker wouldn’t do that. Whatever had happened between us, however tense things were, he wouldn’t leave me behind. I knew it. Knew him.

  Then I thought about the words sung by the man next door:

  They said someday you’ll find

  All who love are blind.

  And suddenly I wondered how well I really knew Parker. How well any of us knew one another.

  Thirty-Two

  I was on my way out of the house the next morning when I spotted Parker through the crack in his bedroom door. He was sprawled facedown across his bed, still dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. It was after ten. Usually he would be up, sitting at the kitchen table and reading the business section. He must have been o
ut late.

  I nudged the door open a little more with my foot and peered around the room, eager for clues about his whereabouts the night before. His jacket was tossed haphazardly on the chair near the bed, the carpet covered in muddy boot prints. They led to his boots, which looked like they’d been pulled off in a hurry, tossed so that they landed a few feet apart, half under the bed.

  I hesitated, torn between wanting answers and wanting to put off another confrontation. The idea wasn’t appealing, especially since Rachel had texted early this morning asking if I was up for working on our AP Euro project. The thought of spending time alone with her tied my stomach in knots, but the saying “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” was a cornerstone of every con. Besides, if Rachel had picked up the ID in AP Euro, she would have confronted me with it. And even if she hadn’t, the ID wasn’t proof of anything. We could have been in Arizona before San Francisco. People moved all the time.

  I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down, and pulled Parker’s door closed.

  Rachel lived a couple of miles away, farther up the peninsula on a bluff overlooking the sea. Her house was bigger than Logan’s. Unlike the aged bronze of Logan’s gate, the one outside Rachel’s property was buffed silver. The house was newer, too, although I’d guess a lot of money had gone into making it look like the houses that were original to the peninsula, most of them built in the 1960s and 1970s.

  Rachel buzzed me in at the gate, and I continued up the driveway. The house stood in the middle of a gigantic stretch of lawn. Other than a few well-placed palm trees, there was no foliage. Nothing to create shadow or mystery. It was a diamond, glittering under the showroom lights, carefully positioned to look as shiny as possible.

  I parked the car and made my way to the door. The bell echoed throughout the house in a long series of rings. A few seconds later, footsteps sounded on the other side of the door just before it was opened by a youngish woman with dark luminous skin and deep brown eyes.

  “Miss Fontaine?” the woman asked.

  “Yes.”

  She opened the door wider. “Please, come in. Miss Mercer is waiting for you in the kitchen. I’ll show you the way.”

  Miss Fontaine? Miss Mercer? Did Rachel’s family seriously have a maid? It was hard to tell. The woman wore plain black pants and a white shirt, and while it wasn’t everyday wear for most of the people on the peninsula, it wasn’t exactly traditional maid attire either.

  I followed her down a hallway lined with terra-cotta tile to the back of the house. Like most of the houses I’d seen in Playa Hermosa, the kitchen looked out onto a backyard with a pool and enough patio furniture to outfit an entire living room. At the doorway, the woman turned to me with a smile.

  “Here you go,” she said, turning to leave.

  “Thanks, Graciella,” Rachel said. She was standing at the kitchen island, her laptop open in front of her as she poured two glasses of what looked like lemonade. “Thirsty?”

  “Sure.” I walked into the room, careful not to look around. The slate countertops, custom tile backsplash, and commercial-grade appliances were standard for the rich. Even noticing them could be a red flag for someone like Rachel, who would expect me to be used to it.

  She pushed one of the glasses my way and took a drink of her own, eyeing me over the top of it. The silence was like a vacuum, sucking all the air outside the room. It got under my skin, and I had to remind myself who I was, what I’d spent the last few years doing. It’s not like I was an amateur.

  “Want to work outside?” she finally asked. “We can turn on the patio heaters if it gets cold.”

  “Sounds good.”

  She picked up her laptop and we headed for the patio just outside the French doors. She dropped casually into one of the wicker chairs, setting her drink and computer on the coffee table in the middle of the seating group. I chose the love seat across from her and pulled my laptop out of my bag.

  “Any ideas for the board game?” she asked.

  “A few,” I said. “The instructions say we should pattern it off a game we know. I was thinking maybe Monopoly? Depending on the era we decide to work with, we could have players buy different commodities?”

  She picked up her computer. “True. Or different pieces of land.”

  We tossed ideas back and forth, finally agreeing to focus on the Reformation. She was surprisingly agreeable. Not exactly friendly, but minus the super-icy vibe I’d gotten used to. I wondered if she’d finally given up on freezing me out. Maybe she realized how futile it was now that Logan and I were official and I was in with the rest of the group.

  We’d been working for about an hour and a half when Graciella came out with a plate of gourmet cupcakes. Rachel closed her laptop and reached for one of the cupcakes, her hand hovering over the plate until she finally chose what looked like red velvet.

  “So how are you liking it here?” She glanced down at Selena’s bracelet on my hand. “You seem to have settled in quickly.”

  I set my computer aside and chose a vanilla cupcake with lilac-colored frosting. I didn’t really want it. I just wanted to keep my hands busy. I was still a little off-balance, still wondering if this was really Rachel being friendly or if she was just on some kind of bipolar upswing.

  “I like it.” I laughed. “It’s a lot warmer than San Francisco.”

  She nodded. “How long did you live there?”

  “Not long.”

  She finished the cupcake and set the wrapper down on one of the dessert plates Graciella had left. “Sounds like you move around a lot.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Where did you live before San Fran?”

  “Atlanta,” I answered. We’d never worked in Atlanta, which was kind of the point.

  “How was that?” she asked.

  I smiled. “Sticky.” Not hard. The whole South was hot and humid.

  She nodded. “Where else have you lived?”

  I recited a few of the cities we’d never lived in, then laughed with a shrug. “I can hardly remember them all.”

  Winging it wasn’t exactly protocol. Our backstory was airtight, rehearsed both individually and as a group when we’d been in Palm Springs prepping for the Playa Hermosa job. But that was before Rachel. Before I’d lost the Chandler ID card. I’d broken a big rule by keeping it and carrying it around. I didn’t want to make it worse by handing her any of the cities we’d worked in, but if she had picked up the ID, I didn’t want to rule it out and look like an outright liar either. Better to be vague, hedge my bets.

  “Crazy,” she said. “It must be kind of exciting, though. To be able to reinvent yourself so often.”

  I smiled. “Not really. I mean, this is me. It doesn’t really matter where we live. It just sucks having to make new friends all the time.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’ve only ever lived here.” She stood. “I’m running to the ladies’ room. Can I get you anything while I’m up?”

  “No, thanks.”

  She headed back inside, shutting the French doors behind her. I sat there, feeling like a rock was lodged in the pit of my stomach. There was nothing overtly suspicious about her line of questioning. In fact, it was less intense, more conversational than the questions she’d lobbed my way when we first met.

  Somehow the thought didn’t comfort me. I couldn’t help feeling like she was up to something, like her newly pleasant demeanor was a facade for the suspicion she’d been so open about until now. If I could play the game—working to win Rachel over for my own agenda—it stood to reason that she could, too. And if I wanted to know something about someone, wanted them to slip up because I suspected them of lying, I’d have a better chance of getting information by being nice than by alienating them.

  I stared at Rachel’s laptop on the outdoor coffee table. If she was suspicious, would there be something on her computer? Something that would tell me if she had anything substantial?

  Glancing back at the doors off the patio, I conf
irmed that the kitchen was empty. I guessed she’d been gone about a minute, and I looked at the clock on my computer to mark the time before I set it aside and reached for Rachel’s laptop.

  I opened it, waiting a few seconds for it to reconnect to the house’s Wi-Fi before clicking on her open tabs. There were several shopping sites, a Wikipedia page for Martin Luther, YouTube, Spotify, and email.

  I looked behind me to make sure I was still in the clear before scrolling through her emails. There weren’t many. A couple from teachers about school, something from the volleyball coach about tryouts, a link from her mother about a sample sale in the garment district, and a few others that were obviously spam.

  I ran through my options. I could check her browsing history, but that would take time, and she had already been gone four minutes. It would have to wait.

  Skimming the tabs again, I clicked on the open Wikipedia page. Then I hit the Back button. It returned me to the browser page, and my attention was immediately pulled to the name flashing in the search bar.

  Grace Rollins. The name I’d used at Chandler High School.

  The name on my old ID card.

  Thirty-Three

  Logan picked me up at five and we headed to Santa Monica. I was almost manic with anxiety, my nerves crackling like a live wire. I’d made a point to stay at Rachel’s, discussing our project, after she’d come back outside, but all I could think about was the fact that she had my old ID card.

  And now she knew about my alias.

  “You okay?”

  Logan’s voice pulled me from my thoughts, and I looked over, trying to smile.

  “Fine. I was just thinking about the project Rachel and I are working on for AP Euro.”

  “How’s that going?” he asked.

  “Not bad, actually. I think she might be warming up to me.”

  “By which you mean she’s a number four on the bitch scale instead of a ten.”

  “Well, maybe a five.”

  He laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile. His laugh was deep and warm, as genuine as everything else about him. My pulse quickened a little as I looked at him, his faded jeans and button-down shirt fitting him just closely enough that I could make out his athletic legs, his muscular arms and shoulders.