The Lies About Truth

  Gina and I won Pirates and Paintball today. We sort of cheated.

  That note was from three years ago.

  Damn. Whoever did this, if it wasn’t Gina, took a huge risk of being caught. I peeked my head through the zipper and surveyed the group. Everyone was chatting it up by the shore. No one appeared to be the least bit curious that I was in our tent.

  If they were going to play it cool, so would I.

  “You coming?” Gina yelled.

  “On my way.”

  I placed the envelope in the bottom of my bag, re-zipped the tent, and ran toward my friends.

  The sun boiled us as we prepped the Jet Skis. We didn’t discuss riding arrangements, and that was a relief. Gina crawled on behind Gray, and Max held up the keys as an offer.

  “I’ll drive,” I said.

  Dust flew off my words.

  We slid the Ski off the slip, climbed on, and Max settled his hands on my hips, his thighs next to mine. Before I turned the key, I put my hands on his knee. He leaned in close enough to make me shiver.

  “You thinking about winning?” he asked. His hands inched up my back and his breath touched my ear.

  Damn. “Not anymore.”

  “Drive, Kingston,” he instructed.

  I took a deep breath as the engine roared and vibrated beneath us.

  “Y’all have fun,” Sonia called.

  “Take care,” my mom added. She used her patented Mom look to give me something extra.

  “We will,” I promised.

  The rest of the parents waved and wished us luck.

  The little island was only a few minutes’ ride. It was the perfect location for Pirates and Paintball, and I had to admit to myself, I felt a little trigger-happy.

  The sun played peek-a-boo with a cloud, but the winds felt as if they were straight out of Kansas. I handled the Jet Ski like an expert, and Max squeezed his legs against mine and tightened his arms around my waist. Good job, winds. I leaned into his chest until our life jackets touched. Windblown hair, oversize sunglasses, and a handsome pirate boy next to me: crowds be damned, today was fantastic.

  That’s what I told myself, and for once, I listened.

  The closer we drove to the island, the more traffic we saw. Pirates and Paintball had a large following this year, larger than any of the previous years. There must have been over a hundred people on the shore gearing up and registering.

  We ran the Ski up on the sand and crawled off the seat, stretching. Last summer, we’d ridden from fill-up to fill-up without getting sore, but this was my first ride of the season. And Max’s, too.

  “Look at all this,” Max said.

  There was plenty to see. Everyone waved and yelled out pirate-y things like “Matey” and “Har, har” as they passed us. No one said jack shit about my face. I saw one guy who could be Johnny Depp’s brother, but mostly people paired eye patches, plastic swords, and gaudy necklaces with their guns.

  We unzipped our life jackets in unison. Max’s chest was tanned and taut and only slightly smudged from the salt spray. The ropy muscles he attributed to building houses and climbing were lovely.

  For an instant, I wished I had on a swimsuit. If only I could show off my hard-earned running muscles without revealing Pink Floyd and Tennessee.

  Max lifted our guns and locked his backpack in the storage compartment. “You ready to kick some ass?” he asked.

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, more confidently than I felt.

  “You two are toast,” Gray taunted.

  “In your dreams, Garrison.” I pulled my trigger finger a few times in his direction.

  “Sadie is pretty much a beast,” Gina agreed.

  Gray poked Gina in the ribs. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

  “We don’t know whose side I’m on yet, dude,” she said, flipping her hair. “I just might have to take you down.”

  I looked at my old friends in this familiar place and realized I’d found another tiny piece of myself. The moment was so perfect, I chugged it like a Gatorade.

  Max noticed and kissed me on the temple. No flinch from either of us. I was glad he did it in front of Gray, but it sucker punched the conversation.

  “Come on, gang. Let’s go register.” Gina threw an arm around my shoulder like old times. She didn’t realize she was touching Tennessee. I let it go without comment.

  We all stepped out and followed the crowd.

  No one lived on the little island, and I had no clue who owned it. There used to be No Trespassing signs, which everyone ignored, but they’d been gone for several summers. Maybe the city bought the property, because private groups had rented it for all sorts of things: concerts, events, fireworks, and games like Pirates and Paintball. The island was small enough that you could walk around its circumference in two hours; Gina and I had done that plenty of times when we docked here to picnic and swim.

  “Thank you for giving me this weekend,” Gina said.

  “I’m happy I could.”

  Her head tilted into mine. “After this weekend, can we talk?”

  “Talk-talk?”

  She nodded. “I have a confession I need to get off my chest.”

  I succumbed. “Okay. One rule: no apologies.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Then I’ll try too,” I said.

  Give me a frickin’ medal. I’m actually growing as a human being, I thought. Forgiveness was going to be my bitch by the end of this thing.

  The registration team clearly wasn’t expecting this many participants, so we waited forty minutes to pay our twenty-five-dollar fee. The lady taking money, Marge, had been with Pirates and Paintball since it began. Max and I both recognized her immediately. There weren’t many women who wore a striped pirate tube top quite like her. A talent indeed.

  Her hands clamped over her mouth, and she crawled under the table, through the sand, and popped up beside us.

  “You came.” Her delight was plain to see, as well as her cleavage. I squirmed a little as she slapped a hug on me without warning. Max raised his eyebrows, and I swear, somewhere in the ether, Trent giggled.

  “Wouldn’t miss it. Right, Sadie?” Max teased me.

  “Nope,” I said, even though I’d come up with a million excuses to do just that.

  Marge handed us two mesh jerseys, one green, one blue. “Green’s for the privateers. Blue’s the pirates. Take your pick, kiddos.”

  I gave Max the See, I told you this would happen look.

  We chose and she wrote down our numbers under the respective team names.

  “Thanks, Marge,” he said.

  Marge thumbed toward a large gathering of players standing around the starting point. “Just think, sweetie . . . All this energy . . . Your brother would have loved it.” She patted us on the shoulder and shoved us on our way in one motion. “Next,” she called, because the line really was out of control.

  Behind us, Gray plopped down fifty dollars for both his and Gina’s registration.

  “They look . . . snug,” Max noted as we drifted toward the makeshift store that Xtreme Paintball, another sponsor, had set up under a tent.

  “Yep,” I agreed, not letting my mind backtrack to other snug images.

  Tommy, the vendor, waved us over. “Here’re two of my favorite people. What can I do you for today?” he asked.

  Tommy was the sort of fellow who could say something like that, and you believed him. He was retired Air Force, had biceps the size of my thighs, and a wicked little scar above his eye that he’d picked up on a classified mission. Or at least, that was the story he told. I loved Tommy fiercely for that scar. Even more now that I had my own.

  Max thrust out his hand, and when Tommy shook it, Max nearly came off the ground.

  “Hey, Tommy,” I said, and leaned over the merch table to plant a kiss on his weathered cheek.

  He pointed to my face and nodded his approval. “You’ve been adding some serious character, Sadie Kingston. I like it, kid. I like it. We need to trade
war stories.”

  Three extraordinary things happened.

  One, I didn’t automatically recoil or feel attacked.

  Two, I imagined I was a hero like Tommy. That I’d gotten Idaho and Nameless while escaping from an enemy camp.

  Three, I stepped out of myself, lifted the do-rag, and showed him the narrow, pink trenches on my forehead.

  “I call this one Idaho,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Damn, girl.” Tommy clapped his hands in applause. “That’s cool as grits. Maybe I’ll name mine now.”

  Oh, why not go with it, I thought.

  “You’ll have to let me know if you do.”

  Tommy winked at Max. “Don’t let her go, man. Any woman who can fire a gun and wear a scar as pretty as that one is a keeper.”

  Tommy’s words were worth more than a hundred sessions with Fletcher, because I heard them.

  “That’s the plan, Tommy,” Max told him.

  “Thank you.” I stuck those words deep in Tommy’s heart.

  “All truth,” he said.

  We got back to game preparation after that. Max needed two bags of paintballs and some CO2 cartridges, but Tommy wouldn’t take any payment.

  “On the house today. Special-occasion scar bonding,” he claimed as he helped Max fill our gun hoppers and extra ammunition clips.

  Before we left, Tommy leaned over the merchandise and said to me, “I was worried you wouldn’t come this year. Your dad said you’d had a hard time of it.” He pointed to the scars again. “Don’t let anybody give you any shit out there. If they do, send ’em to me.”

  “Thanks, Tommy.”

  “We’re all pulling for you to win,” he told me.

  I was pulling for me too.

  “Wish you’d listen to me the way you listened to him,” Max said when we cleared the tent.

  I traced the X I’d drawn on his chest that morning. “I listen to you.”

  Everywhere we walked, Max drew a crowd. Pirates and Paintball veterans slapped his shoulder and welcomed him. People doled out careful sympathy, not wanting to tip a festive occasion toward sadness, but also not wanting to ignore his loss. Candace Rew, Max’s friend from sophomore year, also seemed happy to see him.

  Candace examined me a little too long.

  “Hey, Max. Hey, Sadie.” Her voice sounded like plastic knives.

  I didn’t pay her many words more than Hi, but I paid her attention. Curvy and sexy. She had perfect hips, boobs that made me envious, great ponytail hair, and a face that hadn’t been through the window of a Yaris.

  She hugged Max longer than I deemed necessary. I seriously considered wandering back to Tommy, but when Max felt my gravity shift in that direction, he accosted my hand. Candace, lovely Candace, looked quite confused.

  I wondered . . . if she’d written Max emails all year, would she be the one with him today?

  “Which team did they give you?” I asked, since she wasn’t wearing her jersey yet.

  Candace rolled her eyes. “Pirates. I always want to be a privateer and every year, I get stuck with this ugly blue jersey. Privateers just sound more sophisticated than pirates.”

  I knew one blue-jerseyed pirate—me—who had zero plan to be sophisticated. I’d rather be on Candace’s team than let her cozy up to Max somewhere on the island.

  “Jealous?” Max asked as we walked away.

  “Nope.”

  “Liar?” he asked again.

  “Yep.”

  Maybe I understood Gray better right then than ever before. Jealousy was fast on the take.

  “There’s no need,” he assured me. “Old news.”

  Candace wasn’t the only roadblock we met. Everywhere we walked, we overheard conversations.

  “Damn. That kid looks like his brother.”

  “Who is his brother?”

  “Trent McCall.”

  “Oh.”

  “The girl with Max . . . was she the one in the front seat?”

  “Think so.”

  “Shitty hand to be dealt.”

  We tried to ignore them, but every comment was a barb that dug into our hearts. Especially the people who said, “Who’s this Trent dude?”

  Only the person who loved Pirates and Paintball more than any of you! I wanted to scream.

  Moving away from the bulk of the crowd, we tested our weapons in the little area they’d set up. The weapons were sound, and much to my relief, I nailed the target. Feeling satisfied, I asked Max to toss me my jersey.

  “It matches your eyes,” he said as I slid it over my Goonies sweatshirt.

  “I’d still rather be on green with you.”

  With everything done, we needed to rendezvous with Gina and Gray. When I spotted them near the water stations, I snuck up and mimicked Trent’s animated voice from years past. “Pirates and Paintball!”

  That made them both whip around with a smile.

  “Nicely done,” Gina said.

  “One of us had to say it,” I told her.

  Gray raised one hand and placed the other over his heart. “I hereby declare the banner passes to Sadie Kingston.”

  “Hear, hear,” Max chimed in.

  “You guys know being nice doesn’t mean I won’t shoot your asses out there, right?” I teased them.

  “Ladies and gentlemen . . . the warrior is back,” Gray said.

  I was back. And I wasn’t the only one.

  Trent had been the nucleus of our friend family. When we lost him, we lost our chemistry. Little by little, as we remembered the things we’d loved and shared with him, the genetic material began to reemerge. We were still a makeshift group without him, but a group. If we kept this up, going back to school would be easier.

  If we kept this up, life would be easier.

  The announcer blew the air horn and called, “Five minutes until Pirates and Paintball. Please listen up for a reading of the rules.”

  We tuned them out, knowing the rules backward and forward. Pirates and Paintball differed from most paintball games. It was typical Capture the Flag style, but had a kill-shot rule that allowed everyone to play a little longer. A hit to the face or chest—a kill shot—put you down, but any other hit on the body required two shots before you were out.

  Max screwed the new CO2 cartridges onto our guns and dumped extra paint into his pockets. Gina and Gray did the same.

  It wasn’t until the official call to assemble into teams that Gray put on a blue jersey from his bag, and Gina put on a green. Gray cut challenging eyes at Max, slung an arm around me, and asked, “Ready, teammate?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Max swore, but it was more like a Nertz swear than a worry swear.

  I mouthed, This is going to be so fun, and he blew me a kiss. Confident. Happy. Not jealous. In control of who he was and what he wanted. Ironically, he was all those things without looking like an imitation of his brother.

  People weren’t perfect, ever, but sometimes moments were. That one was flawless. It wormed its way into my history and onto a piece of mental paper.

  Max McCall stepped into the sun and out of Trent’s shadow.

  Don’t shoot me, he mouthed back.

  I held up my gun. Don’t get in my way, I advised with a wink.

  Max touched the X on his chest before he followed Gina and a sea of green jerseys off the beach to the preassigned meeting place for privateers. Those two would last most of the game. Gina was a brilliant shot, and Max was light and quick on his feet.

  Gray and I had an edge. We’d moved and hunted this island together since the games began, getting better and better every year. One year Gray sweet-talked Marge into a different jersey, so we’d be together. Other than that, we’d been lucky enough to land on the same team.

  “Gina swapped me,” he said.

  “I figured.”

  “Can’t break up a team like ours.”

  Uh, actually, you can. You did.

  I kept that thought to myself.

 
Some self-appointed team captain circled up the group and gave us the winning strategy. According to him, half of us would hunt for the flag, half of us would guard the flag, and . . . another four of us were supposed to hide and wait for everyone else to shoot one another.

  “Not much on math, is he?” Gray whispered.

  “Half and half, and four. Yeah, that equals a whole. Noted.” Our team captain was no General Patton.

  Gray ignored all instructions we’d be given. “Where do you want to go, Sadie May?”

  I gritted my teeth. “Seriously? I’m armed, dude.”

  “You won’t shoot me. I’m on your team,” Gray said confidently.

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  Gray nudged me with the business end of his gun and said, “Let’s just get out of here before Half-Half-Four Guy sees us.”

  No one went in the direction we headed, but Patton yelled at us to hide. Guess we were half of the elusive four. I picked up my pace and forced Gray to match me. Mr. Muscles needed to up his cardio game; he was breathing hard and a step behind. The island was small, but for paintball, it was a huge playing field.

  “When we’re here, I always feel like we’re in an episode of Lost,” Gray said as he ducked through the sea grass without disturbing it.

  “Me too.”

  We were a five-minute hard jog from the beach when the air horn signaled the beginning of the game.

  “Are we really going to hide out?” he asked.

  “For a bit,” I suggested.

  Hiding meant we’d have to be quiet while, hopefully, the bloodthirsty competitors took each other out. That approach had worked the year Gina and I won, and it was worth an attempt today. The competitor in me awakened like a sleeping dragon. I didn’t want to play; I wanted to win. Even if that meant sharing the honor with Gray.

  “No one will think we took this direction. Limited coverage,” he said.

  “Shh.”

  He nodded, and together we dug a foot-deep trench. We both lay down in the dunes, sand crabs and sharp shells be damned. Like this, only a kill shot to the face could take us out. Around us, but not close, we heard the game being played. The thwack of CO2 gunfire echoed from the north and an occasional scream of “I’m out! I’m out! Stop shooting!” carried toward us on the wind.