Here We Lie. Paula DeBoard Treick

making precise notations in the margins of my work—but I decided to stay out of it.

      “Maybe this isn’t a conversation we should be having right now in front of Ariana’s friend,” her dad interjected, and I looked up from where I was sitting on my bed, as if I’d been summoned. Were we friends? I felt closer to the girls I saw twice a week in my American lit seminar.

      Ariana’s mom looked at her watch. “Well, we can talk on the way to the lecture, I suppose.” She cast me the same pitying smile she’d given me in August, when she learned I’d taken the bus all the way from Kansas, alone. “Maybe you’d like to join us for dinner afterward?”

      I noticed the spark in Ariana’s eye, a silent pleading. She didn’t want to be alone with her parents any more than I did. I mouthed a sorry in Ariana’s direction and explained that I’d made other plans.

      “Maybe you could meet us for ice cream, then,” Ariana’s mom pressed. “We’re going to go to that cute place in town, the one with the giant cone on the marquee? Maybe around nine?”

      I smiled. By nine o’clock, I hoped to be in Joe’s Honda, the windows fogging from the heat of our kisses. “I’ll definitely try.”

      * * *

      I changed clothes five times before meeting Joe, deciding on my most flattering jeans and a shirt that was tight across the chest and too sexy to wear around Keale. We’d planned to meet at Slice of Heaven, and Joe was already there when I arrived, breathless from my bike ride into town.

      He whistled, spotting me through the window. We hugged, same as we’d done the last few times we’d seen each other, but this one lasted a few beats longer, and our bodies were pressed just a bit closer.

      “I hope you don’t mind. I got here a bit early and ordered for us,” Joe said, gesturing to the glass of soda in front of him, the empty glass in front of my spot. “Just regular pepperoni and breadsticks.”

      “Just regular pepperoni and breadsticks sounds great,” I said.

      “I was trying to beat the rush,” Joe said, nodding to the line that had formed at the register, snaking halfway to the door. Most of the booths were already full. “I mean, this town is typically overrun with WASPs, but during Parents’ Weekend, the BMW-to-human ratio is especially skewed, if you know what I mean.”

      I laughed at his description.

      “Well, what about you? Don’t you have parents, Midwest?” When I hesitated, he covered quickly. “Did I put my foot in my mouth? Sorry. It’s none of my business.”

      “No, it’s fine. It was just too far for my mom to come.”

      “What about your dad?”

      I shook my head, my throat suddenly clogged. Since coming to Keale, I’d managed to avoid any mention of my dad. It was easier that way, although the omission implied that he’d never existed at all.

      “I am an ass,” Joe said. “Remember?”

      I stood up quickly, grabbing my frosted red cup. “Be right back.”

      By the time our pizza came, we’d already refilled our bottomless sodas twice. Joe laughed as I blotted the top layer of grease from the pizza with a handful of napkins. It’s not a real date, I told myself. It’s pizza and Coke. Beneath the table, his leg brushed against mine, but instead of pulling away like a reflex, it lingered there. Or maybe it is.

      While the restaurant filled up, we talked about our jobs. I mentioned the woman who called the switchboard fifteen times in one night, insisting that there must be a problem with the phone lines since her daughter hadn’t picked up. Joe said that a former coworker at the body shop had opened a place in Michigan, and he’d offered Joe a job.

      He shrugged. “But, I don’t know. Michigan. It’s pretty far away.”

      “Right,” I said, picking off a pepperoni. I felt his loss as keenly as if he’d already packed up the Honda and left. So far, Joe was the only good thing about Scofield. “And you’d have to leave all this.”

      “Some things would be harder to leave than others,” he said, and although he wasn’t looking at me when he said it, my cheeks burned. “Anyway—it might not pan out. There are a lot of things to figure.”

      “Right,” I said again. Someone at the next table stood, jostling my elbow. The restaurant was crowded now, the line out the door. I recognized some girls from Keale with their families and felt a stab of longing for my own family, back when it had been intact and perfectly imperfect. We would never again order a pizza, bicker over our choice of three toppings, then load up our leftovers to eat later that night in front of the TV.

      “Whoa,” Joe said, tapping me on the arm. He gave a subtle head tilt in the direction of a family standing by the door.

      I half turned, pretending to casually glance at the line. “Who are we looking at?”

      “The guy in the button-down shirt.”

      “You’ll have to be more specific.”

      Joe laughed. “With the lady in the sweater.”

      “Again, you’ll have to—”

      “And the dark-haired girl with legs up to her neck.”

      “Ah,” I said, glancing again toward the door. The man was tall with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, a striped shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The woman wore a patterned sweater set, a giant diamond glinting from her finger. They didn’t look familiar, but I recognized the tall girl from Stanton Hall. I associated her with the summer camp crowd, as I’d come to think of them, girls who played lacrosse and rode horses and moved around campus in tight cliques. “That’s Lauren somebody. She lives in my dorm, but not on my floor.”

      Joe leaned forward, conspiratorially. It was hard to hear him over the general noise of happy families. “Her last name is Mabrey.”

      I raised an eyebrow. “And?”

      “Her father is Senator Charles Mabrey of Connecticut.”

      “Seriously? A senator?” I craned around, getting another look.

      “Be cool,” Joe said, his thumb and forefinger reaching for my chin, steering me to face him. “People will think you’ve never seen a senator before.”

      I burned under his touch. “I haven’t.”

      “Well, I suspect they’re just like you and me, only they live in a nicer home—or more likely homes, plural—and they drive better cars if they drive themselves at all, and they’re on a first-name basis with the president of our freaking country, but other than that, no reason to stare.”

      “Got it,” I said. We were close enough for me to see a tiny red fleck caught between Joe’s front teeth. “Did you learn all this in your civics class?”

      Joe released my chin and reached for his tumbler, taking a long swig. “They’re probably all douchebags, but Mabrey at least seems to be a douchebag of the people.”

      I snorted, choking on a bite of cold pizza. “You should volunteer to write his campaign slogans.”

      “You know what?” Joe said, wadding his napkin into a ball. “Want to get out of here? There’s a better place down the road, one that won’t be overrun with all these hoity-toity types.”

      “Do me a favor,” I grinned. “Say that again. Hoity-toity.”

      Instead, he stood up and pulled me to my feet, threading his fingers through mine. I shot a last glance over my shoulder and saw Lauren’s father, the senator, bantering with a cashier. It was the same way married men had talked to me at the Woodstock Diner, as if he were saying, Look how young and virile I still am. In that split second, Lauren turned and our eyes met. She smiled in a faint, pleasant way, as if she didn’t recognize me at all. And why would she? Girls like that moved in their own circles,