Lying Out Loud

Chapter 5

I don’t know how I met Amy Rush. I’d love to tell you this charming story about how we bonded over a shared box of crayons in preschool or something — and who knows, maybe we did — but I can’t remember. That’s how long ago it was.

I know we were young, three or four, maybe. It was before my dad was arrested for the first time. He used to drive me to her house for playdates on the weekends. Dad told me I could invite Amy over, too, if I wanted, but I never did.

Because even as a little kid, I was embarrassed. At that point, my parents and I were living in a trailer out on the edge of Hamilton. And Amy lived in a mansion. Plus, there was my mom, who, I was convinced, would forget to make us dinner or something. I didn’t want Amy to see where I lived. I guess there have always been parts of my life I kept hidden, even from her.

But that didn’t stop us from becoming insanely, maybe unhealthily close. We were two halves of a whole. We needed each other for balance.

She kept me calm, put me at ease when I was freaking out.

Like when we were seven and I accidentally broke the arm off my favorite doll. My dad had just been arrested, and Ramona was the last gift he’d given me. As I sat there, on the verge of an all-out tantrum, Amy gently removed Ramona from my arms, retrieved some glue from her dad’s desk, and put the doll back together. Sure, her arm was a little crooked after that, but that was okay. Amy had, for the most part, solved the problem.

Meanwhile, I spoke up for her, got angry for her, when she was too scared or embarrassed to. Like when we were freshmen and this gross upperclassman named Randy smacked her ass in the hallway.

Amy was so upset and humiliated, and I was pissed on her behalf. So the next time I saw Randy, I threw him up against the wall and gave him a swift knee to the groin. Who cared if I was half his size? Hell hath no fury like a girl defending her bestie. I got two weeks in detention for that, but he never bothered Amy again, so it was worth it.

Amy and I needed each other. Neither of us really had other close friends. We were the type who were friendly with everyone — excluding Ryder Cross, of course — but I think most people felt sort of left out when they spent time with Amy and me. There was too much history, too many inside jokes, and, yeah, maybe our closeness was a little bit weird to some.

But we were okay with that. It was just us. Sonny and Amy. Amy and Sonny. Where she went, I went.

Which was why I got a little panicked when I saw the stack of college applications sitting on her desk.

“Is it already time for these?” I asked, picking up a Cornell application.

“Yep. I got those from the guidance office today.” She’d just let me into the house after her parents had gone off to bed, so we had to keep our voices low.

“Wow.” I flipped through the stack. “Dartmouth, Stanford, Columbia … Very ambitious, Ms. Rush.”

“There are a few safety schools in there,” she said as she changed into her pajamas. “Have you thought about where you’re applying?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “I figured I’d follow you wherever you were accepted and live under your bed in your dorm room.”

She laughed.

But I hadn’t exactly been kidding.

“You better start thinking about it,” she said. “These next few months are going to go fast. I know you get overwhelmed with paperwork —”

“False.”

She rolled her eyes. “You take three days to fill out a one-page job application.”

“I … like to be thorough.”

“Anyway,” she said. “I’d be glad to help you fill them out.”

“Thanks,” I said. “We’ll see.”

The truth was, I was sort of deliberately avoiding thoughts of college. Sure, I had decent grades (I was an AP student, after all), but I wasn’t going to be able to afford tuition. Especially not to the schools Amy was applying to. In just a few months, we’d be separated.

She’d be off at some Ivy League university, and I’d be stuck here.

And that terrified me.

I’d been avoiding it, pretending college was a long way away and I had no reason to worry about it yet, but we were seniors now, which meant it was time to start figuring my shit out.

I wasn’t ready to deal with it yet, though.

Maybe that’s why I got so enraged when Ryder hated on Hamilton, because I knew this place was going to be my home for a very, very long time. Whether I liked it or not.

Amy finished running a comb through her hair. “Okay. You ready for bed?”

I shook my head. All the college talk had gotten me too worked up to sleep. “I need to work on a paper. Mind if I use your computer?”

“Of course not. It’s all yours.”

“Thanks.” I picked up the laptop and stepped out into the hallway. “Sleep tight.”

“See you in the morning.”

I’d barely gotten the laptop set up in the rec room when I heard a ping from the e-mail tab. I rolled my eyes, knowing before I even looked who was messaging me. Or Amy, rather.

“Not now, Ryder,” I mumbled. “Not in the mood.”

A minute later, there was another ping.

RYDER: How was your day?

RYDER: Are you done with that English paper yet?

I was determined to ignore him. After the way he’d talked to me in class that morning, he didn’t deserve my time. But five minutes later, there was another ping, and this time, I couldn’t ignore his message.

RYDER: So Pearl Jam is going to have a concert in Oak Hill.

ME: WHAT?!?! When? Where? Link????

RYDER: Ha. I knew that would get your attention.

I sighed, disappointed.

ME: Not cool.

RYDER: Sorry. I had to try.

ME: How did you know I like Pearl Jam?

RYDER: You love grunge, so I just thought of the most cliché grunge band I could. Other than Nirvana, of course.

ME: Wow. So now you’re calling me a cliché. Nice.

RYDER: You call me a hipster. It only seems fair.

He signed that one off with a smiley face.

ME: I’m a cliché, but you are the King of the Emoticons. Tell me, Ryder, how many selfies have you taken today?

RYDER: None. I don’t even have an Instagram.

ME: Hipster.

RYDER: I can’t win with you.

ME: This is probably true.

RYDER: That’s not going to stop me from trying.

Despite my better judgment, this made me smile.

And that was how I ended up chatting with Ryder — again — for most of the night.

RYDER: My mom is driving me insane.

ME: Welcome to adolescence. You’ll fit in well here.

RYDER: She won’t even let me watch the coverage of Dad’s campaign. It’s hard enough to find it anyway since he doesn’t represent this district, but if she hears one of his ads on my computer, she shouts at me to turn it off.

ME: Wow. Harsh.

RYDER: Hopefully I can get to DC for Thanksgiving next month. I’m desperate to get out of this stupid boring town.

ME: Again. Harsh.

RYDER: Sorry. I’m working on it.

ME: But I hope you are able to go back to DC. I’m sure your dad and your friends will be glad to see you.

I hated myself for keeping up the conversation. But as much as I wanted to despise him, Ryder was kind of being tolerable.

ME: So, you had a girlfriend in DC?

RYDER: Yeah. Eugenia.

ME: Whoa. Terrible name.

RYDER: It really, really is.

ME: So what happened?

RYDER: Nothing. We broke up when I moved and she’s already dating someone else. My best friend, actually.

ME: Oh. Ouch.

RYDER: I’m honestly not that upset about it. We dated for over a year, but it never really felt serious. More convenient than anything.

ME: So romantic.

RYDER: I don’t care that she started dating Aaron (my friend). That’s fine. I’m more upset that she and Aaron and everyone seem to have moved on without me so fast. They were the reasons I was upset to leave DC. They’ve been my friends since elementary school. And now, just a few months after leaving, I hardly hear from them. I get the occasional comment on my Facebook posts, but that’s it.

ME: Well, if you don’t mind me saying so, they suck.

RYDER: Ha.

RYDER: They don’t, really. That’s the worst part. I get it. It’s easy to drift apart. It probably wouldn’t be so bad if I’d actually managed to make friends here. If I’d moved on, too.

ME: Not to harp on this, but if you’d just ease up on the constant Hamilton bashing, you might be surprised how many friends you’d make.

RYDER: I know. I really am trying.

RYDER: But even if I stopped, I don’t know how simple it would be to make friends. Hamilton’s a small school. You all have known each other forever. I’m an outsider here.

ME: Maybe, but it wouldn’t be too difficult for you. If you’d be cool, people at Hamilton would love you. Especially the girls. You’re fresh meat, a boy we’ve never seen throw up on the school bus or go through the worst parts of puberty. Plus, you’re not a bad-looking guy, you know.

I could not believe I’d just typed that. Mortified doesn’t even begin to cover it. It was true, of course. He was hot, and if he wasn’t such a dick about our hometown, girls probably would have thrown themselves at him. No, not probably. Most definitely.

But I didn’t have to tell him that.

Ryder sent back a smiley face emoji. I sent back one rolling its eyes. And eventually this devolved into an oh-so-sophisticated emoji war. The battle was long and there were many casualties, but eventually, with the peace offering of emoji sushi, a cease-fire was called.

If only it were so easy in real life.

The next day, though, Ryder was back to being unbearable.

“Mr. Buckley,” he said, raising his hand. “When are we going to start practicing DBQs?”

“Excuse me?”

“DBQs,” Ryder repeated. “It stands for data-based questions. They’ll be on the AP test in the spring.”

“I’m aware what a DBQ is, Mr. Cross. I am the teacher here, after all.”

I expected Ryder to make a snide comment about this, but he managed to restrain himself and instead asked, “So when will we start practicing them?”

“After Thanksgiving.”

“Don’t you think that’s awfully late?”

“Oh dear,” I said. I was less able to restrain myself. “That’s far too late. Did you know that in DC, students start preparing for AP tests just out of utero?”

Ryder turned to face me, mid-eye-roll. “While your hyperbole is ridiculous, we do start preparing way in advance. And our AP test results reflect it.”

“If only you’d spent as much time working on your social skills.”

“You are going to lecture me on social skills?”

“I’m sorry. Do us ignorant country folk here in Hamilton not communicate to your liking?”

“It’s not a problem with everyone in Hamilton.”

“Enough,” Mr. Buckley said. I was actually amazed at how long he’d let this go on. I suspected he got as much entertainment out of the sparring as the rest of the class did.

And … I think I kind of enjoyed it, too.

Honestly, though, it was amazing how funny and pleasant Ryder could be over IM, only to turn around and be a pompous jerk in real life. I was getting some serious whiplash.

Which was why I couldn’t respond to his IMs anymore. No más. I was done. It was already weird enough since, both times, I’d been on Amy’s account. She didn’t know about the second conversation, and I’d had to lie when she asked me if I knew why Ryder had given her a mixtape (seriously? Who has tapes anymore?) of some weird, poorly recorded band and asked if she’d sit with him at lunch.

“No idea,” I’d said. “I mean, we know he likes you…. What did you say?”

“Thank you, but that I always sit with you,” she’d replied.

Well, that was easy enough. Ryder would never sit at a lunch table with me. So I just shrugged.

Lying was easy. What was worse was that these conversations had totally confused my once unwavering disdain for Ryder Cross.

It had been easier when I hated him.