Liar, Liar

3. A GOOD LIE BEGINS WITH AN ELEMENT OF THE TRUTH

I was still lying on my bed, thinking that even her name was gorgeous—Katrina Marina Zabinski—and sounded like music (kah-TREE-nah mah-REE-nah zah-BIN-skee), when I heard a car pull into the driveway. My sister, Sarah, was dropping our brother, Daniel, off after hockey practice. I jumped up to run downstairs and ask her to take me to the mall with her, since I was going to need new clothes to impress Tina.

My mom was working late, like she always is; my dad was on one of his business trips, like he always is; and even Auntie Buzz, who lives in the apartment above our garage, wasn’t home yet, and I’d been counting on Sarah for a lift.

But before I could take a step, the car zoomed back down the driveway.

I’m fourteen. Daniel’s fifteen. Sarah’s sixteen. We were born exactly thirteen months apart from each other.

Daniel had his learner’s permit, which burned me, but Sarah had her driver’s license, which killed Daniel. We also had Auntie Buzz’s old car, which ticked us all off. We spent a lot of time on the driveway screaming at each other.

That wasn’t the plan. The plan was that Auntie Buzz would go green by not having a car and we would save the Earth by carpooling. She’d showed us the scooter she’d bought and told us about the power walking she’d do to and from work and asked me to help her read the bus schedule. What wound up happening, though, was that Auntie Buzz, who owned a decorating business, drove her work van (which got terrible gas mileage, so where the green part came in, I’ll never know) and we became the new owners of a rusted-out piece of junk that caused more problems than it solved.

When Auntie Buzz gave us the car, she’d handed us each a key. She wanted to be fair, though she didn’t seem to care about being legal, since she was giving two unlicensed kids keys to a car they couldn’t drive. Then she said, “Now, remember, you have to share.”

Sarah’s definition of share was that she drove our/her car everywhere she wanted, whenever she wanted, and made us beg for rides. “I’m the only legal driver,” she kept pointing out, “and besides, you and Daniel never chip in for gas.”

Daniel’s and my definition of share was that, because we were part owners, she should have driven us everywhere we wanted to go, every time we wanted to go anywhere. Daniel jingled his keys at her and said, “We represent a two-thirds majority,” while I reminded her, “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

To be honest, I don’t know what Auntie Buzz was thinking, giving three teenagers a car in the first place, but she only sees the positives of a situation, none of the negatives.

Things went from bad to worse at the beginning of the school year because my brother and sister were both in high school and I was stuck in that yawning chasm of nothingness, middle school. “And our school starts twenty minutes earlier than yours,” they said, “which means you can’t ride to school with us.”

The “so there” was implied.

After our parents refused to intervene—“Your car, your solution,” they said—I asked Auntie Buzz to mediate. I wasn’t happy with her decision.

“You live close enough to easily walk to school, and high school kids have so many more activities, and it’s just so nice to see the two older kids finally spending time together.” She must have felt very King Solomon–esque, or, come to think of it, the very opposite of King Solomon, since everyone got something when he laid down the law.

So Sarah and Daniel drove to school together every morning, making a fast-food drive-thru breakfast run along the way. I walked and ate granola bars.

And then this: Sarah leaving with the car like I didn’t even exist, as if there might not be someplace I needed to go in the afternoon.

Daniel and Sarah had ignored me once too often.

I had to make them see my point of view. Talking it out hadn’t helped, screaming it out hadn’t worked; it was time to take action.

I sat thinking about them for a little while. About their weaknesses. And how I might pit one against the other to my advantage with a few teeny, tiny little lies.

I smiled finally and then went to the kitchen for my favorite snack: a banana dipped in melted chocolate chips. Because creativity, my art teacher always says, must be nourished. Okeydokey.

Daniel came into the kitchen after his shower, grunted hello at me and grabbed a soda and a bag of sour-cream-and-onion chips.

“Where’s Sarah?” I asked as I peeled my second banana. I concentrated on looking innocent, which is harder than you’d think, and I wished I’d practiced that in the mirror too.

“She said something about shoe shopping.” He crunched and slurped his answer.

“That’s weird”—I paused to lick my finger—“because she was whining all last week about being flat broke. Girls, go figure.”

Daniel just kept wolfing down chips. I could tell he was going to need a nudge to see things clearly. Or, at least, from my point of view.

I shook my head. “She seems to have a lot of new clothes all of a sudden. Where does she get all that money, anyway? I hope”—I forced a completely fake laugh that anyone older than five days would have recognized as phony—“she hasn’t been stealing.”

He did a complete and perfect double take. Then he looked at me with huge, shocked eyes. Daniel’s primary character flaw is that he’s gullible.

“Nah. I don’t … stealing?” He was thinking hard, and I hoped he was calculating the cost of Sarah’s wardrobe and the price of gas.

Sarah works like a beast of burden: She’s got a part-time job at the hospital; she babysits a couple of times a week; she occasionally works for Auntie Buzz; and she charges her friends to do their hair and makeup for weekend parties and dates. Our sister is a mogul-in-training and only complains about being broke because she loves to sound dramatic and put-upon.

But Daniel isn’t aware of these facts. He doesn’t particularly notice things, not if they aren’t in a hockey rink or a computer game; he’s not stupid, he’s just not observant.

But I am. I’m a very observant guy.

Daniel was still thinking. “I heard Mom and Dad talking with Sarah the other day in the kitchen. They seemed really upset. I couldn’t hear much, but I wonder if they were trying to figure out what to do about her stealing.”

I pretended to look surprised. Then thoughtful. Then sad. I said, slowly, reluctantly, “I read an article in the newspaper the other day about the rise in teen shoplifting statistics.”

Daniel looked at me disbelievingly. Then an expression of disgust crossed his face.

“Knowing Sarah, she probably made herself seem misunderstood so that they’d feel bad for her and let her off easy.”

“She can talk her way out of anything.” I shook my head in dismay. “I can’t believe, though, that Mom and Dad didn’t at least take the car away.”

Bingo.

Daniel has always thought Sarah is spoiled and selfish and never gets what she’s got coming to her.

“She’s in all this trouble and she still busts my chops about giving me a ride to and from hockey practice? She’s got nerve.”

Just then Sarah came into the kitchen and, as luck would have it, she was carrying four or five shopping bags and looking smug. Her natural expression.

“You always get everything exactly the way you want it, don’t you?” Daniel snapped before he stormed out of the room.

“What’s with Dannyboy?” Sarah asked me.

“He was all peevish that you always take the car because of your, what did he say? Oh yeah, selfish nature.” I didn’t bother mentioning that I had manipulated the situation and that he now thought she was a klepto. Oops. My bad.

“Well, if that’s the way he feels about me, then—” Sarah has never backed down from a fight, and I knew exactly how the next five minutes were going to play out.

She went flying down the hall and started pounding on Daniel’s door. His stereo volume increased to drown her out.

Just as Sarah started shouting curse bombs to get his attention, my mother came home.

She opened the kitchen door and looked at me. “Why do they sound like tiny demons from hell?” Without waiting for my reply, she marched to Daniel’s bedroom and flung open the door.

“Sarah, give me your car keys. Daniel, yours, too. I’ve had it with this constant fighting. Now neither of you will be driving that car for a week and maybe I’ll get some peace and quiet around here.”

“That means I’ll have to get a ride to school with Alex the greasy loser from across the street and his skanky girlfriend,” Sarah moaned.

“Indeed.” Mom was not impressed.

“And”—Daniel’s voice was glum—“I’ll have to bum a lift to hockey practice in Derek’s deathmobile that reeks of jockstraps.”

“That’s what you get for not honoring the spirit of Buzz’s gift by working things out with each other,” Mom said.

A better person than me would have felt bad that Daniel thought Sarah had issues that led her to thievery.

And a more upstanding young man than me would have felt terrible that Sarah felt compelled to yell at Daniel:

“You’re nothing but fecal matter and I wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire!”

“But I’m your brother.” Daniel sounded genuinely wounded.

“You,” she announced, “are a turd in the punch bowl of life.”

Nice one, Sarah! Even Mom, who was back in the kitchen and sorting through mail, lifted an eyebrow in approval.

Two doors slammed. Silence.

“Ah, that’s better,” Mom said. “And how was your day, Kev? And have I mentioned that lately you’re my favorite, and not incidentally quietest, child?”

Before I could answer, Sarah, seething, reappeared in the kitchen.

“I’m telling Dad.”

“Be my guest,” Mom snapped as she swept out of the room. Under her breath, I heard her say, “The next time he stops in for a visit.” Her bedroom door shut. Then she opened the door and slammed it.

Blink.

Huh.

That was new. Mom is usually as cool as a cucumber and, as family fights go, this one was only about a 4 on a scale of 10; I’ve seen Mom reach out and catch sandwiches we kids have hurled at each other without losing her page in the book she was reading.

Mom had been working overtime because the bookstore she manages is short-staffed. Meanwhile, Dad’s new promotion meant that he was always on a business trip. They’d both been crabby lately. I hadn’t really noticed that until Mom slammed her door.

Sarah, having lost everyone’s attention, slunk back to her room. I sat at the kitchen table and thought.

It occurred to me that our family didn’t pay much attention to each other when we were together, which, once I thought about it, wasn’t much to begin with. We were all so busy. And when we were home, everyone usually had his or her nose stuck in one of the books or advance readers’ copies that Mom brought home from work.

My father always says she only works to feed our family’s book addiction and that we’d be further ahead financially if she collected aluminum cans from the side of the freeway to recycle.

In the past couple of weeks, I’d been seeing Daniel reading some business book about how to unleash your inner hound to get ahead in sports; I’d read Lady Chatterley’s Lover (because I thought it was dirty, but I couldn’t find the sex parts); and, over supper, Sarah had been flipping through a baseball book about the steroid scandal. As for Mom, she reads so much and so fast that I can’t keep up with her.

We read a lot, and we have great vocabularies as a result, but we don’t talk very much.

Which kind of leads to a bad place, I guess.

I tried to shrug off a dark feeling I was getting and recapture the warm sense of justice: Sarah and Daniel, carless too. I’m a guy who’s all about justice. In a week they’d get their keys back, but they’d have a better sense of my point of view, and maybe they’d remember to give me a ride now and then.

I headed to my bedroom to start homework and tried to ignore the shiver that ran down my back when I passed three closed doors.