Gary Paulsen: Liar, Liar

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.

Meanwhile, back to Operation Tina.

I was sitting on the front steps of school Tuesday morning before the homeroom bell rang, trying to finish an assignment while keeping an eye on Tina, three steps down, when it hit me: Classes were getting in my way.

It’s not that I don’t like school—I do. But wasting my time in class was a problem if I was going to make Tina understand what a great guy I was.

Out of the eight periods a day, I only saw Tina in three—language arts first period, lunch fifth period and science seventh period. Thanks to the social studies get out of jail free card, I could go to the commons and watch her during her free period while waiting for the perfect moment to dazzle her with my personality.

But I needed more free time. Classes were slowing me down.

A lesser mind would have accepted defeat, since the odds were stacked against me, but the best military leaders always find ways to eliminate obstacles. It was clear that I was going to have to bail on my Tina-free classes: Spanish, math, and gym and art, which alternated days.

I looked around the front steps and sidewalk, assessing my options. I saw Freddy Dooher, who’s on the wrestling team. Normally I hate him because he’s as mean as a snake during the season when he’s starving to death, trying to make weigh-in before the meets. But that day I loved him because he gave me a great idea.

I dashed inside as soon as the first bell rang and ran to the Spanish lab to tell Señora Lucia that I’d recently begun student-managing the wrestling team. She’s only at school two or three times a week because we share her with the other two middle schools in the district, so I didn’t think she’d have a clue about the sports schedules. I didn’t, and I’m here five days a week, all day.

“Buenos dias, Señora.”

“¿Cómo está, Señor Kev?”