Gary Paulsen: Liar, Liar

“You ate that peanut butter sandwich and twitched and your eyes rolled back in your head and, although it was only for a few seconds and I’m not one hundred percent sure, I coulda sworn you stopped breathing.”

“Probably sudden-onset peanut allergies; I read about that on the AskADoc.com site the other day.” I could see that his hands were shaking. “Do I look okay?”

“Kinda.” I studied his face, frowning.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You look … splotchy. And you seem a little … unsteady.”

“I am dizzy.”

“Low blood sugar,” I said, nodding. “That’s probably all it is. You should lie down for a while.”

“Or maybe eat something?”

“And run the risk of choking to death on your own vomit? What if it’s something more serious?”

“Yeah, buddy, you’re right. I’m gonna bail, head home and go lie down for a while.”

“Smart.” I nodded some more.

JonPaul went off, limping slightly. He’d probably be checking his pulse and taking his temperature all night. That kind of behavior made me more certain than ever that, once he was pushed to batcrap-crazy extremes, he’d be forced to see the depth of his obsessions, and then he’d start to develop a more realistic perspective on the whole health nut thing.

I’d started out on the right foot.

I slid the movie into the machine and watched the car turn into monsters by myself. I kind of missed JonPaul, but at least I could eat bananas dipped in melted chocolate chips and not have to listen to what the processed sugar and hydrogenated fat were going to do to my bathroom habits.

Connie called and talked at me about her committee idea for a while. She asked if we could get together on Wednesday or Thursday to do something and talk about the other thing. I wasn’t really listening. I wondered if England had paid attention to everything France had to say during World War II. I didn’t think so—they were allies, not buddies. That was how I’d think about Connie, too. She just didn’t know we were on the same side, fighting for the good guys to win.

Then Katie emailed me an update of her project outline, with the topic sentences from every paragraph. She asked me to proofread her introduction; it was fine, really top-quality work. That was what I emailed back, even though I didn’t read it. That’s what Delete buttons are for.

The next day at lunch I could see the dark circles under JonPaul’s eyes. He hadn’t been in school all morning.

“I went to see the allergist. Got the scratch test,” he reported. “I’m not allergic to anything .”

“Great! But you can’t be too careful, bud.”

“That’s what I said! But Dr. Culligan said I had to ‘react adversely to the stimuli’ before she could prescribe me anything.”

“What’s in your hand, then?”

“Markie’s EpiPen.”

“You stole an EpiPen from Markie? What if Markie has an allergy attack and needs it? I’m calling his mom to make sure he’s got a backup.”

“He’s got a valid prescription and can get more anytime he wants. Lucky booger. Plus, there are about a million of them lying around over there—they’ll never miss one. And I didn’t steal it—he gave it to me.”

“You just gonna carry it around waiting to stab yourself in the leg?”

“Yeah. Like you said—can’t be too careful. I can tell that my glands are swollen. I think my throat is closing up. Am I wheezing? I think I’m wheezing. I definitely feel like I’m wheezing. Maybe I need an inhaler, too?” He held a carton of cold milk up to his nonfevered head.

Friends don’t let friends wuss out like this.

JonPaul’s weakness could easily be exploited by unscrupulous opposing teams if it wasn’t rooted out of him while he was still young. I was doing this for his own good. As well as the teams he played on.

Looking at it from that perspective, I was helping to make JonPaul a happier, better-adjusted person.

And then he could focus on suggestions about the Tina situation, and if she happened to find out that I was a very thoughtful guy and the best friend anyone could ever have, so much the better.

But I forgot to mention it to him. I was calling Markie’s mom.

“Buzz is one crazy broad.” That’s what Dad has always said about my aunt.

“Buzz rocks.” That’s what Sarah and Daniel and I think.

No one’s sure what Mom thinks. But she must like having her sister around, or she wouldn’t have offered to let her move in above our garage. My aunt has lived there as long as I can remember.

When I got home after school, I decided to see if Auntie Buzz had any advice on how to get Tina to realize how incredibly perfect I would be as a boyfriend. Because if anyone knows about relationships, it’s Buzz. She’s been married three and a half times. The half comes from a spring-break marriage in Cancún when she was in college. “It probably wasn’t even legal in the first place, so it only counts as a halfsie,” she told me once.

Auntie Buzz is very high-energy. The double shot of espresso at the coffee shop across the street from her office is called the Buzz in her honor. Dad watched her knock back a few espressos once and muttered to me, “That kind of energy must have been hard on all those husbands.”

Sarah and I work for Buzz on weekends and during school vacations, carrying boxes of swatches and tassels and paint chips and tile samples and carpet books from her office to her work van and back again. Decorating is a heavy business.

She hires Daniel and his hockey team to move furniture. They work dirt cheap and don’t, Auntie Buzz says with a happy smile, belong to a union. Plus they work overtime for pizza and doughnuts and that’s the kind of payment Auntie Buzz can afford. “I’m not good with money, and my projects always go over budget,” she explained.

Auntie Buzz was sitting at our table when I walked into the kitchen, tapping away on her laptop. Mom had a late meeting, Dad was on Generic Business Trip Number Infinity and Beyond, Daniel had practice and Sarah was working, so I had privacy to bring up the Tina thing with Buzz.

“Hi, Buzz.”

“Hiya, Kev.”

“Whatcha doin’?”

“Putting together a demo reel so that I can be hired as the host of a network television show. Or cable, I don’t really care. Just so long as it’s national and pays well. I’ll do any kind of show.”

“Uh, why?” Even though I was dying to ask her about Tina, a person doesn’t just ignore this kind of information.

“When you work for and by yourself on commission and the government is sending you registered letters, you need to get creative about your income stream.”

“I didn’t know you were getting registered letters.”

“It’s a recent development.”

“So … how much trouble are you in?”

She shrugged and then scowled in the direction of a canvas bag near her feet. It was filled with a ton of unopened envelopes. Some of them had green Registered Mail stickers on them and were from the Internal Revenue Service. I’m only fourteen, but those people scare me. Tax time each year at our house is not pretty—Mom and Dad drag out shoe boxes full of receipts and take over the kitchen table for days on end, and there’s a lot of sighing and frowning and clickety-click-click ing of the calculator.

Adults, I’ve noticed, are usually terrible with money. I thought about the sock full of cash I have hidden in my pajama drawer. I’m an excellent saver.

“How much do you owe?”

“I’m not going to open the bills until I have the money to pay everything.” She looked more jittery than normal.