Robin Talley - Lies We Tell Ourselves - Shortlisted for the 2016 Carnegie Medal

Chuck catches up with us at the auditorium doors. It’s too loud for us to hear each other, but he nods to tell me Ruth is all right.

She was all right when he left her, anyway. Who knows what might have happened since then.

A group of boys sings as we walk through the doors. The tune is a song that’s been playing on the radio lately, “Charlie Brown.” I used to like that song, but the boys have changed the words. “Fee fee, fi fi, fo fo, fum! I smell niggers in the auditorium!”

They howl with laughter at their own joke. Other boys and girls join in, snickering at Ennis and Chuck and me as we try to find seats. This room must be built to hold a thousand people. All the seniors are running back and forth between the rows, shouting, laughing, pointing at us. Teachers are standing around, too, but they’re talking to each other, looking at their watches, as if they haven’t even noticed we’re here.

“Two, four, six, eight!” The chant continues as the three of us move toward the front of the room. “We don’t want to integrate!”

Posters for school activities hang on the walls. Basketball practice. Science club meetings. Ticket sales for the prom. My eyes linger on a poster for Glee Club auditions before I remember we aren’t welcome at the clubs and teams and dances at this school. We aren’t even welcome to breathe the same air.

We find three seats together in the front row. I sit between Chuck and Ennis, trying to fold my coat so the spit on my skirt doesn’t show. Normally I’d feel uncomfortable sitting with two boys, but everything about today already feels strange.

We haven’t been sitting ten seconds when everyone else who was sitting on the front row stands up, all in one smooth motion, and files out.

For the second time this morning, I wonder if the white people rehearsed that.

“Boy, does it ever stink in here all of a sudden,” one girl says. Her friends laugh and pinch their noses.

Now that we’re alone in the front row, the chanting starts up again behind us. At first it’s just a few people, but then the rest of them join in. The voices get very loud very fast.

“Niggers go home! Niggers go home! Niggers go home!”

I look straight ahead. Ennis and Chuck are doing the same thing. I want to meet Chuck’s eyes but I’m afraid he’ll only try to make some awful joke, and instead of laughing I’ll burst into tears.

There is only one thing in this world right now that I want.

I want to get out of here. I want to get up, go find my sister and drag her out the front door. I don’t want either of us to ever set foot in this place again.

I’m starting to think things aren’t going to get better after this. I’m starting to think they’re going to get worse.

“All right now,” comes a voice. A teacher is on the stage, holding a clipboard. I wait for her to tell everyone to stop yelling and be polite and respectful, the way the teachers at my old school would have, but she just says, “All right,” again. Slowly, the chanting dies down.

The teacher looks bored. As if it’s any other first day of school. As if we aren’t starting five months late because the governor closed the whole school last semester to stop ten Negroes from walking through the front doors. As if there wasn’t almost a riot in the parking lot five minutes ago.

“Your senior class president will lead us in prayer,” the teacher says. She nods toward yet another boy with blond hair and blue eyes and a varsity letterman’s sweater.

“Let’s all bow our heads,” the boy says.

Automatically, my head goes down, my eyes shut and my hands fold in my lap. Before the prayer has even started, I feel something pushing on my lower back. Then the pressure gets sharper. Digging into my flesh through my thin cotton blouse.

Is it a knife? Am I going to die right now, right here? Before I’ve been to a single class in this godforsaken school? What will happen to Ruth if I die?

I’m about to leap out of my seat when I realize it can’t be a knife. A blade would be slicing into my skin, not just pressing.

This isn’t a knife. It’s a sharpened pencil point.

But it still hurts. A lot.

I ignore it and breathe deeply, trying not to let the pain distract me from my prayer as the blond-haired boy intones, “Our Heavenly Father.”

A second pencil joins the first, twin points drilling into me. I move forward in my seat, but the pencils move with me. They’re pushing deeper now. I wonder if I’m bleeding.

“You best pray hard, nigger bitch,” a boy’s voice says, low in my ear. “We’re gonna tear you to pieces first chance we get.”

That makes me shiver, but I don’t let the boy see. I move my lips along with my own prayer. Please, Father, watch out for Ruth today. And for me, and for all of us. Please watch over us and protect us and let us make it through safely. In Your holy name.

“Amen,” I say with the blond boy and the rest of the senior class. I open my eyes.

The stabbing pain is gone.

Even though I know better—and I’d have killed Ruth if she’d done this—I turn around. I want to see who gave me the bruises forming on my back. I want to meet his eyes.

There’s no one there. The seat behind me is empty. So are the seats on either side of it. The rest of the auditorium is a blur of identical-looking white faces.

Then I see a pretty girl with red hair and a stylish white Villager blouse a few rows back. She’s looking at me. But this girl isn’t sneering, or pinching her nose, or getting ready to throw something at me. She’s just looking.

She nudges her friend, another white girl with frizzy brown hair. The brown-haired girl sees me looking at them and puts her hand up in front of her cheek as if she’s embarrassed, but the red-haired girl isn’t shy about staring.

It takes me too long to realize I’m staring back at the red-haired girl.

I drop my head, but it’s too late.

Did she notice? Could she tell?

This hasn’t happened to me in a long time. Noticing a girl like that, and letting her see it. I’ve learned how to force it down when I feel those things. To act as if I’m normal.

But sometimes I can’t stop it. I can’t stop it now.

My cheeks are flushed. I feel off balance, even though I’m still sitting down. I grip the armrest to steady myself.

My mind is running to scary places. The images come too fast for me to stop them.

I imagine what it would be like if I were alone with the red-haired girl. How it would feel if she smiled at me with her pretty smile, and I smiled back, and—

No. I know better than to think this way.

I can’t take any risks. Especially not at this school. If anyone found out the truth about me it would mean—I don’t even know what it would mean. I only know it would be horrible. It would be a hundred times worse than what happened in the parking lot this morning. A thousand times.

Then I realize I’ve got another problem altogether.

The other white people have noticed I’m turned around. They’re whispering to each other and pointing at me.

The boys leer. The girls scrunch up their faces. One boy rolls a spitball.

I turn back around fast. I can’t make that mistake again.

I’d thought some of the white people at Jefferson might be all right. But if they were, they’d be helping us, wouldn’t they? They’d be telling the other white people to leave us alone. They’d have held the doors open so we could get through.

No one’s helped us yet.

The teacher is back at the front of the stage, still looking bored. “All right, seniors. It’s time to distribute your schedules and locker assignments for the year. When your name is called, go to Mr. Lewis or Mrs. Gruber to pick yours up. Then go straight to your first period class. There will be no dawdling in the halls. Tardiness will result in detention.”