The Lie Spinners (The Deception Dance) (4 page)

“
Details,
please,” Linnie says, but her giddy smile drops when she sees
my expression.

I
glance around the now deserted entrance hall. “Have you heard
anything about Stephen?” I whisper.

“
No,
why?” she says, loudly.

I
shush her, to which she raises her arms and shoulders in a
questioning gesture.

“
We need to
talk,” I mouth. But, immediately, I regret it.

“
What’s
up?” she mouths back.

I
shake my head, “Never mind.”

“
No.
Way,” she whispers, looking me in the eye.

“
Later,”
I whisper back. Like, after I’ve already left, saved Stephen,
and come back, maybe.

Linnie
glares at me, and I see something that I’ve rarely ever in my
life seen directed at me from my sister, real genuine anger.

Thankfully
little Albert chooses that moment to turn around and grab a big
handful of my black hair and attempt to rip it off my head. “Jeezus!”
I say as I try to gently pry open his chubby little fingers while he
sings, “da, da, da,” in my face.

Linnie
gets up to help me untangle little Albert from my hair. “You
need a shower,” she says, and I can sense annoyance in her
voice. I immediately want to ask her: ‘what’s the
matter?’ to clear the air, and to force her not to be annoyed
with me. But, I don’t.

I
cross the sitting room to the inner door that leads to our
raised-basement apartment, and try not to look back at my sister as I
leave.

****

“
So
whose butt do I have to kick?” Albert’s wife Hayvee says,
in halting English as she leans over her plate. Hayvee has one of the
sweetest faces I’ve ever seen, round cheeked and always
smiling. She’s Moroccan with light brown skin, and though I
almost never see her without a hijab covering her hair, I know it is
long, silky and black.

She’s
also one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, so her comment
makes me smile, which hurts my face. My bruised cheek has escalated
to a full blown eggplant and my eye a rotten plum. Ugly doesn’t
even begin to touch what my face is right now.

“
It’s
cool, I shot him five times,” I say, so full of excellent food
that I’m considering unbuttoning the top button of my jeans as
discretely as I can.

“
Yeah,”
Albert laughs and he airplanes food into his fussy mini-Albert’s
mouth, “her face is nothing to what Richard’s pride is
suffering.”

So,
the stupid jerk face has a first name as well, Mr.
Richard
Jones.

“
That
is uncalled for,” Hayvee says, “he of all people should
know better than to do this.” She points to my face, looking
genuinely upset.

“
It’s
better than it looks,” I say.

“
Well,
it looks terrible,” Hayvee says, “I’m afraid that
we will have to delay learning the Samoan
Siva
Afi
until your face heals. Like
the
Ezpata-dantza
or
the Lanna Sword Dance, you need your balance.”

“
Fa,”
Albert says, derisively, “All these dances, they are a waste of
time; she is already behind in her training without you taking her
away to learn to prance around. It has no practical value.”

“
Ceremonial
weapon dances have so many practical values; otherwise I would not
have focused on it in my doctorate. One practical value: balance.
And, Raven Smith is very good, though Linnet could use some
practice.” Hayvee says; the words, and the squabble, lack any
strength of emotion this millionth time spoken. Hayvee just sighs and
stands to stack plates. When Linnie and I stand to help her, Hayvee
says, “Oh no, I don’t want you to clean tonight, this
dinner was for you girls. I will make the soldiers do it. No!”
She raises a finger. “I will make Richard do it.” She
smiles.

Thankfully
the cronies never dine with us, it’s usually just Hayvee,
Linnie, the baby, and me, and sometimes Albert.

“
Okay,”
Linnie says, accepting a little too quickly, she grabs my arm and all
but yanks me out of the dining room, pulling my toward the door that
leads to our apartment. “Goodnight, thanks for dinner.”

“
Yeah,
thanks,” I manage as Linnie pushes me down the steps and shuts
the door behind us.

She
all but shoves me into our bathroom, closes and locks the door, and
turns the bath faucet on high. “What’s going on?”
She asks, sitting on the sink, as steam starts to fill the room.

“
Nothing,”
I say.

“
No,
I don’t think so, Raven. You don’t get to do the shitty
sister thing. Tell me what’s going on.”

“
Shitty
sister…? Nice,” I say.

“
Yeah,
shitty. You’re keeping something from me. Something big. And
every time you do this lying thing, everything goes to shit. I get
tortured, my best friend kills herself, dad gets kidnapped, and you
die. I don’t think so. You don’t get to do that
secretive, keep everything to yourself shit, okay.” Linnie
furiously scrubs her cheeks.

Holy-moly
.

I
clear my throat, “Linnie…”

“
No,
I’m sorry,” She says, scrubbing her eyes. “It’s
not your fault. I just… I…”

But,
it is
.

She
wipes off her face, inhales deeply and tries on a smile. She exhales
a ‘ha,’ then says, “I’m fine. Just…
just tell me the truth.”

I
hesitate. What good could come of her knowing? She already told me
she has no information to add. But, when I look into my sister’s
eyes, that are starting to redden, a clear thought crashes into my
mind:
I’m
losing her. I’m losing my only friend
.

So
I tell her. I tell her every detail of what happened from Madeline
ripping out of the tree, every word she spoke until she dove into the
marsh.

“
So,
you
have
to go? Like, magically?” Linnie asks when I finish the story.

“
I
think so,” I say, though I really don’t know. “Also,
I don’t think Madeline would have picked me, if there was any
other choice.”

“
Unless
she’s gone bad,” Linnie says, as if she’s stating
the obvious, which maybe she is. “I mean, of all people, you
kind of trust Madeline. She shows up all ‘hocus-pocus,’
convinces you to go along, helps you escape your bodyguards, gets you
off hallowed ground, and then hands you over.”

I
stare for a long time, considering this. “It’s possible…”
I admit, “But, of all people, I really don’t see Madeline
going over to the ‘other side.’”

“
I
don’t know, Raven, everyone has a price,” she says, and
though the comment was probably said flippantly we look at each
other; and in our joined stare we silently acknowledge that we each
had a price, and we probably still do.

My
price was her.

“
So,
most likely, you
have
to go,” Linnie says, breaking eye contact and our intense
moment of understanding. “And, when you get into that coffee
shop Madeline will do some magic-mambo to get you alone, and then
she’ll steal you away to the airport.”

“
Yeah,”
I say.

“
So
if she’s bad, we’re seriously screwed,” she says.

“
Yeah,”
I say, again. “But, if she’s not bad, and for some reason
I’m the only person who can save Stephen, if I tell Albert or
try to prevent her plan, Albert will do everything in his power to
stop me from leaving this gilded padded-cell he’s built around
me.”

“
Too
true,” Linnie looks over at the faucet and says, “I’m
starting to feel bad for wasting all this water.”

I
say, “Yeah, the room stopped being steamy ten minutes ago.”
(Which means we wasted all the hot water; a task not hard to do in
this old house.) I whisper, “We need to think.”

“
We need to
make a plan,” She replies, turning the wheel on the faucet,
ceasing the stream and making a loud screeching sound. “And,
you need to call dad, he’s probably freaking out that you
haven’t called for your daily check-in to confirm you’re
not dead… again.”

Day
Two

As
I walk in through the open door of the coffee shop at exactly one
p.m. and glance around, I'm met with the aroma of fresh ground
coffee. I love that smell. As it’s only Wednesday, finals week
still marches on for the majority of students and a good portion of
them pack into this shop. All the tables are taken and loaded down
with textbooks and the chairs overflow with underfed,
over-caffeinated college students.

I
cross to the coffee counter line flanked by two cronies; we left one
behind in the car. I don’t know either of these guys (as in
I’ve seen them every day this year but they refuse to even make
eye contact with me). While standing there, I ignore the feeling in
my stomach and the strange hot feeling in my face, and I try to focus
on what I’m going to order. As much as I want a soy chai, I
have a feeling that this might be a triple shot of espresso in cup of
coffee kind of day (also known as a heart attack in a cup). The lady
at the counter turns around after giving her order and gawks at me.
The coffee girl behind the counter gives me an equally stunned look.
For a second I’m confused at what they’re looking at then
I remember the ‘got in a fight with the back leg of a horse and
lost’ look I’m sporting.

It
really shows how screwed up my life is that I could forget something
like that. Especially since the two ibuprofens I took did absolutely
nothing
.

“
You
should see the other guy,” one of my cronies says.

My
jaw hangs open. I didn’t know they were allowed to have a sense
of humor! I mean sure, it wasn’t very original; but a small
step forward for humor is a great leap forward for crony-kind. “That
was awesome,” I say, and illicit no response.
Oh,
well.

“
May
I help you?” The coffee-girl asks me.

“
Coffee,”
I decide, because the counter girl will go get it right away; if
Madeline is about to hoist me, I don’t want to chance it being
before the barista can make my drink. I’m careful to tilt my
wallet away from the gaze of the cronies so they won’t see that
I have stuffed my entire emergency-cash-stash into its fold.

When
I have my coffee safely in hand and filled with cream and sugar, my
cronies head for the door. Maybe I should have gotten a mocha;
Madeline must have been expecting me to stay for longer. But even if
I convinced the cronies to stay, there’s not a single table
open.

I
stand and gulp my coffee, hoping they’ll just think I’m
fiending for caffeine and can’t wait until I get in the car.
But then I finish the cup and I have no more excuse left; tossing it
into the trash, I head for the door.

On
the street, I stand between the two men, waiting for all the cars to
pass on the two-lane, one-way street. A panhandler walks up to us, he
smells like old booze and a little like pee. Panhandlers, for
whatever reason, love Arcata. There are more street people in this
little town than there are in some large cities. Or at least, that’s
what Hayvee told me upon moving here, to me, it just seems pretty
normal.

“
Do
you have a cigarette I can bum?” the man says, walking up to
me.

“
Sorry,
no,” I say, though I think this should probably be obvious.

One
of my cronies grabs the panhandler by the arm. “Get lost,”
He says in a low voice.

“
Whoa,
man” The panhandler says, stumbling. What happens next happens
so fast, I almost miss it. The panhandler jumps forward, and with his
free hand he smacks each one of the cronies directly in the middle of
the forehead, crushing some dirt there.