Read As I Die Lying for Free Online

clothes. Then
somebody called him from around the front of the garage. He shook
his fist at me and I slipped into the trees. That's the last time I
played over there."
    "Does the man still work there?" Sally
asked, maybe wanting to see what he looked like.
    "I haven't seen him at the garage lately.
But the people who work there don't seem to stay very long. I guess
they get tired of the gasoline smell or something. But I'm still
scared to play in the cars. That's why I come in through the back
of the fence to get here, so they won't see me from the
garage."
    "This is a secret place, all right. It looks
just like a big bunch of weeds from the outside. So, were you
scared about that man?"
    "I don't know. Sometimes I dream that he's
coming to get me, that he's in my bedroom. He's got on his greasy
clothes and he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wrench and
he tightens it around my arm and I can't get away and he's turning
the wrench and my arm turns around and around and he keeps rubbing
my hair and he smells like gasoline and he's got on a spaceman
helmet and then he leans over on me and I can't breathe and I wake
up and I'm kicking my legs against the blankets and it's morning.
Then I go to the window and look at the Ford to make sure it hasn't
blasted off in the night."
    "That sounds like a scary dream."
    "Dreams aren't scary.
They're just dreams. That's not as bad as him really coming after me."
    "Grownups are strange. I don't know if I
want to be in love like grownups after all."
    "But you said we were in love. And you have
to tell me the secrets. You promised."
    "You mean you still want to be in love? It's
already been almost a whole day."
    I was confused. "I thought you said love was
forever."
    "I didn't cross my heart and hope to
die."
    She saw the pain in my eyes. It didn't seem
to bother her. Her blue eyes were as cold as the garage man's had
been. Now that I think about it, she probably smiled. Or maybe I’m
remembering wrong, or lying again, or one of my headmates has taken
over the keyboard.
    "But it's okay, we can still play," she
said, seeing the fallen look on my face. Did I still have to love
her because I'd crossed my heart, even if she didn't love me?
    "I'll tell you some
secrets, then," she said. "Here's the best thing about love: You
can still pretend like we're in love, the way grownups pretend."

 
     
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
    Sally and I sat cross-legged on the warped
plywood floor of the doghouse. The sun was falling into late
afternoon, shining through the gap in the roof like electric
light.
    "What’s this about grown-ups pretending to
love?" I asked.
    "If they loved each other the way people on
TV do, they wouldn't hit each other or yell at each other."
    "I thought they loved each other because
they had to, because they were married."
    "But we loved each other because we wanted
to."
    I noticed she said “loved.” Past tense. My
heart fluttered like a house bird let out of a cage, discovering
its wings only to slam into window glass and fall dead. Or maybe
peck at its own reflection. When you’re that young, you can’t come
up with clever metaphors, which is why you save your autobiography
until you’re older and need money. Or someone has a gun to your
head.
    "But love also has to do with the squeaky
bedsprings," she said. "You've heard them, haven't you? How they
squeak over and over and over and sometimes you can hear your
parents yelling like they're hurting each other, but they don't
sound mad?"
    I nodded. Just another of night's mysterious
noises, along with faraway trains and the wind rustling through the
cornfields and mice gnawing behind the walls and monsters breathing
under the bed and a little person inside your skull. So the
squeaking had something to do with love?
    She continued, spreading out secrets like
grape jelly on white bread. "You ever notice how your parents are
happy the morning after the bedsprings squeak? Mine at least get
through breakfast before they get mad at each