Read Please Ignore Vera Dietz for Free Online Page B

could lie about anything. She’d tell you that she met the lead singer from your favorite band and dropped acid with them. She’d say she was screwing the biology teacher, or that her stepdad snorted coke with the principal. She drew pictures on herself with thin Sharpie marker and told everyone they were tattoos. I heard that she lied to her dad, who lived in California with his new family, about wanting to kill herself, and about an eating disorder or cutting or whatever else she could dream up to move in with him, but all that did was get her hooked on an array of antidepressants and land her in a shrink’s office once a week. She lied the same way to her friends. She had the entire third-period study hall convinced she was going to die of leukemia in freshman year. Some of them even bought her cards—even people who she’d lied and gossiped about.
    I’d managed to stay off her radar, for the most part, and maintained my invisibility. But once she started liking Charlie and wanted me out of his life, things changed. I became her target, and he became her prize.
    Now that Charlie is gone, she ignores me again. I think she thinks she’s safe now, because it’s been three and a half months and I haven’t said anything about what really happened on the night he died. But she’s not.
    My last delivery of the night is a four-pie stop in the old burbs. These are the small single-story brick places that are stuck so close together you can hear your neighbor peeing through the concrete alley between, though they do have front and back yards to litter with more Tacky Glowing Christmas Shit.
    556 North Gerhardt Lane. A red brick bread box with a red and green doorbell that plays “Jingle Bells” when I ring it, and a sign to the right of the door that reads WELCOME TO OUR HOME with two spotted fawns on it. Eight cars stuck multi-directionally in the driveway. Two on blocks. The sound of a party spills out into the sleeping neighborhood. One of the cars has a blue and white football jersey taped to the back window and the words GO PANTHERS painted above it. From the sounds within, I’m guessing we won the game tonight.
    The door jerks open and the music and smell of pot smoke hit me. I open the flap on the hot bag and say, “That’s thirty-four ninety-nine, please.” Then I look up and I see Jenny Flick, arms folded, glaring at me, and Bill Corso, the school’s semi-illiterate star quarterback, standing behind her. “Look who it is,” she says.
    I take the four pizzas out of the bags and hand them to Bill, and then I stash the hot bags under my arm, which is weak from the mix of fear and anger I’m experiencing right now, and get my change bag from the pocket of my black combat pants. Jenny is still staring at me with a scowl on her face, eyeliner drawn around her eyes like she’s a character in a Tim Burton movie.
    “Thirty-four ninety-nine, please.”
    She digs into her pocket and pulls out a wad of bills. Then she peels them off one by one and lets them float to the doormat. Two of them land on my feet.
    “How much was that, baby?” she asks Bill, who is too fucked-up to notice that she’s been tossing out handfuls of cash.
    “I don’t know, Jen. You know I can’t do math when I’m high.”
    She starts giggling and tosses the rest of the wad of bills into the air above my head, and then slams the door in my face. I look around at where the money landed, kick it all together into one place, and bend over to pick it up.
    The door opens. Jenny Flick appears again, and behind her, Bill Corso has a professional-looking slingshot, aimed at me. “And here’s your fucking tip,” she says.
    He shoots a penny that hits my shoulder and stings like a mother. They giggle like a pair of ten-year-old girls and slam the door shut again.
    In the car, I count the scrunched-up money and find that Jenny Flick has just unintentionally given me a thirty-three-dollar tip. Probably the best thing drugs will ever do for me.