Lying Out Loud

“Stop, So

“She’s not perfect either,” I insisted. “Maybe she’s not as selfish as you thought she was when you first moved here, but she made some mistakes, too. She’s cold and judgmental. And it’s okay to see that. You can love people and still realize they’re screwed up.”

Ryder was silent again, and stiff as a board.

I swallowed, knowing I’d crossed a few lines. I hadn’t meant to say any of this. I’d been holding it back, knowing it wasn’t my place to get involved with his family. But it wasn’t just his family anymore. Now, I was the one who’d fallen off that pedestal.

“You did it with Amy, too, you know. You acted like she was some sort of goddess, even when she was rude to you. You ignored it. You were in total denial. Until one day you realized you liked me more and … and then you acted like she was the worst person imaginable.” I shook my head. “And now me. The same thing.”

I looked down at my feet. Staring up at him was too much. Those green eyes were killing me, especially when I couldn’t read them at all. A voice in my head was screaming at me to stop. To shut the hell up. But I couldn’t put the brakes on now. I’d come too far.

“You act like people are either perfect or terrible,” I said. “Like there’s nothing in between. But there is. You might think I’m terrible right now — maybe I am. But there were things about me you liked. Things about me that …” I forced myself to look back up. “Things about me that you thought were incredible. Those things don’t go away just because I messed up.”

We stood there, staring at each other, our bodies less than a foot apart, for a long, long time. My hands were shaking, and I balled them into fists at my sides. This was the longest, most painful silence of my life.

Finally, quietly, he asked, “Are you done?”

“No,” I murmured. “I have one more honest thing to tell you.” I took a deep breath.

The classroom door opened and Amy stuck her head inside. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “But lunch is almost over, so …”

The bell rang, right on cue.

We followed Amy out into the hallway, just as a huge crowd of students stampeded toward us. I turned to Ryder, hoping to finish what I’d been about to say, but he was swallowed up by the crowd.

I had the sudden urge to cry, and I forced it away. For a brief, foolish second, I’d thought I might be able to win him back. But instead, I’d lost him again.

Amy grabbed my wrist and pulled me into a little alcove, out of the path of our recently fed peers.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“Could’ve gone better,” I said.

“What did he say?”

“Not much of anything.” I sighed and shook my head. “I didn’t even finish everything I wanted to say.”

“Well, then we’ve got to make him listen to you. Let you finish.”

“How?” I asked. “It’s not like you can lock us in a room again. I don’t think he’ll fall for that twice.”

“You’re probably right, but there’s got to be some way.”

“I don’t know what it would be … unless …” I paused, an idea dawning on me.

“Uh-oh,” Amy said. “That’s your scheming face. Now I’m scared.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “You don’t have to be part of it this time. It doesn’t even involve any lies. All I need is … Remember that boom box Wesley had when we were little? He wouldn’t still happen to have that, would he?”

Chapter 31

I may not have been an overly romantic person, but I did have a soft spot for romantic comedies. Which meant I also had a soft spot for the cliché of the Grand Gesture. And I was hoping Ryder Cross did, too.

The problem with grand gestures, however, is that they can be really embarrassing for the gesturer. But then, maybe that’s the real gesture: showing that you’re willing to make a fool of yourself for another person.

These were the things I found myself musing over as I stood on Ryder’s front lawn on a Friday afternoon, my hands trembling as I held a (surprisingly heavy) boom box over my head. It was blasting “Of Lions and Robots,” the Goats Vote for Melons love song that I’d begun to associate with Ryder.

If his mother was worried about what the neighbors would think of my car, this was giving her a heart attack. I could see her face in the living room window, staring out at me with intense disapproval.

I tried to ignore that and focus only on Ryder’s bedroom window, which — since he lived in a one-story house — was only a few feet away from my face.

I knew he was inside. I’d seen the curtains shift, so now I stood there, holding my breath, anxious and a little terrified as I waited for him to open the window.

But he did me one better.

He came outside.

“So

I turned and saw him heading down the front steps. “Gesturing,” I said, my heart racing. I smiled and lowered the boom box a little. My arms were killing me.

Slowly, he began to walk toward me. “You know, I like nineties teen movies,” he said. “John Cusack holding a boom box over his head is from Say Anything, which is an eighties movie.”

“Yeah, well, you try finding an iconic, grand romantic gesture that isn’t lame in a nineties teen movie. At least I got the soundtrack right.”

“Goats Vote for Melons grew on you?”

“You wish. I just happen to like this one song. And luckily, in dorky hipster fashion, they released this album on cassette. Weirdos.”

He started to smile, but then he caught himself. “What are you doing here?” he asked again.

“At school the other day, in the art room, I didn’t say everything I needed to.”

“You sure?” he asked. “You said quite a bit.”

I cringed. “I may have gone overboard.”

“Well, you weren’t entirely wrong.” But he didn’t elaborate beyond that. “Is that the fla

I looked down at the red shirt. “Oh, yeah. It is. She’s not really into grunge — that was all me — so she gave to me.”

“It looks nice on you,” he said.

“Thank you.” The song on the boom box faded away, so I set the archaic machine down in the grass. “Listen, Ryder, there’s one more thing I needed to —”

The garage door slid open and Ms. Ta

“Are you going somewhere?” I asked Ryder, surprised.

“The airport,” he said.

“Oh. Where are you headed?”

“DC.”

My face split into a smile I couldn’t hold back. “You’re visiting your dad?”

“Yeah. Mom’s not too thrilled about it, but … So you had something you wanted to say, So

“Right. Yeah.” I took a deep breath. “I know I said a lot of things the other day, about your flaws. And I meant it. You’re pretentious and stubborn and you drive me insane sometimes, but … I love you. And I just needed you to know that.”

There, I’d said it. I now wanted to throw up. But I’d said it.

I hadn’t expected him to say it back. I really hadn’t. But for just a second, as we stood there in his front yard, I thought he might. I thought my grand gesture, my honesty, might have won him over.

He opened his mouth, but before any words could come out —

“Ryder!”

We both turned and saw his mother leaning out the open driver’s-side window.

“We’ve got to go,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, looking back at me. “I’ve got to go.”

He started to walk away, but I panicked and grabbed his arm and nearly tripped over the boom box. “Wait,” I said. “Just wait. Can … can you catch a later flight?”

“No,” he said. “That only works in the movies.”

I let go of his arm, feeling defeated all over again.

“So

“Okay,” I said.

I stayed where I was, watching as he walked away.

He climbed into the passenger’s side, and his mom rolled up her window. She acted as if I wasn’t there now, a heartbroken teenage girl with an old boom box in the middle of her front lawn.