Liars and Saints by Maile Meloy

Author:Maile Meloy [Meloy, Maile]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4165-8311-0
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2015-02-06T05:00:00+00:00

When Jamie left, Clarissa cried, and Abby tried not to. Her mother kept working with juvies in pajamas, and asked if Abby was having sex, which she wasn’t, and if she knew about birth control, which she did. She asked where Abby’s stuffed animals had gone, and why her walls were blank, and if she was depressed. Abby snuck out her window one night, just to walk down the street while her mother didn’t know where she was. She walked back in through the front door, but her mother was on the phone in the kitchen and didn’t notice.

One night when Luís the Buddhist was back, Abby came into the kitchen and asked if she could go to the roller rink.

Her mother said, “Kids sell drugs at that rink.”

“They do?” This was news to Abby. She’d been going to the roller rink since third grade. Girls had birthday parties there, and wore blue pom-poms on their skates. “We just want to go skating.”

“Who wants to go?”

“Tara.”

“Who’s driving?”

“Her mom.”

Clarissa seemed to think about it, then shook her head. “I don’t want you in that environment.”

Luís, sitting quietly at the kitchen table, said, “I think you should let her go.”

“They might drink there.”

“We don’t drink,” Abby said. “They sell Pepsi and Sprite. And you let Jamie drink beer when he was twelve.”

“That was the sixties.”

“It was the seventies,” Abby said. “You were pregnant with me.”

“You know what I mean. End of discussion.”

But it wasn’t the end, and Luís backed her. Her mother gave in, but insisted on picking them up at nine-thirty. In the dark, disco-lit room, in rented skates, Abby skated around the rink to “Another One Bites the Dust.” She wondered which of the ordinary-looking kids there were selling drugs, and which were buying.

At nine-thirty, she and Tara returned their skates and waited by the front door for Clarissa to pick them up. They talked about how strange their shoes felt, how soft and stuck to the ground, after gliding around, three inches taller. Other cars came and picked up other kids. Tara and Abby talked about the boy Tara liked at school. His name was Jason and he had braces, but was cute anyway. At ten the rink closed, and the last skaters came outside. Then they were gone, too, and the street was quiet, and still no Clarissa.

“She’s always late,” Abby said.

The owner came outside, a tall Vietnamese man with lights on his skate wheels. He had once picked Abby up after a bad fall, when she was much smaller, and skated her off the rink to recover. Now he asked if they were all right.

“We’re fine,” Abby said.

Tara looked at her watch and made an apologetic face. “I have to call my mom,” she said. “I’m already so late.”

The owner let them back inside to use the pay phone, and the place was unrecognizable in the bright overhead fluorescent lights with no music playing. A woman was running a floor polisher over the rink. Tara had to pry the nickels out of her penny loafers to make the call.

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