Truth and Lies by Norah McClintock

Author:Norah McClintock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group

Detective Jones came back into the room. He started the video camera again. Then I told the whole story.

I said that on Tuesday evening when somehow Robbie Ducharme had ended up getting himself kicked to death in the park, I was supposed to be doing my homework. But I couldn’t study. I couldn’t make myself concentrate on history and math. I had been thinking about Jen. Jen who was everything I wasn’t—smart, liked by all of her teachers, popular, on her way, had her pick of universities, parents well off. Jen, who was also everything I wanted. Beautiful too, with her long blond hair and her green eyes and her slim sleek body. Jen, who for some reason that I had never understood, had actually liked me. For a while there, she had maybe more than liked me.

Maybe.

How had that word crept into my thinking? It used to be that I had no question in my mind about it. Jen had liked me. She had even loved me for a while. Jen had let me kiss her and she had kissed me back. Jen came looking for me every day at school. She used to come over to my house and sit on my porch and complain about her parents. Or give me grief for not studying hard enough. She used to tell me, “You can do anything. Tell me why you can’t do anything you put your mind to.” And then Jen had met Patrick.

But I didn’t say all of that to Detective Jones and the video camera. I didn’t say any of it. Instead I said, “There’s this girl I know.” Correction. “Used to know,” I said. “Jen Hayes.”

Riel nodded. He knew her too.

“I went out that night to—” To what? What should I say? I went out that night to spy on her? Jeez, what would Detective Jones think? You see, detective, I wasn’t stomping Robbie Ducharme in the park. I have an alibi. I was following my former girlfriend. That’s what it would sound like. “I … ”

Detective Jones was watching me intently.

“I knew she was going to meet someone that night. And I wanted to talk to her. And I can’t call her house because her mother always answers the phone, so I … ” I sounded pathetic. Worse than pathetic. I practically sounded like a stalker. “I wanted to see if I could talk to her.”

Detective Jones didn’t say anything. I glanced at Riel. He nodded, encouraging me to continue.

“I used to go out with her,” I said. “And I just wanted to talk to her.” I told the story carefully, not wanting to come across like a complete loser, but wanting to make sure they believed me because, right now, they didn’t. Neither of them did. So I told them that I’d just wanted to talk to her, that was all. I told them that because of that, I had walked all the way down to the South Central Postal Station on Eastern Avenue.

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