Nothing But the Truth
couldn’t have filled an entire binder, could they?
    “Mark,” calls Mrs. Meyers.
    The Class Coward shuffles up to claim his binder-clipped ream of paper, at least fifty pages thick. Too bad he keeps his eyes averted from the blasts of disgust coming from my desk. I’d bet every one of my favorite books and Janie’s entire ward robe that there isn’t so much as a single sentence in Mark’s Truth Statement that says he’s friends with a racist pig. Or that he’s too much of a wimp to stop Steve Kosanko from spewing on me.
    A shimmer of pink diverts my attention from The Traitor. Janie, who triple-spaced and wide-margined last year’s world history report, holds a dossier with a pink cover sheet tied together with a sparkly silver ribbon. I stare at her work, betrayed again. Hadn’t she been stressing about this assignment as much as I had?
    Come on, people,
I want to shout.
We’ve been alive for about fifteen years. How much truth could any of us accumulate?
    My paltry three pages are such a weak excuse of a Truth Statement that I’m the only one without mine back at the end of the class. Anne doesn’t miss this fact, projecting in her loud voice as if we’re at dim sum and need to talk over the chattering Chinese and rolling carts: “Where’s Patty’s?”
    “The only truth we need to know is that her shirt is butt ugly.” Cole laughs, nothing but good-natured humor. His grubby concert T-shirts never look any better than what I have on, and everyone knows it.
    I smile faintly. “That’s the god-awful truth.”
    “Right on,” says Cole.
    “Patty wrote the truth,” Janie says, wrenching around in her desk to stare pointedly at Mark. “Did everybody else?”
    Mark gets out of his hot seat so quickly, he knocks over his Untruth Statement. All his white lies spill onto the floor. He doesn’t stop to pick up any of the loose pages, just slinks out of the classroom.
    “Mark?” calls Mrs. Meyers. She frowns, confused. Her eyes dart first to Janie and then rest on me.
    Why can’t I confront Steve and Mark myself?
Janie, fearless Janie, who says cellulite be damned and wears thigh-high skirts anyway, can. And does.
    I duck my head, ashamed of my silence. My hands push in my stomach as if I could dig out the truth, tug it from my belly button.
    But the only truth is this: I’ve demolished my GPA. Next year’s class president hates me now. Steve Kosanko is going to be the Grim Reaper of my sophomore year. And a butt ugly shirt can’t cover the fact that I’m a coward, no different from Mark.
    Why is the truth so hard to swallow?
    Apparently, Mrs. Meyers can’t swallow my hard, bitter truths either.
    “Patty,” she says. “I want to see you after class.”

8Incomplete
    A s the other students pile out of the classroom, I can hear summer vacation lightening their voices. Mrs. Meyers doesn’t seem to hear anything, erasing the chalkboard in long, full sweeps, as if cleaning it is the only thing she’s thinking about. In my mind, I’m halfway through bleaching my skin before Mrs. Meyers turns to face me, looking as if she knows what I’m doing and doesn’t like it.
    With a slight frown, Mrs. Meyers picks up a thin, red file folder and heads toward my desk, sitting down in Janie’s seat beside mine. She says, “What you wrote is good, very good.” Her eyes probe mine, like she can see straight over my Great Wall of Chinese Silence. “Your Truth Statement is stronger than anything you’ve produced this year.”
    I nod,
OK,
wondering, so why hasn’t she handed me my paper yet?
    “But you only wrote half the truth.”
    “Half?” I repeat.
    Mrs. Meyers nods, closes her eyes, and when she opensthem, they’re urgent, hot black coals. She hugs the file folder with my writing to her heart before she hands it to me.
    When I open the file, my breath escapes in a whoosh, sounding like the air escaping out of a deflating balloon.
    Incomplete. Written in bright, red ink. That one damning word is a stake

Similar Books

The Crystal Frontier

Carlos Fuentes

The Winter Man

Diana Palmer

And I Love You

Marie Force

Second Sight

George D Shuman

Death and the Sun

Edward Lewine

Rebel's Bargain

Annie West