If You Tell a Lie

by Lucinda Berry

For the first time in their spoiled, entitled lives, they were going to live like the rest of us.

I was shocked to find out Thera was a practicing psychic and spiritual counselor, though.

Grace was a supermodel now. She was internet famous. I couldn’t believe it. Her Instagram had over a million followers, but it was her OnlyFans account that was the most impressive. She was Bahd Barbie, and she’d made over $2 million last year.

I didn’t go to her OnlyFans account even though I really wanted to. My wife, Claire, had access to all my social media accounts, same as I did hers, and we were completely transparent about everything, but I was dying to know how racy Grace got on there. The Grace I knew wore biker shorts underneath her uniform shorts with extra-long T-shirts hanging down. There was no variability to her wardrobe. Her nighttime outfit only included pulling a camp hoodie over her uniform. She was super self-conscious. Always changing with her back to us in the cabin and as fast as she could. Perfecting the art of being in the clothes you were taking off at the same time as the ones you were putting on. She even wore a T-shirt over her swimming suit. How’d she go from that to being Bahd Barbie?

Besides that, I didn’t want her asking questions about Grace, which she absolutely would. I couldn’t explain without lying the reason I was looking her up after all this time had passed.

As far as I could tell, Blakely hadn’t done much with her life except marry one of Georgia’s most eligible bachelors. Literally.

They didn’t even have a quote from her, which seemed odd, not to have anything from the bride, but her father had always controlled her life, so maybe he still did.

People always wondered how four girls could get along so well, but that’s exactly why we got along the way we did and there wasn’t the usual fighting among us. Because there were two dyads to the group: Thera and Blakely. Me and Grace.

They had a connection you couldn’t really touch or compete with. It transcended the bounds of ordinary friendship. They understood each other in a way no one else ever could.

The boundaries shifted and changed between best-friend groups.

When somebody cheated—that’s how it felt when Grace started siding with Thera over me. That’s what drove me to Blakely in the first place. I’d never done what I did if Grace hadn’t pushed me there first, but she’d liked to play it off like she was such an innocent victim.

But it was only partially true. I couldn’t tell her the real reasons the kids hated me, or how they treated me.

We became vicious creatures. No different from our tormentors at home. Except at Pendleton, I got lucky. At Pendleton, I was at the top. And when you’ve always been at the bottom, sometimes the power of being at the top goes to your head. And we were treated like royalty. That’s what happened when you were friends with Blakely and her father was the biggest donor.

That kind of treatment turned you into different people. Made you do things you didn’t know you were capable of.

That was the hardest part about camp. Fueling my binges.

I’d seen the way Clint looked at Meg when we sat down around the campfire tonight. He came by right after Mason pulled out his guitar and started playing. It wasn’t fair. Guys were throwing themselves at her this summer. There was something about her energy lately that pulled you to her, too, that had never been there before. And she wasn’t bothered by any of the attention, which only made them want her more.

It was so annoying. Not that I liked Clint or anything. But still. He was supposed to want me. Not Meg. She was starting to get on my nerves.

The way he did for every single one of his girlfriends. It made the house so boring. Totally lifeless and without personality. Just like her.

I carried it with me like this demon I couldn’t let anyone else see. This darkness. Part of the shame was that I thought I was the only one living with such a beast. But then I learned I wasn’t the only one living with a demon, and somehow that made it okay to have mine.

What’s that they say in Stand by Me? There’s nothing like the friends you have when you’re twelve? Or something like that. They found a dead body lying next to the railroad tracks, and we found one at camp.

I needed help, especially if we were going to talk about Regina.

There was no way we could’ve predicted that she’d snap.

How could we have known what Regina was going through? She and Mr. Crosby had seemed so happy. They looked like the perfect couple. They held hands when they walked together, practically skipping along, and she never looked depressed. I didn’t ever even see her without her makeup on. But if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it ten thousand times—you never know what’s going on behind closed doors, and there was all kinds of stuff going on at home when no one was watching.

One side believed in the insanity defense presented by her attorneys.

So many people could put themselves in her shoes, and lots of them would’ve done exactly what she did to her husband.

The way she’d buckled her kids into their car seats to drive them to the camp.

We all picked our sides, and I fell on the side of wearing her shoes. I knew trauma could break you. Dismantle your insides. Pull your sense of reality right out from underneath you. Twist you and push you into doing things you never thought you were capable of doing. It wasn’t that she’d stabbed her husband 117 times. As awful as that was, nobody really blamed her for doing it, especially after what he’d done. Lots of people thought he deserved it.

Nobody understood why she tried to hurt them. That’s where she lost all compassion and support. Mothers didn’t hurt their children, no matter what, and she’d broken the cardinal rule of motherhood.

But her story didn’t really make sense because she killed Mr. Crosby first.

I’ve never forgotten what she looked like that day. Never will. Blood-splattered face. Wild eyes. Hair gone. Because the first thing she’d done when she heard the news was shave her head. Why hysterical women shave their heads, I’ll never understand. But she’d tied a bandanna around her bald head like she was going into some kind of real battle. Who knows what else she would’ve done that afternoon if she hadn’t been stopped.

You couldn’t get away with doing what we’d done,

But we did. We did a terrible thing and eventually you have to pay for something like that.

I’d been waiting for this. On some level, even though I’d never acknowledged it. Because the truth? If a group of teenage girls had done what we did? I might’ve wanted to hurt us too.

She’d greeted me with a huge smile and a gushing hello, like no time had passed, but I jumped back the moment she touched me.

I didn’t like thinking about Mr. Crosby. I’d never wanted him to take an interest in me. Never. I thought it was a bad idea right from the start. Same as Thera. Send me in next? Ask to get a private lesson? It should’ve been Blakely. It always should’ve been her. I only did it because she wanted me to. It was her plan. All of it was, and we just went along with her like lemmings.

But something happened at camp, and it wasn’t just to me. It happened to all of us. We transformed into these completely different people. I didn’t recognize myself sometimes. But there was nothing more intoxicating than fitting in when you’d always stuck out. And once you’d tasted it? Well, you’d practically do anything for it.

No wonder Blakely had such a crush on him. I could feel her watching us from where she sat on the bleachers. Her eyes daggers into my back.

I just had no idea it would make Blakely so mad or that she’d get so jealous. But nothing Blakely ever did with Mr. Crosby made sense.

Stupid little girls masquerading as women.

But I would’ve rather stayed poor and found another way to make it to the top than have him working at the camp.

Privileged white girls. I told him that’s all the camp was full of. That his brown skin would stand out among their whiteness, but he didn’t listen to me. He liked to pretend racism didn’t exist. I was the one that pointed out the way they followed us around at Nordstrom’s like we were going to steal something.

See, the biggest problem with those girls wasn’t that they were every kind of privileged and white, even though they were. It was that they were so damn smart.

But what they did to him? Well, that was the reason they had to pay.

All I had to do was call my daddy and let him know they’d split up me and my friends into different teams, throw in a few cries for good measure, and he’d be on the phone with the director as soon as we hung up. And, no doubt, we’d be back on a team together quicker than they’d split us up.

We made it our mission to win gold every year. Sometimes we were successful, but sometimes we weren’t, and I absolutely hated losing.

It was just another thing we had in common, because there’s nothing I like more in this world than winning.

And then he winked. Right at me. My stomach flopped.

“Yes, I was there the day Shamu killed the girl—her trainer—in the water.” It was such a tragic story, but for some reason, I liked telling it. People felt sorry for me when I told them that I lost my mom, but they didn’t feel any pain themselves. Just pity for me, and I didn’t like it. Something about their pity always made me so uncomfortable. When I told them about the whale swallowing its owner while we ate . . . that one hit everyone differently. It hurt them, and part of me liked making them feel bad, but I wasn’t trying to make Jared feel sad. I was just trying to get him to stay awhile longer.

I’m talking about the first trainer he killed.”

This was the part of the story that really got people. The gut puncher, always. I never left out the part about my mom.