Free Little Black Lies by Tish Cohen Page A

he’s thin enough that his bones threaten to pierce his skin. In his hand is a smoldering joint, which makes me feel marginally better. There’s another person breaking the law today, and he’s not even worried about keeping it secret. As he tosses his head, a snarl of dusty dreads swings forward like decaying snake skins, and I realize I’m staring at the driver of Carling Burnack’s Bentley. “Hey,” he says, shutting the door before I manage to squeak out a “Hey” of my own.
    As soon as I’m through the threshold of our apartment, I pull the pants down to my ankles and stumble to my room, where I kick them off and cram them behind the unpacked boxes in my closet. I dump a handful of old books and clothing on top. Then I slam the closet door shut and lean back against it as if the pants might try to dig their way out of their makeshift grave.
    I miss my old life so much it hurts. Mandy’s been calling me every night to rave about her new horse. She’s planning to spend tomorrow hacking him in the woods, oiling his hooves, and trimming his tail. After, she and Eddie will go to a big party at Vince Martin’s house, where Leeza Owens is supposed to show up with a tattoo that goes from her shoulder to her elbow.
    Normal teenage existence seems so far away. A life where I’m not monitoring my father’s condition and pulling all-nighters and contemplating being expelled for theft seems so out of reach I wonder if I ever knew it at all.
    I roll over onto my side to see a small envelope waiting on my nightstand. It’s dirty and tattered to the point of being fuzzy at the edges and is addressed to me. There’s no sender information, but the thin, weblike handwriting gives it away even before the French postmark. It’s a new tactic from my mother—a letter in disguise. Slipping a fingernail under the sealed flap, I pause. Do I really want to hear what she has to say, especially since her departure is the reason Dad’s obsessiveness has shown up again?
    Then again, maybe something has changed. Maybe she hates the taste of French tobacco more than she hates life with me and Dad. Maybe she’s coming home. Maybe she can save me from my new life.
    I tear open the envelope and pull out a thick letter. A photo falls to the floor, landing faceup. As soon as I see it, I realize I’m a stupid girl who gets what she deserves. I knew not to open the letter and I opened it. There, lying on the rug, is the black-net rocket of the Eiffel Tower piercing a bleached white sky. Worse, standing at its base is my smiling mother. Whomever she is arm in arm with has been cut out in a lame attempt to crush me slightly less, but I recognize the fur on those burly forearms. It’s the man I despise more than anyone on earth. The reason she went to a French cooking school in the first place. Her bilingual boyfriend got a job so good she just couldn’t help herself.
    I snatch up the photo, the letter, the filthy envelope, and push it into my metal wastepaper basket. Then I heave my window open, set the can on the sill. I light one of the Benson & Hedges from the package I swiped out of my mother’s purse, drop it into the garbage can, and watch the Eiffel Tower curl up and burn.
    Once the smoke in my bedroom has cleared and my mother has vanished—yet again—I wander into the kitchen and pick up the ancient wall phone to check for messages. The beeping dial tone raises my hopes that Mandy has called with more delicious news from Lundon. But after punching in our password, I hear a man’s voice.
    â€œI’m looking for Charlie Black….” He pauses, shuffling a few papers. “I hope I have the right number. This is Ryan Talbot from Eastern Property Management. We’d like to offer you the position you interviewed for. Give me a call at the office when you get a chance.”
    I knew it. Dad should have called them after his interview