Beautiful Lies Read Free

go of my sister’s hand. She seems restless, sort of like she doesn’t want to be out tonight. Her behavior is a little odd; it was her idea to come.
    She tugs me toward the candy-apple stand a few yards away, a bright-red neon apple glowing in the window of the vending trailer. Our friends follow behind us.
    “Would you relax, Kimber?” Holly opens the bottle, shakes two of the pills into her hand. “They’re for Evan’s asthma. They suppress your appetite, that’s all.”
    Nicholas looks at his girlfriend, vaguely interested in the fact that she’s abusing her little brother’s prescription medication. “Doesn’t he need them? You know—to breathe?”
    “Oh, he’ll be fine,” she says, swallowing both pills without anything to drink. “He has tons of them. These are, like, extras.” And she holds out the bottle, offering it to us. “Anybody want one? You won’t be hungry for the rest of the night.”She pauses. “But there’s a very small risk of dizziness, blurred vision, and seizure.”
    Behind us, in the park’s band shell, several musicians are setting up their equipment. The guitarist plays a chord. He’s hooked up to an amplifier. The noise slices through the crowd, momentarily creating an almost complete silence as everybody stops to listen. Just for a second.
    “What are we doing?” I ask. “Does anybody want something to eat? Alice wants a candy apple.”
    My sister’s gaze shifts past my face. I can tell she’s staring at the rides. “Actually, I want to go on the Ferris wheel.
Then
I want a candy apple.” She smiles at me like a little kid. “Can we, Rachel?”
    I turn around. Faintly, I think I can hear the gears grinding on the rides. Among all the food smells, there’s a whiff of grease in the air.
    “I don’t want to. It’s so high, Alice. These things fall apart sometimes; I’ve seen it on the news.”
    “She’s right,” Nicholas says. “Some guy forgets to tighten a bolt in the wrong place, and people end up getting killed.”
    “Come on.” Holly nudges him. “It’s the Ferris wheel.” To me, she says, “It’s for
kids
, Rachel. You’ll be fine.”
    I glance at it again. Heights don’t usually bother me. Tonight, though, the thought of being up in the air makes me uneasy. I don’t know why. “Then come with us.”
    “Okay. We will.” Holly looks from Nicholas to Kimber. “Right?”
    Kimber nods. “Sure.”
    Nicholas shrugs, indifferent. “Whatever. I don’t care.”
    The five of us, led by my sister, hold on to one another’s hands and make a chain as we weave through the crowd together. Even though it’s chilly, the air is crisp and refreshing. Families and kids are out in droves. We pass a few more people we know from school. I see our biology teacher, Mr. Slater, standing alone beside a kettle-corn booth and smoking a cigarette; he doesn’t seem at all concerned that parents and students will see what he’s doing. He looks miserable too, but that’s nothing new for him. I see an elderly woman being pushed along in a wheelchair. She’s had her face painted tonight; her nose and cheeks are colored red and black, like a cat’s. We pass young couples with their hands in one another’s back pockets, and a slew of high-school football players in lettermen jackets who have clearly been boozing it up. Holly almost knocks over a man on stilts as he makes his way through the crowd, a good four feet taller than everyone else, dressed like Uncle Sam.
    And we pass carnies. They’re everywhere, at least one at each booth, all wearing dirty clothes, most of them smoking cigarettes, their eyes gleaming as they call out to whoever’s passing by to come and play, try to win your girl a prize, or to go for a spin on one of the rides.
    When we get to the Ferris wheel, the ride has just come to a stop. The operator is beginning to empty the seats, one swinging bench at a time. The line grows shorter as, two by two, people climb on.
    “I’m so thirsty,”