Stranger With My Face Read Free

trouble getting things set up with a band and all that awesome food.”
    “If I’d known you didn’t want to come, I would have asked someone in your place,” Natalie told me. Her pretty, heart-shaped
     face was flushed with anger.
    “Where are you getting this stuff about my ‘not wanting’ to come?” I was beginning to get angry myself. “What choice did I
     have? People don’t get sick because they want to. I guess you think it’s my idea of fun to lie there in bed when all the rest
     of you are out partying!”
    “Come off it, Laurie,” Gordon said. “You weren’t at home in bed any more than I was.”
    “I had the flu,” I said. “If you don’t believe me—”
    “I don’t.” His voice was flat and hard. “Because I saw you.”
    “You— what ?”
    “The band took a break, so I went outside to get some air. The moon was bright, and I saw you on the beach.”
    “Gordon, you’ve got to be crazy!” I stared at him incredulously. “I never left the house last night. You can ask my parents.”
    “I don’t need to ask anybody. I saw you. So answer me something—who were you meeting there? And don’t try to tell me ‘nobody,’
     because I’m not going to buy it. It was one of the summer guys, wasn’t it? Which one—that dude from Princeton? Or that one
     with the beard who’s been giving you the eye at the Tennis Club?”
    He was furious. I had never seen Gordon so livid. His jaw was set, and his eyes had narrowed to slits of glimmering green.
    Mr. Ziegler gave the boat whistle a toot, and I realized suddenly that we were the only ones who hadn’t boarded.
    “I won’t even try to answer that,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster. “There isn’t any answer. I was home, sick
     in bed. Period. If you saw somebody on the beach, it wasn’t me.”
    For a moment nobody spoke.
    Then Natalie said quietly, “That’s not true. I was with Gordon. We both saw you. There’s no way in the world it could have
     been anyone else.”

It was a long, strange day.
    There were all the usual things that have to be done at the start of a new school year. I went to the office for my locker
     assignment, filled out registration forms, and located my new classrooms.
    People I hadn’t seen since the previous spring greeted me in the halls, and I smiled, said friendly things, and gave appropriate
     answers to routine questions.
    “No, we didn’t go anywhere special for vacation. Did you?”
    “I swam a lot and played some tennis and just generally hung out. What did you do?”
    “Oh—thanks. But it would be weird if I didn’t get a tan, living on the island.”
    And all the while, beneath the surface, I was seething. How could Gordon have had the nerve to accuse me with such certainty
     of something I knew I didn’t do? “I saw you,” he had insisted, not just once but several times, without a hint of doubt in his voice. And Natalie
     had confirmed it. “We both saw you”—when I hadn’t been there to be seen! My denial had counted for nothing. They hadn’t believed
     me. Natalie had actually come right out and said, “We know you’re lying.”
    And what exactly had Gordon and Natalie been doing out on the beach together, anyway? That question occurred to me midmorning
     when I was standing in the library. Natalie was supposed to have been with Carl, her date for the evening, not strolling around
     in the moonlight with my boyfriend! Here Gordon was, acting so furious about something that hadn’t happened, when I was the one who had a right to be upset and angry.
    I collected my books and took them to my locker. My next-door locker neighbor was a tall, freckled girl named Helen Tuttle who had just transferred from a high school in the Southwest. It turned out we had the same split period for English,
     so we ended up eating lunch together in the cafeteria. Darlene and Mary Beth Ziegler came in soon after we did, but they never
     glanced in my direction. They went to a table at