Said the Liar - A. Swift (romantic books to read TXT) 📗

was just bones and metal rods, to see it all come together into something so wicked was gratifying.

            "Don't touch, it might still be tacky." He warned me, he squatted by the back of the kart and kept smiling as he looked it over.

            I shook my head. "It looks great! It's also huge, is this the biggest one you've done so far?"

            Leon nodded. His curly hair was pulled back into a low ponytail, but several strands were loose, they bounced around when he nodded vigorously.

            Then his face went from the car to mine and he gave me a serious look.

            "What's up with you lying about me, dark horse?"

           

           

 

Chapter 4

 

Chapter 4

 

            We stared at each other. My gray eyes and his brown ones. I was the first to break the stare, and instead of keeping contact I watched the wheels of the kart.

            "You mean last night?" I rapped the tire with a knuckle.

            Leon got to his feet and grabbed a rag to clean his hands off a little. It was a pretty hopeless battle. Grease and oil had to be embedded into his bones by this point for how much time he spent with dirty hands and fingers. As bad as his hands were, somehow his ratty red tee had only a few sparse stains on it. How he'd managed to do that I had no idea. There was a reason why I wore old grubby clothes whenever I visited, I didn't have the same magic powers that he did when it came to the distribution of dirt. Lying doesn't help you when your mom still has to find a way to get oil off of your jeans. A stain's a stain.

            "Yeah, what's up with that, huh? You weren't here helping me out or I would have slept for more than forty minutes." Leon considered what he'd said. "Probably." He added as an afterthought. He wasn't really known for keeping normal hours when it came to sleep or work. Whenever he felt like working, he did, and more often than not that happened to be in the middle of the night. Usually he was pretty good about getting rest somehow, but since it looked like he didn't have to work today, he'd been going all out to get stuff done. From what I was looking at it was well worth the lack of sleep.

            I continued to avoid his gaze. I knew he wasn't mad at me, just curious. "I guess mom called you. I got in late and she was up." I thought of my mother sitting in the chair so she could ambush me and immediately wanted to forget the image entirely.

            "Tough nougat."

            I couldn't tell if he was being sympathetic or derisive.

            He sat down heavily in an old computer chair and pulled a granola bar from someplace, which he unwrapped and started eating as if he were a ravenous animal. While he ate he watched me, waiting for me to explain. It made quite the image, a dirty twenty five year old with a ponytail and a grimy face sitting on a pathetic, lumpy old chair devouring granola like it was some kind of ambrosia.

            I ignored him for a few seconds, looking the kart over and fondling the steering wheel to give myself time and then broke down.

            "I didn't know what to say, and I figured it was almost true. I'm here now."

            Leon polished off the granola bar. Had he even actually chewed it? Somewhere inside his stomach it was probably still intact because I think he ate the entire thing in one big bite. He pulled out another granola bar from his jeans pocket and opened it up. The guy could inhale food faster than a starving lion without batting an eye.

            "I'm not mad that you lied, I just think that now you owe me work time, cousin, for being your alibi. Hard labor. You can sweep up for a bit, right?"

            "Pffff." I let out a breath noisily. "Or I could just tell you that I have to go." I joked with him.

            It was Leon's turn to ignore me. The second granola bar vanished without a trace into his mouth. "Nope. I don't think so." He swiveled in the chair and then pulled himself across the floor to the lumpy unfinished statue. "I need more steel wool for this." He said, thoughtfully scratching his chin.

            I could have convinced Leon that I couldn't work, but there was one big reason why I didn't. He knew about my ability.

            Leon was the only person on the entire planet who I'd ever told about my Lying. He believed me, of course, when I explained it to him. Knowledge about what I could do wasn't enough to stop it from working on him, but he did know it was possible. I trusted him not to tell, and he trusted me to be honest with him. I wasn't about to break that trust with some stupid lie. Even if he didn't know I'd lied, I'd know. It was kind of a code of honor I had with him. he'd been there for me when stuff was really getting me down a few years back. I was much better now, but sometimes I still had hard days when I just needed someone to be there without telling me what to do. Someone who wasn't part of the warehouse group.

            I don't have a lot of friends outside of my night life and a few school acquaintances. I'm not a super social and friendly person. I don't talk much.

            I knew that Leon was right and so I grabbed an old broom with half its bristles missing and started the complicated task of sweeping up. It's difficult to do a thorough job when bits and pieces of who knows what are covering the floor and you have to get on your hands and knees to get beneath workbenches. I tried my best to be meticulous. And to not give myself tetanus.

            "So you were at the warehouse again last night I'm guessing?" Leon had a screwdriver and a blowtorch and was getting to work on his sculpture. If I didn't know better I'd say he was about to go all psycho and start cutting stuff up with the weapons. He looked like a crazy person, all covered in oil and with red rimmed eyes.

            I swept an old gum wrapper into the growing pile of trash and dirt. "Yeah." I wondered whether or not I should bring up the rally that night. How much did I want Leon to know about the plans Apex had discussed?

            Leon yawned. "Anything good? Ruse try to kidnap you?" He knew almost everything that I did about the kids at the warehouse. Apex, Brick, Threat, Ruse, Wheelie, Juicer and the rest of us.

            "It's Apex's birthday soon." I told him. "He wants to do this big road trip thing with a bunch of the gang."

            "You gonna go?"

            I paused in my sweeping. "No way."

            Leon didn't say anything else for a few minutes because he was busy sticking stuff together and didn't want to get distracted and burn himself. I finished sweeping, dumped the pan of dirt and trash into a pail and sat on an ancient wooden stool while he finished. The smell of melting metal and burning came into the air and the worst of it got sucked out of the garage through the open door. I was so used to the smell that I barely noticed it anymore. Some people wake up to the smell of coffee and find it comforting. I smell old metal and fire and that's what relaxes me and gets me ready for the day.

            He flicked off the torch. "Whew. That went on nice." He looked over his shoulder at me. "Oy, keep going. You're not done cleaning yet."

            His voice was light. I gave him a look but didn't complain. I didn't mind having something to do and he knew that. I found a trash bag and started collecting loose screws, wrappers, and old cups from around the workshop. How much coffee did one guy go through in a three day period? I'd just been here on Wednesday and helped pick the place up. The garbage must multiply at night. Some kind of cellular division.

            "You wanna help road test this kart before I sell it?" Leon asked me suddenly.

            I stared at him until he turned to look at me, then I nodded, grinning like a maniac. "Heck yeah."

            "Good. But I get first go because I built it and you didn't even help put the wheels on." He said matter-of-factly.
            I rolled my eyes. "I helped put the frame together." I protested. "And how was I supposed to know you'd go insane and start putting it all together last night at who knows when?"

            "Psssssh." He waved his hand at me and scrutinized the sculpture in front of him. "I need.... I need the box of nails." He ordered with a snap of his fingers.

            I dropped the bag of trash and scanned the garage. My eyes lit on a box and I snatched it up and brought it to Leon. He took it without looking and started pulling nails out a few at a time and sticking them into spaces between the metal already on the mass. A spider crawled out of the box, but Leon didn't even notice. Or if he did notice he didn't care enough to react.

            "Thank you."

            "Psssssh." I responded, copying the tone he'd just used.

            "PSSSSHH." He shot back.

            "PSSSSSSSSSSSHHHH."

"PSSSSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHHSHHHHH"

            We broke off and glared at each other, and then both broke off laughing because we both looked ridiculous.

            "My cousin is a freakin' crazy person." Leon declared. "Completely bonkers. Impossible to rationalize with. And just so you know, I won that conversation."

            I just shook my head and went back to cleaning up. Leon was overtired and deep in a creative mood. He often acted like a very strange person when he was working on a project and the 'juices were flowing' as he liked to put it. Sometimes he was a little too odd for me, but today it was okay because I was tired of thinking serious things.

            But I wanted his input on what was happening that night. I took a breath and steeled myself for his reaction when I changed the subject.

            "There's a rally tonight. Apparently there's going to be a raid coming up."

            I waited for the reply.

            Leon didn't give any indication that he'd heard me. I kept waiting. After a time he spoke, and his voice was calm and level.

            "What kind? Like for graffiti stuff or bigger?"

            "Bigger." I admitted. "It's pretty heavy."

            "Jail heavy?"

            "Jail heavy." I confirmed. "Apex wants me to be a big part of it." I didn't like confessing that part, but Leon should know some of the details.

            "Hum."

            "Yeah."

            Leon actually put his tools down and spun around to look at me. His face was thoughtful, not angry or worried. I shouldn't have been anxious about talking with him. Leon knew