Tell Me Lies by Jennifer Crusie

dredged up earlier came flooding back, clear and sharp still.
    It had been the last week of school at the end of fifth grade, on the dusty playground at Harold G. Troop Elementary School. C.L. could taste the dust in the air, remembering, and the blood in his mouth. He’d just finished walloping Pete Murphy for calling him a creep, and he was on the lam, sure that Mrs. Widdington was going to nail him but running anyway on the slim hope that she’d forget about it before the noon bell. He’d rounded the corner to hide out in the black iron fire escapes and come face-to-face with Maddie Martindale, one of the dumb girls in the sixth grade who thought they were such big stuff. He started to duck away and then stayed, caught in spite of himself.
    She was sitting about six steps up on one of the fire escapes, and she looked like something out of the Sears catalog. Her brown hair had been tied back in a glossy ponytail with a big red bow, and she was wearing a red plaid dress with a wide white collar, so white that it glowed in the sun. C.L. remembered wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, his other hand going up to his ripped shirt, trying to brush some of the dust off. His hands had been so dirty from the fight that they’d made his shirt worse, and he’d looked from them to her hands, her fingertips polished with the same bright red as her dress. That’s when he’d known something was wrong because she was chipping the paint off her right thumbnail, leaving it pink-stained and blotchy.
    “What’s wrong with you?” he’d demanded, wiping his hands again, this time on his pants, embarrassed by his own dirt and enraged that he was embarrassed.
    She’d raised dry, swollen eyes to his and said, “My daddy died.”
    Even for C.L., the king of I-Don’t-Care, this was significant. Of course, his daddy was dead, too, a long time ago, long before he could remember. “When?” he demanded, and she said, “Tuesday.”
    He counted back. It was Monday. Six days. “That’s bad,” he told her, and then feeling that something more might be needed, he added, “Sorry.”
    She nodded and went back to chipping her nail polish, and he was seized with the need to do more. She was so shiny and bright that somebody should make her feel better. He jammed his hands in his pockets, but all he could come up with was a broken stick of gum. Juicy Fruit. Even the yellow wrapper was dirty.
    He looked up to see her watching him. “Here,” he said, and gave her the gum.
    She took it carefully, and it seemed so dirty in her fingers that he almost grabbed it back and ran. But before he could move, she unwrapped it, first the yellow paper and then the foil, peeling it gently from the sticky gum. Then she pulled the stick apart at the break and offered him half.
    He swallowed the lump that had somehow clogged his throat and took it, and when she moved over on the fire escape he sat down beside her, careful not to let his dirty shirt touch her sleeve. They chewed the gum together in the sunlight.
    It was possibly the best moment of his ten-year-old life.
    Then Mrs. Widdington came round the fire escape, and yelled, “C. L. Sturgis—” only to break off when she saw who he was with. “Hello, Madeline,” she said, nice and soft. “How are you?”
    “I’m fine,” Maddie said.
    “Well, good. That’s good.” Old Widdy had looked foolish for the moment, and then she turned back to him. “Come with me, young man,” she said with the murder back in her voice.
    He thought about running and discarded the thought. Maddie was watching. He stood up, still careful not to brush against her, and went down the steps to his doom.
    Widdy grabbed him by the collar and started to march him off, but she stopped after a few steps and turned back to Maddie, her fist jammed up under his ear as she talked. “Is there anything you need, Madeline? Anything you want?”
    He’d looked back over his shoulder, caught in Widdy’s grip, and