The Truth Commission by Susan Juby

curious, but she wasn’t. She just thought it would be cool for a while, or at least while she was a member of the Alliance. 55 The minute she left the GSA, which she did after an incident with another member’s brother at a dance, she was ruler-straight again.
    Down came Portia de Rossi, up went Justin Timberlake, because she’d joined Song and Dance Club.

    DeVries is such a compulsive liar that she’s kind of an icon around the Art Farm. Her lies are like little Fabergé eggs: unexpected, intricately detailed, and completely and utterly pointless.
    When Dusk proposed that I confront Lisette DeVries, she was essentially asking me to take a ornate little egg of a person and smash her against the ground. I said as much.
    â€œSo narrow it down,” Dusk said. “Pick one obvious lie. Right now the burning question is does she really think she’s a member of the First Nations.”
    â€œI can’t do that,” I squawked. “She might be one-fortieth Aboriginal or something. What if that’s the one thing about her that turns out to be true? It’s not my place to ask. So what if she wants to be someone she’s not.”
    â€œYou know,” said Neil, using his fork to drag a hash brown through a puddle of ketchup, “I’d like to be someone I’m not.”
    â€œThere’s no one better than you,” I told him. Because it was true.
    â€œI’m doing you a favor by giving you a subject with so many points of entry,” said Dusk.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œShe means that Lisette is constructed of eighty-five percent lies,” said Neil. “You could ask her about just about anything and if she answered honestly, you’d have uncovered a truth.”
    â€œThat reasoning is flawed.”
    Dusk leaned across the table and put a hand on mine. Neil, sitting beside me, did the same.
    â€œUgh!” I said, flinching. “Stop touching me! Both of you.”
    â€œNot until you promise,” said Dusk.
    â€œYou are going to love dancing with the truth. Seriously,” said Neil.
    â€œI’m not ready.”
    â€œSo spend some time with her first. Don’t just dive in there.” 56
    â€œYou are both terrible people.”
    â€œWe appreciate your honesty,” said Dusk and Neil at the same time.
    â€œFine.”
    They let go of my hands and looked very pleased with themselves.
    â€œBut I’m not doing it right away. I have to warm up.” 57
    â€œFine. We have other truths to discover while you conduct research and surveillance,” said Dusk.
    Research. There was only so much research I could conduct. At least researching Lisette DeVries would be easier than poking any further into my sister’s recent past.

Monday, October 1
    The Opposite of a Starfish
    The good news about Lisette from a tracking and monitoring perspective was that she was the opposite of unobtrusive. In fact, she was full-blown trusive.
    At about the time the Truth Commission started, Lisette had thrown herself body, soul, and fashion sense into the Indigenous Art and Performance Program. In a move that I’m pretty sure violates every protocol there is, she had given herself a spirit name, which she said was given to her in a secret ceremony by a very powerful yet little-known elder from Haida Gwaii. 58 The elder was so little known that no one, including our school’s First Nations elders, students, and teachers had ever heard of her. The spirit name was “Red Starfish,” and she started using it in everyday conversation. 59
    She had a temporary tattoo of a red starfish on her neck, where it looked like the worst melanoma dreamt up by an oncologist who ever ate spicy food late at night.
    She started wearing Native-inspired clothing with madcap abandon and a complete disregard for coherence or accuracy. Her wardrobe included items significant to the peoples of the about twenty different nations, plus Pendleton Mills, Disney,