The Less Miserables Spot a Liar (1)

Garrett counted the money three times before he was satisfied.

Forty-seven dollars. Crumpled bills smoothed flat on his desk, sorted by denomination: two tens, four fives, seven ones. His contribution was the cleanest—a crisp fifteen from his allowance, still smelling faintly of his dad's wallet. The rest had come in wrinkled and soft, pulled from pockets and sock drawers and, in Tanner's case, a coffee can his grandmother kept under the sink for emergencies.

He'd seen Tanner's face when he handed over those six dollars. Seen the way his jaw tightened, the way he counted it twice like he was hoping to find more. Six dollars was nothing to Garrett. Six dollars was skipped lunch money, a movie ticket he'd change his mind about, loose change lost in couch cushions. To Tanner, it was probably two days of asking his grandmother if there was anything he could do to earn a little extra, anything at all, and her saying no honey, I'll take care of it, even though they both knew she couldn't really.

Garrett hadn't said anything. Nobody had. That was the rule at Deadwood—you gave what you could, and nobody asked where it came from or what it cost you.

Forty-seven dollars for plywood. Enough to rebuild the launch ramp that had finally given up the ghost last week, its warped surface splitting down the middle when Hector landed a kickflip wrong. The crack had sounded like a gunshot, and Hector had bailed so hard he'd scraped half the skin off his forearm. They'd been talking about fixing it for months, pooling quarters when they had them, watching the wood warp a little more every time it rained. Now they actually had the money.

Garrett wrote the total on a Post-it note, stuck it to the stack, and slid the whole thing into a manila envelope. Tomorrow he'd bring it to the park, and they'd stash it in the spot behind the loose coping on the bowl's north wall—the hiding place everyone knew about but nobody talked about, the place where they kept the communal wax and the spare hardware and, once, a half-empty bottle of Jack that Wesley had forgotten about for three weeks until Tanner found it and tried to drink it and threw up in the snake run.

His room was warm despite the fan oscillating in the corner. Pearl Jam played low on his stereo, Eddie Vedder mumbling something about a better man, about waiting for him. Outside, the sun was going down over Fisher Park, throwing long shadows across the lawn his dad paid someone else to mow. The sprinklers had kicked on at six, like they did every day, watering grass that nobody walked on because they weren't supposed to walk on grass that was being watered.

Garrett looked at the envelope. Ran his thumb along the edge of the bills inside.

He'd been coming to Deadwood Bowl for almost a year now. Long enough that the others had mostly stopped calling him "the rich kid," though Tanner still brought it up when he wanted to get under Garrett's skin. Long enough that he knew the cracks in the concrete and the spots where the coping was missing and the exact angle you needed to hit the quarterpipe to get maximum air. Long enough that when Dusty had suggested pooling money for the ramp, Garrett had said "I'm in" without thinking about it.

Fifteen dollars was nothing to him. He knew that. His allowance was twenty a week, plus whatever he made helping his dad with yard work, plus the occasional birthday check from his grandmother in Charlotte. The others scraped for quarters. Zara had contributed three dollars in dimes and nickels, counted out slowly, her jaw tight like she was daring anyone to comment. The coins had clinked against the concrete when she dropped them into the pile, a sound that seemed louder than it should have been.

Nobody had commented. That was the rule.

But Garrett had noticed. He always noticed—whose shoes had holes, whose board was held together with duct tape, whose shirt was the same one they'd worn three days ago. He told himself it was just observation, just paying attention. But there was something else in it too, something he didn't like to look at directly. A kind of relief, maybe. A quiet voice that said: at least I'm not them.

He set the envelope on his desk, beside his TransWorld Skateboarding subscription and the photo of him and his girlfriend Sarah at the spring formal. Sarah with her perfect hair and her perfect dress and her parents who were friends with his parents, who all went to the same church and played golf at the same club and probably assumed Garrett would grow out of this skateboarding phase and become someone respectable.

He'd bring the money tomorrow. They'd hide it in the spot. And by next weekend, they'd have a new ramp.

He fell asleep feeling good about something for the first time in weeks.

---

The phone rang at 7:43 a.m.

Garrett was already awake—his dad believed in early mornings, even in summer—but he wasn't expecting calls. He picked up the receiver on the second ring, stretching the cord into the hallway so his mom wouldn't hear from the kitchen where she was making coffee.

"Hello?"

"It's Dusty." The voice was flat. Not angry, not panicked. Just flat, like he was reporting the weather. "Money's gone."

Garrett's stomach dropped. "What?"

"The money. For the ramp. It's gone. All of it."

"That's—" He tried to process. "I have it. It's right here. I was going to bring it today."

"Nah, man. The other money. The stuff we already stashed. Hector put in another ten yesterday, after you left. Said he'd hide it in the spot. I went to check this morning and it's empty."

Garrett leaned against the wall. The cord stretched taut. Through the kitchen doorway, he could hear his mom humming something, the coffee maker gurgling. Normal morning sounds in a normal house.

"Maybe Hector moved it?"

"I called him. He didn't."

"Then who—"

He stopped. But the thought was already there, fully formed, rising up from somewhere he didn't want to examine. He saw Zara's face in his mind—the safety-pin piercing, the chipped black nail polish, the way she always seemed to be taking stock of things, measuring, calculating. He remembered the story Tanner had told about her "finding" a Walkman at the mall last month. The way she'd laughed it off, said it was just sitting there, said finders keepers like it was a joke even though they all knew it probably wasn't.

"Bet it was—" he started.

And then he stopped. Because he heard himself. Heard what he was about to say. And because Dusty had gone very, very quiet on the other end of the line.

"Bet it was who?" Dusty's voice had changed. Still flat, but with something underneath now. Something cold and sharp, like ice cracking.

"Nothing. I was just—"

"You were just what?"

Garrett's face felt hot. His hand was sweating against the receiver. "I didn't say anything."

"You were about to."

The silence stretched. Garrett could hear static on the line, the faint hum of the old phone wiring that ran through half the neighborhood. He could hear his own heartbeat, loud and wrong in his ears. He could hear his mom starting to fry eggs, the sizzle and pop of butter in a pan.

"I'll be at the park in an hour," Dusty said finally. "Bring the money you got. We'll figure this out."

He hung up before Garrett could respond.

Garrett stood there with the dead receiver in his hand, the dial tone buzzing. His mom called from the kitchen: "Who was that, honey?"

"Nobody," he said. "Wrong number."

He went to his room and looked at the envelope on his desk. Forty-seven dollars. His fifteen, clean and crisp. Everyone else's, wrinkled and soft.

Bet it was—

He hadn't even finished the thought. But he knew how it would have ended. And he knew, with a sick certainty settling in his stomach, that he couldn't un-think it.

---

The park was already crowded when Garrett arrived.

Not with skaters—with tension. He could feel it the moment he stepped out of his dad's Civic, the engine ticking in the heat. The air was thick with it, heavier than the humidity, harder to breathe.

Zara was sitting on the bowl's coping with her arms crossed, her jaw set in a way that made her look older than fifteen, meaner than she usually let herself seem. She was wearing the same torn jeans from three days ago, the same beanie despite the heat. Her board lay beside her like she hadn't touched it, like touching it might make her explode.

Hector stood nearby, not skating, just watching. His arms were folded across his chest and his face was unreadable, the same calm he brought to everything, but there was something in his posture that suggested he was ready to move if he needed to. Tanner was pacing near the snake run, his mouth going a mile a minute about something Garrett couldn't hear, hands gesturing wildly at nothing. Nova sat on her board by the fence, sketchbook open but pencil still, her eyes moving between the others like she was trying to draw a scene that kept shifting.

And Dusty was standing in the middle of all of it, looking at Garrett.

Not angry. That was the thing. Dusty never looked angry, even when he was. He just looked tired, like everything that happened to him was one more weight on a pile that was already too heavy.

"You bring it?" he asked.

Garrett held up the envelope. "Forty-seven. Everything we had before yesterday."

"Cool." Dusty took it, didn't count it. Just tucked it into his back pocket like it didn't matter. "So that's forty-seven plus Hector's ten. Fifty-seven total. All gone."

"I didn't take it," Zara said.

She wasn't looking at Garrett. She was looking at the concrete between her feet, at a crack that ran from the coping to the edge of the bowl like a scar. Her voice was flat, almost bored, but her hands were gripping the edge of the coping so hard her knuckles had gone white.

"I know that's what you're all thinking. Might as well say it."

"Nobody said that," Hector said quietly.

"Nobody has to." Now she looked up, and her eyes went straight to Garrett like a heat-seeking missile. "I saw your face when you walked up. You already decided."

Garrett's throat tightened. He could feel the others looking at him—Tanner frozen mid-pace, Nova's pencil hovering, Dusty's tired eyes taking in everything. The sun was beating down on the back of his neck, and he was sweating through his shirt, and he wanted to be anywhere else in the world.

"I didn't—" he started.

"Don't." She stood up in one fluid motion, her board clattering against the coping. "Don't lie to me. You thought it the second you heard the money was gone. Bet it was Zara. Bet it was the girl with the safety-pin in her nose and the three dollars in nickels. Bet it was the one whose mom's boyfriend steals her s*** all the time, so she probably does it too."

"That's not—"

"That's exactly what you thought." She stepped closer, and Garrett had to fight every instinct to step back. She was smaller than him, lighter than him, but right now she seemed bigger, seemed to fill the entire park with her anger. "You don't even know you're doing it. That's the f***ed up part. You think you're one of us, rolling up in your dad's Civic with your clean fifteen dollars, but the second something goes wrong, your brain goes straight to 'which one of these people looks like a thief.'"

"Zara." Dusty's voice was low. A warning.

"No. He needs to hear this." She was right in front of Garrett now, close enough that he could see the redness in her eyes, the way her hands were shaking. Close enough that he could smell cigarette smoke and cheap detergent and something else, something like rage given physical form. "You want to know why I gave three dollars in nickels? Because that's what I had. That's literally all the money I had in the world, and I gave it to this stupid ramp because I thought we were—"

She stopped. Swallowed. Looked away.

"Whatever. Forget it."

She grabbed her board and walked toward the gate. Her footsteps were loud on the asphalt, each one a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence she hadn't finished.

"Zara, wait—" Garrett started.

"Don't follow me."

She didn't look back. The gate clanged shut behind her, and then she was gone, and Garrett was standing in the middle of the park with everyone looking at him like he'd just done something unforgivable.

Maybe he had.

(Cont.)