Liar, Liar: Chapters 7–9

Mom had a late meeting, Dad was on Generic Business Trip Number Infinity and Beyond, Daniel had practice and Sarah was working, so I had privacy to bring up the Tina thing with Buzz.

“When you work for and by yourself on commission and the government is sending you registered letters, you need to get creative about your income stream.”

“You’re only fourteen years old—exposure to that kind of stress might kill you or make you sterile, and I don’t want to be responsible for you not being able to have children someday.”

I sat on the floor and separated the invoices from the checks. Then I went downstairs to the family computer in the basement and sorted through the boxes of software until I found the bookkeeping program Mom uses for her store.

I sat on the floor and separated the invoices from the checks. Then I went downstairs to the family computer in the basement and sorted through the boxes of software until I found the bookkeeping program Mom uses for her store.

I grabbed the phone and called the number and, deepening my voice a little, had a friendly conversation with a lady named Ms. Young who was completely understanding about Buzz’s dilemma in these tough economic times and suggested a monthly repayment plan.

I had second thoughts about asking her for advice on Tina when I heard her pretend to banter with her imaginary cohost (“Well, Chuck, you would say that, hahaha”).

“You’ve heard them, you just don’t know it. ‘I Could Kill and Eat You,' 'You Suck, but Let’s Hook Up Anyway,’ ‘Anarchy Rules,’ ‘Dissension Is the Answer,’ ‘Loving You Is a Pit of Death.’”

“You’ve heard them, you just don’t know it. ‘I Could Kill and Eat You,' 'You Suck, but Let’s Hook Up Anyway,’ ‘Anarchy Rules,’ ‘Dissension Is the Answer,’ ‘Loving You Is a Pit of Death.’”

She shuddered and shook her head. “Poetic though they sound, and I appreciate that you’ve just described both tender ballads of love and socially prescient commentary, I still don’t believe this rings any bells.”

She shuddered and shook her head. “Poetic though they sound, and I appreciate that you’ve just described both tender ballads of love and socially prescient commentary, I still don’t believe this rings any bells.”

“Dude and the Jailbaits are playing too, and Skullkraker.”
“Delightful bill. How much is this...ode to dark despair going to run you?”
“Tickets are two fifty.”

“Kevin. Son. Are you crazy? You think your father and I are going to sign off on allowing you, a fourteen-year-old boy, to go off with some...Goober creature for two days and nights of antisocial music—and I use that term lightly and with apologies to musicians and composers everywhere—without parental or even coherent adult supervision?”

“Kevin. Son. Are you crazy? You think your father and I are going to sign off on allowing you, a fourteen-year-old boy, to go off with some...Goober creature for two days and nights of antisocial music—and I use that term lightly and with apologies to musicians and composers everywhere—without parental or even coherent adult supervision?”

Because I wasn’t speaking to her, I didn’t say anything as I turned right around and stomped back up the stairs to the kitchen to make myself a banana with melted chocolate chips, and then, just for good measure, I accidentally/deliberately burned a bag of microwave popcorn so that the whole house reeked.

She went to the living room with a book. I pondered our discussion as I ate my snack.

It’s times like this when loopholes become a guy’s best friend.

My dad’s a big music fan, so I knew he’d be predisposed to thinking it was a good idea.

That would be the icebreaker I needed to talk to Tina and make her aware that I was a cool guy into alternative music who went on weekend concert trips with college students.

“Hi, honey,” Dad said absentmindedly as he shuffled through the pile of mail on the counter, and therefore did not notice her clenched jaw.

“Michael, you treat this house and family like a hotel and staff members. You never do the laundry or handle the dry cleaning yourself, you haven’t gone grocery shopping or cooked in years and you have never once cleaned the cat box. And then you undermine my authority by giving Kevin permission to go to a concert I’d already said no to.”

That’s really all I think of when Dad crosses my mind these days—the junky stuff he brings home for us and the work he’s always preoccupied with between flights.

“Well,” Sarah finally said. “That was...ugly.”
I grunted, and Daniel made a sound that I couldn’t decipher.

I even let Katie corner me in the hallway after school and go over her outline again because she’d changed seven words since the last time she’d shown it to me and she wanted to make sure I approved. And I agreed with her that apathy was going to ruin this society.

He’d been wearing a motion-sickness band around his wrist because, he said, he was queasy all the time.

I’d somehow staggered through a long and weird day, but when I saw Auntie Buzz through the kitchen window as I got home, I headed straight over to Markie's house for my babysitting gig without even dropping my stuff off in my room first.

I never feel right about trying to get out of babysitting, though, because his parents always seem so worried I’ll say no and sound so grateful when I say yes. I usually dread it, but the day after the Kitchen Scene, I was glad.

His parents call him precocious; I looked it up, and it does not mean the personification of an earsplitting, nerve-jangling, head-pounding, exasperating plague that makes you long for deportation from your own country.

His parents call him precocious; I looked it up, and it does not mean the personification of an earsplitting, nerve-jangling, head-pounding, exasperating plague that makes you long for deportation from your own country.

His parents call him precocious; I looked it up, and it does not mean the personification of an earsplitting, nerve-jangling, head-pounding, exasperating plague that makes you long for deportation from your own country.

His parents call him precocious; I looked it up, and it does not mean the personification of an earsplitting, nerve-jangling, head-pounding, exasperating plague that makes you long for deportation from your own country.

I always have to fight the urge to put Markie in a cardboard box in back of the furnace in the basement, securely closed with duct tape. Tied with stout rope. And swaddled with some sort of soundproofing material.

The only solution was storytime. Little kids are suckers for stuff like that. And it quiets them down like a tranquilizer gun.

I blew up balloons until my cheeks ached and I was light-headed from oxygen deprivation.

Eventually, though, Markie’s friends got called home for supper and I was looking down at one grubby kid with a limp balloon trailing behind him.