Today, I Told a Lie

By Michael Crane


Smashwords Edition


© Copyright 2010 by Michael Crane


Cover photo provided by istockphoto.com/mammamaart

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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This is a work of fiction. Names and places are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Today, I told a lie to Mom and I feel bad about it.  I don’t like to lie because lying is what bad kids do, and I’m really not a bad kid.  Mom says that good people don’t lie, so that’s why I always tell the truth.
But I didn’t today.
At Recess today, one of my friends wanted me to play softball with him and a couple of other kids.  I’m not very good at sports.  He knows that, but he was bugging me to play with him anyways.  I was having enough fun by myself.  I was pretending that I was trapped in some monster’s dungeon and that I had to find a way out before he would eat me.  That’s what I was doing when Jarrett asked me.
“It’ll be fun,” he said.
I told him that I didn’t know and that I wasn’t good at softball.  He told me to stop being hard on myself and give it a try.  Jarrett was a grade higher than me.  We were friends because he lives in my neighborhood.  He mostly played with the bigger kids in his grade, and that was another reason why I didn’t want to play.  I was afraid that they wouldn’t like me or call me really bad names.  I was afraid they would make fun of me when I messed up.  I told Jarrett all of that, but he said it would be okay.
“C’mon, Kody.  I’m just asking you to play this one time.  That’s all I’m asking.  We’re a guy short, and I think you’ll have fun.”
I knew that he wouldn’t leave me alone about it, so I finally told him okay.  He was happy and excited.  I wasn’t.  I knew that this was going to be bad, but I went anyways.  I followed Jarrett to the baseball field and my stomach was starting to hurt.  I knew it was because I was feeling nervous, like when the teacher asks for everybody’s homework and you forgot to do yours.  It was that same sick, nervous feeling.  When we got to the field, I was getting looks from the older kids.  Not good looks.  Mean looks.  The look you give when you see somebody who’s not pretty.  It’s not nice to do, but you can’t help it.  Your face just goes like that.
One of the big kids sitting on the bench asked, “Who the hell is that?”
Jarrett put his arm around me.  “This is Kody.  He’s a friend.”
The kid looked at me for a long time.  “What grade you in, kid?”
I tried to talk, but I couldn’t.  I was too scared, so I held up three fingers.
“Third?  You brought us a stinkin’ third grader?”  There was some laughter from the other kids when he said that.  One kid I saw, he just shook his head and mumbled something to himself that I couldn’t hear.  I’m sure it wasn’t anything good.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jarrett said, sounding sort of mad.  “He’s cool.”
“I don’t know him.”
“I said he’s cool.  He’s my friend.”
The kid got up and walked to the caged fence to look at us.  He gave me a nasty look again with his eyes looking small, and after that he spat.  It was really gross when he did it.  It almost looked like throw-up… the clear kind.
“Just ’cause he’s your friend don’t make him a good ballplayer.”
“You’re right,” I said, and I was about to walk away until Jarrett stopped me by putting his hand on my shoulder.
“Just give him a chance, Frankie.  We’re one man short, anyways.  What’s it gonna hurt?”
Frankie knew I was no softball player and wasn’t falling for any of it.  I really wanted to leave and get away from these mean kids.  It was so nice out and I wouldn’t have minded just swinging on the swings for the rest of Recess.  It never bugged me to be alone.  Sometimes I played with imaginary friends—I know they’re imaginary, but it’s fun to pretend, even if you get bad looks from the other kids.  I don’t care.  Imaginary friends don’t hurt your feelings or call you names.  Frankie wasn’t imaginary, and he scared me.
“Hey,” Frankie said while his nose scrunched up a little, “I ain’t no damn genie.  I don’t have to grant you no wishes or favors.”
“You owe me one.”
“Since when!?”
“When you decided to moon the Lacy sisters.  Remember?  I got called to the Principal’s office and had to lie for you, saying that I didn’t see nothing.  That’s why I wasn’t at Recess yesterday.  You owe me, Frankie.”
Frankie frowned and said something that I couldn’t hear.  He spat again, and I really wished that he would cut it out.  It was making me sick.  “Fine,” he said.  “He’s first up to bat.  If he sucks, he’s outta here.  Get me?”
“That’s all I ask,” Jarrett smiled.  I asked him if we could talk, so we walked away a little from the field so the kids couldn’t hear.
“I don’t want to play,” I told him, with my hands in my pockets.
“C’mon.  Give it a chance, Kody.  I mean, they’re good guys and all.”
“Frankie doesn’t look like a good guy.”
“Frankie’s just being Frankie.  He’s like that, but he ain’t a bad guy.  Don’t let him scare you.”
I looked at the field and saw that everybody was staring at us.  I could tell that they were getting mad because they had to wait.  Recess didn’t have much longer to go.  I wished I could’ve kept talking until the bell rang so I wouldn’t have to play, but then that’d just make the kids even angrier.  They might even try to beat me up the next time they see me for ruining their game.  Maybe trap me at the bottom of the slide, like stupid Jason Clay did while another kid kept sliding down and hitting my back with his foot over and over again.
“I don’t feel good about this,” I said.  “I really don’t.”
“Look, here’s the thing.  You can’t always play by yourself,” he told me.
“Sure I can.  I like playing by myself.  It’s fun.”
“It ain’t normal.  You gotta play with other kids.  It looks strange when you do that.”
“So?  I don’t care.”
He put his hand on my shoulder again.  “Just do this for me once, okay?  If you don’t like it, then I’ll never ask you to play with us again.  Okay?”
There was no way out of it, except for saying that I would play.  We walked back to the field and Frankie handed me a bat.  When he put it in my hand, it actually kind of hurt.
“Don’t screw this up,” he said.
I felt like I was going to be sick again.  My head was sweaty and my hand was shaky.  I walked to the plate and held the bat in my hands.  I probably looked goofy holding that bat, since I never really played or anything.  My dad tried to teach me one day, and I couldn’t hit the ball at all.  The bat kept flying out of my hands, and I felt so terrible about it that I ran into the house crying.  Dad was nice about it and tried to tell me that it didn’t matter if I wasn’t good at it, but I was really unhappy about it.  I was hoping that I wouldn’t do the same thing in front of these older kids that I didn’t know.
The pitcher looked at me and laughed.  “Move in guys!” he yelled to everybody.  “This is gonna be an easy out.”
Jarrett frowned at this and said, “Stop being a dick, dude.”
“Hey!  Just calling it like I sees it.”
“So am I.  Knock it off.  Seriously.”
I was standing there with the bat in my hands, and I was wondering what the heck I was doing there.  I didn’t belong on the field with these people.  I belonged on the swings, or the seesaw.  I loved the seesaw.  I didn’t love softball, so what the heck was I doing?  Standing there, I was wishing that I was still on the swing and that Jarrett was home sick so he couldn’t ask me to play.  I didn’t want him sick to be mean or anything, but I just wished he wasn’t at school today.  He wouldn’t have asked me to play, and I would be having fun by myself.  In my head, I could hear a voice yelling at me to run away.  It kind of sounded like my own voice.  Just run away and don’t look back.
I don’t know why, but all of the sudden I swung as the pitcher had just begun to throw the ball.  Everybody on the field started laughing and pointing.  The pitcher even spat a little because he was laughing so hard.  His hands were on his stomach and I think I saw tears coming out of his eyes.
“What the hell was that!?” Frankie screamed.  “Goddammit, the ball wasn’t even close to you, and ya took a swing!  What are you?  Retarded!?”
“Stop it,” I heard Jarrett say.  “He’s just a little nervous, is all.”
“He wasn’t even close!  That was an easy pitch!  The pitcher went easy on him, goddammit!”
I wanted to cry, but I knew that would only make it worse.  I just held the bat and waited for the next pitch.  I only wanted to hit the ball.  It didn’t have to be far.  I wanted to hit the ball so they would all stop making fun of me.
Another pitch, and another strike.  At least I didn’t swing too early that time, but it didn’t matter.  They were all hollering and laughing again.  The pitcher even fell to the ground and he again had his hands on his gut from laughing so hard.  He was rolling around, not caring about getting his clothes getting dirty.
“This is too much!  My grandma could’ve hit that one!”
“You goddamn idiot!” I heard Frankie scream.  I could hear him hitting the cage with his hands and when I looked at him, he was jumping up and down while pulling at his hair.  He looked like an angry monkey.  “You coulda got that one!  You coulda got that one, you stupid retard!”
“Frankie, lay off of him.  He’s trying.”
“Bullcrap!  He ain’t doin’ nothing!  A retard baboon coulda hit that pitch.  You hear me?  A RETARD BABOON, DAMN YOU!”
My eyes were getting wet with tears, and my hands and legs were shaking.  I even bit my tongue for a second because I felt so bad.  The time when Jason Clay trapped me in the slide was nowhere near as bad as this.  This felt like it was never-ending.  I could barely see because of all of the tears.
The pitcher threw the final pitch, and I swung without caring if my bat was even close to the ball.  It didn’t matter anymore.  Even if I did get a grand slam, they still would’ve made fun of me.  It was a strike, of course.  Again, everybody pointed and laugh.
“Goddammit!” I heard Frankie scream from behind the cage.  “You got us an out, you stupid moron!  You can’t hit crap!  Get the hell outta here!  Ya ruined the game for us!”
I threw the bat down and quickly walked away while everybody else was laughing.  When I turned for a second, I saw a kid acting like he was me while holding the bat.  He swung and then spun around again and again, and he had a dumb look on his face as he did it.  Everybody thought it was funny.  Shaking my head, I turned away and kept walking.  I heard enough of them making fun of me, and I wasn’t going to stand there and watch any longer.
“Hey, Kody!” Jarrett called.  He was running to catch up with me.  “Hey!  Slow down!”
I turned around and faced him with my wet and red eyes.  I could feel the tears falling down.  I could tell that Jarrett felt bad because he wasn’t smiling anymore.  He had a hard time looking at me.
“Man, I’m so sorry,” he said.  “Don’t let them make you feel bad.  They were acting like jerks.  Don’t let them get to you.”
I snorted some and said, “I told you I didn’t want to play.”
“I know, I know.  I shoulda listened.  I just thought that maybe you’d do good and they’d want you to play.  So you’d have people to play with.”
“I don’t need anybody to play with.” 
Jarrett was about to say something else, but that’s when Frankie came running towards us.  He was throwing his arms up into the air as he screamed, “Jarrett, what the hell are you doing?  We got a game to play, goddammit!  And you.”  He pointed at me and his eyes got tiny again.  “You.  You stay the hell away from us.  You got that?”
I snorted some, but I was quiet and didn’t say anything.
“I mean it.  You ain’t welcome.  EVER.”  He looked at Jarrett.  “What the hell were you thinking?  Huh?  Bringing this klutz to our game?”
“I just thought it’d be nice for him to try, you know?”
“Nice got nothin’ to do with softball!  Ya hear me?  Nothin’.  You want nice?  Play with the girls.  How’s that for nice?”  He pointed to the field.  “Get back over there so we can finally play a game, goddammit.  I don’t care if we’re one man down.  We’ll do better without this retard.”
Jarrett looked at him for a second and then finally shrugged his shoulders.  “Whatever.”  He went to the field while Frankie looked at me and said nothing.  I wanted him to go away and leave me alone.  I was afraid he was going to punch me or something.  His face was all red and his eyes were tiny like pebbles.  He was breathing loud and fast, too.
He took his finger and pointed it right into my chest.  “You are the stupidest player I have ever seen,” he said quietly.  “You’re good-for-nothing.  Ya know that?”
I didn’t know what else to do, so I told him that I did while more tears were falling down.
“Good,” he said.  “Now, do the world a favor and go get hit by a car, why don’t ya?”  He looked at the ground and gave one final spit.  After that, he walked away and went back to the game while I just watched him as he left.  More tears were coming down and I couldn’t stop snorting.  I felt so awful, and I didn’t know when I’d ever feel better again.  I wished I was somebody else.  I didn’t care who, I just didn’t want to be me.
I lost track of the time, but the bell finally rang and Recess was over.  I didn’t move that whole time until I heard the bell.  When I got back to my class, I couldn’t pay attention to the teacher, and I didn’t know what she was talking about.  I kept thinking about awful Frankie and his gross spitting.  I kept hearing him calling me those awful names over and over again.  The kids laughing at me when I didn’t hit the ball kept playing in my head and I wanted it to stop, but it didn’t.  For sure, I thought that the teacher would call on me and I wouldn’t know the answer because I wasn’t paying attention, but she never did.  When school was finally over, I didn’t feel any better.  On the bus, all I did was stare out the window and look at nothing.
I got home and was ready to go to my room.  I just wanted to lay down and have it be tomorrow already.  Mom was in the living room reading a book.  Dad was still at work.
“Hey, Kody.  How was school today?” she asked.
I froze.  Mom always asked me how school was, but today I didn’t want to tell her.  I just stood and looked at her.  A bad feeling hit my stomach, because I knew that I was going to have to tell a lie.  I didn’t want her to know what happened.  Mom has always told me that you should tell the truth no matter what, but I couldn’t make myself do it.
“It... it was okay,” I said.
She blinked a few times.  “Are you sure?”
The pain felt even worse when she asked me that.  How could a small lie hurt so much?  Maybe it was because I wasn’t a liar.  I wished I was, because I wouldn’t have felt so lousy.  I felt like somebody had grabbed a baseball bat and nailed me right in the gut with it.
“Yeah.  Yeah, school was fine.”   I looked down at my feet and tried to think of something to say.  “Can I go lay down for a little bit?  I’m kinda tired.”
Mom was still looking at me.  Did she know that I was fibbing?  She had never gone this long without saying anything.  Then, she finally said, “That’s fine, Kody.  I’ll call you when dinner’s ready, okay?  Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Yep,” I quickly said.  “I’m fine.  Just tired.”
Mom was quiet again, and I didn’t like it.  It meant she was thinking, and I was afraid that she wasn’t buying my lie.  “Okay,” she said.  She went back to her book and didn’t say anything else.
I ran up the stairs and shut the door when I got inside.  I felt my heart beating really hard and fast in my chest.  I took deep breaths to try to calm myself down, but it wasn’t working.  I knew what I had done.  I told Mom a lie.  It might not have been a big lie, like lying about being too sick to go to school or lying about a bad test grade.  It wasn’t lying about stealing candy from the store and making up some kind of story about how your friend’s mom gave it to you earlier.  It wasn’t that kind of a lie, but it was still a lie, and I felt terrible.
Here’s the truth.  As bad as I felt when Frankie was yelling at me and saying things like how I should get hit by a car, I felt worse about lying to Mom.

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If you enjoyed this story, please check out In Decline (stories), which is available on Amazon.com.  In Decline is a short story collection about people facing tough choices and ugly truths about life, the world and within themselves.

Michael Crane is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago with a BA in Fiction writing.  He likes to write a lot of inane babble—sometimes that inane babble can end up as stories.  He is the author of two short story collections, his most recent being In Decline.  He lives in Orland Park, IL.

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