The Cake is a Lie Read Online Free PDF Page A

mean he gets all the girls, but maybe,
just maybe I could’ve had sex before him. Then maybe he’d know what
it was like. It was all a race, and Jonsen had won.
    Soon I couldn’t take it anymore and
left. I went down to the basement. I watched infomercials all night
in my own personal hell. I replayed the same angry thoughts over
and over. How dare he do this to me…Only twenty two thousand
seconds until morning.
    He came down for me at some point,
apologizing for making me feel uncomfortable, telling me I could
come back now.
    “ I’m fine, don’t worry, I
just can’t sleep,” I told him.
    For a year after that night I just
avoided sleepovers all together, afraid of not being able to sleep,
afraid of that feeling. For all of the big sleepovers I would stay
until 10ish and then make some elaborate lie as to why I couldn’t
spend the night. “I gotta go guys my mom has to go to the
hospital.” And my mom would go along with it. She and my step dad,
Allan, would pick me up.

6. Duncan Anderson (Fall, 1999)
    In 5 th grade, Duncan Anderson threw
the greatest Halloween party I’d ever been to. Duncan was in my
class through grade school. We were far from best friends, but all
the guys in our grade got along and we all played together during
recess (Well, Jonsen didn’t play during recess, he stayed inside,
knitting and playing cards with Mari and the rest of the girls).
Duncan was shy and quiet the first few years I knew him. He wore a
lot of tie dye t-shirts, had a rat tail, and was chubby like me.
Then, in one month, he had a big growth spurt and grew as tall as
Jonsen. I was so jealous. His new height also brought out his
confidence and soon, seemingly out of nowhere, he was hosting our
class’ first boy-girl party.
    We were far from mystical times, but
Halloween was definitely still magical. It was that Northwest-fall
smell in the air. Also, being hopped up on a ton of candy was pure
magic at eleven.
    There was an enchanted threshold that
night at Duncan’s party, too. A long stair case descending from the
grown-ups who were having their own party upstairs, down into the
dark basement full of unsupervised preteens.
    Everyone was there: Kat,
Loren, Jonsen, plenty of 6 th graders. There was a strobe
light and a disco ball, legitimately making it by far the biggest
budgeted party I’d ever been to. Everyone greeted me with
excitement.
    “ Marco’s here.” Loren and
Jonsen yelled.
    People were dancing and singing. “Come
on Barbie let’s go party ah-ah-ah-ya.” I tried to dance and jump
around a little bit. It turned into me sort of hoping across the
floor a few times. I don’t know what my parents were teaching me,
but they should have been teaching me to dance.
    After the dancing died down we played
the granddaddy of all spin the bottle games. I even pecked Kat, it
was a miracle.
    One of the boys in our
class, Brian, brought his 7 th grade step-sister, Addy. Addy
had a reputation and she was living up to it, tongue kissing
everyone.
    Addy and a
6 th grader Jessica were sitting on Duncan’s couch. I confidently
threw my body between them and squeezed in. Then I put my arms
around both of them like a pimp.
    “ Sup ladies, how you doing
tonight.” They cracked up laughing. This was one of my funniest
bits. Then Jessica and Addy both started whispering and giggling
around me.
    “ Marco, Addy thinks you have
an incredible butt,” Jessica blurted before being overwhelmed by
dying laughter. I blushed.
    “ On a scale of 1 to 10, your
butt is a 10,” Addy finished for her. It was my first great
compliment (adults don’t count). From then on, before I showered, I
looked at my chubby body and thought about my classmates making me
take off my shirt so they could compare who was the fattest kid in
the class. Then I would turn around and look at my butt and get so
overcome with joy, it was a 10.
    Allan and my mom picked me up from
Duncan’s party around ten. They went upstairs first and mingled
with the other