The Cake is a Lie Read Online Free PDF

adults for a bit before taking me home. My mom was
starting to quickly catch onto the whole operation. On the drive
home she was going on about her suspicion that we might have been
unsupervised downstairs.
    I heard Duncan’s dad tell her upstairs,
“They’re just kids, we pop down every once in a while.”
    My mom was also certain that all the
parents were drunk.
    “ I think a lot of those
parents might have drinking problems,” She told Allan. God bless
those parents’ souls, every last one of them. I thought. That was
the best night of my life. I’m the shit and I have so many friends.
Duncan’s parents are so cool. And as for Duncan, well we had to be
best friends now, that was just that.
     
7. Pacey Baker (Summer, 2001)
    Duncan and I ran over to Jonsen’s house
to wake him up. Jonsen’s room was a mountain of clothes. You
couldn’t even see the bed. We jumped on him and got him up. He was
groggy as we pushed him out the door and started walking towards
the beach.
    “ ZOOOM.” A boy on a motor
scooter blew past us. We watched him zip down the road then slow
down and turn back towards us.
    Jonsen surprisingly ran out into the
road after him, yelling, “Pacey. What up.”
    I knew that name. Pacey
Baker had a rep. He was a year older than us and in
7 th grade. He got suspended last year from Richmond Beach’s local
elementary school for making out with Samantha Sayers in the
hallway. In plain sight of everyone. They must have known they were
going to get in trouble. Pacey was a myth.
    I had no clue how Jonsen knew him, but
Jonsen knew everyone. Pacey and Jonsen walked back to us and Jonsen
introduced everyone. I felt embarrassed for Jonsen having to
introduce me. Duncan was tall and good looking, for all Pacey knew
he was the shit.
    I studied Pacey meticulously. He wasn’t
as tall as Jonsen and Duncan, but he was stockily built with broad
shoulders. His chubby square face was unique and extremely likable,
but his eyebrows were cocked all the way up, just itching for the
first chance to put someone down. I was now officially in a state
of awe.
    “ What can you get it up to
Pacey? 25?” Jonsen asked.
    “ Are you kidding? I’ve hit
35 before.”
    “ Cool scooter.” I finally
burst out.
    “ Uh, ok.” Willy punished me
by not even looking at me. I decided not to say anything
else.
    Jonsen and Pacey continued talking
about the scooter, how tight it was. While they talked, we walked a
few blocks alongside Pacey over to his house, some of his friends
were meeting him there. We were kind of hanging out with Pacey
Baker! I studied the way Pacey walked. I’d overheard my classmate
Jessica say Pacey walked with a gangster limp, but I didn’t see
anything. He walked kind of slowly, I observed.
    His house was actually an apartment
complex and when we got there two giants and one kid were waiting
in the parking lot with their own motor scooters. Pacey reluctantly
introduced everyone, his friends were Mark (giant), Chris (giant)
and Morris (kid). Morris’ first name was Chris too, but they’d
smartly nicknamed him Morris to avoid confusion. Plus, last name
nicknames were very in, Loren called people by their last names all
the time.
    I’d heard about Mark and Chris. They
were a year older. Kids from their elementary school dropped their
names in stories to sound cool, although they’d never done anything
as infamous as Pacey.
    Mark and Chris were monstrously tall.
They ruled over me. Mark’s brown bangs hung evenly across his
handsome face. But he had a mammoth gap between his front teeth
that he was forced to wear with pride. There was nothing
traditionally handsome about Chris, he had chubby Santa Clause
cheeks and a square forehead. Chris scared the shit out of me. That
one didn’t have anything to lose. Their third companion, Morris,
was barely taller than me. He was a skinny, blond baby. The most
popular kids always came with a pre-puberty sidekick, for what we
lacked in size we made up with quick wit.