The Six Rules of Maybe

though I have to say, the thought of speaking the truth all of the time seemed like it would be the greatest thing in the world. The greatest. I couldn’t even imagine how great that would be and how freeing. But I didn’t think that would ever happen, because speaking your own truth on a fairly consistent basis seemed like one of the hardest jobs a human being could take on. A giant and endless wall to get over and one of those walls that are spiked with cut glass at the top. People were often in the greatest crisis just because they couldn’t speak the truth— I don’t love you. I’m gay. I don’t want to go to that college. I don’t really want to be friends with you. I hate the way things are. With lying, you walked a wide circle around it all. It kept things simple and running smoothly, even if that meant you held hard to your own secrets.
    I didn’t know if other people did this too, the way I did. Lying wasn’t exactly something you told the truth about.
    So that’s what I did when Mom asked me to show Haydenaround town while she went with Juliet to buy maternity clothes. I lied. I moaned and protested when the thought actually made me happy. Really happy. Too happy. I think I even said, “Can’t you guys take him later?” when right at that moment I was figuring out in my head what to show him. I guess when you lied, you were trying to be a better person than the creep you actually thought you were.
    I waited for Hayden to be ready. I sang, “It’s a Big Dog,” to Zeus, to the tune of “It’s a Small World.” Dogs are patient about those things. Finally, when Hayden was ready, I wasn’t. I forgot my camera and had to go back upstairs to get it. Not taking my camera was the same as going shopping when you don’t have money. You go shopping without money and you see a ton of things you can’t live without. You have money, and … nothing. Going somewhere without my camera meant I was sure to see a hundred things I wanted to capture but that would be forever lost.
    “Anyplace we can get Zeus’s nails clipped?” Hayden asked as we finally headed out. “He’s looking like Howard Hughes.”
    “Sure,” I said, but I didn’t really know where. We’d never had a dog ourselves, or any pet for that matter, except the class guinea pigs I used to bring home on school vacations. Harold, for example. Juliet had put a tiny cowboy hat on him that had belonged to her Ken doll. I’d gotten mad at her and made her take it off. Probably guinea pigs didn’t get humiliated, but he looked like it anyway.
    “Sidewalk artist?” Hayden gestured one thumb across the street, where Fiona Saint George was already sitting cross-legged on the cement, filling in a new disciple with yellow chalk. For the last few days, she’d been making a vampire version of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper . All the characters around the table had fangs and white faces—some bald, some with wild, flowing snakelike hair. Fiona’s own long hair was black and shiny as the crows that watched herdraw from the branches of nearby evergreen trees. When I saw her at school, I would smile at her, even though she’d only look back with her face as still as stone. Both of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Saint George, had gone to Yale. They had Yale window stickers in both of their cars so that you would be sure to know it when they drove off to work at the Marine Science Center. Fiona’s brother, Robert, had left home to go to Yale two years ago. Probably their dog, Buster, had gone to Yale too.
    “Goth Girl,” I said when we got into his truck. “That’s what they call her at school. She’s depressed.”
    “She’s also really good,” he said.
    It pleased me that he could see beyond Fiona Saint George’s white face and black eyeliner, to who she really was. I’d seen her eyes up close once or twice. And even though Fiona Saint George never said much, her eyes wanted things badly.
    Hayden backed out of the driveway. “Watch out, azalea,” he said, looking over one shoulder.
    “You get run over enough, you’re immune to all pain,” I said.
    “Same way I went this morning?” he asked. “Turn right at the sign that says WHISTLING FIRS ?”
    I nodded. “They don’t exactly whistle,” I said. We started down the street, drove past the Martinellis’ house with their big RV parked by the curb ( The Pleasure Way was written in green script across its broad side) and continued past Ally Pete-Robbins, who was already in