The Liar's Guide to the Night Sky: A Novel

CHAPTER ONE

IT ISN’T THAT I don’t want to be here, as much as it is that if the devil were to show up at these hipster-ass crossroads in horn-rimmed glasses and a waxed moustache and happen to offer me transport out in exchange for my soul, I’d take it.

I don’t hate Colorado, I don’t hate ski slopes, I don’t even hate the sharp-toothed bite of the cold in my calves, the numb in my toes. I almost like the way it hurts when I sit by the fire in the lodge and ice-pick feeling returns to the frozen items I used to call fingers. It prickles, it hurts, but it makes me feel like life is returning to pieces of me. So no, I don’t really hate any of it.

It’s just that, god, I loved Massachusetts. I hate that I even think it past tense, like Oh, right! Massachusetts died. I don’t "loved

" it. I do still love it. If I close my eyes, I can still smell the bright crisp fog off the Connecticut River, clinging to my clothes when I strayed a little too close to the water.

I shut them tight, but not so tight that it doesn’t dissipate in an instant.

Here, outside this ski lodge, it smells like weed. Like skunk rot and smoke.

And well. You know what they say.

Where there’s smoke? There’s Jonah.

I can hear him laughing over all the rest of them—who knows how many of my cousins and their significant others and their who-knows-whoevers. I want to go find them.

I want to distract myself with what they’re smoking. I want to know what it is Jonah’s laughing about so loud, but I’m not really allowed. I don’t know how intensely your parents can really ground you two months out from eighteen, but if I’m hanging out alone in the dark anywhere Jonah Ramirez is, and I come back into the suite smelling like weed, I’ll find out.

My parents are kind of assholes about my dad’s brother’s kids—Jolie and Jaxon (maddening, the same-letter-first-name thing. Thank god they stopped at two). Everyone knows it’s more about the super Family Drama on the CW history between my dad and my uncle than it is about Jolie and Jaxon. But my cousins have given my parents enough reasons, I guess, for them to feel okay about being total jerks. Jolie is cool but a little artsy, a little follow-your-heart, a little vegan for their tastes. And Jaxon, well. Jaxon is a fucking disaster.

I like him because he always shows up to family gatherings in clothes that are super politically inflammatory and his hair is always cut weird and different and he always finds me and talks to me like he cares what I think about anything. He drops f-bombs too loud and has too many tattoos, and the same shit I think is great about Jaxon Jacob is the same shit my parents can’t stand about him.

Side note: Dad and Uncle Reuben pretend they hate each other because of four decades of bad blood that everyone knows about but no one’s allowed to mention. But, I don’t know. If I’m putting money on it, I’d say it’s gotta be this bullshit: Jaxon and Jolie Jacob. Jaxon. And Jolie. Jacob. How much can you really trust people who do this to their children on purpose?

It’s complicated, I guess. Always eggshells when we’re together because my parents make a big show out of being Disapproving™ of Uncle Reuben and, by extension, his wife and their offspring. And Uncle Reuben plays back, and I have to pretend I’m not on my cousins’ side. But they don’t outright ban me from hanging out with them. There’s a line, I guess.

They just . . . say uppity things the second we leave, acting like we escaped something when we head back to Massachusetts after a weekend (because that’s all they can handle), getting to big family events as late as possible and leaving as early as semi-politeness allows. They don’t like to hear me talk much about what we do when we’re together either; mostly we see them or they see us and then everyone leaves and we pretend, as a family, that it never happened.

Well. Guess that’s all in the past now.

Anyway.

Jaxon and Jolie, and my Favorite Cousin relationship with them, my parents can pretend to ignore.

Jonah, they can’t.

Jonah has been Jaxon’s best friend since middle school so they’ve been attached at the hip since we were all kids. It’s almost like he’s one of them—requisite J name and all.

My parents have made it extremely clear that, in their minds, all of Jaxon’s activities are at least 75 percent Jonah’s fault, and that’s totally not true if you ask me, but they never do.

So.

Here I am.

On this cool family-bonding ski trip, listening to my parents and my dad’s five siblings laughing adultily over their chardonnay or whatever in the common room in front of the fireplace. And I’m just sitting here in the stairwell.

Alone.

Bonding as hell.

I scrape my teeth over my lip and lean my head against the wall; it’s kind of unsettlingly wet, but I’m assuming that’s because of the, you know, snow everywhere. People tromp into a ski lodge with their boots all iced over and their coats covered in powder, stuff gets a little wet. It’s not a big deal.

None of this is a big deal.

Moving away from Massachusetts my senior year isn’t a big deal, and neither is navigating this big family weekend that I’m already kind of tired of, and neither is the reason we had to move here in the first place. My zayde basically dying—one foot in the grave at the very least—isn’t . . . it isn’t a big . . .

I’m sniffling now, in this dark hallway in a very fancy ski lodge all alone, which is totally pathetic.

I feel even more pathetic when the door opens and my cousin Tzipporah’s tall, sleekly braided, absurdly gorgeous girlfriend about trips over me.

Oh my god. She catches herself on the cement corner of the wall and I just cough.

Sorry, I say.

For what? Existing?

I raise an eyebrow.

I should have been watching where I was going. Peripheral isn’t as good from this height. She winks and yeah, it’s abundantly clear why Tzipporah is into her. In addition to the old Tall Dark and Handsome—well, not handsome. Tall, Dark, and Stunning—combo, she’s super funny, laid back, not just cool. Good lord, am I sweating?

Nah, I say. I smile; she has a face you want to smile at. I shouldn’t have been sitting . . . you know. On the floor.

She tilts her head and says, Hallie—is that right?

Yeah. I totally forgot your name; I’m so sorr—

"Samantha. Everyone forgets it. Well, I don’t know why I said that; it’s Sam. I like Sam. Samantha just has like, so much straight girl energy to it."

I smirk and snort and she sinks down beside me. Usually I’m not super into small talk, but Sam is genuine. This will at least be medium talk, and medium talk I can do.

Sam looks, like really looks, at me and sees the pink in my eyes, I guess, because her voice softens. I’m sorry, she says. About your grandpa.

I purse my lips and pull them up to the side a little, like that’s going to help me not just start crying again.

I’m fine. The lie rolls off my tongue easier than the truth would. It’s easy to tell little untruths like that when the alternative makes people uncomfortable. It’s always been easy.

Well. It would be easy if my voice weren’t so thick from all the weeping.

I say, in a forced bout of honesty, We’re not even super close. I don’t know why I’m being like this.

Sam shrugs and says, Grief is weird, man.

And I say, Yeah. Then I apologize because she shouldn’t have to deal with this from a stranger. Tzipporah is pretty cool, and Sam is REALLY cool, and I suddenly feel so extremely, dictionary-defined uncool sitting here shortly next to her, feeling sorry for myself.

Come outside. That’s where the cousins are, and you know the only place to hang out at a family thing is where the cousins are.

I laugh, because this is pretty comfortable. And I almost just say Screw it and go with her. But I hesitate—which, honestly, I spend a fair amount of my time doing. The lines have been pretty clearly drawn by my parents. And in lines, I am comfortable. I glance out the window one last time, and I have to make myself say, I can’t.

Why not?

Just—Jonah. Jonah Ramirez? Is out there? And everyone’s smoking. My parents will kill me.

Jonah Ramirez? Sam starts to wrinkle her nose, then remembers and rolls her eyes. Right. Right, your parents and all their . . . She wiggles her fingers.

I shrug. My parents. I mimic the hand gesture. And all their.

She sighs and looks back out the window into the black, snow falling in fat flakes. Listen, she says, if I just tell everyone to lay off the weed, will you—

NO, I say frantically. I mean. Just. No. No, don’t worry about it.

Christ, what a nightmare if she actually had done that. If she’d actually made everyone stop smoking on my account. I would never recover from that hit to my reputation; I’m sure it’s damaged enough being the good girl rich kid with the asshole parents from ~Massachusetts~.

I’m pretty wiped anyway, so I might just head to bed.

You sure? she says.

Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.

Okay, she says. If you’re sure, and she’s so real that it almost makes me mad. Like, how dare someone that gorgeous be perfectly kind, too?

She slides up off the floor and practically glides when she leaves, tossing this effortless See you tomorrow? over her shoulder.

I feel crumpled.

I feel, well, kind of weirdly comforted.

I feel . . . young. I’m seventeen, just this side of being an adult, and Tzipporah and Sam are just juniors in college, not that much older than me but, god, I feel like such a kid.

I wouldn’t feel this way if I could hang with Jolie, maybe, pull her away from the weed and throw back a pint of ice cream and talk too loud and too detailed about each other’s lives, like it hasn’t been a year since we’ve seen each other.

But I have the whole weekend. And they have their Jonah and their weed.

I’m sleepy anyway, I guess. I sigh, pull myself off the floor and up the stairs.

And what do you know? I actually do go to bed.

In the morning, it seems everyone is skiing.

Communing with nature and shit.

I can see why—mountain peaks that stab into the sky, covered in snowfall like glitter. Fat, bright trees dusted with powder. Clouds like spun sugar covering the ground in white.

You know.

Snow.

It smells like snow.

It looks like . . . snow.

It feels like.

Snow.

Colorado is A+, 11/10 if you want breathtaking white, white views that sound.

Like snow.

I try to wriggle out of skiing, because I am not built for the gorgeous, breathtaking commune-y cold; I am built for hikes in the spring, summer, and fall and reading by the fire at the first bite of frost. But despite all the rules that kept me from family last night, Dad informed me this morning, like he does every year, that family was the whole point of this trip and yes, I would in fact be skiing once again. So today, spending time bonding over frostbite with family was what I was going to do.

Jolie is the first one to see me all dolled up in my skiing gear when I head outside, and that I am extremely stoked about. You’re not supposed to have favorite siblings, so I’ve heard, but I’m pretty sure favorite cousins are totally permitted, and we are each other’s favorite.

I’m full-on the kid from A Christmas Story. Skiing gear is pricey as shit. We have money but realized I’d grown out of the good gear like right when we decided we were moving and Dad was switching jobs, so ski swap it was, and here I am.

Lucky for me, Jaxon and Jolie don’t have money, so they’re not out here looking like L. L. Bean models either; we’re all marshmallows with pink noses. Jolie’s suit is bright purple, which seems right, and Jaxon’s is . . . Jaxon’s is hot pink. Which . . . you know what, also seems right.

Jolie sees me and her eyes brighten, and she waves, a beautifully ridiculous silhouette.

Jaxon tromps right up to me in all that highlighter pink, liner dark around his gray eyes. All of the pizzazz here really makes his usually suntanned skin look weirdly pale. Hot pink doesn’t do great things to winter coloring; someone ought to tell him.

Jaxon says, through the huge, toothy grin on his face, Hey there, little cuz.

I’m not that much littler than you. I fake glare at him, hands on my hips—or where I think my hips probably are under this giant mess of water-resistant fabric.

Jolie bumps me in the side and I almost fall over. Missed you last night.

I was tired, I say.

Mmhmm, she says.

I frown, amazed I can in this cold. I’m surprised my face muscles aren’t all frozen together. What’s that supposed to mean?

It means, I hear from behind me, along with the crunch, crunch, crunch of booted feet through the snow, that we all know your parents are scared shitless of me.

I feel it on my neck when he talks. I don’t move.

I just glance to the side, where Jonah Ramirez now stands an inch from my shoulder, and breathe out, Oh, is that right?

That’s right. He smiles and clenches a honey straw between his teeth.

Jonah is like the rest of us—in absurdly puffy ski gear he probably got off Craigslist. His is black like mine, simple. And he doesn’t . . . well, he kind of does look stupid, but he doesn’t look like he even notices, which changes everything.

I guess I never really mentioned that while Past Jonah used to be this annoying gangly walking smirk, Recent Past Jonah had turned into something tolerable, and Current Jonah is just . . . just a straight up problem. I don’t know how to talk to him like a normal person, because I have no freaking idea where I’m supposed to look.

His eyes are so dark they practically glitter, and he’s got this intensely perfect nut-brown skin, dark freckles dusting his cheeks and nose. Hard jawline, cheekbones, sharp smile, the works. And dimples—the audacity of dimples on a guy like that.

And he doesn’t ski, he snowboards. Of course he snow-boards. I’m a little nervous about his board’s structural integrity, truth be told; it’s scratched to hell.

Of course it is. Of course even his snowboard rides the ragged edge of safety.

Well, I say, I’m not my parents.

His eyebrow arches and he takes that straw out of his mouth, which I bet right now would taste like honey.

Jesus Christ, Hal; what is your problem?

He’s off-limits.

And even if my parents are being pretty unfair about him, blaming Jaxon’s autonomous (and not all that scandalous) life choices on him, there’s nothing drawing me there except the air about him. The one that says he’s a little dangerous.

And Oh, he just seems so DaNgErOuS is not exactly the opening line to an epic love story, is it?

Well.

Okay.

The danger, and the dimples.

Jolie coughs, and Jonah scrapes his teeth over his lip and kind of laughs. It’s a little throaty, a tic raspy, and I assume it’s the dry cold.

I hope it’s the dry cold.

And Jaxon says to his super dangerous best friend, Come on, Ramirez. Keep me warm on the ski lift.

Why, Jaxon, Jonah says, pressing his hand to his chest, that’s so forward.

Then he smacks Jaxon on the back and they head to the line.

You ready for this? I say to Jolie.

Oh god, she says. If I could just . . . just stay in and read a book.

I fake a sob and we link arms, ready to brave the mountain together.

CHAPTER TWO

DAD SIDE-EYES ME THE second I make it back into the ski lodge.

What? I say when Jolie shoots me this knowing Uncle-Uri-Am-I-Right kind of smile and heads upstairs to change out of her soaked clothes. I’d kind of like to be doing that right now; it turns out, when you haven’t skied in forever, what happens when you jump back on those long, skinny death traps is you spend a lot of time rolling down the mountain.

The number of times Jaxon and Jonah passed us, laughing their asses off (and that we recovered, only to find both of them absolutely eating it thirty yards ahead), was truly astounding. I can’t even begin to imagine what every single spot on