Page 69 of One Lovely Lie

“Avery, do you know why I called you in here today?”

I gulp. I can’t lie and say this is the first time I’ve been called down to the headmaster’s office. I hate to admit that I find myself here more often than not. It’s not that I’m a bad kid but—as my friends call me—eccentric.

Fuck, I hate that word.

In my four years at Armory Prep, I’ve probably been called down to the office sixteen times. I instigated a food fight freshman year, I took all the school’s dry-erase markers for a project sophomore year, and I got caught trying to free the rats in our anatomy class junior year. I don’t do this maliciously. It’s just that sometimes when I get something in my head, I can’t help but do something about it.

This time, however, I seriously don’t know why I’m here but I can take a wild guess.

“Um, I did something wrong?” I respond lamely as I scratch my head.

The headmaster sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose as he mumbles something under his breath. “Yes, Avery. You did something wrong. Can you tell me what you did today?”

“Well, it started as usual. I woke up, I showered, I jerked off—”

“Please, skip that part.”

“Oh, okay,” I say. Jeez, he’s the one that asked. “Um, I went to meet Bambi—”

“There!” He says, snapping his fingers in triumph as if I just solved a ridiculously difficult math problem. “Bambi. Who is Bambi?”

“Oh, Bambi is my friend! Or, I guess she used to be. He? I’m not really sure how to determine the sex of a deer. Or gender. I don’t want to assume.”

Bambi used to be my friend. She was this cute-as-fuck little deer that hung around the edge of campus by the woods. I used to sneak out and feed her Cheetos which made her my instant pal.

But Bambi fucked up.

“So, you went deer hunting.”

“What?” I gasp, slapping my hand over my heart. “I’d never hurt Bambi!”

“Avery,” he sighs again. Yeah, I get that a lot. He gestures at me. “Look at what you’re wearing.”

I look down and frown. I don’t see anything wrong with it. I like how many pockets my camo pants have. The equally camo jacket is nice, well, I thought so at least. My combat boots are a little scuffed up but they’re not terrible. Maybe it’s the war paint I put on my face, two little black lines on my cheeks.

Oh.

“Okay, I see how you’re confused,” I say with a laugh. “I guess I sort of look like I’m a hunter, but that’s not what I was doing. I was giving her a warning. I was…warniningher? Is that a word? Or maybe we can call it deterring, although that doesn’t sound like a word either. Maybe—”

“Avery. Focus.”

“Oh, right. Sorry,” I say sheepishly. Sometimes my mind wanders. I can’t help it. “So, I was just trying to scare her off.”

He slowly nods but doesn’t look convinced. “Okay, can you tell mewhyyou were trying to warn her?”

“Because she was eating your peonies!” I yell, throwing my hands up in the air. “I swear, Headmaster, you should be more pissed than me. I know how much time you spend in your garden. I think I did you a favor.”

“You didn’t—” he cuts himself off because I think he’s pretty close to losing his patience. I recognize all the signs. The subtle jutting out of the veins in his neck, the rapid reddening of the face, and the stuttering responses. People do that a lot around me. “First, I don’t need you defending my garden’s honor. Second, can you please tell me what isthat?”

He gestures at the gun at my feet. Technically it’s not agungun, not after I filled it with paintballs.

“It was for the deterring,” I say simply, subtly shifting the gun underneath my seat because he’s eyeing it furiously and this was an expensive gun.

Not that I want for money.

“So, back to our story,” he continues. “Did you end up catching and…” he groans “…deterringBambi?”

I sigh and slap my hands on my face in embarrassment. “No! I thought I did but I was wrong.”

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