There’s a science to lying. I know because my mother once played a criminal psychologist whose specialty was helping prosecutors put away hard-to-convict criminals.
So here’s how to tell if someone’s lying, in case you ever really need to know:
Word repetition. Liars tend to repeat rehearsed statements.
Pitch. When someone’s nervous, their vocal cords tighten and their pitch tends to go up. So you can hear their voice get a little higher at the end of the sentence. Like when your boyfriend says, “I’m just going out with the guys,” but “the guys” sounds all high and squeaky, when your boyfriend’s voice is never like that.
False starts. Liars tend to self-correct, so they’ll start to spill the beans, and then they stop and begin again. For example, “I was on my…I mean, we were at the library until ten p.m., when it closed.”
This is the thing. None of this would have helped Willow and Tiggy catch me, because I am what clinical psychologists refer to as a relaxed liar. I was enjoying myself. I was comfortable with my material and my audience. I didn’t give any tics because the lies flowed easily and I felt good about them. Slightly psychopathic, I know.
I always knew that I would make a good liar. When your mother is an actress, you learn quickly how to pretend. As far back as I can remember, my mom’s moods were a ball that she threw out and that I learned to catch and throw back. If she was happy, I was happy. If she was OMG, so excited, then I was giddy too. If she was sad or depressed, I was appropriately and sympathetically somber. It was never something we discussed, just something I did. But like most things, the more you do it, the better you get at it. By the time I got to Polestar Academy in LA, I was a pro.
I never intended to lie to Willow and Tiggy. Never planned on being a pretend chola girl from the barrio. It was just that when they threw it out there, I did what my instincts were honed to do. I caught their perception and tossed it back to them. Then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, we started to play catch.
Did you know that some studies say that the average person tells three lies every ten minutes? Most are little lies to protect feelings, like, “Wow, your haircut looks great” or to cover up your screwups, like, “I can’t believe I left that algebra worksheet on the kitchen table. I spent two hours on that thing!” But we all lie all day long. In fact, my mother, in her wisdom as a TV doctor, said that people who never lie, who feel the relentless compunction to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, are suffering from a kind of mental illness—one that can run the gamut from narcissistically mean and thoughtless to cold-blooded and pathologically insane. She always told me and Sergio, “When it comes down to telling a truth that would hurt my feelings or a lie that will help me be strong enough to get through the day, mientame, lie to me.”
So when I started lying at my new school, it felt like a kindness, going along with my new friends’ expectations. But it was also entertaining. Pulling one over on them made me feel like some cultural undercover crusader. The loco things they said made me want to laugh out loud.
Cooking with Rooney twice a week was the proverbial icing on the cake. Mexico has great food. Not just tacos and burritos but really amazing modern food. But before I started at Polestar, I’d never made anything. My mom doesn’t cook. Albita made my father his favorite traditional meals, and the rest of the food was made by her personal chef Diana. In our house, meals appeared on the table three times a day, and I’d never given much thought about where they came from.
Working with Rooney was a revelation. She made a lot of Mexican dishes because, she said, “it’s only natural in California to work that flavor profile.” But she made things her own way: pumpkin spread on a vegetable torta, plantain empanadas, and salmon panuchos. I grew to love the quiet work of making a meal, and there was also this immediate gratification: you worked for an hour or even sometimes thirty minutes, and there was a beautiful meal—done and ready for eating. I’d always liked science, but I hadn’t realized how much of cooking was scientific, how you used accelerants like heat on the grill and citrus in the seviche to transform the flavors and textures of the raw ingredients.
I hadn’t read much poetry in English, but every time I stepped into Rooney’s kitchen, my mind flashed to a poem by Elizabeth Alexander:
Science, science, science!
Everything is beautiful.
Elegant facts await me.
Small things in this world are mine.
Tiggy, Willow, and I were having lunch at our usual spot when Willow said, “So here’s the thing. I’m barely passing Spanish.”
Tiggy looked at me and explained, “By ‘barely passing,’ she means she’s got a C, or as they put it here, SAI—Suggested Area of Improvement.”
Willow looked upset. “You know that Cs aren’t good enough in my house.”
Tiggy replied, “I know, mine neither. But you could try to show a little sensitivity to Camilla. She’s new to this country. Polestar is as competitive as hell, and English is not her first language. Chances are, she’s going to end up with a few Cs on her report card this quarter.”
It was interesting, how they each took turns standing up for me. They weren’t mean girls exactly. More like misguided.
“Anyway,” Willow continued, “my dad said he’ll pay you twenty-five dollars an hour to tutor me in Spanish, two days a week.”
Tiggy looked surprised and whispered, loud enough for me to hear, “That’s probably more than her mother makes per hour.”
That, of course, was not true. It occurred to me that this would be a good time to tell the truth. “Hey, guys, I was conducting a social experiment for psych class. My mom isn’t a maid; she just plays one on TV.” But I didn’t want to go back to being the daughter of a television star. Even if it was a star most people in the US had never heard of, being a celebrity kid was like wearing a too-tight sports bra that you could never take off. Sure, it offered up a certain level of support, but it was also as stifling as hell.
I took a deep breath. My mother’s first appearance on Shot Callers wouldn’t come until May sweeps. Her own show wouldn’t debut until July. It was January. I had at least three or four months of keeping my secret. Maybe more, depending on how successful her show was and how much press they threw behind it.
Tiggy looked at me pityingly and then said to Willow, “See, you’ve insulted her.”
I shrugged. “I’m not insulted. Who couldn’t use some extra cash, right?”
Willow beamed. “Great. Can we start tomorrow after school?”
“Sounds good,” I said. Then for extra emphasis, I added, “Will your dad pay me in cash after each tutoring session?”
Willow said, “Of course!” Then, as if I wasn’t sitting right next to her, she whispered to Tiggy, “I told you. She needs the money.”
I smiled broadly and stood up. “We all need money, right? How does the expression go? No shame in my game.”
Willow looked relieved. “You’re absolutely right. No shame in your game.”
Tiggy nodded. “No shame at all.”
As I walked away, I could hear Willow—who had absolutely no volume control—say, “I love her. I’m so happy that Polestar has doubled down on both racial and economic diversity.”
To which Tiggy replied, “True dat, ése.”
The next morning before I left for school, I FaceTimed Sergio. Seven a.m. for me was four p.m. for him. It was the perfect time to chat, just when my bro was feeling that midafternoon slump and craving caffeine. He made himself a cup of espresso while I talked.
“So, Camilla, how is Operation Poor Girl going?”
“Excellent. Yesterday one of the girls offered me a job tutoring her in Spanish.”
“That doesn’t sound bad,” he said, opening two packets of Sugar in the Raw.
“It’s not,” I explained. “Guess how much they’re paying me?”
“Ten dollars an hour?”
I beamed. “Twenty-five! Boom! My anthropological experiment continues, and I get to make some nice cheddar.”
He looked concerned. “What are you going to do when those girls find out the truth about you?”
I didn’t want to hear it. “They’re the ones who jumped to all kinds of conclusions about me being poor and a scholarship student.”
My tall, dark, and handsome brother sat back at his fancy desk and said, “When they find out the truth, your friends will be hurt.”
I hadn’t used those words in my mind, but I had to admit that in just a few short weeks, Tiggy and Willow had started to feel like friends. Sure, they were a little racist. But maybe we all are.
Changing the subject, I said, “The studio has hired a dialogue coach for our mother.”
He laughed. “The purpose being?”
I smirked. “They want her to be able to control her accent so she can play her own American-born twin.”
Then in his most flawless Scarface accent, Sergio said, “The accent always tells the truth, even when the rest of you is lying. Good luck with that, chief.”
He smiled and then waved goodbye. “Hasta luego, Camilla.”
I smiled back. “Hasta luego, Sergio.”