When we got to the car, Mom turned into a giant barking dog. She woofed angrily at me at a hundred miles an hour about honesty being the most important thing in the universe rurrurrurrurruh and I should be the one paying for the window woofwoofwoofwoofwoof and what was I thinking and how did I break it anyway? With a rock?

“I didn’t break it,” I yelled.

She stopped barking at me for a second. “Well, who did then?”

“Someone else.”

“Oh yeah? Who? You were the only one there.”

I sat there with injustice fizzing and bubbling inside me like an unstable science experiment about to go boom.

Five minutes later, when we turned into our street, Mom said, “So listen to me, when you go into Greek school next week…” and that’s when the lid came off.

I yelled, “I’m never going back to Greek school ever in my entire life! I hate every single one of them in that stupid class and I hate Greek and most of all I hate you because you make me go when you know I hate it!”

Mom slowed down and stopped the car. Luckily, we were in our cul-de-sac by then and not on the main road. Still. She just stopped! In the middle of the road! Isn’t that illegal or something? I wanted to ask but I was boiling, erupting, and steaming at the time.

“Finished?” she asked, not looking at me.

“No, I have not finished!”

“So finish. Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

But I couldn’t because by then, I was snorting like a bull and trying not to cry.

Eventually, Mom said quietly but firmly, “You’re going next week. And the week after. And the week after that. And every week until you’re sixteen. Just so you know.”

When I got home, I was the grumpiest I’ve ever been in my life. I slammed doors. I stomped around. I growled loudly at Dad’s three-out-of-ten Dad jokes. Mom sent me to bed at 6 p.m. as a punishment for breaking the window, so I flung the toothpaste back on the side of the sink without closing the lid and brushed my teeth so hard, enamel must have rubbed off. Then I marched into my room, threw myself into bed, and pulled the duvet over my head.

Being dramatic and angry was kind of fun. I felt like a teenager. But I got bored after ten minutes. Six p.m. is early. So I got out my notebook and started writing. Not just fun stuff this time, but everything that happened, right from the beginning. And it felt good to get it out. For once, someone was listening to me. Even if that someone was a piece of paper in a notebook.

Have you ever been so close to someone that you could wah-wah in whale song?

I have. Well, sort of, anyway.

When I say wah-wah, I mean communicate, but not in a normal way. In a special telepathic way that wah-wahs out of your brain and into theirs, or wah-wahs out of their brain into yours.

About half an hour later, when I was lying in bed having a temper tantrum, the phone rang.

“Oh, hi Maria,” I heard Mom say, and then she muttered something quietly, which I didn’t even realize she could physically do. I tried to eavesdrop but I needn’t have bothered because Mom yelled, “Lexie! Come.”

I didn’t budge. Mom called twice more and then came upstairs. I pretended I hadn’t heard, which, if you think about it, is another type of lying. Mom held out the phone and said, “Kyria Maria. She wants to talk to you.”

I stared ahead like Mom wasn’t even standing there.

“Take the phone. Talk to your teacher.”

I shook my head.

“Lexie!”

But I wouldn’t.

Mom put her hand over the mouthpiece and whispered to me, “That is so rude. Don’t you dare do that.”

I looked up and replied, “Do what?” Which is lying through acting, if you think about it. Did that even count as lying? Actors do it every day.

“Talk to her.”

My brain turned into a stormy place. I snatched the phone and mumbled, “Hello?”

“Lexie, I want to give you one more chance. Tell me the truth about the window.”

Poisoned purple pus burnt my insides. I wasn’t going to answer, but Mom was standing next to me with her arms folded, so I muttered, “I didn’t break it.”

“Then tell me who did.”

What are you supposed to say at times like these? What?

And then something in me snapped. I’d had enough. So I told her the truth. Kind of. In a firm voice, so they’d both hear me loud and clear.

“I didn’t break the window, OK? Someone else did. But I can’t tell you who it was because that’s called snitching. I have no idea why snitching is worse than being honest, but it is. So all I can tell you is that I didn’t do it and that’s the truth.”

I handed the phone back to Mom and threw the duvet over my head. I was quite pleased with myself, actually. I’d found a way to tell the truth without exactly telling the truth. It was brilliant.

Now all I had to do was figure out how to do the same thing with the necklace.