Trust Me. I'm Lying - (SLOWLY EDITING)

For The Sass: Chapter 3

"Someday, you'll be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."

—C.S. Lewis

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CHAPTER THREE:

For The Sass.

How I made it through that day was a mystery to me. I spent the rest of the day wary and jumpy. As if my heart was about to come out of my mouth any minute. And because I'm one of those people who count every second until they'd be free to leave this prison temporarily for the joys of food and Wi-Fi, the day dragged even slower than usual.

And here, sitting on the comfortable yet old sofa of my living room with Mom at work and Mia still in school after what has been a pretty horrible day, I felt like my heart was going to explode. It hasn't decelerated much since lunch. I'm still shaking, and I've been biting my nails non-stop.

My parents abandoned me when I was nine years old. I couldn't get that out of my head. It was already bad knowing your father didn't want you or your family. I can't imagine a little kid coming home and never finding his parents again. I can't imagine what it must have felt like— what it must feel like now when you more or less have a mind of your own, and you can see things from your perspective.

I jumped from the couch as the front door opened, and Chris came in. My expression had to more or less resemble a ghost because Chris stopped looking at her phone and raised her grey eyes to my face. "What happened?"

I moved aside, and she grabbed me by the shoulders. "What happened?"

"Chris, someone found the letter I wrote a couple of weeks ago," I choked out.

"What?" she asked, her eyebrows coming together. "What?"

"Someone found it, and now my letter is gone, and now anyone can know what I wrote in it," I explained. I ran a hand through my hair. "This is bad, Chris. This situation is very, very bad."

I had a feeling he didn't tell many people what he wrote. I wasn't in the business of telling them. They could keep secrets, but, like me, I think it was kind of very personal. I didn't want to be boasting about it. All I hoped was that he took the same role.

"Okay, just calm down," she told me. Chris looked around the room for a few minutes, her expression anxious. I knew this expression too well. "Okay, don't kill me, but—"

Yes, I had seen this coming.

"—why is it very, very bad?" she asked in a small voice.

Meet my best friend, Christina Davids. Who I wanted to choke right now.

I looked at her, perplexed. "Come off it, Christina!" I roared. She jumped at my tone. "'Write something no one else knows about you' 'what's the worse that can happen?' "

She sighed and scowled at me. "Isabelle, I know you well enough to know you haven't done anything bad like robbing a bank or something. The worse that's happened to you was all the crap with your dad. It was pretty horrible, but it wasn't your fault, honey."

I looked at her dumbfounded. Another knot in my throat because she didn't know all about me. But she was almost right. "Right," I said in a small voice, not meeting her eyes this time.

"Now," she sat down on the sofa opposite me, taking off her Toms and putting her feet up on the coffee table. "Explain. What, where, when, and how."

"Okay," I sighed and crossed my legs on the sofa. "First of all, two weeks ago, I left the damn letter in a copy of Pride and Prejudice that seemed to belong from that point in time.''