If I hadn’t been feeling so incomplete lately, I would’ve turned around to speak to her. Not only because it was the respectful way to approach a conversation, but because this was Mom. Ialwayslooked at her when she was talking to me.
Still, I couldn’t this time. If I looked at her right now, I was going to break.
I didn’t tell my parents Alana and I were over, couldn’t bring myself to do it. When they asked why she hadn’t been there for my graduation last week, I told them she was sick in bed.
She wasn’t sick, at least I didn’t think so. Alana was done with me.
Lucky for me, my parents didn’t follow up on Tori’s blog because they knew that if she wrote about me, I always told them. So, they didn’t know what happened. And as much as keeping this from them annoyed me, it was better than telling them.
I couldn’t disappoint them again.
“She’s busy with classes,” I lied, though, to be fair, it wasn’t technically a lie. Alana was still busy with her classes, but she had also cut all ties to me.
If I had to guess, she had her nose stuck in a million different textbooks and probably finished off her last few assignments before the summer. Maybe she was finally hanging out with Austin, living the life she dreamt of.
Well, the last time we spoke, she said she hadn’t been interested in Austin for a while, but maybe it changed now that I was gone. Maybe she just said it to make me feel alittlebetter, though that seemed unlikely given the other stuff she threw at me, ultimately deciding to slap me right in the face with her words.
God, how could I have been so fucking stupid? To think, even for a second, Alana was different. To think she might have actually liked me forme.
“I mean, you could help her study, couldn’t you?” Mom asked before she took a seat beside me.
I hummed quietly, trying not to crack when Mom looked at me, waiting for me to say something, anything really.
She already knew.
Mom knew I wasn’t doing alright. She knew I was crumbling behind that happy facade I was trying so hard to keep up. She always knew.
“Are you okay, honey?”
Oh, God.
I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep lying.
My head dropped back against the backrest of the sofa, a heavy sigh drawing from my lungs. “Mom? If I told you that I lied, would you be mad at me?”
Mom hated lies, which I suppose all parents did.
My parents used to tell us that telling a lie would make one’s eye color change to red, so it was easy to spot a liar. I believed them forwaytoo long, but it did make me an honest person.
It was kind of contradicting, looking at it now. They made their kids honest by telling them a lie. It was alright, though, because it was a harmless one. I guess sometimes kids needed those lies.
To be fair, my parents never meant any harm by telling us this. All they wanted was for their kids to be honest with them, and we always knew, no matter what we did, they would listen without judgment.
We didn’t get in trouble much unless wereallymessed up, which almost never happened. We must’ve done something very bad to be met with heavy consequences. They also didn’t believe in grounding their kids as a punishment, or at all, and being too strict on us because it would’ve only raised kids who were sneaking around.
All they wanted was honesty.
We would figure things out together.
We could always talk to them.
It was why I was so afraid that Mom was going to be mad at me if she ever found out that I lied to her about Alana. Dad was a little more chill, but Momreallyhated being lied to.
I looked at my mother, trying to see whether she was already steaming with anger or not.
She didn’t exactly look mad yet, curious, sure, but nothing like I imagined.
“It depends on what you lied to me about,” she answered.
