Page 12 of Dream On, Liar

“I’ll tell Dad you stopped by,” he added, quieter this time.

That word again.

Dad.

Something in my jaw locked then. This time I knew I meant the words as I spoke them. “Don’t bother. I got what I came for.”

His expression shifted, something flickering there, but I didn’t stay long enough to read it. I stepped outside before the air in the house could follow me out, the door shutting behind me with a soft click that felt louder than it should’ve been.

By the time I reached my car, the journal was still clutched in my hand, edges digging into my palm like it was reminding me of something far greater than I’d let myself remember when I’d been inside the house.

I sat in silence, the cold clinging to the air, the house still watching from behind like it hadn’t quite let me go. I leaned back, closing my eyes, just for a moment—just enough to steady the noise in my head.

But it didn’t stay quiet for long.

It drifted.

Not to what had just happened, not to the sharp edges of it, but further back—somewhere softer, less defined. A memory worn thin at the corners. It was one I’d often revisit as a child, but I could never quiet figure out why.

For the longest time, that’s all it had ever been. A stray memory. A face without a name. Someone the past had folded away without asking permission.

The early days of Dad taking me to the nets. The details didn’t sit still long enough to be certain. It never did. Just sunlight, harsh and golden. The scrape of gravel under trainers. The hollow shock of a tennis ball hitting a plastic bat. Laughter, breathless and easy in a way that felt foreign now.

I was smaller. Lighter. The world hadn’t split itself into sides yet.

But there had been another boy.

Same age. Close enough in height that it hadn’t mattered who was older, who was better. Just two kids passing time without keeping score of anything that would matter later.

I’d always thought it had been just some kid who was also there with his dad, playing and making memories.

But now, it wasn’t the memory that changed.

It was the recognition.

Something in it had shifted, sharpened just enough to feel wrong. The outline of that boy no longer blurred at the edges. It held. It stayed.

It was the eyes.

The same one that I’d seen today, and I’d realised that there had been a time I’d known my younger brother.

My eyes snapped open, staring ahead at the gravel that lined near our driveway, but unable to shake the feeling that something had quietly rearranged itself without asking.

It hadn’t meant anything then.

It probably shouldn’t mean anything now.

Still it did.

But a lot had been said and done to do something about it now.

4

Maeve

THE BATHROOM DOOR SLAMMED shut with a bang, and I barely made it into the stall before the world tilted, and my breakfast made it’s way out of my body and into the toilet bowl.

It came in waves, sharp and relentless, as my one hand fumbled for the wall while the other held my open hair back, clutching the bow tied into it so it wouldn’t end up splattered with vomit too.