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I never stopped believing in Santa Claus.
I never even started.
And so, there was no fairytale to un-believe. No lie to un-tell. My dad told me it was just a fairytale straightaway, when I was a kid. He read me Christmas stories and showed me painted pictures of a grandpa dressed in red, and told me that he wasn’t real, but that kids liked to imagine him bringing them presents. And that was it.
He didn’t think I would need to believe in magic, I suppose. Living in the palace, daughter to the king, there was nothing I needed and couldn’t have: that’s what fairytales are for. To give hope. But we had money and power, and we did not need hope. Also, we had lies—even though I didn’t know it at the time. But we had lies. So many lies. We were swimming in them.
Is that why my dad didn’t want to add one more lie to the lies?
Was Santa Claus the only lie he could tell me the truth about?
…
I woke up in a bathtub, fighting for my life.
There is warm water that comes up to my chin, and I’m supposed to be getting over hypothermia and nearly drowning in it. I’m not. Marco is kneeling next to the bathtub, but he’s avoiding my gaze, his body tense, coiled.
“Are you a bodyguard?” I ask him.
“Yes, I am,” he says.
He is my bodyguard. Not my friend. Not my coach. Not even my classmate.
He’s been my bodyguard this whole time, and I never knew. I never even suspected it. I lick my lips. My throat is scraped raw from swallowing so much lake-water.
“Last night… Is that why you didn’t want me?” I ask.
He grabs the back of his neck. His chin is all square and dripping and mouthwatering.No, stop. You can’t think that, not about your bodyguard.
“I never said I didn’t want you,” he says. His voice sounds strangled. “I am a liar, but I’m not that good of a liar.”
“What kind of liar are you then?”
He hangs his head. For a minute, I think he won’t say anything, but then he begins to talk, his voice raw from coughing out water:
“I got recruited right off the army. I had only seen pictures of you before I came to Vermont—I never even knew who you were, except from the internet. I went through my guard training in Asteria, after I came back from the war. I became a bodyguard there.” I shiver when he mentions my homeland. He notices, looks away.
‘Recruited right off the army,’he said. Now it makes sense. That’s how an American ended up being my bodyguard. That’s why I never even considered the possibility that he might be anything other than a hot college guy. What an idiot.
“But I saw you for the first time here, on campus,” he goes on, oblivious to my thoughts. “I was not prepared for this magnetic thing you have… I don’t know if you are even aware of it, Olivia, but just by looking at your photo, I didn’t think you were anything more than a pretty girl. But when I saw you in person…” He tugs at his neck again. The skin is getting red and irritated. His cheeks are aflame. “Are you kidding me? I have done nothing but want you since you showed up at my dorm. Do you know how hard it is to concentrate, to…?” His voice trails off.
Yeah, right. I bet it was hard to keep all his lies straight. He did call me ‘pretty’ and ‘magnetic’, but I bet he’d say anything to keep me here in this little cabin in the woods right now. Well, I’m not going to run away, I’m too scared to do that, but I’m not going to start believing him either.
“Well, then, why didn’t you want me?” I ask, teeth chattering.
He brings a hand to my back, trying to still my shaking. The water ripples around my knees, already turning tepid.
“I did…” he bites his lip and lets his head fall back, shutting his eyes. His Adam’s apple juts out at a sharp angle. “Stopping before things got too far was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life.” He inhales sharply. “It was supposed to be a sacrifice,” he says in a whisper, as if he’s talking to himself. “It was supposed to be the one good, selfless thing I did. It was supposed to be the right thing.”
“What was?”
“Stopping myself.”
“Then why did it feel so sucky?”
He laughs. “For you too, huh?”
