Page 71 of The Lies We Steal

The key gave us access to what we dubbed, the LS Clubhouse, a secret room inside the Rothchild District third floor. Inside had couches, a TV, tables and even a little popcorn machine.

We had the room until the end of our freshman year and it was where we’d started spending most of our time. Partly because it was ours, partly because we could lock the door with a key, and we felt safe.

“As long as I get first movie pick.” I raise my milkshake glass towards her,

“Deal.”

We click glasses and for a moment I feel like a regular college student.

I feel like a regular girl who was about to have a movie night with her roommate.

And I couldn’t help but wonder if Lyra was right or wrong. Was I the girl who needed the challenge? Who needed to choose love? Did I need the extra drama my life had been given? A guy who is bad for me but good for my sense of adventure?

Because this, even as simple as this moment was, it felt enough for me.

Alistair

Once, when I was eight my grandfather took me hunting.

He was largely into big game animals. Things he could gut, skin, and hang on his wall or plaster on the floor as a rug in front of one of his many fireplaces. Not because he enjoyed killing, because he enjoyed winning.

Without fail when new people would show up to his home, he’d walk them into his study and brag about one of his many kills. Spewing an absurd story that always made him the hero. How he bravely fended off a bear from his buddies when he was only a teen or tracked a wounded elk for twenty miles.

My father got his boasting attitude honestly.

We stood in the middle of the woods from dawn till midafternoon when a flash oftawny fur rustled the trees in front of our tent.

“Nice looking female.” His smokers voice always scratched along my ears like nails on a chalkboard.

The cougar’s bright yellow eyes scanned the area in front of her, not thinking to look to her direct right. My grandfather shoved the outrageously large gun into my hands.

I looked over at him confused on what he wanted me to do with this fucking thing because I’d never even shot a gun before.

“Go on. You have to become a man eventually.” He nods his head to the unsuspecting animal.

I never understood that. The need to kill something to prove your masculinity. It always seemed like a ploy to make people into serial killers. But because I felt honored he’d picked me to come with him today, I lifted the heavy weapon.

Mimicking every western movie I’d ever watched, I pointed the barrel of the gun out, placing my small finger on the trigger and took a few deep breaths. Everything felt heavy, I felt awkward holding it.

I’d yet to grow into my body, all of me just limbs and bone. I didn’t even feel strong enough to hold it up. I told myself it would be no different than the toy guns Silas played with, the ones that shot plastic bullets with rubber tips.

I hadn’t meant to, but when I pressed the trigger and the explosion from the shotgun rocked my body I shut my eyes. I closed them tight, wincing in immediate pain. My shoulder felt like it had been blown clean off and for ten seconds I thought I’d accidentally shot myself.

But even through the pain my eardrums rang aggressively.

I thought, like lions or tigers, the cougar would roar in defense. That it would have a deep, hollow voice that made the ground vibrate with the bravado. Instead, it was a miserable shriek.

It sounded like a child wailing, shrieking over and over again.

Opening my eyes to see the animal fallen over in the clearing, tossing its head around and barring its teeth as it screamed in what I imagined was agonizing pain.

My grandfather, a man who on that day, taught me a very important lesson. The only one I ever remembered. He dragged me by my aching arm towards the crying animal.

Quickly removed a knife from his boot and showed me the long, thick blade,

“Sometimes putting something out of its misery is easy, Alistair. Like this cougar,” He says, “It’s obvious she’s in pain, so we are going to help her.” He swiftly plunges the dagger right beneath her rib cage puncturing the heart I think.

The sound dies in my ears, the eyes of the animal close and just like that, its life is over.

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