Page 93 of The Lies Always Told

“Come here,” I whisper. I scoot backward until my back hits the wall and help her climb into my lap. I cradle her against my chest. Her hair is ruffled, I’m assuming from going to sleep with it wet, but it’s soft, just as it always is. It smells like vanilla, sweet and intoxicating. “I need you to be honest with me. I’m not going to judge. I’m not gonna go anywhere. Are you safe?”

“I am. I promise. I’m not going to hurt myself, but I’m not going to lie, I thought about it. It was just too much, Gus. It’s too much.”

“It is. You just went through something nobody should go through, but we need you here. I need you here.”

She looks up, her eyes finding mine, searching mine. Her lips part like she wants to say something, but she hesitates. I feel her fingers grip the fabric of my shirt like she’s holding on for dear life. My heart clenches.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she whispers, barely audible. “I don’t know how to be okay after this.”

“You don’t have to be okay right now,” I tell her, my voice steady but soft. “You just have to be here. You just have to let yourself breathe. But Nellie, you don’t have to carry it all. You told me to let you help carry my health—do you remember that?”

“Yeah, and then you fucking dumped me like I meant nothing to you.”

“You know what, Nellie…I wasn’t going to do this now, but I’m done dancing around it. I didn’t dump you. I did try to play it off as less than what we were…what weare, but guess what? I’m not going anywhere. It’s not what you think, andyoudidn’t allow me to say anything. You jumped to conclusions and came for my throat. I was afraid, okay? Is that what you want to hear?”

“Gus, if you’re just going to lie to me, just leave. I’m so tired of the lies always told. I can’t try to decipher?—”

“Damn it, woman. I got sick,” I interrupt. She sits up and brings her hands to hold my face, holding my gaze and reassuring me. So much for me being the rock she needed right now. “I’m okay, I promise, but I wasn’t for a bit there, and I didn’t want to drag you down with me. I was terrified.”

“Gus—” I bring my hands up to stop her from talking. I guess we’re doing this now. It’s all or nothing.

“No, let me finish. They didn’t know what was going on, and I just…I was scared. I was scared to tell you. I was scared it would be too much for you to handle, and you would end up too worried and too sad.”

“You know what made me fucking sad? You pushing me away. You know what made me really angry? You disappearing on me and then showing up a couple of weeks later like nothing happened. Am I that disposable to you?”

“No. You’re not disposable. I was trying to protect you, and if I recall correctly, you pushed me away too. I was giving you space. I was trying to protect your heart while mine was slowly falling apart. I didn’t want to be a burden to you.”

“Funny you say that—that’s the same reason I’m here. Because I’m a burden to everyone around me.” She brings her hands out to point at the cabin. “Why am I the one with these feelings, huh? I don’t deserve to be this sad. I didn’t lose my husband. I didn’t lose my dad. I wasn’t removed from my home and sent to live someplace else. My life will continue as usual…so why am I this fucking sad?” She exhales shakily, her forehead dropping against my chest. I run my hand up and down her back, slow and steady, grounding her, reminding her she’s not alone.

“It was my fault,” she admits, her voice raw.

“No. You don’t get to say that. It wasn’t. You didn’t wake up and decide to bring a gun to work. You didn’t pull the trigger. You didn’t do anything wrong. Why do you think it was your fault? Why do you think you aren’t allowed to feel sad? You’re allowed to feel whatever it is you’re feeling, Nellie, regardless of what you think, of what other people think.” I stop because I haven’t given her time to even answer one question. I wish I could get inside her brain and iron out all her thoughts, all her feelings. I wish I could pluck them out, one at a time, and shed some light on them, show them to her with a big ass magnifying glass so she knows the reality. Her brain is lying to her, just like it was lying to her about my feelings. “Why? You want honesty? Give it to me. Let me take it all. Tell me…why?”

She stays quiet for a long time, and I don’t rush her. The weight of her against me, the way she lets herself lean intome, is enough to tell me she trusts me with this, with her pain, even if she doesn’t have the words for it yet.

After a while, she whispers, “How much time do you have?”

“For you? A lifetime.” She nods and pulls the blanket around her as she lays on the pillows so she can face me.

“How much do you know about what happened?”

“Not much. A kid brought a gun to school and shot Nick. That’s all I know.”

“Josh. His name was Josh,” she exhales, rubbing a hand over her face as she musters the courage to say whatever happened. “I didn’t know him personally, and honestly, I don’t think most people in town did. Funny how that works, isn’t it? How nobody really noticed him until now. He had football and school, and then school was hard because others didn’t see him struggling. Just another jock in the background, not part of the popular crowd but not a loner either. He was with everyone, but nobody noticed him. Invisible—until he wasn’t.”

I lean back, looking at her, quietly waiting for her to continue. I’m not rushing her. I’m letting her share, in her own time. “His little brother, Cody, though…he was different. He was in my office all the time, every single day, sometimes twice. Funny kid. Sweet, too. Always had something to say but never anything too deep. It was mostly small talk—pointless stuff, I thought. I never thought twice about it, you know?. And now? Now, I see it. Now, I realize that’s all he ever gave me. Surface-level things. He never let me in. I never pushed. Because why would I? He looked happy. He seemed fine. But you know what they say about people who smile the most.”

I can see her swallowing hard as she shakes her head and wipes away tears. “Turns out, things at home weren’t so good. Their parents…they had their own issues, though I don’t know the full story. What I do know is that they controlled everything—food, toiletries, even clothes, locked them up like they were privileges instead of basic needs. If the boys wanted something, they had to earn it through physical labor. And if they spoke up? If they dared to tell anyone? They were threatened with starvation. And Josh…Josh got the worst of it.”

She closes her eyes and lets out a breath before looking at me. I hold her hand and make the small circles she likes on her wrist, touching her scars gently, reminding her I’m here for it all. “He wasn’t like Cody. He was quieter, more withdrawn, not as well-liked. But football…that gave him something. A place to be. A purpose.” She lets out a humorless chuckle. “Didn’t matter, though. Some kids saw him stashing food in his backpack one day and made a joke out of it. That joke lasted two years. Two damn years of taunts, whispers, laughter at his expense. And his parents found out, but instead of protecting him, they punished him. They took away even more. They starved him, Gus. Abused him. Not in the way people think—not through bruises or belts. No, they just…let him waste away. Quietly. Subtly. They never laid a hand on him, but they still hurt him, or at least that’s what the principal shared with me.”

I look up, meeting her eyes. “Do you know what that does to a kid? To be constantly hungry, to feel that kind of emptiness every single day? To be mocked at school and tormented at home? To have nowhere—no one—to turn to? He was starving, Gus, in every way a person can be. His dad brought the gun out the night before and threatened the family. The mom too. Suddenly, Josh had too much. He brought the gun to scare his classmates, to stop the bullying, but nobody knew that. In a time of school shootings and safety meetings, in a time of lockdown drills and everyone preparing for the worst, everyone thought that was his end goal. It happened during Home Economics class. Nick was his Home Ec teacher, but he was also his coach. He got in between Josh and the students, and when he thought he had the upper hand, he tried tosnatch the gun away, and Josh accidentally pulled the trigger. It was an accident. Josh didn’t even know it had a bullet in it, or so he told the police. Something that never should have happened, something I should’ve seen coming.”

“How, Nellie?” I keep my voice low, steady. “How should you have seen it coming?”

She shakes her head, staring at the floor like the answer might be written in the cracks between the tiles. “I don’t know,” she whispers. “I just should have.”

“Nobody could’ve predicted that.” I lean in, trying to catch her eyes, but she won’t look at me. “If anyone should have seen something, it’s the high school counselors, right? Not you.”

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