The Girl Who Kissed a Lie

Chapter One

The gnomes are getting smarter.

At least according to Aunt True and Aunt Virtue, who I find with their heads in the oven on the first day of summer vacation.

I don’t even ask them what they’re doing because this is the kind of thing that happens all the time in our house, and I’ve learned not to ask questions. After sixteen years of responses like “The gnomes are getting smarter,” you stop asking.

My aunts are convinced that our house is infested with gnomes. I’ve never seen any, but I can’t remember a time in my life when my aunts weren’t engaged in an all-out war with them. They see evidence of them everywhere. They insist the creatures move our furniture around when we’re not looking and then replace it but always off by an inch or so. They do the same thing with the paintings on the walls. According to my aunts. I have never noticed any of this, but I’ve learned to go along with it.

“Are they in the oven now?” I ask, as I eat my cereal at our kitchen table.

“They have learned how to open the oven,” Aunt Virtue confirms.

“They moved the frying pan that was in the oven two whole inches to the left,” Aunt True adds, also backing out of the oven. “They’re getting bold.”

“There is nothing for it,” Aunt Virtue announces. “We must scour the kitchen.”

Aunt True nods. They exchange looks of grim determination, like spry, elderly aunt generals.

Then Aunt True turns to me. “Aren’t you off to school today?”

“It’s summer vacation, Aunt True,” I remind her. This whole school-schedule thing is still new to us. Up until last year, my aunts had homeschooled me, insisting that it was “safest.” I wasn’t sure what that meant but assumed it had something to do with gnomes, so I didn’t ask questions. Last summer, though, I asked if I could attend school. My aunts fretted about it for several days, and then finally grandly announced that yes, I would be allowed to go to elementary school.

And then I pointed out that I’m in high school.

After all the buildup to school, it turned out to be a bit anticlimactic. None of my aunts’ mysterious, threatening gnomes showed up, which was really disappointing. I know that gnomes don’t exist, but I can’t help the little part of me that wishes that they did, just because then I wouldn’t have to feel like my aunts were crazy. But no gnomes showed up—unless you count weaselly Mr. Brannigan, the biology teacher, and he’s just a weaselly little man, not a gnome (I’m fairly sure)—and the rest of school was just like how I’ve found the rest of life to be: there were bits of it I really liked and bits of it I could have done without. For instance, I liked getting to be around lots of normal people. I didn’t like getting to be around lots of normal people who had all established their friendship cliques years earlier.

And now it is summer vacation, and I am feeling somewhat at loose ends. When I was homeschooled, we didn’t really stop for summer. My aunts don’t pay attention to the passage of time. They always dress exactly the same: all in black. Long-sleeved black blouses, knee-length black skirts, black boots underneath. No concession to humid Boston summers. I’m not even sure that they realize the climate here contains four distinct seasons, because they stay in our town house, fighting gnomes and not really acknowledging the world outside. So we didn’t stop for summers when I was a child, and I have never had a summer vacation before. You’d think this would be exciting. Everyone else at school was excited to be standing at the edge of an abyss of Nothing To Do. I seem to be the only one pointing out that, actually, it’s an abyss, and that’s not a good thing.