The Girl Who Kissed a Lie

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

I’m home in time for dinner, which turns out to be a stew of some sort. I don’t really want it. It seems too heavy for the heat of the day, and I wish there’d just been a salad instead. I feel, once again, like my aunts have no concept of summer.

“How was your day, dear?” Aunt Virtue asks me as we sit down to dinner. She asks it almost absently, sounding distracted, spooning stew into her bowl.

“It was fine,” I reply, and instead of explaining all of the crazy things that had happened to me that day, I take the cowardly path of changing the subject. “How’d it go with the gnomes?”

Aunt True makes a fluttery exclamation of displeasure, and Aunt Virtue raises long-suffering eyes to the heavens.

“Let us not discuss it,” she intones dramatically, and Aunt True nods her head fervently.

Great, I think. That leaves only me to discuss. I lick my lips and swallow. “I got a job today.”

Both aunts look up at me. Aunt True looks concerned. Aunt Virtue looks puzzled.

“A job?” Aunt Virtue repeats.

I nod and pretend to be engrossed in my stew.

“Why?” Aunt Virtue presses.

I shrug a bit. “I don’t know. It seemed like it would give me something to do all summer.”

“I knew we should have come up with things for you to do!” wails Aunt True. “I told you, Virtue.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I say quickly, because I really don’t want to be enlisted in hunting gnomes all summer.

“Where did you get a job?” Aunt Virtue asks.

I take a deep breath. “Bourne’s.”

Aunt Virtue blinks at me.

Aunt True exclaims, “Bourne’s?!”

“It’s not a big deal,” I say again.

“Not a big deal?!” exclaims Aunt True.

Aunt Virtue says, “Don’t you know how dangerous it could be?”

“At Bourne’s?” Bourne’s is the sleepiest store to ever exist. I can’t believe they don’t realize how ridiculous they sound.

“The world is a dangerous place, Selkie,” Aunt Virtue intones at me. “Have the gnomes taught you nothing?”

I lose my temper suddenly. “There aren’t any gnomes,” I snap.

Aunt True gasps.

Aunt Virtue says, “Selkie. You know better than to think that just because you can’t see them, they don’t exist.”

I take a deep breath and tell myself to keep calm. It seems silly to lose my temper about gnomes after all these years of dealing with them. “I’ll make sure I don’t let the gnomes get the better of me. Bourne’s will be fine. I swear. Kelsey works there, and she said they were looking for more help, and Mrs. Bourne said that I could have the job if Kelsey vouched for me, so—”

“Who’s Kelsey?” interrupts Aunt Virtue.

I say, slowly, “My friend.”

“How do you know her?” asks Aunt Virtue.

“From school.”

Aunt True and Aunt Virtue seem to absorb this.

“And she is a nice girl?” Aunt True asks me. “Normal?”