Lie to Me Again | ONC 2024

5 - Forever Summer

The tape roll screeched as Yuki pulled on it and used her teeth to bite off a piece. Sliding the ring up her elbow so her hands were free, she connected a blue string from one post-it to another on the pale lilac of her bedroom wall. It crossed midway with a black thread taped to the same papers.

Blue string for Truths. Red string for Lies. Black for the unknown.

Every student in the fortune cookie club had their name on the bedroom wall above her bed. Yuki supposed it resembled a convoluted hit list to the uninitiated eye. Only Ethan's fortune and hers had ink telling their Truth and Lie but black strings brought Sophia and Rhett into their square of influence.

Someone knocked on her door and opened it. "Yuki, I brought you some fruit," her grandmother said. "Are you studying?"

"Yes, Nana," Yuki answered with a sigh. Twirling the masking tape roll around her finger, she walked to her desk where her grandma set a plate down. When Yuki looked at the apple on its porcelain surface, all the air left her lungs at once. She stopped moving.

"It took me a couple tries, but I think I finally got it perfect." Her grandma tapped the back of the apple swan, with several cut pieces fanning out to form wings and seeds pressed into the head for eyes. "Just like your mother used to do."

"Nana...you really didn't have to," Yuki whispered. She wanted to say thank you, but when she tried, the words lodged in her throat. She didn't want to remember. She wanted to be stronger than this, than her past. If she kept walking, kept moving forward, there had to be light at the end of the road.

"Ah, well it's pretty," her grandma said with a beaming smile as she dusted her hands off. "Let me see your test results."

Yuki fetched the paper for her SAT scores from her three-ring binder and handed it over. She knew it wasn't good enough, had beaten herself up already, yet she cringed at the sound of tongue clicking. Her grandma plucked the dreaded glasses of disapproval from their resting place on her short, curly grey hair and set them on her nose.

"Yuki, Yuki. Only 1400? You can do better than that. Your father scored 1570 on his first try..."

Checked out. Zoned out. Yuki couldn't listen anymore, so she just didn't. Yet she heard the words anyway, because they'd been drilled into her brain.

Her father, born poor, had attended Princeton University, become a successful businessman, and married rich as the icing on the cake. If she didn't follow in his footsteps, she was crazy. Ungrateful. Wasted potential. It didn't matter that his footsteps led to death and ruin.

"I'll do better, Nana. I'll make you and Papa proud," Yuki said, because it was what her grandmother wanted to hear. She always knew what words were desired of her, even if she didn't believe them to be true. "I have a history assignment to finish tonight."

With some parting words that went unheard, the door closed behind her grandma. The room fell into silence until with a sharp movement, Yuki knocked the apple swan off the plate and into the trash bin beside her desk. It landed with a thud and for a moment she saw her mother's kind eyes and her beautiful, steady hands making precision cuts with the fruit knife.

She shoved the image away, instead pulling out her old laptop to start researching the War of 1812 for Sophia's paper. No time existed for tears and memories, not when she had grades to attain, money to make, and a scholarship to win.

But she wondered, at the end of it all, would her grandparents be proud of her? When she looked in the mirror, would she recognize herself or would she see a lying girl who was the spitting image of a dead man?

Her phone chimed.

Flipping it open, she leaned back in her chair. "Moshi moshi."

"Night bird as always. No wonder you look dead tired in class."