Tricia Fox -

She opened her mouth to tell him about the bruise. About the empty cafeteria table. About the night she turned fifteen and cried into a pillow because she realized she had invented so many friends that she no longer remembered how to make a real one.

None of it was true.

It was a lie. Every word of it.

She started visiting the antique shop on her breaks. She told him about her fictional uncle’s saxophone. She told him about the time she supposedly met a famous actress at a gas station. Ellis listened without nodding, his gray eyes fixed on her like she was a puzzle missing half its pieces. tricia fox

The truth was that pretending was all she had. And the saddest stories, she had learned, are the ones we tell ourselves. She opened her mouth to tell him about the bruise

By high school, she had perfected the art. Her lies were never large enough to harm. She never claimed to have cancer or a dead twin. Instead, she invented a weekend trip to Boston she never took, an uncle who played saxophone in a jazz club, a scar on her palm from rescuing a stray cat from a drainpipe. Each lie was a tiny, shimmering scale, and together they formed a suit of armor. None of it was true